Neuromancer - William Gibson Page 0,26

remain jacked in and still retain awareness of his body. It might take Sense/Net days to discover the theft of the construct. The key would be the deflection of the Los Angeles transfer, which coincided too neatly with the Modern’s terror run. He doubted that the three security men Molly had encountered in the corridor would live to talk about it. He flipped.

The elevator, with Molly’s blackbox taped beside the control panel, remained where she’d left it. The guard still lay curled on the floor. Case noticed the derm on his neck for the first time. Something of Molly’s, to keep him under. She stepped over him and removed the blackbox before punching LOBBY.

As the elevator door hissed open, a woman hurtled backward out of the crowd, into the elevator, and struck the rear wall with her head. Molly ignored her, bending over to peel the derm from the guard’s neck. Then she kicked the white pants and the pink raincoat out the door, tossing the dark glasses after them, and drew the hood of her suit down across her forehead. The construct, in the suit’s kangaroo pocket, dug into her sternum when she moved. She stepped out.

Case had seen panic before, but never in an enclosed area.

The Sense/Net employees, spilling out of the elevators, had surged for the street doors, only to meet the foam barricades of the Tacticals and the sandbag-guns of the BAMA Rapids. The two agencies, convinced that they were containing a horde of potential killers, were cooperating with an uncharacteristic degree of efficiency. Beyond the shattered wreckage of the main street doors, bodies were piled three deep on the barricades. The hollow thumping of the riot guns provided a constant background for the sound the crowd made as it surged back and forth across the lobby’s marble floor. Case had never heard anything like that sound.

Neither, apparently, had Molly. “Jesus,” she said, and hesitated. It was a sort of keening, rising into a bubbling wail of raw and total fear. The lobby floor was covered with bodies, clothing, blood, and long trampled scrolls of yellow printout.

“C’mon, sister. We’re for out.” The eyes of the two Moderns stared out of madly swirling shades of polycarbon, their suits unable to keep up with the confusion of shape and color that raged behind them. “You hurt? C’mon. Tommy’ll walk you.” Tommy handed something to the one who spoke, a video camera wrapped in polycarbon.

“Chicago,” she said, “I’m on my way.” And then she was falling, not to the marble floor, slick with blood and vomit, but down some bloodwarm well, into silence and the dark.

THE PANTHER MODERN leader, who introduced himself as Lupus Yonderboy, wore a polycarbon suit with a recording feature that allowed him to replay backgrounds at will. Perched on the edge of Case’s worktable like some kind of state of the art gargoyle, he regarded Case and Armitage with hooded eyes. He smiled. His hair was pink. A rainbow forest of microsofts bristled behind his left ear; the ear was pointed, tufted with more pink hair. His pupils had been modified to catch the light like a cat’s. Case watched the suit crawl with color and texture.

“You let it get out of control,” Armitage said. He stood in the center of the loft like a statue, wrapped in the dark glossy folds of an expensive-looking trenchcoat.

“Chaos, Mr. Who,” Lupus Yonderboy said. “That is our mode and modus. That is our central kick. Your woman knows. We deal with her. Not with you, Mr. Who.” His suit had taken on a weird angular pattern of beige and pale avocado. “She needed her medical team. She’s with them. We’ll watch out for her. Everything’s fine.” He smiled again.

“Pay him,” Case said.

Armitage glared at him. “We don’t have the goods.”

“Your woman has it,” Yonderboy said.

“Pay him.”

Armitage crossed stiffly to the table and took three fat bundles of New Yen from the pockets of his trenchcoat. “You want to count it?” he asked Yonderboy.

“No,” the Panther Modern said. “You’ll pay. You’re a Mr. Who. You pay to stay one. Not a Mr. Name.”

“I hope that isn’t a threat,” Armitage said.

“That’s business,” said Yonderboy, stuffing the money into the single pocket on the front of his suit.

The phone rang. Case answered.

“Molly,” he told Armitage, handing him the phone.

THE SPRAWL’S GEODESICS were lightening into predawn gray as Case left the building. His limbs felt cold and disconnected. He couldn’t sleep. He was sick of the loft. Lupus had gone, then Armitage,