Neuromancer - William Gibson Page 0,65
decay or sabotage.”
“That was her you saw in the restaurant,” the Finn said.
“By the standards of the archipelago,” the head continued, “ours is an old family, the convolutions of our home reflecting that age. But reflecting something else as well. The semiotics of the Villa bespeak a turning in, a denial of the bright void beyond the hull.
“Tessier and Ashpool climbed the well of gravity to discover that they loathed space. They built Freeside to tap the wealth of the new islands, grew rich and eccentric, and began the construction of an extended body in Straylight. We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self.
“The Villa Straylight knows no sky, recorded or otherwise.
“At the Villa’s silicon core is a small room, the only rectilinear chamber in the complex. Here, on a plain pedestal of glass, rests an ornate bust, platinum and cloisonné, studded with lapis and pearl. The bright marbles of its eyes were cut from the synthetic ruby viewport of the ship that brought the first Tessier up the well, and returned for the first Ashpool. . . .”
The head fell silent.
“Well?” Case asked, finally, almost expecting the thing to answer him.
“That’s all she wrote,” the Finn said. “Didn’t finish it. Just a kid then. This thing’s a ceremonial terminal, sort of. I need Molly in here with the right word at the right time. That’s the catch. Doesn’t mean shit, how deep you and the Flatline ride that Chinese virus, if this thing doesn’t hear the magic word.”
“So what’s the word?”
“I don’t know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don’t know, because I can’t know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew, man, and told me, I couldn’t know. It’s hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it and bring it here, just when you and the Flatline punch through that ice and scramble the cores.”
“What happens then?”
“I don’t exist, after that. I cease.”
“Okay by me,” Case said.
“Sure. But you watch your ass, Case. My, ah, other lobe is on to us, it looks like. One burning bush looks pretty much like another. And Armitage is starting to go.”
“What’s that mean?”
But the paneled room folded itself through a dozen impossible angles, tumbling away into cyberspace like an origami crane.
FIFTEEN
“YOU TRYIN’ TO break my record, son?” the Flatline asked. “You were braindead again, five seconds.”
“Sit tight,” Case said, and hit the simstim switch.
She crouched in darkness, her palms against rough concrete.
CASE CASE CASE CASE. The digital display pulsed his name in alphanumerics, Wintermute informing her of the link.
“Cute,” she said. She rocked back on her heels and rubbed her palms together, cracked her knuckles. “What kept you?”
TIME MOLLY TIME NOW.
She pressed her tongue hard against her lower front teeth. One moved slightly, activating her microchannel amps; the random bounce of photons through the darkness was converted to a pulse of electrons, the concrete around her coming up ghost-pale and grainy. “Okay, honey. Now we go out to play.”
Her hiding place proved to be a service tunnel of some kind. She crawled out through a hinged, ornate grill of tarnished brass. He saw enough of her arms and hands to know that she wore the polycarbon suit again. Under the plastic, he felt the familiar tension of thin tight leather. There was something slung under her arm in a harness or holster. She stood up, unzipped the suit and touched the checkered plastic of a pistolgrip.
“Hey, Case,” she said, barely voicing the words, “you listening? Tell you a story. . . . Had me this boy once. You kinda remind me . . .” She turned and surveyed the corridor. “Johnny, his name was.”
The low, vaulted hallway was lined with dozens of museum cases, archaic-looking glass-fronted boxes made of brown wood. They looked awkward there, against the organic curves of the hallway’s walls, as though they’d been brought in and set up in a line for some forgotten purpose. Dull brass fixtures held globes of white light at ten-meter intervals. The floor was uneven, and as she set off along the corridor, Case realized that hundreds of small rugs and carpets had been put down at random. In some places, they were six deep, the floor a soft patchwork of handwoven wool.
Molly paid little attention to the cabinets and their contents, which irritated him. He had to satisfy himself with her disinterested glances, which gave him fragments of pottery, antique weapons,