COUNT ZERO

3 BOBBY PULLS A WILSON

IT WAS SUCH an easy thing, death. He saw that now: It just happened. You screwed up by a fraction and there it was, some-thing chill and odorless, ballooning out from the four stupid corners of the room, your mother’s Barrytown living room.

Shit, he thought, Two-a-Day’ll laugh his ass off, first time out and I pull a wilson.

The only sound in the room was the faint steady burr of his teeth vibrating, supersonic palsy as the feedback ate into his nervous system. He watched his frozen hand as it trembled delicately, centimeters from the red plastic stud that could break the co

Shit.

He’d come home and gotten right down to it, slotted the icebreaker he’d rented from Two-a-Day and jacked in. punch-ing for the base he’d chosen as his first live target. Figured that was the way to do it; you wa

But Bobby was alone now, his autonomic nervous system overridden by the defenses of a database three thousand kilometers from Barrytown, and he knew it. There was some magic chemistry in that impending darkness, something that let him glimpse the infinite desirability of that room, with its carpet-colored carpet and curtain-colored curtains, its dingy foam sofa-suite, the angular chrome frame supporting the components of a six-year-old Hitachi entertainment module.

He’d carefully closed those curtains in preparation for his run, but now, somehow, he seemed to see out anyway, where the condos of Barrytown crested back in their concrete wave to break against the darker towers of the Projects. That condo wave bristled with a fine insect fur of ante

His heart stopped. It seemed to him that it fell sideways, kicked like an animal in a cartoon.

Sixteenth second of Bobby Newmark’s death. His hotdogger’s death.

And something leaned in, vastness unutterable, from beyond the most distant edge of anything he’d ever known or imagined, and touched him.

::: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE THEY DOING THAT TO YOU?

Girlvoice, brownhair, drake’s...

: KILLING ME KILLING ME GET IT OFF GET IT OFF

Darkeyes, desertstar, tanshirt, girlhair

::: BUT IT’S A TRICK, SEE? YOU ONLY THINK

IT’S GOT YOU. LOOK. NOW I FIT HERE AND

YOU AREN’T CARRYING THE LOOP.

And his heart rolled right over, on its back, and kicked his lunch up with its red cartoon legs, galvanic frog-leg spasm hurling him from the chair and tearing the trodes from his forehead. His bladder let go when his head clipped the corner of the Hitachi, and someone was saying fuck fuck fuck into the dust smell of carpet. Girlvoice gone, no desertstar, flash impression of cool wind and waterworn stone...

Then his head exploded. He saw it very clearly, from somewhere far away. Like a phosphorus grenade.

White.

Light.

4 CLOCKING IN

THE BLACK HONDA hovered twenty meters above the octagonal deck of the derelict oil rig. It was nearing dawn, and Turner could make out the faded outline of a biohazard trefoil mark-ing the helicopter pad.

“You got a biohazard down there, Conroy?”

“None you aren’t used to,” Conroy said.

A figure in a red jumpsuit made brisk arm signals to the Honda’s pilot. Propwash flung scraps of packing waste into the sea as they landed. Conroy slapped the release plate on his harness and leaned across Turner to unseal the hatch The roar of the engines battered them as the hatch slid open. Conroy was jabbing him in the shoulder, making urgent lifting motions with an upturned palm. He pointed to the pilot.

Turner scrambled out and dropped, the prop a blur of thunder, then Conroy was crouching beside him. They cleared the faded trefoil with the bent-legged crab scuttle common to helicopter pads, the Honda’s wind snapping their pants legs around their ankles. Turner carried a plain gray suitcase molded from ballistic ABS, his only piece of luggage; someone had packed it for him, at the hotel, and it had been waiting on Tsushima. A sudden change in pitch told him the Honda was rising. It went whining away toward the coast, showing no lights. As the sound faded, Turner heard the cries of gulls and the slap and slide of the Pacific.

“Someone tried to set up a data haven here once,” Conroy said. “International waters. Back then nobody lived in orbit, so it made sense for a few years. . .” He started for a rusted forest of beams supporting the rig’s superstructure. “One scenario Hosaka showed me, we’d get Mitchell out here, clean him up, stick him on Tsushima, and full steam for old Japan. I told ‘em, forget that shit. Maas gets on to it and they can come down on this thing with anything they want. I told ‘em, that compound they got down in the D.F, that’s the ticket, right? Plenty of shit Maas wouldn’t pull there, not in the fucking middle of Mexico City...

A figure stepped from the shadows, head distorted by the bulbous goggles of an image-amplification rig. It waved them on with the blunt, clustered muzzles of a Lansing flechette gun. “Biohazard,” Conroy said as they edged past. “Duck your head here. And watch it, the stairs get slippery.”

The rig smelled of rust and disuse and brine. There were no windows. The discolored cream walls were blotched with spreading scabs of rust. Battery-powered fluorescent lanterns were slung, every few meters, from beams overhead, casting a hideous green-tinged light, at once intense and naggingly uneven. At least a dozen figures were at work, in this central room; they moved with the relaxed precision of good technicians. Professionals, Turner thought; their eyes seldom met and there was little talking. It was cold, very cold, and Conroy had given him a huge parka covered with tabs and zippers.

A bearded man in a sheepskin bomber jacket was securing bundled lengths of fiber-optic line to a dented bulkhead with silver tape. Conroy was locked in a whispered argument with a black woman who wore a parka like Turner’s. The bearded tech looked up from his work and saw Turner. “Shee-it,” he said, still on his knees, “I figured it was a big one, but I guess it’s go

Turner took the flask, snapped its lid, and tipped it. Bourbon. It stung deep and sour, warmth spreading from the region of his sternum. “Thanks.” He returned the flask and the man pocketed it.

“Oakey,” the man said. “Name’s Oakey? You remember?”

“Sure,” Turner lied, “Marrakech.”

“Wild Turkey,” Oakey said. “Flew in through Schipol, I hit the duty-free. Your partner there,” another glance at Conroy, “he’s none too relaxed, is he? I mean, not like Marrakech, right?”