COUNT ZERO

Angela Mitchell was well above the norm. Had been, all along.

He took the biosoft out of his socket and rolled it absently between thumb and forefinger. The shame. Mitchell and the shame and grad school... Grades, he thought. I want the bastard’s grades. I want his transcripts.

He jacked the dossier again.

Nothing. He’d gotten it, but there was nothing.

No. Again.

Again...

“Goddamn,” he said, seeing it.

A teenager with a shaved head glanced at him from a seat across the aisle, then turned back to the stream of his friend’s monologue: “They’re go

Turner snapped the biosoft back into his socket.

This time, when it was over, he said nothing at all. He put his arm back around Angie and smiled, seeing the smile in the window. It was a feral smile; it belonged to the edge

Mitchell’s academic record was good, extremely good Excellent. But the arc wasn’t there. The arc was something Turner had learned to look for in the dossiers of research people, that certain signal curve of brilliance. He could spot the arc the way a master machinist could identify metals by observing the spark plume off a grinding wheel. And Mitchell hadn’t had it.

The shame. The graduate dorms Mitchell had known, known he wasn’t going to make it. And then, somehow, he had. How? It wouldn’t be in the dossier. Mitchell, somehow, had known how to edit what he gave the Maas security machine. Otherwise, they would have been on to him Someone, something, had found Mitchell in his postgraduate slump and had started feeding him things. Clues, directions. And Mitchell had gone to the top, his arc hard and bright and perfect then, and it had carried him to the top. Who? What?

He watched Angie’s sleeping face in the shudder of subway light.

Faust.

Mitchell had cut a deal. Turner might never know the details of the agreement, or Mitchell’s price, but he knew he understood the other side of it. What Mitchell had been required to do in return.

Legba, Samedi, spittle curling from the girl’s contorted lips.

And the train swept into old Union in a black blast of midnight air.

“Cab, sir?” The man’s eyes were moving behind glasses with a polychrome tint that swirled like oil slicks. There were flat, silvery sores across the backs of his hands. Turner stepped in close and caught his upper arm, without breaking stride, forcing him back against a wall of scratched white tile, between gray ranks of luggage lookers.

“Cash,” Turner said. “I’m paying New Yen. I want my cab. No trouble with the driver Understand? I’m not a mark.” He tightened his grip. “Fuck up on me, I’ll come back here and kill you, or make you wish I had.”

“Got it Yessir. Got it. We can do that, sir, yessir. Where d’ you wa

“Hired man.” the voice came from Angie, a hoarse whisper. And then an address. Turner saw the tout’s eyes dart nervously behind the swirls of colors. “That’s Madison?” he croaked. “Yessir. Get you a good cab, real good cab...”

“What is this place,” Turner asked the cabby, leaning forward to thumb the SPEAK button beside the steel speaker grid, “the address we gave you?”

There was a crackle of static. “Hypermart. Not much open there this time of night. Looking for anything in particular?”

“No,” Turner said. He didn’t know the place. He tried to remember that stretch of Madison, Residential, mostly. Uncounted living spaces carved out of the shells of commercial buildings that dated from a day when commerce had required clerical workers to be present physically at a central location. Some of the buildings were tall enough to penetrate a dome.

“Where are we going?” Angie asked, her hand on his arm.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“God,” she said, leaning against his shoulder, looking up at the pink neon HYPERMART sign that slashed the granite face of the old building, “I used to dream about New York, back on the mesa. I had a graphics program that would take me through all the streets, into museums and things. I wanted to come here more than anything in the world

“Well, you made it. You’re here.”

She started to sob, hugged him, her face against his bare chest, shaking. “I’m scared. I’m so scared.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, stroking her hair, his eyes on the main entrance. He had no reason to believe anything would ever be okay for either of them. She seemed to have no idea that the words that had brought them here had come from her mouth. But then, he thought, she hadn’t spoken them. There were bag people huddled on either side of Hypermart’s entranceway, prone hummocks of rag gone the exact shade of the sidewalk; they looked to Turner as though they were being slowly extruded from the dark concrete, to become mobile extensions of the city. “Jammer’s,” the voice said, muffled by his chest, and he felt a cold revulsion, “a club. Find Danbala’s horse.” And then she was crying again He took her hand and walked past the sleeping transients, in under the tarnished gilt scrollwork and through the glass doors. He saw an espresso machine down an aisle of tents and shuttered stalls, a girl with a black crest of hair swabbing a counter. “Coffee.” he said. “Food. Come on. You need to eat.”

He smiled at the girl while Angie settled herself on a stool.

How about cash?” he said. “You ever take cash?”

She stared at him, shrugged. He took a twenty from Rudy’s ziploc and showed it to her. ‘What do you want?”

“Coffees. Some food.”

“That all you got? Nothing smaller?”

He shook his head.

“Sorry. Can’t make the change.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You crazy?”

“No, but I want coffee.”

“That’s some tip, mister. I don’t make that in a week.”

“It’s yours.”

Anger crossed her face. “You’re with those shitheads up-stairs. Keep your money. I’m closing.”

“We aren’t with anybody,” he said, leaning across the counter slightly, so that the parka fell open and she could see the Smith & Wesson. “We’re looking for a club. A place called Jammer s.

The girl glanced at Angie, back to Turner. “She sick?

Dusted? What is this?”

“Here’s the money,” Turner said. “Give us our coffee. You want to earn the change, tell me how to find Jammer’s place It’s worth it to me. Understand?”

She slid the worn bill out of sight and moved to the espresso machine. “I don’t think I understand anything any-more.” She rattled cups and milk-filmed glasses out of the way. “What is it with Jammer’s? You a friend of his? You know Jackie?”

“Sure,” Turner said.

“She came by early this morning with this little wilson from the ‘burbs. I guess they went up there.”

“Where?”

“Jammer’s. Then the weirdness started.”

“Yeah?”

“All these creeps from Barrytown, greaseballs and white-shoes, walking in like they owned the place. And now they damn well do, the top two floors. Started buying people out of their stalls. A lot of people on the lower floors just packed and left. Too weird...”

“How many came?”

Steam roared out of the machine. “Maybe a hundred. I been scared shit all day, but I can’t reach my boss. I close up in thirty minutes anyway. The day girl never showed, or else she came in, caught the trouble smell, and walked...” She took the little steaming cup and put it in front of Angie. “You okay, honey?”

Angie nodded.

“You have any idea what these people are up to?” Turner asked.