Cyberpunk

the Green Dream. The roombrain brought Tree up in a new window. “Oh, hi,” she said. “You rich boys sleep late.”
    “What’s this about Happy’s?”
    “She invited me.” Tree was recharging her hairworks with a red brush. “I said yes. Something wrong?”
    Comrade slipped into the room; I shushed him. “You sure you want to go to a smash party? Sometimes they get a little crazy.”
    She aimed the brush at me. “You’ve been to smash parties before. You survived.”
    “Sure, but . . .”
    “Well, I haven’t. All I know is that everybody at school is talking about this one, and I want to see what it’s about.”
    “You tell your parents you’re going?”
    “Are you kidding? They’d just say it was too dangerous. What’s the matter, Mr. Boy, are you scared? Come on, it’ll be extreme.”
    “She’s right. You should go,” said Comrade.
    “Is that Comrade?” Tree said. “You tell him, Comrade!”
    I glared at him. “Okay, okay, I guess I’m outnumbered. Stennie said he’d drive. You want us to pick you up?”
    She did.
    I flew at Comrade as soon as Tree faded. “Don’t you ever do that again!” I shoved him, and he bumped up against the wall. “I ought to throw you to Montross.”
    “You know, I just finished chatting with him.” Comrade stayed calm and made no move to defend himself. “He wants to meet—the three of us, face to face. He suggested Happy’s.”
    “He suggested . . . I told you not to talk to him.”
    “I know.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think we should do it.”
    “Who gave you permission to think?”
    “You did. What if we give him the picture back and open our files and then I grovel, say I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again, blah, blah, blah. Maybe we can even buy him off. What have we got to lose?”
    “You can’t bribe software. And what if he decides to snatch us?” I told Comrade about the gypsy with the penlight. “You want Tree mixed up in this?”
    All the expression drained from his face. He did not say anything at first, but I had watched his subroutines long enough to know that when he looked this blank, he was shaken. “So we take a risk, maybe we can get it over with,” he said. “He’s not interested in Tree, and I won’t let anything happen to you. Why do you think your mom bought me?”
    Happy Lurdane lived on the former estate of Philip Johnson, a notorious twentieth-century architect. In his will Johnson had arranged to turn his compound into the Philip Johnson Memorial Museum, but after he died his work went out of fashion. The glass skyscrapers in the cities did not age well; they started to fall apart or were torn down because they wasted energy. Nobody visited the museum, and it went bankrupt. The Lurdanes had bought the property and made some changes.
    Johnson had designed all the odd little buildings on the estate himself. The main house was a shoebox of glass with no inside walls; near it stood a windowless brick guest house. On a pond below was a dock that looked like a Greek temple. Past the circular swimming pool near the houses were two galleries that had once held Johnson’s art collection, long since sold off. In Johnson’s day, the scattered buildings had been connected only by paths, which made the compound impossible in the frosty Connecticut winters. The Lurdanes had enclosed the paths in clear tubes and commuted in a golf cart. Stennie told his Alpha not to wait, since the lot was already full and cars were parked well down the driveway. Five of us squeezed out of the car: me, Tree, Comrade, Stennie, and Janet Hoyt. Janet wore a Yankees jersey over pinstriped shorts, Tree was a little overdressed in her silver jaunts, I had on baggies padded to make me seem bigger, and Comrade wore his usual window coat. Stennie lugged a box with his swag for the party.
    Freddy the Teddy let us in. “Stennie and Mr. Boy!” He reared back on his hindquarters and roared. “Glad I’m not going to be the only beastie here. Hi, Janet. Hi, I’m Freddy,” he said to Tree. His pink tongue lolled. “Come in, this way. Fun starts right here. Some kids are swimming, and there’s sex in the guest house. Everybody else is with Happy having lunch in the sculpture gallery.”
    The interior of the Glass House was bright and hard. Dark woodblock floor, some unfriendly furniture, huge panes of glass framed in black-painted steel. The few kids in the kitchen were passing an inhaler around and watching a microwave fill up with