Neuromancer - William Gibson Page 0,36

window. The Citroen ground away down the alley and swung clumsily into the street.

Now the Mercedes whispered through Istanbul as the city woke. They passed the Beyoglu tunel terminal and sped past mazes of deserted back streets, run-down apartment houses that reminded Case vaguely of Paris.

“What is this thing?” he asked Molly, as the Mercedes parked itself on the fringes of the gardens that surround the Seraglio. He stared dully at the baroque conglomeration of styles that was Topkapi.

“It was sort of a private whorehouse for the King,” she said, getting out stretching. “Kept a lotta women there. Now it’s a museum. Kinda like Finn’s shop, all this stuff just jumbled in there, big diamonds, swords, the left hand of John the Baptist. . . .”

“Like in a support vat?”

“Nah. Dead. Got it inside this brass hand thing, little hatch on the side so the Christians could kiss it for luck. Got it off the Christians about a million years ago, and they never dust the goddam thing, ’cause it’s an infidel relic.”

Black iron deer rusted in the gardens of the Seraglio. Case walked beside her, watching the toes of her boots crunch unkept grass made stiff by an early frost. They walked beside a path of cold octagonal flagstones. Winter was waiting, somewhere in the Balkans.

“That Terzi, he’s grade-A scum,” she said. “He’s the secret police. Torturer. Real easy to buy out, too, with the kind of money Armitage was offering.” In the wet trees around them, birds began to sing.

“I did that job for you,” Case said, “the one in London. I got something, but I don’t know what it means.” He told her the Corto story.

“Well, I knew there wasn’t anybody name of Armitage in that Screaming Fist. Looked it up.” She stroked the rusted flank of an iron doe. “You figure the little computer pulled him out of it? In that French hospital?”

“I figure Wintermute,” Case said.

She nodded.

“Thing is,” he said, “do you think he knows he was Corto, before? I mean, he wasn’t anybody in particular, by the time he hit the ward, so maybe Wintermute just . . .”

“Yeah. Built him up from go. Yeah . . .” She turned and they walked on. “It figures. You know, the guy doesn’t have any life going, in private. Not as far as I can tell. You see a guy like that, you figure there’s something he does when he’s alone. But not Armitage. Sits and stares at the wall, man. Then something clicks and he goes into high gear and wheels for Wintermute.”

“So why’s he got that stash in London? Nostalgia?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know about it,” she said. “Maybe it’s just in his name, right?”

“I don’t get it,” Case said.

“Just thinking out loud. . . . How smart’s an AI, Case?”

“Depends. Some aren’t much smarter than dogs. Pets. Cost a fortune anyway. The real smart ones are as smart as the Turing heat is willing to let ’em get.”

“Look, you’re a cowboy. How come you aren’t just flat-out fascinated with those things?”

“Well,” he said, “for starts, they’re rare. Most of them are military, the bright ones, and we can’t crack the ice. That’s where ice all comes from, you know? And then there’s the Turing cops, and that’s bad heat.” He looked at her. “I dunno, it just isn’t part of the trip.”

“Jockeys all the same,” she said. “No imagination.”

They came to a broad rectangular pond where carp nuzzled the stems of some white aquatic flower. She kicked a loose pebble in and watched the ripples spread.

“That’s Wintermute,” she said. “This deal’s real big, looks to me. We’re out where the little waves are too broad, we can’t see the rock that hit the center. We know something’s there, but not why. I wanna know why. I want you to go and talk to Wintermute.”

“I couldn’t get near it,” he said. “You’re dreaming.”

“Try.”

“Can’t be done.”

“Ask the Flatline.”

“What do we want out of that Riviera?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

She spat into the pond. “God knows. I’d as soon kill him as look at him. I saw his profile. He’s a kind of compulsive Judas. Can’t get off sexually unless he knows he’s betraying the object of desire. That’s what the file says. And they have to love him first. Maybe he loves them, too. That’s why it was easy for Terzi to set him up for us, because he’s been here three years, shopping politicals to the secret police. Probably Terzi let him