Neuromancer

`You let it get out of control,' Armitage said. He stood in the center of the loft like a statue, wrapped in the dark glossy folds of an expensive-looking trenchcoat.

`Chaos, Mr.~ Who,' Lupus Yonderboy said. `That is our mode and modus. That is our central kick. Your woman knows. We deal with her. Not with you, Mr.~ Who.' His suit had taken on a weird angular pattern of beige and pale avocado. `She needed her medical team. She's with them. We'll watch out for her. Everything's fine.' He smiled again.

`Pay him,' Case said.

Armitage glared at him. `We don't have the goods.'

`Your woman has it,' Yonderboy said.

`Pay him.'

Armitage crossed stiffly to the table and took three fat bundles of New Yen from the pockets of his trenchcoat. `You want to count it?' he asked Yonderboy.

`No,' the Panther Modern said. `You'll pay. You're a Mr.~ Who. You pay to stay one. Not a Mr.~ Name.'

`I hope that isn't a threat,' Armitage said.

`That's business,' said Yonderboy, stuffing the money into the single pocket on the front of his suit.

The phone rang. Case answered.

`Molly,' he told Armitage, handing him the phone.

The Sprawl's geodesics were lightening into predawn gray as Case left the building. His limbs felt cold and disco

He took corners at random, his collar up, hunched in a new leather jacket, flicking the first of a chain of Yeheyuans into the gutter and lighting another. He tried to imagine Armitage's toxin sacs dissolving in his bloodstream, microscopic membranes wearing thi

`Case.'

He darted sideways, instinctively getting a wall behind his back.

`Message for you, Case.' Lupus Yonderboy's suit cycled through pure primaries. `Pardon. Not to startle you.'

Case straightened up, hands in jacket pockets. He was a head taller than the Modern. `You oughta be careful, Yonderboy.'

`This is the message. Wintermute.' He spelled it out.

`From you?' Case took a step forward.

`No,' Yonderboy said. `For you.'

`Who from?'

`Wintermute,' Yonderboy repeated, nodding, bobbing his crest of pink hair. His suit went matte black, a carbon shadow against old concrete. He executed a strange little dance, his thin black arms whirling, and then he was gone. No. There. Hood up to hide the pink, the suit exactly the right shade of gray, mottled and stained as the sidewalk he stood on. The eyes winked back the red of a stoplight. And then he was really gone.

Case closed his eyes, massaged them with numb fingers, leaning back against peeling brickwork.

Ninsei had been a lot simpler.

5

The medical team Molly employed occupied two floors of an anonymous condo-rack near the old hub of Baltimore. The building was modular, like some giant version of Cheap Hotel, each coffin forty meters long. Case met Molly as she emerged from one that wore the elaborately worked logo of one GERALD CHIN, DENTIST. She was limping.

`He says if I kick anything, it'll fall off.'

`I ran into one of your pals,' he said, `a Modern.'

`Yeah? Which one?'

`Lupus Yonderboy. Had a message.' He passed her a paper napkin with W I N T E R M U T E printed in red feltpen in his neat, laborious capitals. `He said --' But her hand came up in the jive for silence.

`Get us some crab,' she said.

After lunch in Baltimore, Molly dissecting her crab with alarming ease, they tubed in to New York. Case had learned not to ask questions; they only brought the sign for silence. Her leg seemed to be bothering her, and she seldom spoke.

A thin black child with wooden beads and antique resistors woven tightly into her hair opened the Fi

Beyond the army blanket, the Fi

Molly began to sign rapidly, produced a scrap of paper, wrote something on it, and passed it to the Fi

`Wait,' the Fi

Molly took his place, extruded the blade from her index finger, and speared a grayish slab of herring. Case wandered aimlessly around the room, fingering the sca

Ten minutes and the Fi

`Honey,' he said to Molly, tucking the console away, `you have got it. No shit, I can smell it. You wa

`Yonderboy,' Molly said, shoving the herring and crackers aside. `I did a deal with Larry, on the side.'

`Smart,' the Fi

`Slow it down a little,' Case said.

`Berne,' the Fi

`What's in Berne, okay?' Case deliberately stepped between them.

`Wintermute is the recognition code for an AI. I've got the Turing Registry [16] numbers. Artificial intelligence.'

`That's all just fine,' Molly said, `but where's it get us?'

`If Yonderboy's right,' the Fi

`I paid Larry to have the Moderns nose around Armitage a little,' Molly explained, turning to Case. `They have some very weird lines of communication. Deal was, they'd get my money if they answered one question: who's ru

`And you think it's this AI? Those things aren't allowed any autonomy. It'll be the parent corporation, this Tessle...'

`Tessier-Ashpool S.A.,' said the Fi

`Fi

`Haven't ever told anybody this one,' the Fi

The Fi

Smith was also a fence, but in balmier seasons he surfaced as an art dealer. He was the first person the Fi