Neuromancer (16 page)

Case managed to straighten out, but began to corkscrew in a long spiral.

“Hold on,” the Finn said, “I’ll fast-forward us.”

The walls blurred. Dizzying sensation of headlong movement, colors, whipping around
corners and through narrow corridors. They seemed at one point to pass through several
meters of solid wall, a flash of pitch darkness.

“Here,” the Finn said. “This is it.”

They floated in the center of a perfectly square room, walls and ceiling paneled in
rectangular sections of dark wood. The floor was covered by a single square of brilliant
carpet patterned after a microchip, circuits traced in blue and scarlet wool. In the
exact center of the room, aligned precisely with the carpet pattern, stood a square
pedestal of frosted white glass.

“The Villa Straylight,” said a jeweled thing on the pedestal, in a voice like music,
“is a body grown in upon itself, a Gothic folly. Each space in Straylight is in some
way secret, this endless series of chambers linked by passages, by stairwells vaulted
like intestines, where the eye is trapped in narrow curves, carried past ornate screens,
empty alcoves. . . .”

“Essay of 3Jane’s,” the Finn said, producing his Partagas. “Wrote that when she was
twelve. Semiotics course.”

“The architects of Freeside went to great pains to conceal the fact that the interior
of the spindle is arranged with the banal precision of furniture in a hotel room.
In Straylight, the hull’s inner surface is overgrown with a desperate proliferation
of structures, forms flowing, interlocking, rising toward a solid core of microcircuitry,
our clan’s corporate heart, a cylinder of silicon wormholed with narrow maintenance
tunnels, some no wider than a man’s hand. The bright crabs burrow there, the drones,
alert for micromechanical decay or sabotage.”

“That was her you saw in the restaurant,” the Finn said.

“By the standards of the archipelago,” the head continued, “ours is an old family,
the convolutions of our home reflecting that age. But reflecting something else as
well. The semiotics of the Villa bespeak a turning in, a denial of the bright void
beyond the hull.

“Tessier and Ashpool climbed the well of gravity to discover that they loathed space.
They built Freeside to tap the wealth of the new islands, grew rich and eccentric,
and began the construction of an extended body in Straylight. We have sealed ourselves
away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self.

“The Villa Straylight knows no sky, recorded or otherwise.

“At the Villa’s silicon core is a small room, the only rectilinear chamber in the
complex. Here, on a plain pedestal of glass, rests an ornate bust, platinum and cloisonné,
studded with lapis and pearl. The bright marbles of its eyes were cut from the synthetic
ruby viewport of the ship that brought the first Tessier up the well, and returned
for the first Ashpool. . . .”

The head fell silent.

“Well?” Case asked, finally, almost expecting the thing to answer him.

“That’s all she wrote,” the Finn said. “Didn’t finish it. Just a kid then. This thing’s
a ceremonial terminal, sort of. I need Molly in here with the right word at the right
time. That’s the catch. Doesn’t mean shit, how deep you and the Flatline ride that
Chinese virus, if this thing doesn’t hear the magic word.”

“So what’s the word?”

“I don’t know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don’t
know, because I
can’t
know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew, man, and told me, I couldn’t
know
. It’s hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it and bring it here, just when you
and the Flatline punch through that ice and scramble the cores.”

“What happens then?”

“I don’t exist, after that. I cease.”

“Okay by me,” Case said.

“Sure. But you watch your ass, Case. My, ah, other lobe is on to us, it looks like.
One burning bush looks pretty much like another. And Armitage is starting to go.”

“What’s that mean?”

But the paneled room folded itself through a dozen impossible angles, tumbling away
into cyberspace like an origami crane.

“Y
OU TRYIN
’
TO
break my record, son?” the Flatline asked. “You were braindead again, five seconds.”

“Sit tight,” Case said, and hit the simstim switch.

She crouched in darkness, her palms against rough concrete.

CASE CASE CASE CASE. The digital display pulsed his name in alphanumerics, Wintermute
informing her of the link.

“Cute,” she said. She rocked back on her heels and rubbed her palms together, cracked
her knuckles. “What kept you?”

TIME MOLLY TIME NOW.

She pressed her tongue hard against her lower front teeth. One moved slightly, activating
her microchannel amps; the random bounce of photons through the darkness was converted
to a pulse of electrons, the concrete around her coming up ghost-pale and grainy.
“Okay, honey. Now we go out to play.”

Her hiding place proved to be a service tunnel of some kind. She crawled out through
a hinged, ornate grill of tarnished brass. He saw enough of her arms and hands to
know that she wore the polycarbon suit again. Under the plastic, he felt the familiar
tension of thin tight leather. There was something slung under her arm in a harness
or
holster. She stood up, unzipped the suit and touched the checkered plastic of a pistolgrip.

“Hey, Case,” she said, barely voicing the words, “you listening? Tell you a story. . . .
Had me this boy once. You kinda remind me . . .” She turned and surveyed the corridor.
“Johnny, his name was.”

The low, vaulted hallway was lined with dozens of museum cases, archaic-looking glass-fronted
boxes made of brown wood. They looked awkward there, against the organic curves of
the hallway’s walls, as though they’d been brought in and set up in a line for some
forgotten purpose. Dull brass fixtures held globes of white light at ten-meter intervals.
The floor was uneven, and as she set off along the corridor, Case realized that hundreds
of small rugs and carpets had been put down at random. In some places, they were six
deep, the floor a soft patchwork of handwoven wool.

Molly paid little attention to the cabinets and their contents, which irritated him.
He had to satisfy himself with her disinterested glances, which gave him fragments
of pottery, antique weapons, a thing so densely studded with rusted nails that it
was unrecognizable, frayed sections of tapestry. . . .

“My Johnny, see, he was smart, real flash boy. Started out as a stash on Memory Lane,
chips in his head and people paid to hide data there. Had the Yak after him, night
I met him, and I did for their assassin. More luck than anything else, but I did for
him. And after that, it was tight and sweet, Case.” Her lips barely moved. He felt
her form the words; he didn’t need to hear them spoken aloud. “We had a set-up with
a squid, so we could read the traces of everything he’d ever stored. Ran it all out
on tape and started twisting selected clients, ex-clients. I was bagman, muscle, watchdog.
I was real happy. You ever been happy, Case? He was my boy. We worked together. Partners.
I was maybe eight weeks out of the puppet house when I met him. . . .” She paused,
edged around a sharp turn, and continued. More of the glossy wooden cases, their sides
a color that reminded him of cockroach wings.

“Tight, sweet, just ticking along, we were. Like nobody could ever touch us. I wasn’t
going to let them. Yakuza, I guess, they still wanted Johnny’s ass. ’Cause I’d killed
their man. ’Cause Johnny’d burned them. And the Yak, they can afford to move so fucking
slow, man, they’ll
wait years and years. Give you a whole life, just so you’ll have more to lose when
they come and take it away. Patient like a spider. Zen spiders.

“I didn’t know that, then. Or if I did, I figured it didn’t apply to us. Like when
you’re young, you figure you’re unique. I was young. Then they came, when we were
thinking we maybe had enough to be able to quit, pack it in, go to Europe maybe. Not
that either of us knew what we’d do there, with nothing to do. But we were living
fat, Swiss orbital accounts and a crib full of toys and furniture. Takes the edge
off your game.

“So that first one they’d sent, he’d been hot. Reflexes like you never saw, implants,
enough style for ten ordinary hoods. But the second one, he was, I dunno, like a
monk
. Cloned. Stone killer from the cells on up. Had it in him, death, this silence, he
gave it off in a cloud. . . .” Her voice trailed off as the corridor split, identical
stairwells descending. She took the left.

“One time, I was a little kid, we were squatting. It was down by the Hudson, and those
rats, man, they were big. It’s the chemicals get into them. Big as I was, and all
night one had been scrabbling under the floor of the squat. Round dawn somebody brought
this old man in, seams down his cheeks and his eyes all red. Had a roll of greasy
leather like you’d keep steel tools in, to keep the rust off. Spread it out, had this
old revolver and three shells. Old man, he puts one bullet in there, then he starts
walking up and down the squat, we’re hanging back by the walls.

“Back and forth. Got his arms crossed, head down, like he’s forgotten the gun. Listening
for the rat. We got real quiet. Old man takes a step. Rat moves. Rat moves, he takes
another step. An hour of that, then he seems to remember his gun. Points it at the
floor, grins, and pulls the trigger. Rolled it back up and left.

“I crawled under there later. Rat had a hole between its eyes.” She was watching the
sealed doorways that opened at intervals along the corridor. “The second one, the
one who came for Johnny, he was like that old man. Not old, but he was like that.
He killed that way.” The corridor widened. The sea of rich carpets undulated gently
beneath an enormous candelabrum whose lowest crystal pendant reached nearly to
the floor. Crystal tinkled as Molly entered the hall. THIRD DOOR LEFT, blinked the
readout.

She turned left, avoiding the inverted tree of crystal. “I just saw him once. On my
way into our place. He was coming out. We lived in a converted factory space, lots
of young comers from Sense/Net, like that. Pretty good security to start with, and
I’d put in some really heavy stuff to make it really tight. I knew Johnny was up there.
But this little guy, he caught my eye, as he was coming out. Didn’t say a word. We
just looked at each other and I knew. Plain little guy, plain clothes, no pride in
him, humble. He looked at me and got into a pedicab. I knew. Went upstairs and Johnny
was sitting in a chair by the window, with his mouth a little open, like he’d just
thought of something to say.”

The door in front of her was old, a carved slab of Thai teak that seemed to have been
sawn in half to fit the low doorway. A primitive mechanical lock with a stainless
face had been inset beneath a swirling dragon. She knelt, drew a tight little roll
of black chamois from an inside pocket, and selected a needle-thin pick. “Never much
found anybody I gave a damn about, after that.”

She inserted the pick and worked in silence, nibbling at her lower lip. She seemed
to rely on touch alone; her eyes unfocused and the door was a blur of blond wood.
Case listened to the silence of the hall, punctuated by the soft clink of the candelabrum.
Candles? Straylight was all wrong. He remembered Cath’s story of a castle with pools
and lilies, and 3Jane’s mannered words recited musically by the head. A place grown
in upon itself. Straylight smelled faintly musty, faintly perfumed, like a church.
Where were the Tessier-Ashpools? He’d expected some clean hive of disciplined activity,
but Molly had seen no one. Her monologue made him uneasy; she’d never told him that
much about herself before. Aside from her story in the cubicle, she’d seldom said
anything that had even indicated that she had a past.

She closed her eyes and there was a click that Case felt rather than heard. It made
him remember the magnetic locks on the door of her cubicle in the puppet place. The
door had opened for him, even though he’d had the wrong chip. That was Wintermute,
manipulating the lock the way it had manipulated the drone micro and the robot gardener.
The lock system in the puppet place had been a subunit of Freeside’s
security system. The simple mechanical lock here would pose a real problem for the
AI, requiring either a drone of some kind or a human agent.

She opened her eyes, put the pick back into the chamois, carefully rerolled it, and
tucked it back into its pocket. “Guess you’re kinda like he was,” she said. “Think
you’re born to run. Figure what you were into back in Chiba, that was a stripped down
version of what you’d be doing anywhere. Bad luck, it’ll do that sometimes, get you
down to basics.” She stood, stretched, shook herself. “You know, I figure the one
Tessier-Ashpool sent after that Jimmy, the boy who stole the head, he must be pretty
much the same as the one the Yak sent to kill Johnny.” She drew the Fletcher from
its holster and dialed the barrel to full auto.

The ugliness of the door struck Case as she reached for it. Not the door itself, which
was beautiful, or had once been part of some more beautiful whole, but the way it
had been sawn down to fit a particular entrance. Even the shape was wrong, a rectangle
amid smooth curves of polished concrete. They’d imported these things, he thought,
and then forced it all to fit. But none of it fit. The door was like the awkward cabinets,
the huge crystal tree. Then he remembered 3Jane’s essay, and imagined that the fittings
had been hauled up the well to flesh out some master plan, a dream long lost in the
compulsive effort to fill space, to replicate some family image of self. He remembered
the shattered nest, the eyeless things writhing. . . .

Molly grasped one of the carved dragon’s forelegs and the door swung open easily.

The room behind was small, cramped, little more than a closet. Gray steel tool cabinets
were backed against a curving wall. A light fixture had come on automatically. She
closed the door behind her and went to the ranged lockers.

THIRD LEFT, pulsed the optic chip, Wintermute overriding her time display. FIVE DOWN.
But she opened the top drawer first. It was no more than a shallow tray. Empty. The
second was empty as well. The third, which was deeper, contained dull beads of solder
and a small brown thing that looked like a human fingerbone. The fourth drawer held
a damp-swollen copy of an obsolete technical manual in French and Japanese. In the
fifth, behind the armored gauntlet of a heavy
vacuum suit, she found the key. It was like a dull brass coin with a short hollow
tube braised against one edge. She turned it slowly in her hand and Case saw that
the interior of the tube was lined with studs and flanges. The letters CHUBB were
molded across one face of the coin. The other was blank.

“He told me,” she whispered. “Wintermute. How he played a waiting game for years.
Didn’t have any real power, then, but he could use the Villa’s security and custodial
systems to keep track of where everything was, how things moved, where they went.
He saw somebody lose this key twenty years ago, and he managed to get somebody else
to leave it here. Then he killed him, the boy who’d brought it here. Kid was eight.”
She closed her white fingers over the key. “So nobody would find it.” She took a length
of black nylon cord from the suit’s kangaroo pocket and threaded it through the round
hole above CHUBB. Knotting it, she hung it around her neck. “They were always fucking
him over with how old-fashioned they were, he said, all their nineteenth-century stuff.
He looked just like the Finn, on the screen in that meat puppet hole. Almost thought
he
was
the Finn, if I wasn’t careful.” Her readout flared the time, alphanumerics superimposed
over the gray steel chests. “He said if they’d turned into what they’d wanted to,
he could’ve gotten out a long time ago. But they didn’t. Screwed up. Freaks like 3Jane.
That’s what he called her, but he talked like he liked her.”

She turned, opened the door, and stepped out, her hand brushing the checkered grip
of the holstered fletcher.

Case flipped.

K
UANG
G
RADE
M
ARK
Eleven was growing.

“Dixie, you think this thing’ll work?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” The Flatline punched them up through shifting rainbow
strata.

Something dark was forming at the core of the Chinese program. The density of information
overwhelmed the fabric of the matrix, triggering hypnagogic images. Faint kaleidoscopic
angles centered in to a silver-black focal point. Case watched childhood symbols of
evil and bad luck tumble out along translucent planes: swastikas, skulls and
crossbones, dice flashing snake eyes. If he looked directly at that null point, no
outline would form. It took a dozen quick, peripheral takes before he had it, a shark
thing, gleaming like obsidian, the black mirrors of its flanks reflecting faint distant
lights that bore no relationship to the matrix around it.

“That’s the sting,” the construct said. “When Kuang’s good and bellytight with the
Tessier-Ashpool core, we’re ridin’ that through.”

“You were right, Dix. There’s some kind of manual override on the hardwiring that
keeps Wintermute under control. However much he
is
under control,” he added.

“He,” the construct said. “He. Watch that. It. I keep telling you.”

“It’s a code. A word, he said. Somebody has to speak it into a fancy terminal in a
certain room, while we take care of whatever’s waiting for us behind that ice.”

“Well, you got time to kill, kid,” the Flatline said. “Ol’ Kuang’s slow but steady.”

Case jacked out.

I
NTO
M
AELCUM
’
S STARE
.

“You dead awhile there, mon.”

“It happens,” he said. “I’m getting used to it.”

“You dealin’ wi’ th’ darkness, mon.”

“Only game in town, it looks like.”

“Jah love, Case,” Maelcum said, and turned back to his radio module. Case stared at
the matted dreadlocks, the ropes of muscle around the man’s dark arms.