`Boss,' she asked him, `you know Wintermute?'
`A name. Yes. To conjure with, perhaps. A lord of hell, surely. In my time, dear Molly, I have known many lords. And not a few ladies. Why, a queen of Spain, once, in that very bed... But I wander.' He coughed wetly, the muzzle of the pistol jerking as he convulsed. He spat on the carpet near his one bare foot. `How I do wander. Through the cold. But soon no more. I'd ordered a Jane thawed, when I woke. Strange, to lie every few decades with what legally amounts to one's own daughter.' His gaze swept past her, to the rack of blank monitors. He seemed to shiver. `Marie-France's eyes ,' he said, faintly, and smiled. `We cause the brain to become allergic to certain of its own neurotransmitters, resulting in a peculiarly pliable imitation of autism.' His head swayed sideways, recovered. `I understand that the effect is now more easily obtained with an embedded microchip.'
The pistol slid from his fingers, bounced on the carpet.
`The dreams grow like slow ice,' he said. His face was tinged with blue. His head sank back into the waiting leather and he began to snore.
Up, she snatched the gun. She stalked the room, Ashpool's automatic in her hand.
A vast quilt or comforter was heaped beside the bed, in a broad puddle of congealed blood, thick and shiny on the patterned rugs. Twitching a corner of the quilt back, she found the body of a girl, white shoulder blades slick with blood. Her throat had been slit. The triangular blade of some sort of scraper glinted in the dark pool beside her. Molly knelt, careful to avoid the blood, and turned the dead girl's face to the light. The face Case had seen in the restaurant.
There was a click, deep at the very center of things, and the world was frozen. Molly's simstim broadcast had become a still frame, her fingers on the girl's cheek. The freeze held for three seconds, and then the dead face was altered, became the face of Linda Lee.
Another click, and the room blurred. Molly was standing, looking down at a golden laser disk beside a small console on the marble top of a bedside table. A length of fiberoptic ribbon ran like a leash from the console to a socket at the base of the slender neck.
`I got your number, fucker,' Case said, feeling his own lips moving, somewhere, far away. He knew that Wintermute had altered the broadcast. Molly hadn't seen the dead girl's face swirl like smoke, to take on the outline of Linda's deathmask.
Molly turned. She crossed the room to Ashpool's chair. The man's breathing was slow and ragged. She peered at the litter of drugs and alcohol. She put his pistol down, picked up her fletcher, dialed the barrel over to single shot, and very carefully put a toxin dart through the center of his closed left eyelid. He jerked once, breath halting in mid-intake. His other eye, brown and fathomless, opened slowly.
It was still open when she turned and left the room.
16
`Got your boss on hold,' the Flatline said. `He's coming through on the twin Hosaka in that boat upstairs, the one that's riding us piggy-back. Called the Haniwa.'
`I know,' Case said, absently, `I saw it.'
A lozenge of white light clicked into place in front of him, hiding the Tessier-Ashpool ice; it showed him the calm, perfectly focused, utterly crazy face of Armitage, his eyes blank as buttons. Armitage blinked. Stared.
`Guess Wintermute took care of your Turings too, huh? Like he took care of mine,' Case said.
Armitage stared. Case resisted the sudden urge to look away, drop his gaze. `You okay, Armitage?'
`Case' -and for an instant something seemed to move, behind the blue stare -`you've seen Wintermute, haven't you? In the matrix.'
Case nodded. A camera on the face of his Hosaka in Marcus Garveywould relay the gesture to the Haniwamonitor. He imagined Maelcum listening to his tranced half conversations, unable to hear the voices of the construct or Armitage.
`Case' -and the eyes grew larger, Armitage leaning toward his computer -`what is he, when you see him?'
`A high-rez simstim construct.'
`But who?'
`Finn, last time... Before that, this pimp I...'
`Not General Girling?'
`General who?'
The lozenge went blank.
`Run that back and get the Hosaka to look it up,' he told the construct.
He flipped.
The perspective startled him. Molly was crouching between steel girders, twenty meters above a broad, stained floor of polished concrete. The room was a hangar or service bay. He could see three spacecraft, none larger than Garveyand all in various stages of repair. Japanese voices. A figure in an orange jumpsuit stepped from a gap in the hull of a bulbous construction vehicle and stood beside one of the thing's piston-driven, weirdly anthropomorphic arms. The man punched something into a portable console and scratched his ribs. A cartlike red drone rolled into sight on gray balloon tires.
CASE, flashed her chip.
`Hey,' she said. `Waiting for a guide.'
She settled back on her haunches, the arms and knees of her Modern suit the color of the blue-gray paint on the girders, Her leg hurt, a sharp steady pain now. `I shoulda gone back to Chin,' she muttered.
Something came ticking quietly out of the shadows, on a level with her left shoulder. It paused, swayed its spherical body from side to side on high-arched spider legs, fired a microsecond burst of diffuse laserlight, and froze. It was a Braun microdrone, and Case had once owned the same model, a pointless accessory he'd obtained as part of a package deal with a Cleveland hardware fence. It looked like a stylized matte black daddy longlegs. A red LED began to pulse, at the sphere's equator. Its body was no larger than a baseball. `Okay,' she said, `I hear you.' She stood up, favoring her left leg, and watched the little drone reverse. It picked its methodical way back across its girder and into darkness. She turned and looked back at the service area. The man in the orange jumpsuit was sealing the front of a white vacuum rig. She watched him ring and seal the helmet, pick up his console, and step back through the gap in the construction boat's hull. There was a rising whine of motors and the thing slid smoothly out of sight on a tenmeter circle of flooring that sank away into a harsh glare of arc lamps. The red drone waited patiently at the edge of the hole left by the elevator panel.
Then she was off after the Braun, threading her way between a forest of welded steel struts. The Braun winked its LED steadily, beckoning her on.
`How you doin'~, Case? You back in Garveywith Maelcum? Sure. And jacked into this. I like it, you know? Like I've always talked to myself, in my head, when I've been in tight spots. Pretend I got some friend, somebody I can trust, and I'll tell 'em what I really think, what I feel like, and then I'll pretend they're telling me what they think about that, and I'll just go along that way. Having you in is kinda like that. That scene with Ashpool...' She gnawed at her lower lip, swinging around a strut, keeping the drone in sight. `I was expecting something maybe a little less gone, you know? I mean, these guys are all batshit in here, like they got luminous messages scrawled across the inside of their foreheads or something. I don't like the way it looks, I don't like the way it smells...'
The drone was hoisting itself up a nearly invisible ladder of U-shaped steel rungs, toward a narrow dark opening. `And while I'm feeling confessional, baby, I gotta admit maybe I never much expected to make it out of this one anyway. Been on this bad roll for a while, and you're the only good change come down since I signed on with Armitage.' She looked up at the black circle. The drone's LED winked, climbing. `Not that you're all that shit hot.' She smiled, but it was gone too quickly, and she gritted her teeth at the stabbing pain in her leg as she began to climb. The ladder continued up through a metal tube, barely wide enough for her shoulders.
She was climbing up out of gravity, toward the weightless axis.
Her chip pulsed the time.
04:23:04.
It had been a long day. The clarity of her sensorium cut the bite of the betaphenethylamine, but Case could still feel it. He preferred the pain in her leg.
C A S E : 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .
`Guess it's for you,' she said, climbing mechanically. The zeros strobed again and a message stuttered there, in the corner of her vision, chopped up by the display circuit.
G E N E R A L G
I R L I N G : : :
T R A I N E D
C O R T O F O R
S C R E A M I N G
F I S T A N D
S O L D H I S
A S S T O
T H E P E N T
A G O N : : : :
W / M U T E '~ S
P R I M A R Y
G R I P O N
A R M I T A G
E I S A
C O N S T R U
C T O F G
I R L I N G :
W / M U T E
S E Z A '~ S
M E N T I O N
O F G
M E A N S
H E '~ S
C R A C K
I N G : : : :
W A T C H
Y O U R
A S S : : : :
: : D I X I E
`Well,' she said, pausing, taking all of her weight on her right leg, `guess you got problems too.' She looked down. There was a faint circle of light, no larger than the brass round of the Chubb key that dangled between her breasts. She looked up. Nothing at all. She tongued her amps and the tube rose into vanishing perspective, the Braun picking its way up the rungs. `Nobody told me about this part,' she said.
Case jacked out.
`Maelcum...'
`Mon, you bossman gone ver'~ strange.' The Zionite was wearing a blue Sanyo vacuum suit twenty years older than the one Case had rented in Freeside, its helmet under his arm and his dreadlocks bagged in a net cap crocheted from purple cotton yarn. His eyes were slitted with ganja and tension. `Keep callin'~ down here wi'~ orders,mon, but be some Babylon war...' Maelcum shook his head. `Aerol an'~ I talkin'~, an'~ Aerol talkin'~ wi'~ Zion, Founders seh cut an'~ run.' He ran the back of a large brown hand across his mouth.
`Armitage?' Case winced as the betaphenethylamine hangover hit him with its full intensity, unscreened by the matrix or simstim. Brain's got no nerves in it, he told himself, it can't really feel this bad. `What do you mean, man? He's giving you orders? What?'
`Mon, Armitage, he tellin'~ me set course for Finland, ya know? He tellin'~ me there be hope, ya know? Come on my screen wi'~ his shirt all blood, mon, an'~ be crazy as some dog, talkin'~ screamin'~ fists an'~ Russian an'~ th'~ blood of th'~ betrayers shall be on our hands.' He shook his head again, the dreadcap swaying and bobbing in zero-g, his lips narrowed. `Founders seh the Mute voice be false prophet surely, an'~ Aerol an'~ I mus'~ 'bandon Marcus Garveyand return.'
`Armitage, he was wounded? Blood?'
`Can't seh, ya know? But blood, an'~ stone crazy, Case.'
`Okay,' Case said `So what about me? You're going home. What about me, Maelcum?'
`Mon,' Maelcum said, `you comin'~ wi'~ me. I an'~ I come Zion wi'~ Aerol, Babylon Rocker.Leave Mr.~ Armitage t'~ talk wi'~ ghost cassette, one ghost t'~ 'nother...'
Case glanced over his shoulder: his rented suit swung against the hammock where he'd snapped it, swaying in the air current from the old Russian scrubber. He closed his eyes. He saw the sacs of toxin dissolving in his arteries. He saw Molly hauling herself up the endless steel rungs. He opened his eyes.
`I dunno, man,' he said, a strange taste in his mouth. He looked down at his desk, at his hands. `I don't know.' He looked back up. The brown face was calm now, intent. Maelcum's chin was hidden by the high helmet ring of his old blue suit. `She's inside,' he said. `Molly's inside. In Straylight, it's called. If there's any Babylon, man, that's it. We leave on her, she ain't comin'~ out, Steppin'~ Razor or not.'
Maelcum nodded, the dreadbag bobbing behind him like a captive balloon of crocheted cotton. `She you woman, Case?'
`I dunno. Nobody's woman, maybe.' He shrugged. And found his anger again, real as a shard of hot rock beneath his ribs. `Fuck this,' he said. `Fuck Armitage, fuck Wintermute, and fuck you. I'm stayin'~ right here.'
Maelcum's smile spread across his face like light breaking. `Maelcum a rude boy, Case. GarveyMaelcum boat.' His gloved hand slapped a panel and the bass-heavy rocksteady of Zion dub came pulsing from the tug's speakers. `Maelcum not runnin'~, no. I talk wi'~ Aerol, he certain t'~ see it in similar light.'
Case stared. `I don't understand you guys at all,' he said.
`Don'~ 'stan'~ you, mon,' the Zionite said, nodding to the beat, `but we mus'~ move by Jah love, each one.'
Case jacked in and flipped for the matrix.
`Get my wire?'
`Yeah.' He saw that the Chinese program had grown, delicate arches of shifting polychrome were nearing the T-A ice.
`Well, it's gettin'~ stickier,' the Flatline said. `Your boss wiped the bank on that other Hosaka, and damn near took ours with it. But your pal Wintermute put me on to somethin'~ there before it went black. The reason Straylight's not exactly hoppin'~ with Tessier-Ashpools is that they're mostly in cold sleep. There's a law firm in London keeps track of their powers of attorney. Has to know who's awake and exactly when. Armitage was routing the transmissions from London to Straylight through the Hosaka on the yacht. Incidently, they know the old man's dead.'
`Who knows?'
`The law firm and T-A. He had a medical remote planted in his sternum. Not that your girl's dart would've left a resurrection crew with much to work with. Shellfish toxin. But the only T-A awake in Straylight right now is Lady 3Jane Marie-France. There's a male, couple years older, in Australia on business. You ask me, I bet Wintermute found a way to cause that business to need this 8Jean's personal attention. But he's on his way home, or near as matters. The London lawyers give his Straylight ETA as 09:00:00, tonight. We slotted Kuang virus at 02:32:03. It's 04:45:20. Best estimate for Kuang penetration of the T-A core is 08:30:00. Or a hair on either side. I figure Wintermute's got somethin'~ goin'~ with this 3Jane, or else she's just as crazy as her old man was. But the boy up from Melbourne'll know the score. The Straylight security systems keep trying to go full alert, but Wintermute blocks 'em, don't ask me how. Couldn't override the basic gate program to get Molly in, though. Armitage had a record of all that on his Hosaka; Riviera must've talked 3Jane into doing it. She's been able to fiddle entrances and exits for years. Looks to me like one of T-A's main problems is that every family bigwig has riddled the banks with all kinds of private scams and exceptions. Kinda like your immune system falling apart on you. Ripe for virus. Looks good for us, once we're past that ice.'
`Okay. But Wintermute said that Arm --'
A white lozenge snapped into position, filled with a closeup of mad blue eyes. Case could only stare. Colonel Willie Corto, Special Forces, Strikeforce Screaming Fist, had found his way back. The image was dim, jerky, badly focused. Corto was using the Haniwa's navigation deck to link with the Hosaka in Marcus Garvey.
`Case, I need the damage reports on Omaha Thunder.'
`Say. I... Colonel?'
`Hang in there, boy. Remember your training.'
But where have you been, man?he silently asked the anguished eyes. Wintermute had built something called Armitage into a catatonic fortress named Corto. Had convinced Corto that Armitage was the real thing, and Armitage had walked, talked, schemed, bartered data for capital, fronted for Wintermute in that room in the Chiba Hilton... And now Armitage was gone, blown away by the winds of Corto's madness. But where had Corto been,those years?
Falling, burned and blinded, out of a Siberian sky.
`Case, this will be difficult for you to accept, I know that. You're an officer. The training. I understand. But, Case, as God is my witness, we have been betrayed.'
Tears started from the blue eyes.
`Colonel, ah, who? Who's betrayed us?'
`General Girling, Case. You may know him by a code name. You do know the man of whom I speak.'
`Yeah,' Case said, as the tears continued to flow, `I guess I do. Sir,' he added, on impulse. `But, s
ir, Colonel, what exactly should we do? Now, I mean.'
`Our duty at this point, Case, lies in flight. Escape. Evasion. We can make the Finnish border, nightfall tomorrow. Treetop flying on manual. Seat of the pants, boy. But that will only be the beginning.' The blue eyes slitted above tanned cheekbones slick with tears. `Only the beginning. Betrayal from above. From above...'He stepped back from the camera, dark stains on his torn twill shirt. Armitage's face had been masklike, impassive, but Corto's was the true schizoid mask, illness etched deep in involuntary muscle, distorting the expensive surgery.
`Colonel, I hear you, man. Listen, Colonel, okay? I want you to open the, ah... shit, what's it called, Dix?'
`The midbay lock,' the Flatline said.
`Open the midbay lock. Just tell your central console there to open it, right? We'll be up there with you fast, Colonel. Then we can talk about getting out of here.'
The lozenge vanished.
`Boy, I think you just lost me, there,' the Flatline said.
`The toxins,' Case said, `the fucking toxins,' and jacked out.
`Poison?' Maelcum watched over the scratched blue shoulder of his old Sanyo as Case struggled out of the g-web.
`And get this goddam thing off me...' Tugging at the Texas catheter. `Like a slow poison, and that asshole upstairs knows how to counter it, and now he's crazier than a shithouse rat.' He fumbled with the front of the red Sanyo, forgetting how to work the seals.
`Bossman, he poisonyou?' Maelcum scratched his cheek. `Got a medical kit, ya know.'
`Maelcum, Christ, help me with this goddam suit.'
The Zionite kicked off from the pink pilot module. `Easy, mon. Measure twice, cut once, wise man put it. We get up there...'
Neuromancer ts-1 Page 18
