Neuromancer - William Gibson Page 0,94

a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, “I am the dead, and their land.” He laughed. A gull cried. “Stay. If your woman is a ghost, she doesn’t know it. Neither will you.”

“You’re cracking. The ice is breaking up.”

“No,” he said, suddenly sad, his fragile shoulders sagging. He rubbed his foot against the sand. “It is more simple than that. But the choice is yours.” The gray eyes regarded Case gravely. A fresh wave of symbols swept across his vision, one line at a time. Behind them, the boy wriggled, as though seen through heat rising from summer asphalt. The music was loud now, and Case could almost make out the lyrics.

“Case, honey,” Linda said, and touched his shoulder.

“No,” he said. He took off his jacket and handed it to her. “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe you’re here. Anyway, it gets cold.”

He turned and walked away, and after the seventh step, he’d closed his eyes, watching the music define itself at the center of things. He did look back, once, although he didn’t open his eyes.

He didn’t need to.

They were there by the edge of the sea, Linda Lee and the thin child who said his name was Neuromancer. His leather jacket dangled from her hand, catching the fringe of the surf.

He walked on, following the music.

Maelcum’s Zion dub.

THERE WAS A gray place, an impression of fine screens shifting, moire, degrees of half tone generated by a very simple graphics program. There was a long hold on a view through chainlink, gulls frozen above dark water. There were voices. There was a plain of black mirror, that tilted, and he was quicksilver, a bead of mercury, skittering down, striking the angles of an invisible maze, fragmenting, flowing together, sliding again. . . .

“CASE? MON?”

The music.

“You back, mon.”

The music was taken from his ears.

“How long?” he heard himself ask, and knew that his mouth was very dry.

“Five minute, maybe. Too long. I wan’ pull th’ jack, Mute seh no. Screen goin’ funny, then Mute seh put th’ phones on you.”

He opened his eyes. Maelcum’s features were overlayed with bands of translucent hieroglyphs.

“An’ you medicine,” Maelcum said. “Two derm.”

He was flat on his back on the library floor, below the monitor. The Zionite helped him sit up, but the movement threw him into the savage rush of the betaphenethylamine, the blue derms burning against his left wrist. “Overdose,” he managed.

“Come on, mon,” the strong hands beneath his armpits, lifting him like a child, “I an’ I mus’ go.”

TWENTY-TWO

THE SERVICE CART was crying. The betaphenethylamine gave it a voice. It wouldn’t stop. Not in the crowded gallery, the long corridors, not as it passed the black glass entrance to the T-A crypt, the vaults where the cold had seeped so gradually into old Ashpool’s dreams.

The transit was an extended rush for Case, the movement of the cart indistinguishable from the insane momentum of the overdose. When the cart died, at last, something beneath the seat giving up with a shower of white sparks, the crying stopped.

The thing coasted to a stop three meters from the start of 3Jane’s pirate cave.

“How far, mon?” Maelcum helped him from the sputtering cart as an integral extinguisher exploded in the thing’s engine compartment, gouts of yellow powder squirting from louvers and service points. The Braun tumbled from the back of the seat and hobbled off across the imitation sand, dragging one useless limb behind it. “You mus’ walk, mon.” Maelcum took the deck and construct, slinging the shock cords over his shoulder.

The trodes rattled around Case’s neck as he followed the Zionite. Riviera’s holos waited for them, the torture scenes and the cannibal children. Molly had broken the triptych. Maelcum ignored them.

“Easy,” Case said, forcing himself to catch up with the striding figure. “Gotta do this right.”

Maelcum halted, turned, glowering at him, the Remington in his hands. “Right, mon? How’s right?”

“Got Molly in there, but she’s out of it. Riviera, he can throw holos. Maybe he’s got Molly’s fletcher.” Maelcum nodded. “And there’s a ninja, a family bodyguard.”

Maelcum’s frown deepened. “You listen, Babylon mon,” he said. “I a warrior. But this no m’ fight, no Zion fight, Babylon fightin’ Babylon, eatin’ i’self, ya know? But Jah seh I an’ I t’ bring Steppin’ Razor outa this.”

Case blinked.

“She a warrior,” Maelcum said, as if it explained everything. “Now you tell me, mon, who I not t’ kill.”

“3Jane,” he said, after a pause. “A girl there. Has a kinda white robe thing on, with a hood. We