COUNT ZERO

“I’m Turner,” he said. “I’m in charge here.”

“You don’t need our names,” the woman said as the two Hosaka men bowed automatically. They exchanged glances, looked at Turner, then looked back to the Korean.

“No,” Turner said, “it isn’t necessary.”

“Why are we still denied access to the patient’s medical data?” the Korean asked.

“Security,” Turner said, the answer very nearly an automatic response. In fact, he could see no reason to prevent them from studying Mitchell’s records.

The woman shrugged, turned away, her face hidden by the upturned collar of her insulated jacket.

“Would you like to inspect the surgery?” the man in the bulky cardigan asked, his face polite and alert, a perfect corporate mask.

“No,” Turner said. “We’ll be moving you out to the lot twenty minutes prior to his arrival. We’ll take the wheels off, level you with jacks. The sewage link will be disco

“There will be no problem,” the other man said, smiling.

“Now I want you to tell me what you’re going to be doing in there, what you’ll do to him and how it might affect him.”

“You don’t know?” the woman asked, sharply, turning back to face him.

“I said that I wanted you to tell me,” Turner said.

“We’ll conduct an immediate scan for lethal implants,” the man in the cardigan said.

“Cortex charges, that sort of thing?”

“I doubt,” said the other man, “that we will encounter anything so crude, but yes, we will be sca

“It’s currently quite fashionable to equip top employees with modified insulin-pump subdermals,” his partner broke in. ‘The subject’s system can be tricked into an artificial reliance on certain synthetic enzyme analogs. Unless the sub-dermal is recharged at regular intervals, withdrawal from the source – the employer – can result in trauma.”

“We are prepared to deal with that as well,” said the other.

“Neither of you are even remotely prepared to deal with what I suspect we will encounter,” the black medic said, her voice as cold as the wind that blew out of the east now. Turner heard sand hissing across the rusted sheet of steel above them.

“You,” Turner said to her, “come with me.” Then he turned, without looking back, and walked away. It was possible that she might not obey his command, in which case he’d lose face with the other two, but it seemed the right move. When he was ten meters from the surgery pod, he halted. He heard her feet on the gravel.

“What do you know?” he asked without turning.

“Perhaps no more than you do,” she said, “perhaps more.

“More than your colleagues, obviously.”

“They are extremely talented men. They are also... servants.”

“And you are not.”

“Neither are you, mercenary. I was hired out of the finest unlicensed clinic in Chiba for this I was given a great deal of material to study in preparation for my meeting with this illustrious patient. The black clinics of Chiba are the cutting edge of medicine: not even Hosaka could know that my position in black medicine would allow me to guess what it is that your defector carries in his head. The street tries to find its own uses for things, Mr. Turner Already, several times, I’ve been hired to attempt the removal of these new implants. A certain amount of advanced Maas biocircuitry has found its way into the market. These attempts at implanting are a logical step. I suspect Maas may leak these things deliberately.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“I don’t think I could,” she said, and there was a strange hint of resignation in her voice. “I told you, I’ve seen it. I didn’t say that I understood it.” Fingertips suddenly brushed the skin beside his skull jack “This, compared with biochip implants, is like a wooden staff beside a myoelectric limb.”

“But will it be life-threatening, in his case?”

“Oh, no,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “not for him...” And then he heard her trudging back toward the surgery

Conroy sent a ru

“Harry’s got something for you from Tucson,” Lynch said.

“You two know each other?” Turner asked, looking at Lynch “Maybe have a friend in common?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lynch asked.

Turner held his stare. “You know his name.”

“He told me his fucking name, Turner.”

“Name’s Harry,” the burnt man said. He tossed the bicycle down on a clump of brush. He smiled vacantly, exposing badly spaced, eroded teeth. His bare chest was filmed with sweat and dust, and hung with loops of fine steel chain, rawhide, bits of animal horn and fur, brass cartridge casings, copper coins worn smooth and faceless with use, and a small pouch made of soft brown leather.

Turner looked at the assortment of things strung across the ski

“That’s a coon’s pecker,” Harry said. “Coon’s got him a jointed bone in his pecker Not many as know that”

“You ever meet my friend Lynch before, Harry?”

Harry blinked.

“He had the passwords,” Lynch said. “There’s an urgency hierarchy. He knew the top. He told me his name. Do you need me here, or can I get back to work?”

“Go,” Turner said.

When Lynch was out of earshot, Harry began to work at the thongs that sealed the leather pouch. “You shouldn’t be harsh with the boy,” he said. “He’s really very good. I actually didn’t see him until he had that fletcher up against my neck.” He opened the pouch and fished delicately inside. “Tell Conroy I’ve got him pegged.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, extracting a folded sheet of yellow notebook paper from his pouch. “You’ve got who pegged?” He handed it to Turner; there was something inside.

“Lynch. He’s Conroy’s bumboy on the site. Tell him.” He unfolded the paper and removed the fat military microsoft.

There was a note in blue capitals: BREAK A LEG, ASSHOLE. SEE YOU IN THE DF

“Do you really want me to tell him that?”

“Tell him.”

“You’re the boss.”

“You fucking know it,” Turner said, crumpling the paper and thrusting it into Harry’s left armpit. Harry smiled, sweetly and vacantly, and the intelligence that had risen in him settled again, like some aquatic beast sinking effortlessly down into a smooth sea of sun-addled vapidity. Turner stared into his eyes. Cracked yellow opal, and saw nothing there but sun and the broken highway. A hand with missing joints came up to scratch absently at a week’s growth of beard. “Now,” Turner said. Harry turned, pulled his bike up from the tangle of brush, shouldered it with a grunt, and began to make his way back across the ruined parking lot. His oversized, tattered khaki shorts flapped as he went, and his collection of chains rattled softly.

Sutcliffe whistled from a rise twenty meters away, held up a roll of orange surveyor’s tape. It was time to start laying out Mitchell’s landing strip. They’d have to work quickly, before the sun was too high, and still it was going to be hot.