gh to take advantage of my unnatural state." He looked
down. "I mean, look at this unnatural state."
     She laughed. "It won't last."
     "But it will," he said,  climbing  into  the  sand-colored  temperfoam,
"that's what's so unnatural about it."



        11
     "Case, what's  wrong with  you?" Armitage said, as the waiter was
seating  them at  his table in the Vingtieme Siecle. It was the smallest and
most  expensive of several floating restaurants  on  a  small lake near  the
Intercontinental.
     Case shuddered.  Bruce hadn't said anything about after  effects.
He  tried to  pick up  a glass  of  ice water, but his  hands  were shaking.
"Something I ate, maybe."
     "I want you checked out by a medic," Armitage said.
     "Just  this hystamine reaction,"  Case lied. "Get it when I travel, eat
different stuff, sometimes."
     Armitage wore  a dark suit, too formal for the place,  and a white silk
shirt. His  gold  bracelet  rattled  as  he  raised  his  wine  and  sipped.
"I've ordered for you," he said.
     Molly  and Armitage ate in  silence, while Case  sawed shakily  at  his
steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments,  which  he pushed around
in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing.
     "Jesus," Molly said, her  own plate empty,  "gimme that. You  know what
this costs?" She took his  plate. "They gotta raise a whole animal for years
and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff." She forked a mouthful up
and chewed.
     "Not hungry,"  Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No,  he decided,
it had  been thrown into hot  fat and  left there and the  fat had cooled, a
thick  dull  grease  congealing on  the wrinkled  lobes, shot  through  with
greenish-purple flashes of pain.
     "You look fucking awful," Molly said cheerfully.
     Case  tried the  wine.  The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it
taste like iodine.
     The lights dimmed.
     "Le Restaurant  Vingtieme Siecle,"  said a  disembodied  voice  with  a
pronounced Sprawl  accent, "proudly  presents the holographic cabaret of Mr.
Peter Riviera. "  Scattered applause  from the other tables. A waiter  lit a
single  candle and placed  it  in the  center of their table, then began  to
remove the dishes. Soon a candle flickered at each of the restaurant's
dozen tables, and drinks were being poured.
     "What's happening?" Case asked Armitage, who said nothing.
     Molly picked her teeth with a burgundy nail.
     "Good evening," Riviera said, stepping forward on  a small stage at the
far end  of  the  room.  Case  blinked.  In  his discomfort, he hadn't
noticed the  stage.  He hadn't seen where  Riviera had  come from. His
uneasiness increased.
     At first he assumed the man was illuminated by a spotlight.
     Riviera glowed.  The light clung around him like  a skin, lit  the dark
hangings behind the stage. He was projecting.
     Riviera smiled. He wore a white dinner jacket. On his lapel, blue coals
burned  in  the depths of a black carnation. His  fingernails  flashed as he
raised his hands in a gesture of greeting, an embrace for his audience. Case
heard the shallow water lap against the side of the restaurant.
     "Tonight," Riviera  said,  his  long  eyes shining, "I  would  like  to
perform an extended piece  for you. A new work." A cool ruby of light formed
in the palm of his upraised right hand. He dropped it. A gray dove fluttered
up from the point of impact and vanished into the shadows. Someone whistled.
More applause.
     "The title of the work is ‘The Doll.' " Riviera lowered his
hands. "I  wish  to  dedicate  its  première  here,  tonight, to Lady  3Jane
Marie-France  Tessier-Ashpool." A  wave  of  polite  applause.  As it  died,
Riviera's eyes seemed to find their table. "And to another lady."
     The restaurant's lights died entirely, for a few seconds, leaving
only the  glow of candles. Riviera's  holographic  aura had faded with
the lights, but Case could still see him, standing with his head bowed.
     Lines  of  faint  light  began  to  form,  verticals  and  horizontals,
sketching an  open cube around the stage. The restaurant's  lights had
come  back up  slightly, but the framework surrounding the stage might  have
been constructed of frozen moonbeams. Head bowed, eyes closed, arms rigid at
his sides, Riviera seemed to quiver with concentration. Suddenly the ghostly
cube was filled, had become a room, a room lacking its fourth wall, allowing
the audience to view its contents.
     Riviera seemed to relax slightly. He raised his head, but kept his eyes
closed. "I'd always lived  in the room,"  he  said.  "I couldn't
remember  ever having lived in  any other room." The room's walls were
yellowed  white plaster. It  contained  two pieces of furniture.  One  was a
plain wooden chair, the other an iron bedstead  painted white. The paint had
chipped and flaked, revealing  the  black iron. The  mattress on the bed was
bare. Stained ticking with faded brown stripes.  A single bulb dangled above
the bed on a twisted length of  black wire. Case could see the thick coating
of dust on the bulb's upper curve. Riviera opened his eyes.
     "I'd been alone in the room, always." He sat on the chair, facing
the  bed. The blue coals  still burned  in the black flower on his lapel. "I
don't  know  when I first began to dream of her," he  said,  "but I do
remember that at first she was only a haze, a shadow."
     There was something on the bed. Case blinked. Gone.
     "I couldn't quite hold her, hold her in  my mind. But I wanted to
hold her, hold her and more. . ." His voice carried perfectly in the hush of
the restaurant. Ice clicked against the side  of a  glass.  Someone giggled.
Someone else  asked a whispered question in  Japanese. "I decided that  if I
could visualize  some  part of her, only a  small part, if I  could see that
part perfectly, in the most perfect detail. . ."
     A  woman's  hand  lay  on the  mattress now, palm  up,  the white
fingers pale.
     Riviera  leaned  forward, picked  up the  hand, and began  to stroke it
gently. The fingers moved. Riviera raised the hand to his mouth and began to
lick the tips of the fingers. The nails were coated with a burgundy lacquer.
     A hand, Case saw, but not a severed hand; the skin swept back smoothly,
unbroken and unscarred.  He  remembered a tattooed lozenge of vatgrown flesh
in the window of a Ninsei surgical boutique. Riviera was holding the hand to
his lips, licking its palm.  The fingers tentatively caressed his face.  But
now  a second hand lay  on the bed. When Riviera reached for it, the fingers
of the first were locked around his wrist, a bracelet of flesh and bone.
     The  act progressed with a surreal internal  logic of its own. The arms
were  next.  Feet.  Legs.  The legs  were  very beautiful. Case's head
throbbed. His throat was dry. He drank the last of the wine.
     Riviera  was in the bed now, naked. His clothing had been a part of the
projection, but Case couldn't remember seeing it fade  away. The black
flower lay at the foot of the bed, still seething with its blue inner flame.
Then  the torso  formed, as Riviera caressed it into being, white, headless,
and perfect, sheened with the faintest gloss of sweat.
     Molly's body. Case stared, his  mouth open.  But it  wasn't
Molly; it  was Molly as Riviera imagined  her. The breasts  were wrong,  the
nipples larger, too dark. Riviera and the limbless torso writhed together on
the  bed,  crawled  over  by the hands with their bright  nails. The bed was
thick now with folds  of yellowed, rotting  lace that crumbled  at  a touch.
Motes of dust boiled around Riviera and the twitching limbs, the  scurrying,
pinching, caressing hands.
     Case   glanced  at  Molly.  Her   face  was  blank;   the   colors   of
Riviera's  projection heaved and  turned in her mirrors. Armitage  was
leaning  forward, his  hands round the  stem  of a  wineglass, his pale eyes
fixed on the stage, the glowing room.
     Now  limbs  and torso  had merged, and Riviera shuddered.  The head was
there,  the  image  complete.  Molly's  face, with smooth  quicksilver
drowning the eyes. Riviera and the Mollyimage began to couple with a renewed
intensity.  Then  the  image slowly extended  a clawed hand and extruded its
five  blades.   With  a   languorous,   dreamlike  deliberation,  it   raked
Riviera's bare  back.  Case caught a  glimpse of exposed spine, but he
was already up and stumbling for the door.
     He vomited over a  rosewood railing into the quiet waters of the  lake.
Something that had seemed to close around his head like  a vise had released
him  now.  Kneeling, his cheek against the cool wood, he stared  across  the
shallow lake at the bright aura of the Rue Jules Verne.
     Case had seen the medium before; when he'd been a teenager in the
Sprawl, they'd called  it, "dreaming real." He remembered  thin Puerto
Ricans under  East Side  streetlights, dreaming real to  the quick beat of a
salsa, dreamgirls  shuddering and turning, the onlookers  clapping  in time.
But that had needed a van full of gear and a clumsy trode helmet.
     What Riviera dreamed, you got. Case shook his aching head and spat into
the lake.
     He  could guess the end,  the  finale. There was an inverted  symmetry:
Riviera  puts the dreamgirl together, the dreamgirl  takes him  apart.  With
those hands. Dreamblood soaking the rotten lace.
     Cheers from the restaurant, applause. Case stood and ran his hands over
his clothes. He turned and walked back into the Vingtieme Siecle.
     Molly's  chair  was empty. The stage  was deserted. Armitage  sat
alone,  still  staring at the  stage,  the stem of the wineglass between his
fingers.
     "Where is she?" Case asked.
     "Gone," Armitage said.
     "She go after him?"
     "No." There  was a  soft tink. Armitage  looked down at  the glass. His
left hand came up holding the  bulb of  glass with its  measure of red wine.
The broken  stem protruded like a sliver of ice. Case took  it  from him and
set it in a water glass.
     "Tell me where she went, Armitage."
     The lights  came up. Case looked  into the pale eyes. Nothing there  at
all. "She's gone to  prepare herself. You  won't see her  again.
You'll be together during the run."
     "Why did Riviera do that to her?"
     Armitage  stood,  adjusting  the lapels of his jacket. "Get some sleep,
Case."
     "We run, tomorrow?"
     Armitage smiled his meaningless smile and walked away, toward the exit.
     Case  rubbed his forehead  and looked  around the room. The diners were
rising,  women  smiling  as men made  jokes. He  noticed the balcony for the
first time, candles still flickering there in private darkness. He heard the
clink of silverware, muted  conversation. The candles threw dancing  shadows
on the ceiling.
     The girl's  face  appeared as abruptly  as one of Riviera's
projections, her small hands on  the  polished wood of the  balustrade;  she
leaned  forward,  face  rapt,  it  seemed  to him, her dark  eyes intent  on
something beyond. The  stage. It was  a  striking face,  but  not beautiful.
Triangular, the cheekbones high yet  strangely  fragile-looking,  mouth wide
and firm, balanced  oddly by a narrow, avian nose with flaring nostrils. And
then she was gone, back into private laughter and the dance of candles.
     As he left the restaurant, he noticed the two young Frenchmen and their
girlfriend, who were  waiting for the boat  to the far shore and the nearest
casino.

     Their room  was silent,  the temperfoam smooth  as  some  beach after a
retreating tide. Her bag was gone. He looked for a note.  There was nothing.
Several seconds passed before the scene beyond the window registered through
his  tension  and unhappiness. He looked up  and saw  a view  of Desiderata,
expensive shops: Gucci, Tsuyako, Hermes, Liberty.
     He stared, then shook his  head and crossed to  a panel he hadn't
bothered  examining.  He turned the hologram  off and was  rewarded with the
condos that terraced the far slope.
     He picked up the phone and carried it out to the cool balcony.
     "Get me a number for the Marcus Garvey," he told  the desk. "It's
a tug, registered out of Zion cluster."
     The  chip  voice  recited  a  ten-digit number.  "Sir,"  it added  "the
registration in question is Panamanian."
     Maelcum answered on the fifth tone. "Yo?"
     "Case. You got a modem, Maelcum?"
     "Yo. On th' navigation comp, ya know."
     "Can you get it off for me, man? Put it on my Hosaka. Then turn my deck
on. It's the stud with the ridges on it."
     "How you doin' in there, mon?"
     "Well, I need some help."
     "Movin', mon. I get th' modem."
     Case listened to  faint static while Maelcum attached  the simple phone
link. "Ice this," he told the Hosaka, when he heard it beep.
     "You  are  speaking  from a heavily monitored  location,"  the computer
advised primly.
     "Fuck it,"  he  said.  "Forget the  ice. No  ice. Access the construct.
Dixie?"
     "Hey, Case." The Flatline spoke through the Hosaka's voice  chip,
the carefully engineered accent lost entirely.
     "Dix, you're about to  punch your  way in  here and get something
for me. You can be as blunt as you want. Molly's in here somewhere and
I  wanna  know  where.  I'm  in 335W,  the  Intercontinental.  She was
registered here too, but I don't know what name she was using. Ride in
on this phone and do their records for me."
     "No sooner said," the Flatline said. Case heard the white  sound of the
invasion. He smiled. "Done. Rose Kolodny. Checked out. Take me a few minutes
to screw their security net deep enough to get a fix."
     "Go."
     The phone whined  and clicked with the construct's  efforts. Case
carried  it  back into  the  room  and  put  the  receiver  face  up on  the
temperfoam. He  went into  the bathroom  and  brushed  his teeth. As  he was
stepping back out, the monitor on the room's Braun audiovisual complex
lit up.  A Japanese pop star reclining against metallic cushions. An  unseen
interviewer asked a question in German. Case stared. The screen  jumped with
jags of blue interference. "Case, baby, you lose your mind, man?" The  voice
was slow, familiar.
     The glass wall  of the balcony clicked in with  its view of Desiderata,
but  the street  scene blurred, twisted, became the interior of the Jarre de
The, Chiba, empty, red neon replicated to scratched infinity in the mirrored
walls.
     Lonny  Zone stepped  forward, tall and cadaverous, moving with the slow
undersea grace of his addiction. He stood alone among the square tables, his
hands  in  the  pockets  of   his  gray  sharkskin   slacks.  "Really,  man,
you're lookin' very scattered."
     The voice came from the Braun's speakers.
     "Wintermute," Case said.
     The pimp shrugged languidly and smiled.
     "Where's Molly?"
     "Never  you   mind.   You're  screwing  up  tonight,   Case.  The
Flatline's  ringing bells  all  over Freeside.  I  didn't  think
you'd do that, man. It's outside the profile."
     "So tell me where she is and I'll call him off."
     Zone shook his head.
     "You can't  keep too good track of your women, can you Case. Keep
losin' 'em, one way or another."
     "I'll bring this thing down around your ears," Case said.
     "No. You aren't that kind, man. I know that. You  know something,
Case? I figure you've got it figured out that it was me  told Deane to
off that little cunt of yours in Chiba."
     "Don't," Case said, taking an involuntary step toward the window.
     "But  I  didn't. What's it matter, though? How much does it
really  matter to Mr. Case? Quit kidding yourself. I know your Linda, man. I
know all the Lindas. Lindas are  a generic  product in my line of work. Know
why  she decided to  rip you off?  Love. So you'd  give a  shit. Love?
Wanna talk love? She loved you.  I  know that. For the little she was worth,
she loved you. You couldn't handle it. She's dead."
     Case's fist glanced off the glass.
     "Don't fuck up the hands, man. Soon you punch deck."
     Zone vanished, replaced by Freeside night and the lights of the condos.
The Braun shut off.
     From the bed, the phone bleated steadily.
     "Case?"  The  Flatline was waiting. "Where you been? I  got  it. but it
isn't  much." The construct  rattled off  an  address. "Place had some
weird ice  around it for a nightclub. That's  all I could get  without
leaving a calling card."
     "Okay," Case said. "Tell  the Hosaka to tell Maelcum to  disconnect the
modem. Thanks, Dix."
     "A pleasure."
     He  sat on  the bed  for  a  long  time, savoring  the new  thing,  the
treasure.
     Rage.

     "Hey. Lupus. Hey, Cath,  it's friend Lupus." Bruce stood naked in
his doorway, dripping wet, his pupils enormous. "But we're just having
a shower. You wanna wait? Wanna shower?"
     "No. Thanks. I want some help." He pushed the boy's arm aside and
stepped into the room.
     "Hey, really, man, we're. . ."
     "Going  to  help  me.  You're  really  glad  to  see me.  Because
we're friends, right? Aren't we?"
     Bruce blinked. "Sure."
     Case recited the address the Flatline had given him.
     "I knew he was a gangster," Cath called cheerfully from the shower.
     "I gotta Honda trike," Bruce said, grinning vacantly.
     "We go now," Case said.

     "That level's the cubicles,"  Bruce  said, after asking  Case  to
repeat  the  address  for the  eighth  time. He climbed back into the Honda.
Condensation dribbled from the hydrogen-cell exhaust  as  the red fiberglass
chassis swayed on chromed shocks. "You be long?"
     "No saying. But you'll wait."
     "We'll wait, yeah." He scratched his bare chest. "That  last part
of the address, I think that's a cubicle. Number forty–three."
     "You expected, Lupus?" Cath craned forward over Bruce's  shoulder
and peered up. The drive had dried her hair.
     "Not really," Case said. "That's a problem?"
     "Just go down to the lowest level and find your friend's cubicle.
If they  let you  in, fine.  If  they don't wanna see  you .  . ." She
shrugged.
     Case turned and  descended a spiral staircase of floral iron. Six turns
and  he'd  reached a nightclub. He paused and lit  a Yeheyuan, looking
over the tables. Freeside suddenly made sense to  him. Biz. He could feel it
humming in the air. This was it, the local action. Not the high-gloss facade
of the  Rue Jules Verne, but the  real thing. Commerce. The dance. The crowd
was mixed;  maybe  half were  tourists,  the other  half  residents  of  the
islands.
     "Downstairs," he said to a passing  waiter, "I want  to go downstairs."
He showed his Freeside chip. The man gestured toward the rear of the club.
     He walked quickly past the crowded tables, hearing fragments  of half a
dozen European languages as he passed.
     "I want a cubicle," he  said  to  the  girl who sat  at the low desk, a
terminal on her lap. "Lower level." He handed her his chip.
     "Gender preference?"  She passed  the chip across a  glass plate on the
face of the terminal.
     "Female," he said automatically.
     "Number  thirty-five.  Phone  if  it isn't  satisfactory. You can
access our special services display  beforehand,  if you like." She  smiled.
She returned his chip.
     An elevator slid open behind her.
     The  corridor lights were blue.  Case stepped  out  of the elevator and
chose  a  direction at random. Numbered doors. A hush like the  halls of  an
expensive clinic.
     He  found his cubicle.  He'd been looking  for Molly's; now
confused, he  raised his  chip  and placed  it against  a black  sensor  set
directly beneath the number plate.
     Magnetic locks. The sound reminded him of Cheap Hotel.
     The girl sat up in bed and said something in German. Her eyes were soft
and unblinking.  Automatic  pilot.  A  neural cutout.  He backed out of  the
cubicle and closed the door.
     The door  of  forty-three was like  all the others.  He hesitated.  The
silence of  the  hallway  said  that  the cubicles  were soundproof. It  was
pointless  to try the chip.  He rapped  his knuckles against enameled metal.
Nothing. The door seemed to absorb the sound.
     He placed his chip against the black plate.
     The bolts clicked.
     She seemed  to hit him, somehow,  before he'd actually gotten the
door open.  He was on his knees, the steel door against his back, the blades
of her rigid thumbs quivering centimeters from his eyes. . .
     "Jesus Christ," she  said,  cuffing the side  of his head as  she rose.
"You're an idiot to try that. How the hell you open those locks, Case?
Case? You okay?"
     She  leaned over him. "Chip,"  he said, struggling for breath. Pain was
spreading from his chest. She helped him up and shoved him into the cubicle.
     "You bribe the help, upstairs?"
     He shook his head and fell across the bed.
     "Breathe in. Count. One, two, three, four. Hold it. Now out. Count."
     He clutched his stomach.
     "You kicked me," he managed.
     "Shoulda been  lower. I wanna be  alone.  I'm meditating, right?"
She sat beside him. "And getting a briefing." She pointed at a small monitor
set  into  the wall  opposite the  bed. "Wintermute's telling me about
Straylight."
     "Where's the meat puppet?"
     "There isn't any. That's the most expensive special service
of all."  She stood up. She  wore her leather jeans and a loose dark  shirt.
"The run's tomorrow, Wintermute says."
     "What was that all about, in the restaurant? How come you ran?"
     "'Cause, if I'd stayed, I might have killed Riviera."
     "Why?"
     "What he did to me. The show."
     "I don't get it."
     "This cost a lot," she said, extending her right hand as though it held
an  invisible fruit. The  five blades  slid  out,  then  retracted smoothly.
"Costs to go to Chiba,  costs to get  the surgery, costs to have  them  jack
your nervous  system up so  you'll have  the reflexes to go  with  the
gear. .  . You know how I got the money, when I was starting out? Here.  Not
here, but a place like it, in the Sprawl. Joke,  to start with, 'cause
once they plant the cut-out  chip, it seems  like free money. Wake  up sore,
sometimes, but that's it. Renting the  goods, is all. You aren't
in,  when it's  all  happening.  House  has  software  for  whatever a
customer  wants to  pay for. . ."  She cracked  her knuckles. "Fine.  I  was
getting  my money.  Trouble was,  the cut-out  and  the  circuitry the Chiba
clinics put in weren't  compatible. So the  worktime started  bleeding
in, and I  could remember it. . . But  it was just  bad dreams,  and not all
bad."  She  smiled.  "Then  it  started  getting  strange."  She  pulled his
cigarettes  from  his pocket and lit one. "The house  found  out what  I was
doing  with  the money. I  had the blades in, but  the fine neuromotor  work
would  take another three trips. No way I was ready to give up puppet time."
She inhaled, blew  out  a  stream of smoke, capping  it  with three  perfect
rings. "So the bastard who ran the place, he had some custom software cooked
up. Berlin, that's the place for snuff, you know? Big market  for mean
kicks, Berlin. I  never knew who wrote the  program they switched me to, but
it was based on all the classics."
     "They knew you  were picking up on this  stuff? That you were conscious
while you were working?"
     "I  wasn't  conscious.  It's like  cyberspace,  but  blank.
Silver. It smells  like rain. . . You  can see  yourself orgasm,  it's
like a  little nova right out  on the  rim of  space. But I was starting  to
remember.  Like  dreams,  you  know.  And  they didn't tell  me.  They
switched the software and started renting to specialty markets."
     She seemed to  speak from  a  distance.  "And I knew,  but I kept quiet
about it. I needed the money. The dreams got worse and worse, and  I'd
tell  myself  that at  least some  of  them  were just dreams,  but  by then
I'd started to figure that the boss had a whole little clientele going
for me. Nothing's too good for Molly, the boss says, and gives me this
shit  raise." She shook her head. "That prick  was charging eight times what
he was paying me, and he thought I didn't know."
     "So what was he charging for?"
     "Bad dreams.  Real ones. One night . . . one night, I'd just come
back from Chiba." She dropped  the cigarette, ground it  out  with her heel,
and sat  down,  leaning against the wall. "Surgeons went way in, that  trip.
Tricky. They must have  disturbed the  cut-out chip.  I came  up. I was into
this  routine with a customer. . ." She  dug her  fingers  deep in the foam.
"Senator,  he was. Knew his fat  face  right away. We were both covered with
blood. We  weren't  alone.  She  was  all.  . ."  She  tugged  at  the
temperfoam. "Dead. And  that fat  prick, he  was saying, ‘What's
wrong.  What's wrong?'  ‘Cause we  weren't  finished
yet. . ."
     She began to shake.
     "So I guess I gave the Senator what he  really  wanted, you know?"  The
shaking stopped. She released the foam and ran her fingers back  through her
dark hair. "The house put a contract out on me. I had to hide for a while."
     Case stared at her.
     "So Riviera hit a  nerve last night," she said. "I guess it wants me to
hate him real bad, so I'll be psyched up to go in there after him."
     "After him?"
     "He's already there. Straylight. On the invitation of Lady 3Jane,
all that dedication shit. She was there in a private box, kinda . . ."
     Case remembered the face he'd seen. "You gonna kill him?"
     She smiled. Cold. "He's going to die, yeah. Soon."
     "I had a visit too,"  he said, and told her about the window, stumbling
over what the Zone-figure had said about Linda. She nodded.
     "Maybe it wants you to hate something too."
     "Maybe I hate it."
     "Maybe you hate yourself, Case."

     "How was it?" Bruce asked, as Case climbed into the Honda.
     "Try it sometime," he said, rubbing his eyes.
     "Just can't see  you the  kinda guy  goes for the  puppets," Cath
said unhappily, thumbing a fresh derm against her wrist.
     "Can we go home, now?" Bruce asked.
     "Sure. Drop me down Jules Verne, where the bars are."



        12
     Rue   Jules  Verne   was   a   circumferential   avenue,   looping  the
spindle's  midpoint,  while Desiderata  ran its length, terminating at
either end in the supports  of  the Lado-Acheson light pumps. If  you turned
right, off Desiderata, and followed Jules Verne far enough, you'd find
yourself approaching Desiderata from the left.
     Case watched Bruce's trike until it was out of sight, then turned
and walked past a vast, brilliantly lit newsstand, the covers of  dozens  of
glossy Japanese magazines presenting the  faces  of the month's newest
simstim stars.
     Directly  overhead, along the  nighted axis, the hologram sky glittered
with fanciful constellations suggesting playing cards, the faces  of dice, a
top  hat, a martini glass.  The intersection of  Desiderata and  Jules Verne
formed a kind of gulch, the balconied terraces of  Freeside  cliff  dwellers
rising gradually  to the  grassy tablelands of another casino complex.  Case
watched a drone microlight bank gracefully in an updraft at the  green verge
of an artificial mesa,  lit for  seconds by the soft glow  of the  invisible
casino. The thing was a kind  of pilotless biplane of  gossamer polymer, its
wings silkscreened to resemble  a giant  butterfly. Then it was gone, beyond
the mesa's edge.  He'd seen a  wink of reflected neon off glass,
either  lenses  or  the turrets  of lasers.  The  drones were  part  of  the
spindle's security system, controlled by some central computer.
     In Straylight? He walked on,  past  bars named the Hi-Lo, the Paradise,
le  Monde,  Cricketeer, Shozoku Smith's, Emergency. He chose Emergency
because it was the smallest  and most crowded, but it took  only seconds for
him  to  realize that it was a  tourist place.  No hum of  biz here,  only a
glazed  sexual  tension.  He  thought  briefly of  the nameless  club  above
Molly's rented cubicle, but the image  of  her mirrored  eyes fixed on
the little  screen dissuaded him. What  was Wintermute revealing  there now?
The   ground  plans  of  the   Villa  Straylight?   The   history   of   the
Tessier-Ashpools?
     He  bought  a  mug of  Carlsberg  and  found a place against  the wall.
Closing his eyes, he felt  for the knot of rage, the pure  small coal of his
anger. It was there still.  Where had it  come  from? He  remembered feeling
only  a  kind of bafflement  at his maiming  in Memphis, nothing at all when
he'd killed to defend his dealing interests in Night City, and a slack
sickness and loathing after Linda's death under the inflated dome. But
no anger. Small and far away,  on  the mind's screen, a  semblance  of
Deane  struck a semblance of an office wall in an explosion  of  brains  and
blood.  He  knew then:  the  rage had come in the  arcade,  when  Wintermute
rescinded  the  simstim ghost of  Linda  Lee, yanking away the simple animal
promise of food, warmth, a place to sleep. But he  hadn't become aware
of it until his exchange with the holo-construct of Lonny Zone.
     It was a strange thing. He couldn't take its measure.
     "Numb," he  said. He'd  been  numb a  long  time, years. All  his
nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed and numb  at the cold
sweating center of  every drug deal.  But  now he'd  found  this  warm
thing, this chip of murder. Meat, some part of him said. It's the meat
talking, ignore it.
     "Gangster."
     He opened his eyes.  Cath stood beside him in  a black  shift, her hair
still wild from the ride in the Honda.
     "Thought you went home," he said, and covered his confusion with a  sip
of Carlsberg.
     "I got  him to drop me off at this shop. Bought this." She ran her palm
across the fabric, curve of the  pelvic girdle. He saw  the blue derm on her
wrist. "Like it?"
     "Sure." He automatically scanned  the faces  around  them,  then looked
back at her. "What do you think you're up to, honey?"
     "You  like  the beta you got  off  us, Lupus?" She was  very close now,
radiating  heat and  tension, eyes slitted over enormous pupils and a tendon
in  her neck tense as a  bowstring.  She was quivering, vibrating  invisibly
with the fresh buzz. "You get off?"
     "Yeah. But the comedown's a bitch."
     "Then you need another one."
     "And what's that supposed to lead to?"
     "I got a key. Up the hill behind the Paradise, just the creamiest crib.
People down the well on business tonight, if you follow me. . ."
     "If I follow you."
     She took his hand  between  hers, her palms  hot and dry. "You're
Yak, aren't you, Lupus? Gaijin soldierman for the Yakuza."
     "You  got  an  eye,  huh?"  He withdrew his  hand  and  fumbled  for  a
cigarette.
     "How come you got all your fingers, then? I thought you had to chop one
off every time you screwed up."
     "I never screw up." He lit his cigarette. "I saw that girl you're
with. Day I met you. Walks like Hideo. Scares me." She smiled too widely. "I
like that. She like it with girls?"
     "Never said. Who's Hideo?"
     "3Jane's, what she calls it, retainer. Family retainer."
     Case  forced himself  to  stare dully at the  Emergency crowd  while he
spoke. "Dee-Jane?"
     "Lady 3Jane. She's triff. Rich. Her father owns all this."
     "This bar?"
     "Freeside!"
     "No shit.  You keepin' some class company,  huh?"  He  raised  an
eyebrow. Put his arm around her, his hand on her hip. "So how you meet these
aristos, Cathy? You some kinda closet  deb? You an' Bruce secret heirs
to  some  ripe old credit?  Huh?" He spread his fingers, kneading  the flesh
beneath the thin black cloth. She squirmed against him. Laughed.
     "Oh, you  know,"  she said, lids half lowered in  what  must have  been
intended as a look of modesty, "she likes to party. Bruce and I, we make the
party circuit. . . It  gets real boring for her, in  there. Her old man lets
her out sometimes, as long as she brings Hideo to take care of her."
     "Where's it get boring?"
     "Straylight, they  call it. She told me, oh, it's pretty, all the
pools  and  lilies.  It's a  castle,  a  real  castle,  all  stone and
sunsets." She snuggled in against him. "Hey, Lupus, man, you need a derm. So
we can be together."
     She wore  a tiny leather purse on a slender neck-thong. Her  nails were
bright pink  against  her boosted tan, bitten to the  quick. She  opened the
purse and withdrew a  paperbacked bubble with  a blue derm inside. Something
white tumbled to the floor; Case stooped and picked it up. An origami crane.
     "Hideo gave  it  to  me," she  said. "He  tried to  show me how, but  I
can't ever get it right. The necks come out backwards." She tucked the
folded paper back  into her purse. Case watched as she tore the bubble away,
peeled the derm from its backing, and smoothed it across his inner wrist.
     "3Jane,  she's got a pointy face,  nose like a bird?"  He watched
his hands fumble an outline. "Dark hair? Young?"
     "I guess. But she's triff, you know? Like, all that money."
     The drug hit him like  an  express train, a white-hot  column of  light
mounting his spine from the region of his prostate, illuminating the sutures
of his skull with x-rays of short-circuited sexual energy. His teeth sang in
their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear
as ethanol. His  bones, beneath the hazy envelope of flesh, were chromed and
polished, the joints lubricated  with a film  of silicone.  Sandstorms raged
across  the scoured floor of his skull, generating waves of high thin static
that broke behind his eyes, spheres of purest crystal, expanding. . .
     "Come on,"  she said, taking  his hand. "You got it now. We got  it. Up
the hill, we'll have it all night."
     The anger was expanding, relentless, exponential, riding out behind the
betaphenethylamine  rush like  a  carrier  wave, a seismic fluid,  rich  and
corrosive.  His erection  was a  bar of  lead.  The  faces  around  them  in
Emergency  were  painted  doll  things, the  pink and  white  of mouth parts
moving, moving, words emerging like discrete balloons of sound. He looked at
Cath  and saw each pore in the tanned skin, eyes flat as dumb  glass, a tint
of dead metal, a faint  bloating, the most minute  asymmetries of breast and
collarbone, the – something flared white behind his eyes.
     He dropped her hand and stumbled for the  door, shoving someone out  of
the way.
     "Fuck you!" she screamed behind him, "you ripoff shit!"
     He  couldn't feel  his legs. He used them  like  stilts,  swaying
crazily across the flagstone pavement of Jules Verne, a distant rumbling  in
his ears, his own blood, razored  sheets of light bisecting his skull  at  a
dozen angles.
     And  then he  was frozen,  erect, fists tight against his  thighs, head
back, his lips curled, shaking. While he watched the loser's zodiac of
Freeside, the nightclub  constellations of the  hologram sky, shift, sliding
fluid down the  axis of darkness, to swarm  like live  things  at  the  dead
center  of reality.  Until they had arranged themselves, individually and in
their  hundreds,  to  form  a  vast  simple portrait, stippled the  ultimate
monochrome, stars against night sky. Face of Miss Linda Lee.
     When he was able to look away, to  lower his eyes, he found every other
face  in the street  upraised, the strolling tourists  becalmed with wonder.
And when the lights in the sky went out, a  ragged cheer went up  from Jules
Verne, to echo off the terraces and ranked balconies of lunar concrete.
     Somewhere a clock began to chime, some ancient bell out of Europe.
     Midnight.

     He walked till morning.
     The  high  wore  away,  the chromed skeleton  corroding  hourly,  flesh
growing  solid,  the  drug-flesh replaced with  the  meat  of  his life.  He
couldn't think. He liked that very much, to be conscious and unable to
think. He seemed to become each thing he saw: a park bench, a cloud of white
moths around an  antique streetlight, a robot  gardener  striped  diagonally
with black and yellow.
     A recorded dawn crept along the Lado-Acheson system, pink and lurid. He
forced himself to eat an  omelette in a Desiderata cafe, to drink  water, to
smoke the last of his cigarettes. The rooftop meadow of the Intercontinental
was stirring as he crossed it, an early breakfast crowd intent on coffee and
croissants beneath the striped umbrellas.
     He still had his anger. That  was like  being rolled in some  alley and
waking to discover your  wallet still in  your pocket, untouched. He  warmed
himself with it, unable to give it a name or an object.
     He rode the  elevator down to his level, fumbling in his pocket for the
Freeside credit chip that served as  his key.  Sleep was  becoming real, was
something he might do.  To lie down on the  sand-colored temperfoam and find
the blankness again.
     They  were  waiting  there,  the  three  of  them,  their perfect white
sportsclothes  and stenciled tans setting off the handwoven organic  chic of
the furniture. The girl sat on a wicker sofa, an automatic pistol beside her
on the leaf-patterned print of the cushion.
     "Turing," she said. "You are under arrest."




         * PART FOUR. THE STRAYLIGHT RUN



        13
     "Your  name is  Henry Dorsett Case." She recited the year and place  of
his birth, his BAMA Single Identification Number,  and a string of  names he
gradually recognized as aliases from his past.
     "You  been here awhile?" He saw  the  contents of his  bag  spread  out
across  the  bed,  unwashed  clothing sorted  by  type. The shuriken  lay by
itself, between jeans and underwear, on the sand-tinted temperfoam.
     "Where is Kolodny?" The two  men sat  side  by side on the couch, their
arms crossed  over  tanned chests, identical  gold chains slung around their
necks. Case peered at them and saw that their  youth was counterfeit, marked
by a certain telltale corrugation at the knuckles,  something  the  surgeons
were unable to erase.
     "Who's Kolodny?"
     "That was the name in the register. Where is she?"
     "I dunno," he said, crossing to  the bar and pouring himself a glass of
mineral water. "She took off."
     "Where did you go  tonight, Case?" The girl picked  up  the pistol  and
rested it on her thigh, without actually pointing it at him.
     "Jules Verne, couple of bars,  got high. How about you?" His knees felt
brittle. The mineral water was warm and flat.
     "I  don't think you grasp your situation,"  said the  man on  the
left, taking a  pack of Gitanes  from the  breast pocket  of  his white mesh
blouse. "You are busted, Mr. Case. The charges have to do with conspiracy to
augment an  artificial intelligence." He  took a gold Dunhill from the  same
pocket and cradled it in  his palm. "The man you call Armitage is already in
custody."
     "Corto?"
     The man's  eyes widened. "Yes.  How  do you know that that is his
name?" A millimeter of flame clicked from the lighter.
     "I forget," Case said.
     "You'll remember," the girl said.

     Their  names, or worknames,  were Michele,  Roland, and Pierre. Pierre,
Case decided, would  play the  Bad Cop; Roland would take Case's side,
provide small kindnesses – he found an unopened pack of Yeheyuans when
Case  refused  a   Gitane  –  and  generally   play  counterpoint   to
Pierre's cold hostility. Michele would be  the Recording Angel, making
occasional adjustments in the direction of the interrogation. One or  all of
them, he  was  certain, would be  kinked for audio, very likely for simstim,
and anything he said or did now was  admissible evidence. Evidence, he asked
himself, through the grinding come-down, of what?
     Knowing  that  he couldn't follow their French, they spoke freely
among themselves. Or  seemed to.  He  caught enough as  it  was: names  like
Pauley,  Armitage, Sense/Net. Panther  Moderns protruding like icebergs from
an animated  sea of Parisian  French. But  it was entirely possible that the
names were there for his benefit. They always referred to Molly as Kolodny.
     "You  say you were  hired to make a  run, Case,"  Roland said, his slow
speech intended to convey reasonableness, "and that you  are unaware  of the
nature of the target.  Is this not  unusual in your trade? Having penetrated
the  defenses,  would  you  not  be  unable then  to  perform  the  required
operation? And surely an operation of some kind is required, yes?" He leaned
forward,  elbows  on  his  stenciled  brown  knees,  palms  out  to  receive
Case's  explanation. Pierre paced the room; now  he was by the window,
now by  the door. Michele  was  the kink,  Case decided. Her eyes never left
him.
     "Can I put some clothes on?" he asked. Pierre had