'What happened in 1911?

'Everything changed.

'How?

'It just did. That's how it works. I can see it now'

'Laney, Yamazaki says, 'when you told me about the stalker effect, you said that the victims, the test subjects, became obsessed with one particular media figure.

'Yes.

'And you are obsessed with her?

Laney stares at him, eyes lit by a backwash of data. 'No. Not with her. Guy named Harwood. Cody Harwood. They're coming together, though. In San Francisco. And someone else. Leaves a sort of negative trace; you have to infer everything from the way he's not there.

'Why did you ask me here, Laney? This is a terrible place. Do you wish me to help you to escape? Yamazaki is thinking of the blades of the Swiss Army knife in his pocket. One of them is serrated; he could easily cut his way out through the wall. Yet the psychological space is powerful, very powerful, and overwhelms him. He feels very far from Shinjuku, from Tokyo, from anything. He smells Laney's sweat. 'You are not well.

'Rydell, Laney says, replacing the eyephones. 'That rent-a-cop from the Chateau. The one you knew. The one who told me about you, back in LA.

'Yes?

'I need a man on the ground, in San Francisco. I've managed to move some money. I don't think they can trace it. I decked with DatAmerica's banking sector. Find Rydell and tell him he can have it as a retainer.

'To do what?

Laney shakes his head. The cables on the eyephones move in the dark like snakes. 'He has to be there, is all. Something's coming down. Everything's changing.

'Laney, you are sick, Let me take you-

'Back to the island? There's nothing there. Never will be, now she's gone.

And Yamazaki knows this is true.

'Where's Rez? Laney asks.

'He mounted a tour of the Kombinat states, when he decided she was gone.