Neuromancer

`So what's he got on you? How's he got the working girl kinked?'

`Professional pride, baby, that's all.' And again the sign for silence. `We're go

Lifeless neon spelled out METRO HOLOGRAFIX in dusty capitals of glass tubing. Case picked at a shred of bacon that had lodged between his front teeth. He'd given up asking her where they were going and why; jabs in the ribs and the sign for silence were all he'd gotten in reply. She talked about the season's fashions, about sports, about a political scandal in California he'd never heard of.

He looked around the deserted dead end street. A sheet of newsprint went cartwheeling past the intersection. Freak winds in the East side; something to do with convection, and an overlap in the domes. Case peered through the window at the dead sign. Her Sprawl wasn't his Sprawl, he decided. She'd led him through a dozen bars and clubs he'd never seen before, taking care of business, usually with no more than a nod. Maintaining co

Something was moving in the shadows behind METRO HOLOGRAFIX.

The door was a sheet of corrugated roofing. In front of it, Molly's hands flowed through an intricate sequence of jive that he couldn't follow. He caught the sign for cash,a thumb brushing the tip of the forefinger. The door swung inward and she led him into the smell of dust. They stood in a clearing, dense tangles of junk rising on either side to walls lined with shelves of crumbling paperbacks. The junk looked like something that had grown there, a fungus of twisted metal and plastic. He could pick out individual objects, but then they seemed to blur back into the mass: the guts of a television so old it was studded with the glass stumps of vacuum tubes, a crumpled dish ante

The tu

Four square walls of blank white plastic, ceiling to match, floored with white hospital tile molded in a nonslip pattern of small raised disks. In the center stood a square, white-painted wooden table and four white folding chairs.

The man who stood blinking now in the doorway behind them, the blanket draping one shoulder like a cape, seemed to have been designed in a wind tu

`Time,' the man said, straightening up, `and counting. You know the rate, Moll.'

`We need a scan, Fi

`So get over there between the pylons. Stand on the tape. Straighten up, yeah. Now turn around, gimme a full threesixty.' Case watched her rotate between two fragile-looking stands studded with sensors. The man took a small monitor from his pocket and squinted at it. `Something new in your head, yeah. Silicon, coat of pyrolitic carbons. A clock, right? Your glasses gimme the read they always have, low-temp isotropic carbons. Better biocompatibility with pyrolitics, but that's your business, right? Same with your claws.'

`Get over here, Case.' He saw a scuffed X in black on the white floor. `Turn around. Slow.'

`Guy's a virgin.' The man shrugged. `Some cheap dental work, is all.'

`You read for biologicals?' Molly unzipped her green vest and took off the dark glasses.

`You think this is the Mayo? Climb on the table, kid, we'll run a little biopsy.' He laughed, showing more of his yellow teeth. `Nah. Fi

`Just for as long as it takes you to leave, Fi

`Hey, that's fine by the Fi

They sealed the door behind him and Molly turned one of the white chairs around and sat on it, chin resting on crossed forearms. `We talk now. This is as private as I can afford.'

`What about?'

`What we're doing.'

`What are we doing?'

`Working for Armitage.'

`And you're saying this isn't for his benefit?'

`Yeah. I saw your profile, Case. And I've seen the rest of our shopping list, once. You ever work with the dead?'

`No.' He watched his reflection in her glasses. `I could. I guess. I'm good at what I do.' The present tense made him nervous.

`You know that the Dixie Flatline's dead?'

He nodded. `Heart, I heard.'

`You'll be working with his construct.' She smiled. `Taught you the ropes, huh? Him and Quine. I know Quine, by the way. Real asshole.'

`Somebody's got a recording of McCoy Pauley? Who?' Now Case sat, and rested his elbows on the table. `I can't see it. He'd never have sat still for it.'

`Sense/Net. Paid him mega, you bet your ass.'

`Quine dead too?'

`No such luck. He's in Europe. He doesn't come into this.'

`Well, if we can get the Flatline, we're home free. He was the best. You know he died braindeath three times?'

She nodded.

`Flatlined on his EEG. Showed me tapes. Boy, I was daid.'

`Look, Case, I been trying to suss out who it is is backing Armitage since I signed on. But it doesn't feel like a zaibatsu, a government, or some Yakuza subsidiary. Armitage gets orders. Like something tells him to go off to Chiba, pick up a pillhead who's making one last wobble through the burnout belt, and trade a program for the operation that'll fix him up. We coulda bought twenty world class cowboys for what the market was ready to pay for that surgical program. You were good, but not thatgood...' She scratched the side of her nose.

`Obviously makes sense to somebody,' he said. `Somebody big.'

`Don't let me hurt your feelings.' She gri

`Yeah, it's all weird. You're weird, this hole's weird, and who's the weird little gopher outside in the hall?'

`Fi

`So what's Armitage got dissolving inside you?'

`I'm an easy make.' She smiled. `Anybody any good at what they do, that's what they are,right? You gotta jack, I gotta tussle.'

He stared at her. `So tell me what you know about Armitage.'

`For starters, nobody named Armitage took part in any Screaming Fist. I checked. But that doesn't mean much. He doesn't look like any of the pics of the guys who got out.' She shrugged. `Big deal. And starters is all I got.' She drummed her nails on the back of the chair. `But you area cowboy, aren't you? I mean, maybe you could have a little look around.' She smiled.