Neuromancer - William Gibson Page 0,72
hoisting itself up a nearly invisible ladder of U-shaped steel rungs, toward a narrow dark opening. “And while I’m feeling confessional, baby, I gotta admit maybe I never much expected to make it out of this one anyway. Been on this bad roll for a while, and you’re the only good change come down since I signed on with Armitage.” She looked up at the black circle. The drone’s LED winked, climbing. “Not that you’re all that shit hot.” She smiled, but it was gone too quickly, and she gritted her teeth at the stabbing pain in her leg as she began to climb. The ladder continued up through a metal tube, barely wide enough for her shoulders.
She was climbing up out of gravity, toward the weightless axis.
Her chip pulsed the time.
04:23:04.
It had been a long day. The clarity of her sensorium cut the bite of the betaphenethylamine, but Case could still feel it. He preferred the pain in her leg.
CASE:0000 000000000 00000000.
“Guess it’s for you,” she said, climbing mechanically. The zeros strobed again and a message stuttered there, in the corner of her vision, chopped up by the display circuit.
GENERAL G IRLING::: TRAINED CORTO FOR SCREAMING FIST AND SOLD HIS ASS TO THE PENT AGON:::: W/MUTE’S PRIMARY GRIP ON ARMITAG E IS A CONSTRU CT OF G IRLING: W/MUTE SEZ A’S MENTION OF G MEANS HE’S
CRACK ING:::: WATCH YOUR ASS:::: ::DIXIE
“Well,” she said, pausing, taking all of her weight on her right leg, “guess you got problems too.” She looked down. There was a faint circle of light, no larger than the brass round of the Chubb key that dangled between her breasts. She looked up. Nothing at all. She tongued her amps and the tube rose into vanishing perspective, the Braun picking its way up the rungs. “Nobody told me about this part,” she said.
Case jacked out.
“MAELCUM . . .”
“Mon, you bossman gone ver’ strange.” The Zionite was wearing a blue Sanyo vacuum suit twenty years older than the one Case had rented in Freeside, its helmet under his arm and his dreadlocks bagged in a net cap crocheted from purple cotton yarn. His eyes were slitted with ganja and tension. “Keep callin’ down here wi’ orders, mon, but be some Babylon war. . . .” Maelcum shook his head. “Aerol an’ I talkin’, an’ Aerol talkin’ wi’ Zion. Founders seh cut an’ run.” He ran the back of a large brown hand across his mouth.
“Armitage?” Case winced as the betaphenethylamine hangover hit him with its full intensity, unscreened by the matrix or simstim. Brain’s got no nerves in it, he told himself, it can’t really feel this bad. “What do you mean, man? He’s giving you orders? What?”
“Mon, Armitage, he tellin’ me set course for Finland, ya know? He tellin’ me there be hope, ya know? Come on my screen wi’ his shirt all blood, mon, an’ be crazy as some dog, talkin’ screamin’ fists an’ Russian an’ th’ blood of th’ betrayers shall be on our hands.” He shook his head again, the dreadcap swaying and bobbing in zero-g, his lips narrowed. “Founders seh the Mute voice be false prophet surely, an’ Aerol an’ I mus’ ’bandon Marcus Garvey and return.”
“Armitage, he was wounded? Blood?”
“Can’t seh, ya know? But blood, an’ stone crazy, Case.”
“Okay,” Case said. “So what about me? You’re going home. What about me, Maelcum?”
“Mon,” Maelcum said, “you comin’ wi’ me. I an’ I come Zion wi’ Aerol, Babylon Rocker. Leave Mr. Armitage t’ talk wi’ ghost cassette, one ghost t’ ’nother. . . .”
Case glanced over his shoulder: his rented suit swung against the hammock where he’d snapped it, swaying in the air current from the old Russian scrubber. He closed his eyes. He saw the sacs of toxin dissolving in his arteries. He saw Molly hauling herself up the endless steel rungs. He opened his eyes.
“I dunno, man,” he said, a strange taste in his mouth. He looked down at his desk, at his hands. “I don’t know.” He looked back up. The brown face was calm now, intent. Maelcum’s chin was hidden by the high helmet ring of his old blue suit. “She’s inside,” he said. “Molly’s inside. In Straylight, it’s called. If there’s any Babylon, man, that’s it. We leave on her, she ain’t comin’ out, Steppin’ Razor or not.”
Maelcum nodded, the dreadbag bobbing behind him like a captive balloon of crocheted cotton. “She you woman, Case?”
“I dunno. Nobody’s woman, maybe.” He shrugged. And found his anger again, real as