COUNT ZERO

The girl had returned to the machine. It roared again. “I think they’re waiting for someone,” she said quietly and brought Turner an espresso. “Either for someone to try to leave Jammer’s or for someone to try to get in.”

Turner looked down at the swirls of brown foam on his coffee. “And nobody here called the police?”

“The police? Mister, this is Hypermart. People here don’t call the police.

Angie’s cup shattered on the marble counter.

“Short and straight, hired man,” the voice whispered.

“You know the way. Walk in.”

The countergirl’s mouth was open. “Jesus,” she said, “she’s gotta be dusted bad... She looked at Turner coldly. “You give it to her?”

“No,” Turner said, “but she’s sick. It’ll be okay.” He drank off the black bitter coffee. It seemed to him, just for a second, that he could feel the whole Sprawl breathing, and its breath was old and sick and tired, all up and down the stations from Boston to Atlanta...

28 JAYLENE SLIDE

“JESUS,” BOBBY SAID to Jackie, “can’t you wrap it up or something?” Jammer’s burn filled the office with a smell, like overdone pork, that turned Bobby’s stomach.

“You don’t bandage a burn,” she said, helping Jammer sit down in his chair. She began to open his desk drawers, one after another. “You got any painkillers? Derms? Anything?”

Jammer shook his head, his long face slack and pale.

“Maybe. Behind the bar, there’s a kit...”

“Get it!” Jackie snapped. “Go on!”

“What are you so worried about him for.” Bobby began, hurt by her tone. “He tried to let those Gothicks in here.”

“Get the box, asshole! He just got weak for a second, is all. He got scared. Get me that box or you’ll need it yourself.”

He darted out into the club and found Beauvoir wiring pink hotdogs of plastic explosive to a yellow plastic box like the control unit for a kid’s toy truck. The hotdogs were mashed around the hinges of the doors and on either side of the lock.

“What’s that for?” Bobby asked, scrambling over the bar. “Somebody might want in,” Beauvoir said. “They do, we’ll open it for them.”

Bobby paused to admire the arrangement. “Why don’t you just mash it up against the glass, so it’ll blow straight out?”

“Too obvious,” Beauvoir said, straightening up, the yel-low detonator in his hands. “But I’m glad you think about these things. If we try to blow it straight out, some of it blows back in. This way is... neater.”

Bobby shrugged and ducked behind the bar. There were wire racks filled with plastic sacks of krill wafers, an assortment of abandoned umbrellas, an unabridged dictionary, a woman’s blue shoe, a white plastic case with a ru

“Hey, Jackie,” he said, putting the first-aid kit down beside Jammer’s deck.

“Forget it.” She popped the case open and rummaged through its contents. “Jammer, there’s more poppers in here than anything else...”

Jammer smiled weakly.

“Here. These’ll do you.” She unrolled a sheet of red derms and began to peel them off the backing, smoothing three across the back of the burnt hand. “What you need’s a local, though.”

“I was thinking,” Jammer said, staring up at Bobby. “Maybe now’s when you can earn yourself a little ru

“How’s that?” Bobby asked, eyeing the deck.

“Stands to reason,” Jammer said, “that whoever’s got those jerks outside, they’ve also got the phones tapped.”

Bobby nodded. Beauvoir had said the same thing, when he’d run his plan down to them.

“Well, when Beauvoir and I decided you and I might hit the matrix for a little look-see, I actually had something else in mind.” Jammer showed Bobby his expanse of small white teeth. “See, I’m in this because I owed Beauvoir and Lucas a favor. But there are people who owe me favors, too, favors that go way back. Favors I never needed to call in.”

“Jammer.” Jackie said, “you gotta relax. Just sit back. You could go into shock.”

“How’s your memory, Bobby? I’m going to run a sequence by you. You practice it on my deck. No power, not jacked. Okay?”

Bobby nodded.

“So dry-run this a couple of times. Entrance code. Let you in the back door.”

“Whose back door?” Bobby spun the black deck around and poised his fingers above the keyboard.

“The Yakuza,” Jammer said.

Jackie was staring at him. “Hey, what do you”

“Like I said. It’s an old favor. But you know what they say, the Yakuza never forget. Cuts both ways...”

A whiff of singed flesh reached Bobby and he winced.

“How come you didn’t mention this to Beauvoir?” Jackie was folding things back into the white case.

‘Honey,” Jammer said, “you’ll learn. Some things you teach yourself to remember to forget.”

“Now look,” Bobby said, fixing Jackie with what he hoped was his heaviest look, “I’m ru

“She doesn’t call them up,” Beauvoir said, crouching by the office door, the detonator in one hand and the South African riot gun in the other, “they just come. They want to come, they’re there. Anyway, they like you.”

Jackie settled the trodes across her forehead. “Bobby,” she said, “you’ll be fine. Don’t worry, just jack.” She’d removed her headscarf. Her hair was cornrowed between neat furrows of shiny brown skin, with antique resistors woven in at random intervals, little cylinders of brown phenolic resin ringed with color-coded bands of paint.

“When you punch out past the Basketball,” Jammer said to Bobby, “you wa

“Past the what?”

“Basketball. That’s the Dallas-Fort Worth Sunbelt Co-Prosperity Sphere, you wa

Bobby nodded, gri

“Anybody sees you going by, well, that’s their lookout. People who jack down there are used to seeing some weird shit anyway.”

“Man,” Beauvoir said to Bobby, “get it on. I gotta get back to the door...”

Bobby jacked.

He followed Jammer’s instructions, secretly grateful that he could feel Jackie beside him as they plunged down into the workaday depths of cyberspace, the glowing Basketball dwindling above them. The deck was quick, superslick, and it made him feel fast and strong. He wondered how Jammer had come to have the Yakuza owing him a favor, one he’d never bothered to collect, and a part of him was busily constructing scenarios when they hit the ice.

“Jesus...” And Jackie was gone. Something had come down between them, something he felt as cold and silence and a shutting off of breath. “But there wasn’t anything there, Goddamn it!” He was frozen, somehow, locked steady He could still see the matrix, but he couldn’t feel his hands.

“Why the hell anybody plug the likes of you into a deck like that? Thing ought to be in a museum, you ought to be in grade school.”

“Jackie!” The cry was reflex.

“Man,” said the voice, “I du

“Fuck off!” Bobby said. It was all he could think of to say.

The voice began to laugh. “Ramirez would split his sides at this, you know? He had him a fine sense of the ridiculous. That’s one of the things I miss.”

“Who’s Ramirez?”

“My partner. Ex. Dead. Very. I was thinking maybe you could tell me how he got that way.”

“Never heard of him,” Bobby said. “Where’s Jackie?”

“Sittin’ cold-cocked in cyberspace while you answer my questions, wilson. What’s your name?”