Gonzales said, 'So you need a spy, and I'm it.'
Traynor shrugged.
The Advisor said, 'You represent properly vested interests in
a situation where they would not otherwise be adequately
represented.'
Gonzales said, 'That's a good one, 'represent properly vested
interests.' I'll try to remember it. Okay, I'll do my best.' He
turned to face Traynor and said, 'To get you on the board.'
Traynor laughed. Gonzales asked, 'How long will this thing take?'
'Not too long,' Traynor said.
The Advisor said, 'Once Chapman's state has been stabilized
'
'Or he dies,' Traynor said.
'Highly probable,' said the Advisor. 'Once he is stable
alive or deadyour job will be finished.'
Traynor said, 'But until then, your job is to let me know
what's happening. You'll be in machine-space along with them, and
you'll see what they're doing.'
'Fine,' Gonzales said. 'So what do I do now?'
'You fly to Berkeley and talk to Doctor Heywood,' Traynor
said. 'Introduce yourself. Make a friend.'
5. So Come to Me, Then
Gonzales arrived at Berkeley Aeroport, a collection of
cracked cement pads at the edge of the water, by mid-afternoon.
He stepped out of the swing-wing into blazing sunshine. Across
the bay, the Golden Gate and Alcatraz Island danced in the glare;
the water glittered so intensely his sunglasses went nearly black.
A Truesdale rental waited for him in the parking lot. He
stuck a SenTrax i.d./credit chip into its door slot, and the door
retracted into its frame with a muted hiss. The Truesdale's
windows had opaqued against the dazzle, and its passive a/c had
been working, so the dark brown velvet seat was cool to the touch
when Gonzales slid across it.
'Do you wish to drive, Mister Gonzales?' the car asked.
Gonzales said, 'Not really. You know where we're going?'
'Yes, I have that address.'
'Then you take it.'
Diana Heywood lived in the Berkeley hills, in a Maybeck house
more than a century old. The car drove Gonzales through streets
that wound their way up the hillside, then stopped in front of a
house whose redwood-shingled bulk loomed over Gonzales's head as
he stood on the sidewalk. Sun glinted off the lozenged panes of
its bay window.
Her door answered his knock by saying she was a few blocks
away, at the Rose Gardens. The door said, 'It is a civic project:
volunteers are rebuilding the garden, which has fallen into
disuse. Many of the local'
'Thank you,' Gonzales said.
He told the Truesdale where he was going and set off on foot
in the direction the memex had indicated. To his left hand,
streets and homes sloped down toward the bay; to his right, they
climbed up the steep hillside.
Gonzales came to a hand-lettered sign in green poster paint
on white board that read:
BERKELEY ROSE GARDENS RECLAMATION PROJECT
He looked down to where broken redwood lattices fanned out along
terraced pathways threaded with a clumsy patchwork of green pvc
irrigation pipes. Halfway down stood a cracked and peeling
trellis of white-painted wood with bushes dangling from its gaps.
Next to the trellis, a small gardener robot, a green plastic-
coated block on miniature tractor wheels, extended a delicate arm
of shining coiled steel ending in a ten-fingered fibroid hand.
The hand closed, and a dark red rose came away from its bush.
Clutching the blossom, the little robot wheeled away.
Gonzales walked down the inclined pathway, his feet crunching
on gravel, past the bushes and their labels stating often
improbable names: Dortmunds with red, papery petals, large Garden
Parties flamboyant in white and yellow, Montezumas, Martin
Frobishers, and Mighty Mouses. He stopped and inhaled the strong
perfume of purple Intrigue. In the recombinant section, Halos,
blossoms in careful rainbow stripes, had grown immense. Giant
psychedelic grids, only vaguely rose-shaped, they pushed
everything else aside. Gonzales put his nose above a pink blossom
on a nameless bush; the rose smelled like peppermint candy.
He recognized the woman at the bottom of the path from
dossier pictures Traynor had shown him. Diana Heywood wore a
culotte dress of white cotton that exposed her shoulders, wrapped
tightly about her waist, split to cover her thighs. Small and
slender, she had close-cut dark hair, streaked with grey. No age
in her skin; fine, sculpted features. She wore glasses as opaque
as Gonzales's own.
She held out the thorny stem of a dark-red rose. 'Would you
like a flower?' she asked. Sun across her face erased her
features.
'Thanks,' he said as he took the flower gingerly, aware of
its thorns.
She said, 'Who are you, and what do you want?'
'My name is Mikhail Gonzales, and I want to talk to you.
I'll be working with you at Halo.'
She said, 'Will you?' Her back to him, she knelt and snipped
away a greenish tangle of vine and thorn. The clippers choked on
a clump of grass. She freed them, then threw them to the ground,
where they stuck point-first, buzzed for a moment, then stopped.
She looked over her shoulder at him and said, 'I've been waiting
for someone like you to show upthe company's lad, the one who
keeps watch on me and poor old Jerry, to make sure we don't do
anything unauthorized.'
