“Yes, we have a Roger Reaumur Coolidge in Saint-Cergue,” responded the guide in a flash.
“Can you show me where Saint-Cergue is on a map?”
“Hold my hand,” said the guide. “We’ll fly.” I took his hand, and then he leapt up into the air. It was a fabulous feeling to fly straight up from the top of the Matterhorn. Soon we were at such an altitude that our virtual Switzerland had become its own map.
“Saint-Cergue is near Geneva,” said the guide. We flew out of the Alps and up the great curve of Lake Geneva. Soon we were near the city of Geneva at the far end of the lake. The guide pointed away from Geneva toward a meek range of rounded mountains to our right. “Those are the Jura Mountains,” he said. “See that little peak? That is the Dole. Saint-Cergue is in the saddle of the pass beside the Dole.”
He flew us lower, showed me the Geneva airport, and jovially instructed me to make steering wheel motions so as to remotely pilot a distant virtual car up the serpentine road that led from the Geneva/Lausanne Autoroute to Saint-Cergue. The simulation reminded me of a recurrent nightmare that I’d had when I’d been in my twenties-a dream where I’d be driving a car with a steering wheel column that grew to be hundreds of yards long. I declined the simulation, and the guide flew us straight on up to Saint-Cergue.
“Do you know which building Roger Coolidge lives in?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the guide, and one of the properties began blinking. It was a compound of two large buildings up in a meadow two or three kilometers above the main drag of Saint-Cergue. I stared for a few minutes, fixing landmarks in my mind. I could rent a car at the Geneva airport and drive right up to Roger’s. I’d buy a big hunting knife at a Swiss knife shop first. It was kind of too bad I’d never gotten that plastic gun Keith had told me about.
“Was there anything else?” the guide asked.
“Okay, yeah, I’d like to see a movie. How’s my credit holding up?”
“You have more than enough credit for a movie. We have several special made-for-cyberspace productions, and many of our standard films have been cyberized.”
“Take me to your interface.”
We jumped to a room with thousands of tiny screens showing small images. There were some big posters. Off to one side of the room a live cyberspace action film was being acted out, a fight-it-out shoot-’em-up kind of thing.
“I guess you don’t have any hard-core pornography?” I asked the guide.
“We have a selection of tasteful erotic films available for the passengers of our business-class.”
“No thanks, I don’t think so. And I’m kind of tired, so I don’t want the stress of a cybershow. Maybe an old movie. What do you have with Natalie Wood?”
“Fortunate choice, Mr. Schrandt! We have two movies available with Natalie Wood. First is Rebel Without a Cause, released 1956, featuring James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood. Critic Lester Seda terms Rebel Without a Cause ”An early cult movie of teenage anomie in the computer age.“ Second is Brainstorm, released 1977, a classic science fiction thriller featuring Natalie Wood as a mystical scientist who records her brain onto reflection hologram memory ribbon. Of Brainstorm, critic Lester Seda says, ”Released after Natalie Wood’s death, Brainstorm is eerily prescient and campily elegant.“
I watched Brainstorm. They’d cyberized it enough so that it wrapped around about half the field of my vision. It was a good flick.
When the credits started running, Karl the guide daemon reappeared like a person coming up to you in your seat at the movies.
“What,” I said.
“It’s about your cy-mail message, Mr. Schrandt. The sender has been steadily pinging us. He knows you’re on this flight. Wouldn’t you care to view the message now?”
“All right,” I sighed. “Let it come down.” I really dreaded this, whatever it was. I kept both hands poised on my headset, ready to tear it off lest I suffer another burn.
There was a buzzing, the Brainstorm credits melted, and then I was looking at Roger Coolidge, Roger sitting there looking at me from an armchair in a shitty unfinished drywall room. He was wearing gray pants and a short- sleeved white polyester shirt.
“Hi, Jerzy. I’m talking to you live from my house in Saint-Cergue,” said Roger. “Excuse the mess-Kay and I have been remodeling.“ Roger’s dusty study had a desk and a picture window; I could see up a sloping green hillside to the concave horizon of a mountain pass. It was early on a rainy morning. Roger stared passively in thought, like a beaver resting by a stream. Finally he spoke again. ”I had a feeling you’d come to me. Thanks for making it so easy. My chauffeur Tonio will meet you at the Geneva airport and bring you to Saint-Cergue. I’ll explain the whole thing when you get here, okay?“
I pawed the headset off and stumbled blindly down the carpeted floor that hid the thin metal fuselage of this most improbable construct: a jetliner. We were ants in an aluminum beer can hurtling through the sky. I found the stewardess in the galley and told her that my cyberspace hookup didn’t seem to be working correctly, and that she should switch if off before it ate any more of my credit. I took a glass of cognac back to my seat and fell into troubled sleep.
TEN
In Geneva I got through passport control and customs without a hitch. Nobody asked me about the Y9707-EX chips. But I was tense; I kept feeling as though people were shoving their faces up close to me.
It was four in the afternoon local time when I stepped out into the public airport lobby, a big stone-floored glass-and-metal hall with lots of shops. For a moment I thought I was free to go off on my own-but then someone tapped my shoulder. It was an athletic, middle-aged Italian man in an unmarked blue serge uniform. He tipped his hat and smiled with his teeth.
“Welcome, Mr. Schrandt! Mr. Coolidge sends me here to drive you. My name is Tonio. Do you have luggage?”
“No,” I sighed. “No, no, this is my only bag. And I can carry it.” I was sad to see this guy. “So you’re going to drive me up to Roger’s villa in Saint-Cergue?”
“Exactly,” said Tonio and gestured sweepingly toward the exit. “Please to come with me.” It would have been nice to buy a big hunting knife first, but, hell, there’d be knives in Roger’s kitchen. I followed along.
Outside it was drizzling briskly. Tonio had parked Roger’s car at the curb right outside the entrance. The car was an unimpressive beige Subaru station wagon. At Tonio’s urging, I sat in back. We did a piece on the Autoroute, and then we headed up the rolling green slopes of the Jura Mountains. Before long we were racing up the same winding road that the Swissair guide had mapped for me in cyberspace. Tonio drove much too fast for my comfort, repeatedly tailgating and passing other cars. I asked him to drive slower, but he chose not to understand.
In the cold Swiss springtime, Saint-Cergue looked battened down and godforsaken. The wet posters for cigarettes and liquors were all in French. There were several barns with piles of straw and manure right on the main street; the runoff from the piles fanned filthily across the pavement. A thin village idiot in a plastic raincoat and a plastic-covered beret went lurching past, one hand fingering his bristly chin.
Tonio slewed into a tiny road off the main street and sped uphill two and a half kilometers to Roger’s domain: two sturdy Swiss buildings that looked to be made of concrete. The walls were covered in rough stucco, and the roofs were of heavy gray tile. No neighboring houses were in sight. The rain was pouring down harder than ever.
The first building was large and windowless; the second was a house, long and low. Its windows had the European metal roll-down shutters, but most of the shutters were open. Tonio snapped open a big black umbrella and walked me up to the house’s automated front door. The puddles splashed over my sandals and soaked my socks.
Roger came quickly after Tonio’s first knock. The door made a heavy thunk as it unlocked itself and swung open.
