» The Mercedes swerved, avoiding a bal— loon-tired dray stacked with hides. «I have followed him in the street and seen a dozen cycles fall, near him, in a day. Find the cyclist in a hospital, the story is always the same. A scorpion poised beside a brake lever….» «'What you see is what you get,' yeah,» the Finn said. «I seen the schematics on the guy's silicon. Very flash. What he imagines, you see. I figure he could narrow it to a pulse and fry a retina over easy.» «You have told this to your woman friend?» Terzibashjian leaned forward between the ultrasuede buckets. «In Turkey, women are still women. This one. . .» The Finn snorted. «She'd have you wearing your balls for a bow tie if you looked at her cross-eyed.» «I do not understand this idiom.» «That's okay,» Case said. «Means shut up.» The Armenian sat back, leaving a metallic edge of after— shave. He began to whisper to a Sanyo transceiver in a strange salad of Greek, French, Turkish, isolated fragments of English. The transceiver answered in French. The Mercedes swung smoothly around a corner. «The spice bazaar, sometimes called the Egyptian bazaar,» the car said, «was erected on the site of an earlier bazaar erected by Sultan Hatice in 1660. This is the city's central market for spices, software, perfumes, drugs….» «Drugs,» Case said, watching the car's wipers cross and recross the bulletproof Lexan. «What's that you said before, Jersey, about this Riviera being wired?» «A mixture of cocaine and meperidine, yes.» The Armenian went back to the conversation he was having with the Sanyo. ' Demerol, they used to call that,» said the Finn. «He's a speedball artist. Funny class of people you're mixing with, Case.» «Never mind,» Case said, turning up the collar of his jacket, «we'll get the poor fucker a new pancreas or something.»

Once they entered the bazaar, the Finn brightened notice— ably, as though he were comforted by the crowd density and the sense of enclosure. They walked with the Armenian along a broad concourse, beneath soot-stained sheets of plastic and green-painted ironwork out of the age of steam. A thousand suspended ads writhed and flickered. «Hey, Christ,» the Finn said, taking Case's arm, «looka that.» He pointed. «It's a horse, man. You ever see a horse?» Case glanced at the embalmed animal and shook his head. It was displayed on a sort of pedestal, near the entrance to a place that sold birds and monkeys. The thing's legs had been worn black and hairless by decades of passing hands. «Saw one in Maryland once,» the Finn said, «and that was a good three years after the pandemic. There's Arabs still trying to code 'em up from the DNA, but they always croak.» The animal's brown glass eyes seemed to follow them as they passed. Terzibashjian led them into a cafe near the core of the market, a low-ceilinged room that looked as though it had been in continuous operation for centuries. Skinny boys in soiled white coats dodged between the crowded tables, bal— ancing steel trays with bottles of Turk-Tuborg and tiny glasses of tea. Case bought a pack of Yeheyuans from a vendor by the door. The Armenian was muttering to his Sanyo. «Come,» he said, «he is moving. Each night he rides the tunel to the bazaar, to purchase his mixture from Ali. Your woman is close. Come.»

The alley was an old place, too old, the walls cut from blocks of dark stone. The pavement was uneven and smelled of a century's dripping gasoline, absorbed by ancient limestone. «Can't see shit,» he whispered to the Finn. «That's okay for sweetmeat,» the Finn said. «Quiet,» said Terzibashjian, too loudly Wood grated on stone or concrete. Ten meters down the alley, a wedge of yellow light fell across wet cobbles, widened. A figure stepped out and the door grated shut again, leaving the narrow place in darkness. Case shivered. «Now,» Terzibashjian said, and a brilliant beam of white light, directed from the rooftop of the building opposite the market, pinned the slender figure beside the ancient wooden door in a perfect circle. Bright eyes darted left, right, and the man crumpled. Case thought someone had shot him; he lay face down, blond hair pale against the old stone, his limp hands white and pathetic. The floodlight never wavered. The back of the fallen man's jacket heaved and burst, blood splashing the wall and doorway. A pair of impossibly long, rope-tendoned arms flexed grayish-pink in the glare. The thing seemed to pull itself up out of the pavement, through the inert, bloody ruin that had been Riviera. It was two meters tall, stood on two legs, and seemed to be headless. Then it swung slowly to face them, and Case saw that it had a head, but no neck. It was eyeless, the skin gleaming a wet intestinal pink. The mouth, if it was a mouth, was circular, conical, shallow, and lined with a seething growth of hairs or bristles, glittering like black chrome. It kicked the rags of clothing and flesh aside and took a step, the mouth seeming to scan for them as it moved. Terzibashjian said something in Greek or Turkish and rushed the thing, his arms spread like a man attempting to dive through a window. He went through it. Into the muzzle-flash of a pistol from the dark beyond the circle of light. Fragments of rock whizzed past Case's head; the Finn jerked him down into a crouch. The light from the rooftop vanished, leaving him with mis— matched afterimages of muzzle-flash, monster, and white beam. His ears rang. Then the light returned, bobbing now, searching the shad— ows. Terzibashjian was leaning against a steel door, his face very white in the glare. He held his left wrist and watched blood drip from a wound in his left hand. The blond man, whole again, unbloodied, lay at his feet. Molly stepped out of the shadows, all in black, with her fletcher in her hand. «Use the radio,» the Armenian said, through gritted teeth. «Call in Mahmut. We must get him out of here. This is not a good place.» «Little prick nearly made it,» the Finn said, his knees crack— ing loudly as he stood up, brushing ineffectually at the legs of his trousers. «You were watching the horror-show, right? Not the hamburger that got tossed out of sight. Real cute. Well, help 'em get his ass outa here. I gotta scan all that gear before he wakes up, make sure Armitage is getting his money's worth.» Molly bent and picked something up. A pistol. «A Nambu,» she said. «Nice gun.» Terzibashjian made a whining sound. Case saw that most of his middle finger was missing.

With the city drenched in predawn blue, she told the Mercedes to take them to Topkapi . The Finn and an enormous Turk named Mahmut had taken Riviera, still unconscious, from the alley. Minutes later, a dusty Citroen had arrived for the Armenian who seemed on the verge of fainting. «You're an asshole,» Molly told the man, opening the car door for him. «You shoulda hung back. I had him in my sights as soon as he stepped out.» Terzibashjian glared at her. «So we're through with you anyway.» She shoved him in and slammed the door. «Run into you again and I'll kill you,» she said to the white face behind the tinted window. The Citroen ground away down the alley and swung clumsily into the street. Now the Mercedes whispered through Istanbul as the city woke. They passed the Beyoglu tunel terminal and sped past mazes of deserted back streets, run-down apartment houses that reminded Case vaguely of Paris. «What is this thing?» he asked Molly, as the Mercedes parked itself on the fringes of the gardens that surround the Scraglio. He stared dully at the baroque conglomeration of styles that was Topkapi. «It was sort of a private whorehouse for the King,» she said, getting out stretching. «Kept a lotta women there. Now it's a museum. Kinda like Finn's shop, all this stuff just jumbled in there big diamonds, swords, the left hand of John the Baptist….» «Like in a support vat?» «Nah. Dead. Got it inside this brass hand thing, little hatch on the side so the Christians could kiss it for luck. Got it off the Christians about a million years ago, and they never dust the goddam thing, 'cause it's an infidel relic.» Black iron deer rusted in the gardens of the Seraglio. Case walked beside her, watching the toes of her boots crunch unkept grass made stiff by an early frost. They walked beside a path of cold octagonal flagstones. Winter was waiting, somewhere in the Balkans. «That Terzi, he's grade-A scum,» she said. «He's the secret police. Torturer. Real easy to buy out, too, with the kind of money Armitage was offering.» In the wet trees around them, birds began to sing. «I did that job for you,» Case said, «the one in London. I got something, but I don't know what it means.» He told her the Corto story.

«Well, I knew there wasn't anybody name of Armitage in that Screaming Fist. Looked it up.» She stroked the rusted flank of an iron doe. «You figure the little computer pulled him out of it? In that French hospital?» «I figure Wintermute,» Case said. She nodded. «Thing is,» he said, «do you think he knows he was Corto, before? I mean, he wasn't anybody in particular, by the time he hit the ward, so maybe Wintermute just. . .» «Yeah. Built him up from go. Yeah…» She turned and they walked on. «It figures. You know, the guy doesn't have any life going, in private. Not as far as I can tell. You see a guy like that, you figure there's something he does when he's alone. But not Armitage. Sits and stares at the wall, man. Then something clicks and he goes into high gear and wheels for Wintermute.» «So why's he got that stash in London? Nostalgia?» «Maybe he doesn't know about it,» she said. «Maybe it's just in his name, right?» «I don't get it,» Case said. «Just thinking out loud…. How smart's an Al, Case?» «Depends. Some aren't much smarter than dogs. Pets. Cost a fortune anyway. The real smart ones are as smart as the Turing heat is willing to let 'em get.» «Look, you're a cowboy. How come you aren't just flat— out fascinated with those things?» «Well,» he said, «for starts, they're rare. Most of them are military, the bright ones, and we can't crack the ice. That's where ice all comes from, you know? And then there's the Turing cops, and that's bad heat.» He looked at her. «I dunno, it just isn't part of the trip.» «Jockeys all the same,» she said. «No imagination.» They came to a broad rectangular pond where carp nuzzled the stems of some white aquatic flower. She kicked a loose pebble in and watched the ripples spread. «That's Wintermute,» she said. «This deal's real big, looks to me. We're out where the little waves are too broad, we can't see the rock that hit the center. We know something's there, but not why. I wanna know why. I want you to go and talk to Wintermute.» «I couldn't get near it,» he said. «You're dreaming.» «Try.» «Can't be done.» «Ask the Flatline.» «What do we want out of that Riviera?» he asked, hoping to change the subject. She spat into the pond. «God knows. I'd as soon kill him as look at him. I saw his profile. He's a kind of compulsive Judas. Can't get off sexually unless he knows he's betraying the object of desire. That's what the file says. And they have to love him first. Maybe he loves them, too. That's why it was easy for Terzi to set him up for us, because he's been here three years, shopping politicals to the secret police. Probably Terzi let him watch, when the cattle prods came out. He's done eighteen in three years. All women age twenty to twenty-five. It kept Terzi in dissidents.» She thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. «Because if he found one he really wanted, he'd make sure she turned political. He's got a personality like a Modern's suit. The profile said it was a very rare type, estimated one in a couple of million. Which anyway says something good about human nature, I guess.» She stared at the white flowers and the sluggish fish, her face sour. «I think I'm going to have to buy myself some special insurance on that Peter.» Then she turned and smiled, and it was very cold. «What's that mean?» «Never mind. Let's go back to Beyoglu and find something like breakfast. I gotta busy night again, tonight. Gotta collect his stuff from that apartment in Fener, gotta go back to the bazaar and buy him some drugs….» «Buy him some drugs? How's he rate?» She laughed. «He's not dying on the wire, sweetheart. And it looks like he can't work without that special taste. I like you better now, anyway, you aren't so goddam skinny.» She smiled. «So I'll go to Ali the dealer and stock up. You betcha.»

Armitage was waiting in their room at the Hilton. «Time to pack,» he said, and Case tried to find the man called Corto behind the pale blue eyes and the tanned mask. He thought of Wage, back in Chiba. Operators above a certain level tended to submerge their personalities, he knew. But Wage had had vices, lovers. Even, it had been rumored, chil— dren. The blankness he found in Armitage was something else. «Where to now?» he asked, walking past the man to stare down into the street. «What kind of climate?» «They don't have climate, just weather,» Armitage said. «Here. Read the brochure.» He put something on the coffee table and stood. «Did Riviera check out okay? Where's the Finn?» «Riviera's fine. The Finn is on his way home.» Armitage smiled, a smile that meant as much as the twitch of some insect's antenna. His gold bracelet clinked as he reached out to prod Case in the chest. «Don't get too smart. Those little sacs are starting to show wear, but you don't know how much.» Case kept his face very still and forced himself to nod. When Armitage was gone, he picked up one of the bro— chures. It was expensively printed, in French, English, and Turkish.

FREESIDE-WHY WAIT?

The four of them were booked on a THY flight out of Yes— ilkoy airport. Transfer at Paris to the JAL shuttle. Case sat in the lobby of the Istanbul Hilton and watched Riviera browse bogus Byzantine fragments in the glass-walled gift-shop. Ar— mitage, his trenchcoat draped over his shoulders like a cape, stood in the shop's entrance. Riviera was slender, blond, soft-voiced, his English ac— centless and fluid. Molly said he was thirty, but it would have been difficult to guess his age. She also said he was legally stateless and traveled under a forged Dutch passport. He was a product of the rubble rings that fringe the radioactive core of old Bonn. Three smiling Japanese tourists bustled into the shop, nod— ding politely to Armitage. Armitage crossed the floor of the shop too quickly, too obviously, to stand beside Riviera. Ri— viera turned and smiled. He was very beautiful; Case assumed the features were the work of a Chiba surgeon. A subtle job, nothing like Armitage's blandly handsome blend of pop faces. The man's forehead was high and smooth, gray eyes calm and distant. His nose, which might have been too nicely sculpted, seemed to have been broken and clumsily reset. The suggestion of brutality offset the delicacy of his jaw and the quickness of his smile. His teeth were small, even, and very white. Case watched the white hands play over the imitation fragments of sculpture. Riviera didn't act like a man who'd been attacked the night before, drugged with a toxin-flechette, abducted, subjected to the Finn's examination, and pressured by Armitage into joining their team. Case checked his watch. Molly was due back from her drug run. He looked up at Riviera again. «I bet you're stoned right now, asshole,» he said to the Hilton lobby. A graying Italian matron in a white leather tuxedo jacket lowered her Porsche glasses to stare at him. He smiled broadly, stood, and shoul— dered his bag. He needed cigarettes for the flight. He wondered if there was a smoking section on the JAL shuttle. «See ya lady,» he said to the woman, who promptly slid the sunglasses back up her nose and turned away. There were cigarettes in the gift shop, but he didn't relish talking with Armitage or Riviera. He left the lobby and located a vending console in a narrow alcove, at the end of a rank of pay phones. He fumbled through a pocketful of lirasi, slotting the small dull alloy coins one after another, vaguely amused by the anach— ronism of the process. The phone nearest him rang. Automatically, he picked it up. «Yeah?» Faint harmonics, tiny inaudible voices rattling across some orbital link, and then a sound like wind. «Hello. Case.» A fifty-lirasi coin fell from his hand, bounced, and rolled out of sight across Hilton carpeting. «Wintermute, Case. It's time we talk.» It was a chip voice. «Don't you want to talk, Case?» He hung up. On his way back to the lobby, his cigarettes forgotten, he had to walk the length of the ranked phones. Each rang in turn, but only once, as he passed.