Gravity fell away as the spindle narrowed. Case's stomach churned.
Aerol was waiting with his scooter beside the dock.
`Case, mon, big problem.' The soft voice faint in his phones. He chinned the volume control and peered into the Lexan face-plate of Aerol's helmet.
`Gotta get to Garvey,Aerol.'
`Yo. Strap in, mon. But Garveycaptive. Yacht, came before, she came back. Now she lockin'~ steady on Marcus Garvey.'
Turing? `Came before?' Case climbed into the scooter's frame and began to fasten the straps.
`Japan yacht. Brought you package...'
Armitage.
Confused images of wasps and spiders rose in Case's mind as they came in sight of Marcus Garvey.The little tug was snug against the gray thorax of a sleek, insectile ship five times her length. The arms of grapples stood out against Garvey's patched hull with the strange clarity of vacuum and raw sunlight. A pale corrugated gangway curved out of the yacht, snaked sideways to avoid the tug's engines, and covered the aft hatch. There was something obscene about the arrangement, but it had more to do with ideas of feeding than of sex.
`What's happening with Maelcum?'
`Maelcum fine. Nobody come down the tube. Yacht pilot talk to him, say relax.'
As they swung past the gray ship, Case saw the name HANIWA in crisp white capitals beneath an oblong cluster of Japanese.
`I don't like this, man. I was thinking maybe it's time we got our ass out of here anyway.'
`Maelcum thinkin'~ that precise thing, mon, but Garveynot be goin'~ far like that.'
Maelcum was purring a speeded-up patois to his radio when Case came through the forward lock and removed his helmet.
`Aerol's gone back to the Rocker,'Case said.
Maelcum nodded, still whispering to the microphone.
Case pulled himself over the pilot's drifting tangle of dreadlocks and began to remove his suit. Maelcum's eyes were closed now; he nodded as he listened to some reply over a pair of phones with bright orange pads, his brow creased with concentration. He wore ragged jeans and an old green nylon jacket with the sleeves ripped out. Case snapped the red Sanyo suit to a storage hammock and pulled himself down to the g-web.
`See what th'~ ghost say, mon,' Maelcum said. `Computer keeps askin'~ for you.'
`So who's up there in that thing?'
`Same Japan-boy came before. An'~ now he joined by you Mister Armitage, come out Freeside...'
Case put the trodes on and jacked in.
`Dixie?'
The matrix showed him the pink spheres of the steel combine in Sikkim.
`What you gettin'~ up to, boy? I been hearin'~ lurid stories. Hosaka's patched into a twin bank on your boss's boat now. Really hoppin'~. You pull some Turing heat?'
`Yeah, but Wintermute killed 'em.'
`Well, that won't hold 'em long. Plenty more where those came from. Be up here in force. Bet their decks are all over this grid sector like flies on shit. And your boss, Case, he says go. He says run it and run it now.'
Case punched for the Freeside coordinates.
`Lemme take that a sec, Case...' The matrix blurred and phased as the Flatline executed an intricate series of jumps with a speed and accuracy that made Case wince with envy.
`Shit, Dixie...'
`Hey, boy, I was that good when I was alive. You ain't seen nothin'~. No hands!'
`That's it, huh? Big green rectangle off left?'
`You got it. Corporate core data for Tessier-Ashpool S.A., and that ice is generated by their two friendly AI's. On par with anything in the military sector, looks to me. That's king hell ice, Case, black as the grave and slick as glass. Fry your brain soon as look at you. We get any closer now, it'll have tracers up our ass and out both ears, be tellin'~ the boys in the T-A boardroom the size of your shoes and how long your dick is.'
`This isn't looking so hot, is it? I mean, the Turings are on it. I was thinking maybe we should try to bail out. I can take you.'
`Yeah? No shit? You don't wanna see what that Chinese program can do?'
`Well, I...' Case stared at the green walls of the T-A ice. `Well, screw it. Yeah. We run.'
`Slot it.'
`Hey, Maelcum,' Case said, jacking out, `I'm probably gonna be under the trodes for maybe eight hours straight.' Maelcum was smoking again. The cabin was swimming in smoke. `So I can't get to the head...'
`No problem, mon.' The Zionite executed a high forward somersault and rummaged through the contents of a zippered mesh bag, coming up with a coil of transparent tubing and something else, something sealed in a sterile bubble pack.
He called it a Texas catheter, and Case didn't like it at all.
He slotted the Chinese virus, paused, then drove it home.
`Okay,' he said, `we're on. Listen, Maelcum, if it gets really funny, you can grab my left wrist. I'll feel it. Otherwise, I guess you do what the Hosaka tells you, okay?'
`Sure, mon.' Maelcum lit a fresh joint.
`And turn the scrubber up. I don't want that shit tangling with my neurotransmitters. I got a bad hangover as it is.'
Maelcum grinned.
Case jacked back in.
`Christ on a crutch,' the Flatline said, `take a look at this.'
The Chinese virus was unfolding around them. Polychrome shadow, countless translucent layers shifting and recombining. Protean, enormous, it towered above them, blotting out the void.
`Big mother,' the Flatline said.
`I'm gonna check Molly,' Case said, tapping the simstim switch.
Freefall. The sensation was like diving through perfectly clear water. She was falling-rising through a wide tube of fluted lunar concrete, lit at two-meter intervals by rings of white neon.
The link was one way. He couldn't talk to her.
He flipped.
`Boy, that is one mean piece of software. Hottest thing since sliced bread. That goddam thing's invisible.I just now rented twenty seconds on that little pink box, four jumps left of the T-A ice; had a look at what we look like. We don't. We're not there.'
Case searched the matrix around the Tessier-Ashpool ice until he found the pink structure, a standard commercial unit, and punched in closer to it. `Maybe it's defective.'
`Maybe, but I doubt it. Our baby's military, though. And new. It just doesn't register. If it did, we'd read as some kind of Chinese sneak attack, but nobody's twigged to us at all. Maybe not even the folks in Straylight.'
Case watched the blank wall that screened Straylight. `Well,' he said, `that's an advantage, right?'
`Maybe.' The construct approximated laughter. Case winced at the sensation. `I checked ol'~ Kuang Eleven out again for you, boy. It's real friendly, long as you're on the trigger end, jus'~ polite an'~ helpful as can be. Speaks good English, too. You ever hear of slow virus before?'
`No.'
`I did, once. Just an idea, back then. But that's what ol'~ Kuang's all about. This ain't bore and inject, it's more like we interface with the ice so slow, the ice doesn't feel it. The face of the Kuang logics kinda sleazes up to the target and mutates, so it gets to be exactly like the ice fabric. Then we lock on and the main programs cut in, start talking circles 'round the logics in the ice. We go Siamese twin on 'em before they even get restless.' The Flatline laughed.
`Wish you weren't so damn jolly today, man. That laugh of yours sort of gets me in the spine.'
`Too bad,' the Flatline said. `Ol'~ dead man needs his laughs.' Case slapped the simstim switch.
And crashed through tangled metal and the smell of dust, the heels of his hands skidding as they struck slick paper. Something behind him collapsed noisily.
`C'mon,' said the Finn, `ease up a little.'
Case lay sprawled across a pile of yellowing magazines, the girls shining up at him in the dimness of Metro Holografix, a wistful galaxy of sweet white teeth. He lay there until his heart had slowed, breathing the smell of old magazines.
`Wintermute,' he said.
`Yeah,' said the Finn, somewhere be
hind him, `you got it.'
`Fuck off.' Case sat up, rubbing his wrists.
`Come on,'said the Finn, stepping out of a sort of alcove in the wall of junk. `This way's better for you, man.' He took his Partagas from a coat pocket and lit one. The smell of Cuban tobacco filled the shop. `You want I should come to you in the matrix like a burning bush? You aren't missing anything, back there. An hour here'll only take you a couple of seconds.'
`You ever think maybe it gets on my nerves, you coming on like people I know?' He stood, swatting pale dust from the front of his black jeans. He turned, glaring back at the dusty shop windows, the closed door to the street. `What's out there? New York? Or does it just stop?'
`Well,' said the Finn, `it's like that tree, you know? Falls in the woods but maybe there's nobody to hear it.' He showed Case his huge front teeth, and puffed his cigarette. `You can go for a walk, you wanna. It's all there. Or anyway all the parts of it you ever saw. This is memory, right? I tap you, sort it out, and feed it back in.'
`I don't have this good a memory,' Case said, looking around. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. He tried to remember what the lines on his palms were like, but couldn't.
`Everybody does,' the Finn said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out under his heel, `but not many of you can access it. Artists can, mostly, if they're any good. If you could lay this construct over the reality, the Finn's place in lower Manhattan, you'd see a difference, but maybe not as much as you'd think. Memory's holographic, for you.' The Finn tugged at one of his small ears. `I'm different.'
`How do you mean, holographic?' The word made him think of Riviera.
`The holographic paradigm is the closest thing you've worked out to a representation of human memory, is all. But you've never done anything about it. People, I mean.' The Finn stepped forward and canted his streamlined skull to peer up at Case. `Maybe if you had, I wouldn't be happening.'
`What's that supposed to mean?'
The Finn shrugged. His tattered tweed was too wide across the shoulders, and didn't quite settle back into position. `I'm trying to help you, Case.'
`Why?'
`Because I need you.' The large yellow teeth appeared again. `And because you need me.'
`Bullshit. Can you read my mind, Finn?' He grimaced. `Wintermute, I mean.'
`Minds aren't read.See, you've still got the paradigms print gave you, and you're barely print-literate. I can accessyour memory, but that's not the same as your mind.' He reached into the exposed chassis of an ancient television and withdrew a silver-black vacuum tube. `See this? Part of my DNA, sort of...' He tossed the thing into the shadows and Case heard it pop and tinkle. `You're always building models. Stone circles. Cathedrals. Pipe-organs. Adding machines. I got no idea why I'm here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you'll have finally managed the real thing.'
`I don't know what you're talking about.'
`That's `you' in the collective. Your species.'
`You killed those Turings.'
The Finn shrugged. `Hadda. Hadda. You should give a shit; they woulda offed you and never thought twice. Anyway, why I got you here, we gotta talk more. Remember this?' And his right hand held the charred wasps'~ nest from Case's dream, reek of fuel in the closeness of the dark shop. Case stumbled back against a wall of junk. `Yeah. That was me. Did it with the holo rig in the window. Another memory I tapped out of you when I flatlined you that first time. Know why it's important?'
Case shook his head.
`Because' -and the nest, somehow, was gone -`it's the closest thing you got to what Tessier-Ashpool would like to be. The human equivalent. Straylight's like that nest, or anyway it was supposed to work out that way. I figure it'll make you feel better.'
`Feel better?'
`To know what they're like. You were starting to hate my guts for a while there. That's good. But hate them instead. Same difference.'
`Listen,' Case said, stepping forward, `they never did shit to me. You, it's different...' But he couldn't feel the anger.
`So T-A, they made me. The French girl, she said you were selling out the species. Demon, she said I was.' The Finn grinned. `It doesn't much matter. You gotta hate somebody before this is over.' He turned and headed for the back of the shop. `Well, come on, I'll show you a little bit of Straylight while I got you here.' He lifted the corner of the blanket. White light poured out. `Shit, man, don't just stand there.'
Case followed, rubbing his face.
`Okay,' said the Finn, and grabbed his elbow.
They were drawn past the stale wool in a puff of dust, into freefall and a cylindrical corridor of fluted lunar concrete, ringed with white neon at two-meter intervals.
`Jesus,' Case said, tumbling.
`This is the front entrance,' the Finn said, his tweed flapping. `If this weren't a construct of mine, where the shop is would be the main gate, up by the Freeside axis. This'll all be a little low on detail, though, because you don't have the memories. Except for this bit here, you got off Molly...'
Case managed to straighten out, but began to corkscrew in a long spiral.
`Hold on,' the Finn said, `I'll fast-forward us.'
The walls blurred. Dizzying sensation of headlong movement, colors, whipping around corners and through narrow corridors. They seemed at one point to pass through several meters of solid wall, a flash of pitch darkness.
`Here,' the Finn said. `This is it.'
They floated in the center of a perfectly square room, walls and ceiling paneled in rectangular sections of dark wood. The floor was covered by a single square of brilliant carpet patterned after a microchip, circuits traced in blue and scarlet wool. In the exact center of the room, aligned precisely with the carpet pattern, stood a square pedestal of frosted white glass.
`The Villa Straylight,' said a jeweled thing on the pedestal, in a voice like music, `is a body grown in upon itself, a Gothic folly. Each space in Straylight is in some way secret, this endless series of chambers linked by passages, by stairwells vaulted like intestines, where the eye is trapped in narrow curves, carried past ornate screens, empty alcoves...'
`Essay of 3Jane's,' the Finn said, producing his Partagas. `Wrote that when she was twelve. Semiotics course.'
`The architects of Freeside went to great pains to conceal the fact that the interior of the spindle is arranged with the banal precision of furniture in a hotel room. In Straylight, the hull's inner surface is overgrown with a desperate proliferation of structures, forms flowing, interlocking, rising toward a solid core of microcircuitry, our clan's corporate heart, a cylinder of silicon wormholed with narrow maintenance tunnels, some no wider than a man's hand. The bright crabs burrow there, the drones, alert for micromechanical decay or sabotage.'
`That was her you saw in the restaurant,' the Finn said.
`By the standards of the archipelago,' the head continued, `ours is an old family, the convolutions of our home reflecting that age. But reflecting something else as well. The semiotics of the Villa bespeak a turning in, a denial of the bright void beyond the hull.
`~Tessier and Ashpool climbed the well of gravity to discover that they loathed space. They built Freeside to tap the wealth of the new islands, grew rich and eccentric, and began the construction of an extended body in Straylight. We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self.
`~The Villa Straylight knows no sky, recorded or otherwise.
`~At the Villa's silicon core is a small room, the only rectilinear chamber in the complex. Here, on a plain pedestal of glass, rests an ornate bust, platinum and cloisonn, studded with lapis and pearl. The bright marbles of its eyes were cut from the synthetic ruby viewport of the ship that brought the first Tessier up the well, and returned for the first Ashpool...'
The head fell silent.
`Well?' Case asked, finally almost expecting the thing to answer him.
`That's all she wrote,' the Finn said. `Didn't finish it. Just a kid
then. This thing's a ceremonial terminal, sort of. I need Molly in here with the right word at the right time. That's the catch. Doesn't mean shit, how deep you and the Flatline ride that Chinese virus, if this thing doesn't hear the magic word.'
`So what's the word?'
`I don't know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don't know, because I can'tknow. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew, man, and told me, I couldn't know.It's hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it and bring it here, just when you and the Flatline punch through that ice and scramble the cores.'
`What happens then?'
`I don't exist, after that. I cease.'
`Okay by me,' Case said.
`Sure. But you watch your ass, Case. My, ah, other lobe is on to us, it looks like. One burning bush looks pretty much like another. And Armitage is starting to go.'
`What's that mean?'
But the paneled room folded itself through a dozen impossible angles, tumbling away into cyberspace like an origami crane.
15
`You tryin'~ to break my record, son?' the Flatline asked. `You were braindead again, five seconds.'
`Sit tight,' Case said, and hit the simstim switch.
She crouched in darkness, her palms against rough concrete.
CASE CASE CASE CASE. The digital display pulsed his name in alphanumerics, Wintermute informing her of the link.
`Cute,' she said. She rocked back on her heels and rubbed her palms together, cracked her knuckles. `What kept you?'
TIME MOLLY TIME NOW.
She pressed her tongue hard against her lower front teeth. One moved slightly, activating her microchannel amps; the random bounce of photons through the darkness was converted to a pulse of electrons, the concrete around her coming up ghost-pale and grainy. `Okay, honey. Now we go out to play.'
Her hiding place proved to be a service tunnel of some kind. She crawled out through a hinged, ornate grill of tarnished brass. He saw enough of her arms and hands to know that she wore the polycarbon suit again. Under the plastic, he felt the familiar tension of thin tight leather. There was something slung under her arm in a harness or holster. She stood up, unzipped the suit and touched the checkered plastic of a pistolgrip.
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