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, per— fectly 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 Garvey would relay the gesture to the Naniwa monitor. 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 Garvey and all in various stages of repair. Japanese voices. A figure in an orange jumpsuit stepped from a gap in the hull of a bulbous construc— tion 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 shouder. It paused, swayed its spherical body from side to side on high-arched spider legs, fired a micro— second 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 ten— meter 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 Garvey with 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.

CASE: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O .

«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.

GENERAL G IRLING ::: TRAINED CORTO F O R SCREAMING FIST A N D SOLD H I S ASS TO THE PENT AGON:::: W/MUTE'S PRIMARY GRIP ON ARMITAG E IS A CONSTRU CT OF G IRLING: W/MUTE SEZ A'S MENTION OF G MEANS HE'S CRACK ING:::: WATCH YOUR ASS:::: ::DIXIE

«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 hang— over 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 Garvey and 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. Mael— cum'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. Garvey Maelcum boat.» His gloved hand slapped a panel and the bass-heavy rocksteady of Zion dub came pulsing from the tug's speakers. «Maelcum not run— nin', 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; del— icate 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 hop— pin' 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. Ar-

mitage 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 res— urrection 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 pen— etration 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 sys— tems 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 ex— ceptions. 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 close— up 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 an— guished 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 Win— termute in that room in the Chiba Hilton…. And now Arm— itage 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, sir, 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 cheek— bones 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 ex— pensive 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 shoul— der 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 poison you?» 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….»

There was air in the corrugated gangway that led from Mar— cus Garvey's aft lock to the midbay lock of the yacht called Haniwa, but they kept their suits sealed. Maelcum executed the passage with balletic grace, only pausing to help Case, who'd gone into an awkward tumble as he'd stepped out of Garvey. The white plastic sides of the tube filtered the raw sunlight; there were no shadows. Garvey's airlock hatch was patched and pitted, decorated with a laser-carved Lion of Zion. Haniwa's midbay hatch was creamy gray, blank and pristine. Maelcum inserted his gloved hand in a narrow recess. Case saw his fingers move. Red LEDs came to life in the recess, counting down from fifty. Maelcum withdrew his hand. Case, with one glove braced against the hatch, felt the vibration of the lock mechanism through his suit and bones. The round segment of gray hull began to withdraw into the side of Haniwa. Maelcum grabbed the recess with one hand and Case with the other. The lock took them with it.

Haniwa was a product of the Dornier-Fujitsu yards, her interior informed by a design philosophy similar to the one that had produced the Mercedes that had chauffeured them through Istanbul. The narrow midbay was walled in imitation ebony veneer and floored with gray Italian tiles. Case felt as though he were invading some rich man's private spa by way of the shower. The yacht, which had been assembled in orbit, had never been intended for re-entry. Her smooth, wasplike line was simply styling, and everything about her interior was cal— culated to add to the overall impression of speed. When Maelcum removed his battered helmet, Case followed his lead. They hung there in the lock, breathing air that smelled faintly of pine. Under it, a disturbing edge of burning insula— tion. Maelcum sniffed. «Trouble here, mon. Any boat, you smell that….» A door, padded with dark gray ultrasuede, slid smoothly back into its housing. Maelcum kicked off the ebony wall and sailed neatly through the narrow opening, twisting his broad shoulders, at the last possible instant, for clearance. Case fol— lowed him clumsily, hand over hand, along a waist-high padded rail. «Bridge,» Maelcum said, pointing down a seamless, cream— walled corridor, «be there.» He launched himself with another effortless kick. From somewhere ahead, Case made out the familiar chatter of a printer turning out hard copy. It grew louder as he followed Maelcum through another doorway, into a swirling mass of tangled printout. Case snatched a length of twisted paper and glanced at it.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

«Systems crash?» The Zionite flicked a gloved finger at the column of zeros. «No,» Case said, grabbing for his drifting helmet, «the Flat— line said Armitage wiped the Hosaka he had in there.» «Smell like he wipe 'em wi' laser, ya know?» The Zionite braced his foot against the white cage of a Swiss exercise machine and shot through the floating maze of paper, batting it away from his face. «Case, mon…» The man was small, Japanese, his throat bound to the back of the narrow articulated chair with a length of some sort of fine steel wire. The wire was invisible, where it crossed the black temperfoam of the headrest, and it had cut as deeply into his larynx. A single sphere of dark blood had congealed there like some strange precious stone, a red-black pearl. Case saw the crude wooden handles that drifted at either end of the garrotte, like worn sections of broom handle. «Wonder how long he had that on him?» Case said, re— membering Corto's postwar pilgrimage. «He know how pilot boat, Case, bossman?» «Maybe. He was Special Forces.» «Well, this Japan-boy, he not be pilotin'. Doubt I pilot her easy myself. Ver' new boat. . .» «So find us the bridge.» Maelcum frowned, rolled backward, and kicked. Case followed him into a larger space, a kind of lounge, shredding and crumpling the lengths of printout that snared him in his passage. There were more of the articulated chairs, here, something that resembled a bar, and the Hosaka. The printer, still spewing its flimsy tongue of paper, was an in-built bulk— head unit, a neat slot in a panel of handrubbed veneer. He pulled himself over the circle of chairs and reached it, punching a white stud to the left of the slot. The chattering stopped. He turned and stared at the Hosaka. Its face had been drilled through, at least a dozen times. The holes were small, circular, edges blackened. Tiny spheres of bright alloy were orbiting the dead computer. «Good guess,» he said to Maelcum. «Bridge locked, mon,» Maelcum said, from the opposite side of the lounge. The lights dimmed, surged, dimmed again. Case ripped the printout from its slot. More zeros. «Win— termute?» He looked around the beige and brown lounge, the space scrawled with drifting curves of paper. «That you on the lights, Wintermute?» A panel beside Maelcum's head slid up, revealing a small monitor. Maelcum jerked apprehensively, wiped sweat from his forehead with a foam patch on the back of a gloved hand, and swung to study the display. «You read Japanese, mon?» Case could see figures blinking past on the screen. «No,» Case said. «Bridge is escape pod, lifeboat. Countin' down, looks like it. Suit up now.» He ringed his helmet and slapped at the seals. «What? He's takin' off? Shit!» He kicked off from the bulkhead and shot through the tangle of printout. «We gotta open this door, man!» But Maelcum could only tap the side of his helmet. Case could see his lips moving, through the Lexan. He saw a bead of sweat arc out from the rainbow braided band of the purple cotton net the Zionite wore over his locks. Mael— cum snatched the helmet from Case and ringed it for him smoothly, the palms of his gloves smacking the seals. Micro— LED monitors to the left of the faceplate lit as the neck ring connections closed. «No seh Japanese,» Maelcum said, over his suit's transceiver, «but countdown's wrong.» He tapped a particular line on the screen. «Seals not intact, bridge module. Launchin' wi' lock open.» «Armitage!» Case tried to pound on the door. The physics of zero-g sent him tumbling back through the printout. «Corto! Don't do it! We gotta talk! We gotta-« «Case? Read you, Case…» The voice barely resembled Armitage's now. It held a weird calm. Case stopped kicking. His helmet struck the far wall. «I'm sorry, Case, but it has to be this way. One of us has to get out. One of us has to testify. If we all go down here, it ends here. I'll tell them, Case, I'll tell them all of it. About Girling and the others. And I'll make it, Case. I know I'll make it. To Helsinki.» There was a sudden silence; Case felt it fill his helmet like some rare gas. «But it's so hard, Case, so goddam hard. I'm blind.» «Corto, stop. Wait. You're blind, man. You can't fly! You'll hit the fucking trees. And they're trying to get you, Corto, I swear to God, they've left your hatch open. You'll die, and you'll never get to tell 'em, and I gotta get the enzyme, name of the enzyme, the enzyme, man….» He was shouting, voice high with hysteria. Feedback shrilled out of the helmet's phone pads. «Remember the training, Case. That's all we can do.» And then the helmet filled with a confused babble, roaring static, harmonics howling down the years from Screaming Fist. Fragments of Russian, and then a stranger's voice, Midwestern, very young. «We are down, repeat, Omaha Thunder is down, we . . .» «Wintermute,» Case screamed, «don't do this to me!