Even then, there had been confusion. Bobby had argued that Linglessou, who rode Beauvoir in the oumphor, and the Linglessou of the matrix were separate entities, if in fact the former was an entity at all. "They been doing that for ten thousand years," he'd say, "dancing and getting crazy, but there's only been those things in cyberspace for seven, eight years." Bobby believed the old cowboys, the ones he bought drinks for in the Gentlemen Loser whenever Angie's career took him to the Sprawl, who maintained that the loa were recent arrivals. The old cowboys looked back to a time when nerve and talent were the sole deciding factors in a console artist's career, although Beauvoir would have argued that it required no less to deal with the loa.