Neuromancer - William Gibson Page 0,60

have been Wintermute’s first mistake.” Case stared at her as blankly as he could. The name hadn’t been mentioned before. “The process employed on you resulted in the clinic’s owner applying for seven basic patents. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means that the operator of a black clinic in Chiba City now owns a controlling interest in three major medical research consortiums. This reverses the usual order of things, you see. It attracted attention.” She crossed her brown arms across her small high breasts and settled back against the print cushion. Case wondered how old she might be. People said that age always showed in the eyes, but he’d never been able to see it. Julie Deane had had the eyes of a disinterested ten-year-old behind the rose quartz of his glasses. Nothing old about Michèle but her knuckles. “Traced you to the Sprawl, lost you again, then caught up with you as you were leaving for Istanbul. We backtracked, traced you through the grid, determined that you’d instigated a riot at Sense/Net. Sense/Net was eager to cooperate. They ran an inventory for us. They discovered that McCoy Pauley’s ROM personality construct was missing.”

“In Istanbul,” Roland said, almost apologetically, “it was very easy. The woman had alienated Armitage’s contact with the secret police.”

“And then you came here,” Pierre said, slipping the binoculars into his shorts pocket. “We were delighted.”

“Chance to work on your tan?”

“You know what we mean,” Michèle said. “If you wish to pretend that you do not, you only make things more difficult for yourself. There is still the matter of extradition. You will return with us, Case, as will Armitage. But where, exactly, will we all be going? To Switzerland, where you will be merely a pawn in the trial of an artificial intelligence? Or to le BAMA, where you can be proven to have participated not only in data invasion and larceny, but in an act of public mischief which cost fourteen innocent lives? The choice is yours.”

Case took a Yeheyuan from his pack; Pierre lit it for him with the gold Dunhill. “Would Armitage protect you?” The question was punctuated by the lighter’s bright jaws snapping shut.

Case looked up at him through the ache and bitterness of betaphenethylamine. “How old are you, boss?”

“Old enough to know that you are fucked, burnt, that this is over and you are in the way.”

“One thing,” Case said, and drew on his cigarette. He blew the smoke up at the Turing Registry agent. “Do you guys have any real jurisdiction out here? I mean, shouldn’t you have the Freeside security team in on this party? It’s their turf, isn’t it?” He saw the dark eyes harden in the lean boy face and tensed for the blow, but Pierre only shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” Roland said. “You will come with us. We are at home with situations of legal ambiguity. The treaties under which our arm of the Registry operates grant us a great deal of flexibility. And we create flexibility, in situations where it is required.” The mask of amiability was down, suddenly, Roland’s eyes as hard as Pierre’s.

“You are worse than a fool,” Michèle said, getting to her feet, the pistol in her hand. “You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?” There was a knowing weariness in her young voice that no nineteen-year-old could have mustered. “You will dress now. You will come with us. Along with the one you call Armitage, you will return with us to Geneva and give testimony in the trial of this intelligence. Otherwise, we kill you. Now.” She raised the pistol, a smooth black Walther with an integral silencer.

“I’m dressing already,” he said, stumbling toward the bed. His legs were still numb, clumsy. He fumbled with a clean t-shirt.

“We have a ship standing by. We will erase Pauley’s construct with a pulse weapon.”

“Sense/Net’ll be pissed,” Case said, thinking: and all the evidence in the Hosaka.

“They are in some difficulty already, for having owned such a thing.”

Case pulled the shirt over his head. He saw the shuriken on the bed, lifeless metal, his star. He felt for the anger. It was gone. Time to give in, to roll with it. . . . He thought of the toxin sacs. “Here comes the meat,” he muttered.

In the