Neuromancer

Smith, it developed, had had a supplier known as Jimmy. Jimmy was a burglar and other things as well, and just back from a year in high orbit, having carried certain things back down the gravity well. The most unusual thing Jimmy had managed to score on his swing through the archipelago was a head, an intricately worked bust, cloiso

Smith's clientele included a Tokyo billionaire whose passion for clockwork automata approached fetishism. Smith shrugged, showing Jimmy his upturned palms in a gesture old as pawn shops. He could try, he said, but he doubted he could get much for it.

When Jimmy had gone, leaving the head, Smith went over it carefully, discovering certain hallmarks. Eventually he'd been able to trace it to an unlikely collaboration between two Zurich artisans, an enamel specialist in Paris, a Dutch jeweler, and a California chip designer. It had been commissioned, he discovered, by Tessier-Ashpool S.A.

Smith began to make preliminary passes at the Tokyo collector, hinting that he was on the track of something noteworthy.

And then he had a visitor, a visitor una

Smith told the man that he had no wish to die, and produced the head. And how much, his visitor asked, did you expect to obtain through the sale of this object? Smith named a figure far lower than the price he'd intended to set. The ninja produced a credit chip and keyed Smith that amount out of a numbered Swiss account. And who, the man asked, brought you this piece? Smith told him. Within days, Smith learned of Jimmy's death.

`So that was where I came in,' the Fi

Case raised his eyebrows.

`Freeside,' the Fi

`How's that?' Molly asked.

`Got their own cryogenic setup. Even under orbital law, you're legally dead for the duration of a freeze. Looks like they trade off, though nobody's seen the founding father in about thirty years. Founding momma, she died in some lab accident...'

`So what happened with your fence?'

`Nothing.' The Fi

`You figure they own that ninja, Fi

`Smith thought so.'

`Expensive,' she said. `Wonder whatever happened to that little ninja, Fi

`Probably got him on ice. Thaw when needed.'

`Okay,' Case said, `we got Armitage getting his goodies off an AI named Wintermute. Where's that get us?'

`Nowhere yet,' Molly said, `but you got a little side gig now.' She drew a folded scrap of paper from her pocket and handed it to him. He opened it. Grid coordinates and entry codes.

`Who's this?'

`Armitage. Some data base of his. Bought it from the Moderns. Separate deal. Where is it?'

`London,' Case said.

`Crack it.' She laughed. `Earn your keep for a change.'

Case waited for a trans-BAMA local on the crowded platform. Molly had gone back to the loft hours ago, the Flatline's construct in her green bag, and Case had been drinking steadily ever since.

It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct, a hardwired ROM cassette replicating a dead man's skills, obsessions, kneejerk responses... The local came booming in along the black induction strip, fine grit sifting from cracks in the tu

He stepped out and caught sight of a white holographic cigar suspended against the wall of the station, FREESIDE pulsing beneath it in contorted capitals that mimicked printed Japanese. He walked through the crowd and stood beneath it, studying the thing. WHY WAIT? pulsed the sign. A blunt white spindle, flanged and studded with grids and radiators, docks, domes. He'd seen the ad, or others like it, thousands of times. It had never appealed to him. With his deck, he could reach the Freeside banks as easily as he could reach Atlanta. Travel was a meat thing. But now he noticed the little sigil, the size of a small coin, woven into the lower left corner of the ad's fabric of light: T-A.

He walked back to the loft, lost in memories of the Flatline. He'd spent most of his nineteenth summer in the Gentleman Loser, nursing expensive beers and watching the cowboys. He'd never touched a deck, then, but he knew what he wanted. There were at least twenty other hopefuls ghosting the Loser, that summer, each one bent on working joeboy for some cowboy. No other way to learn.