Neuromancer

The matrix showed him the pink spheres of the steel combine in Sikkim.

`What you gettin'~ up to, boy? I been hearin'~ lurid stories. Hosaka's patched into a twin bank on your boss's boat now. Really hoppin'~. You pull some Turing heat?'

`Yeah, but Wintermute killed 'em.'

`Well, that won't hold 'em long. Plenty more where those came from. Be up here in force. Bet their decks are all over this grid sector like flies on shit. And your boss, Case, he says go. He says run it and run it now.'

Case punched for the Freeside coordinates.

`Lemme take that a sec, Case...' The matrix blurred and phased as the Flatline executed an intricate series of jumps with a speed and accuracy that made Case wince with envy.

`Shit, Dixie...'

`Hey, boy, I was that good when I was alive. You ain't seen nothin'~. No hands!'

`That's it, huh? Big green rectangle off left?'

`You got it. Corporate core data for Tessier-Ashpool S.A., and that ice is generated by their two friendly AI's. On par with anything in the military sector, looks to me. That's king hell ice, Case, black as the grave and slick as glass. Fry your brain soon as look at you. We get any closer now, it'll have tracers up our ass and out both ears, be tellin'~ the boys in the T-A boardroom the size of your shoes and how long your dick is.'

`This isn't looking so hot, is it? I mean, the Turings are on it. I was thinking maybe we should try to bail out. I can take you.'

`Yeah? No shit? You don't wa

`Well, I...' Case stared at the green walls of the T-A ice. `Well, screw it. Yeah. We run.'

`Slot it.'

`Hey, Maelcum,' Case said, jacking out, `I'm probably go

`No problem, mon.' The Zionite executed a high forward somersault and rummaged through the contents of a zippered mesh bag, coming up with a coil of transparent tubing and something else, something sealed in a sterile bubble pack.

He called it a Texas catheter, and Case didn't like it at all.

He slotted the Chinese virus, paused, then drove it home.

`Okay,' he said, `we're on. Listen, Maelcum, if it gets really fu

`Sure, mon.' Maelcum lit a fresh joint.

`And turn the scrubber up. I don't want that shit tangling with my neurotransmitters. I got a bad hangover as it is.'

Maelcum gri

Case jacked back in.

`Christ on a crutch,' the Flatline said, `take a look at this.'

The Chinese virus was unfolding around them. Polychrome shadow, countless translucent layers shifting and recombining. Protean, enormous, it towered above them, blotting out the void.

`Big mother,' the Flatline said.

`I'm go

Freefall. The sensation was like diving through perfectly clear water. She was falling-rising through a wide tube of fluted lunar concrete, lit at two-meter intervals by rings of white neon.

The link was one way. He couldn't talk to her.

He flipped.

`Boy, that is one mean piece of software. Hottest thing since sliced bread. That goddam thing's invisible.I just now rented twenty seconds on that little pink box, four jumps left of the T-A ice; had a look at what we look like. We don't. We're not there.'

Case searched the matrix around the Tessier-Ashpool ice until he found the pink structure, a standard commercial unit, and punched in closer to it. `Maybe it's defective.'

`Maybe, but I doubt it. Our baby's military, though. And new. It just doesn't register. If it did, we'd read as some kind of Chinese sneak attack, but nobody's twigged to us at all. Maybe not even the folks in Straylight.'

Case watched the blank wall that screened Straylight. `Well,' he said, `that's an advantage, right?'

`Maybe.' The construct approximated laughter. Case winced at the sensation. `I checked ol'~ Kuang Eleven out again for you, boy. It's real friendly, long as you're on the trigger end, jus'~ polite an'~ helpful as can be. Speaks good English, too. You ever hear of slow virus before?'

`No.'

`I did, once. Just an idea, back then. But that's what ol'~ Kuang's all about. This ain't bore and inject, it's more like we interface with the ice so slow, the ice doesn't feel it. The face of the Kuang logics kinda sleazes up to the target and mutates, so it gets to be exactly like the ice fabric. Then we lock on and the main programs cut in, start talking circles 'round the logics in the ice. We go Siamese twin on 'em before they even get restless.' The Flatline laughed.

`Wish you weren't so damn jolly today, man. That laugh of yours sort of gets me in the spine.'

`Too bad,' the Flatline said. `Ol'~ dead man needs his laughs.' Case slapped the simstim switch.

And crashed through tangled metal and the smell of dust, the heels of his hands skidding as they struck slick paper. Something behind him collapsed noisily.

`C'mon,' said the Fi

Case lay sprawled across a pile of yellowing magazines, the girls shining up at him in the dimness of Metro Holografix, a wistful galaxy of sweet white teeth. He lay there until his heart had slowed, breathing the smell of old magazines.

`Wintermute,' he said.

`Yeah,' said the Fi

`Fuck off.' Case sat up, rubbing his wrists.

`Come on,'said the Fi

`You ever think maybe it gets on my nerves, you coming on like people I know?' He stood, swatting pale dust from the front of his black jeans. He turned, glaring back at the dusty shop windows, the closed door to the street. `What's out there? New York? Or does it just stop?'

`Well,' said the Fi

`I don't have this good a memory,' Case said, looking around. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. He tried to remember what the lines on his palms were like, but couldn't.

`Everybody does,' the Fi

`How do you mean, holographic?' The word made him think of Riviera.

`The holographic paradigm is the closest thing you've worked out to a representation of human memory, is all. But you've never done anything about it. People, I mean.' The Fi

`What's that supposed to mean?'

The Fi

`Why?'

`Because I need you.' The large yellow teeth appeared again. `And because you need me.'

`Bullshit. Can you read my mind, Fi