COUNT ZERO

“My daddy he’s a handsome devil

got a chain ‘bout nine miles long

And from every link

A heart does dangle

Of another maid

He’s loved and wronged.”

22 JAMMER’S

JAMMER’S WAS UP twelve more flights of dead escalator and occupied the rear third of the top floor. Aside from Leon’s place, Bobby had never seen a nightclub, and he found Jammer’s both impressive and scary. Impressive because of its scale and what he took to be the exceptional quality of the fittings, and scary because a nightclub, by day, is somehow inately unreal. Witchy. He peered around, thumbs snagged in the back pockets of his new jeans, while Jackie conducted a whispered conversation with a long-faced white man in rum-pled blue coveralls. The place was fitted out with dark ultrasuede banquettes, round black tables, and dozens of or-nate screens of pierced wood. The ceiling was painted black, each table faintly illuminated by its own little recessed flood aimed straight down out of the dark There was a central stage, brightly lit now with work lights strung on yellow flex, and, in the middle of the stage, a set of cherry-red acoustic drums. He wasn’t sure why, but it gave him the creeps; some sidelong sense of a half-life, as though something was about to shift, just at the edge of his vision...

“Bobby,” Jackie said, “come over here and meet Jammer.”

He crossed the stretch of plain dark carpet with all the cool

he could muster and faced the long-faced man, who had dark, thi

“Well,” the man said, “you want to be a cowboy?” He was looking at Bobby’s T-shirt and Bobby had the uncomfortable feeling that he might be about to laugh.

“Jammer was a jockey,” Jackie said. “Hot as they come.

Weren’t you, Jammer?”

“So they say,” Jammer said, still looking at Bobby. “Long time ago, Jackie. How many hours you logged, ru

Bobby’s face went hot. “Well, one, I guess.”

Jammer raised his bushy eyebrows. “Gotta start somewhere.” He smiled, his teeth small and u

“Bobby,” Jackie said, “why don’t you ask Jammer about this Wig character the Fi

Jammer glanced at her, then back to Bobby. “You know the Fi

Bobby didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask. “Well,” Bobby ventured, “this Wig’s up in orbit somewhere, and he sells the Fi

“No shit? Well, you coulda fooled me. I woulda told you the Wig was either dead or drooling. Crazier than your usual cowboy, you know what I mean? Batshit. Gone. Haven’t heard of him in years.”

“Jammer,” Jackie said, “I think it’s maybe best if Bobby just tells you the story. Beauvoir’s due here this afternoon, and he’ll have some questions for you, so you better know where things stand...”

Jammer looked at her. “Well. I see. Mr. Beauvoir’s calling in that favor, is he?”

“Can’t speak for him,” she said, “but that would be my guess. We need a safe place to store the Count here.” “What count?”

“Me,” Bobby said, “that’s me.”

“Great,” Jammer said, with a total lack of enthusiasm. “So come on back into the office.”

Bobby couldn’t keep his eyes off the cyberspace deck that took up a third of the surface of Jammer’s antique oak desk It was matte black, a custom job, no trademarks anywhere. He kept craning forward, while he told Jammer about Two-a-Day and his attempted run, about the girl-feeling thing and his mother getting blown up. It was the hottest-looking deck he’d ever seen, and he remembered Jackie saying that Jammer had been such a shithot cowboy in his day.

Jammer slumped back in his chair when Bobby was finished. “You wa

“Try it?”

“The deck. I think you might wa

“Shit yeah. I mean, yeah, thanks, yeah, I would...”

“Why not? No way for anybody to know it’s you and not me, right? Why don’t you jack in with him, Jackie? Kinda keep track.” He opened a desk drawer and took out two trode sets. “But don’t do anything, right? I mean, just buzz on out and spin. Don’t try to run any numbers I owe Beauvoir and Lucas a favor, and it looks like how I’m paying it back is by helping keep you intact.” He handed one set of trodes to Jackie, the other to Bobby. He stood up, grabbed handles on either side of the black console, and spun it around so it faced Bobby. “Go on. You’ll cream your jeans. Thing’s ten years old and it’ll still wipe ass on most anything. Guy name of Automatic Jack built it straight up from scratch He was Bobby Quine’s hardware artist, once. The two of ‘em burnt the Blue Lights together, but that was probably before you were born.”

Bobby already had his trodes on. Now he looked at Jackie “You ever jack tandem before?”

He shook his head.

“Okay. We’ll jack, but I’ll hang off your left shoulder. I say jack out, jack out. You see anything fu

He nodded.

She undid a pair of long, silver-headed pins at the rear of her fedora and took it off, putting it down on the desk beside Jammer’s deck. She slid the trodes on over the orange silk headscarf and smoothed the contacts against her forehead.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Now and ever was, fast forward, Jammer’s deck jacked up so high above the neon hotcores, a topography of data he didn’t know. Big stuff, mountain-high, sharp and corporate in the nonplace that was cyberspace. “Slow it down, Bobby.” Jackie’s voice low and sweet, beside him in the void.

“Jesus Christ, this thing’s slick!”

“Yeah, but damp it down. The rush isn’t any good for us. You want to cruise. Keep us up here and slow it down.

He eased off on forward until they seemed to coast along. He turned to the left, expecting to see her there, but there was nothing.

“I’m here,” she said, “don’t worry

“Who was Quine?”

“Quine? Some cowboy Jammer knew. He knew ‘em all, in his day.”

He took a right-angle left at random, pivoting smoothly at the grid intersection, testing the deck for response. It was amazing, totally unlike anything he’d felt before in cyberspace. “Holy shit. This thing makes an Ono-Sendai look like a kid’s toy.

“It’s probably got O-S circuitry in it. That’s what they used to use, Jammer says. Takes us up a little more...”

They rose effortlessly through the grid, the data receding below them “There isn’t a hell of a lot to see up here,” he complained.

“Wrong. You see some interesting stuff, you hang out long enough in the blank parts...”

The fabric of the matrix seemed to shiver, directly in front of them...”

“Uh, Jackie...”

“Stop here. Hold it. It’s okay. Trust me.”

Somewhere, far away, his hands moving over the unfamiliar keyboard configuration He held them steady now, while a section of cyberspace blurred, grew milky. “What is -”

“Danbala ap monte I,” the voice said, harsh in his head, and in his mouth a taste like blood. “Danbala is nding her.” He knew, somehow, what the words meant, but the voice was iron in his head The milky fabric divided, seemed to bubble, became two patches of shifting gray.

“Legba,” she said, “Legba and Ougou Feray, god of war. Papa Ougou’ St. Jacques Majeur! Viv Ia Vyéj!”