COUNT ZERO by William Gibson

A whiff of singed flesh reached Bobby and he winced. “How come you didn’t mention this to Beauvoir?” Jackie was folding things back into the white case. `Honey,” Jammer said, “you’ll learn. Some things you teach yourself to remember to forget.”

“Now look,” Bobby said, fixing Jackie with what he hoped was his heaviest look, “I’m running this. So I don’t need your loas, okay, they get on my nerves . “She doesn’t call them up,” Beauvoir said, crouching by the office door, the detonator in one hand and the South Mrican riot gun in the other, “they just come. They want to come, they’re there. Anyway, they like you . Jackie settled the trodes across her forehead. “Bobby,” she said, “you’ll be fine. Don’t worry, just jack.” She’d removed her headscarf. Her hair was cornrowed between neat furrows of shiny brown skin, with antique resistors woven in at random intervals, little cylinders of brown phenolic resin ringed with color-coded bands of paint. “When you punch out past the Basketball,” Jammer said to Bobby, “you wanna dive right three clicks and go for the floor, I mean straight down.. “Past the what?” “Basketball. That’s the Dallas-Fort Worth Sunbelt Co-Pros- perity Sphere, you wanna get your ass down fast, all the way, then you run how I told you, for about twenty clicks. It’s all used-car lots and tax accountants down there, but just stand on that mother, okay?” Bobby nodded, grinning. “Anybody sees you going by, well, that’s their lookout. People who jack down there are used to seeing some weird shit anyway . “Man,” Beauvoir said to Bobby, “get it on. I gotta get back to the door. . Bobby jacked.

He followed Jammer’s instructions, secretly grateful that he could feel Jackie beside him as they plunged down into the workaday depths of cyberspace, the glowing Basketball dwin- dling above them. The deck was quick, superslick, and it made him feel fast and strong. He wondered how Jammer had come to have the Yakuza owing him a favor, one he’d never bothered to collect, and a part of him was busily constructing scenarios when they hit the ice. “Jesus …” And Jackie was gone. Something had come down between them, something he felt as cold and silence and a shutting off of breath. “But there wasn’t anything there, Goddamn it!” He was frozen, somehow, locked steady He could still see the matrix, but he couldn’t feel his hands. “Why the hell anybody plug the likes of you into a deck like that? Thing ought to be in a museum, you ought to be in grade school.” “Jackie!” The cry was reflex. “Man,” said the voice, “I dunno. It’s been a long few days I haven’t slept, but you sure don’t look like what I was set to catch when you came out of there . . . How old are you?” “Fuck off!” Bobby said. It was all he could think of to say. The voice began to laugh. “Ramirez would split his sides at this, you know? He had him a fine sense of the ridiculous. That’s one of the things I miss . “Who’s Ramirez?” “My partner. Ex. Dead. Very. I was thinking maybe you could tell me how he got that way.” “Never heard of him,” Bobby said. “Where’s Jackie?” “Sittin’ cold-cocked in cyberspace while you answer my questions, wilson. What’s your name?” “B Count Zero.” “Sure. Your name!” “Bobby, Bobby Newmark . Silence. Then: “Well. Hey. Does make a litle sense, then. That was your mother’s place I watched those Maas spooks use the rocket on, wasn’t it? But I guess you weren’t there, or you wouldn’t be here Hold on a sec A square of cyberspace directly in front of him flipped sickeningly and he found himself in a pale blue graphic that seemed to represent a very spacious apartment, low shapes of furniture sketched in hair-fine lines of blue neon. A woman stood in front of him, a sort of glowing cartoon squiggle of a woman, the face a brown smudge. “I’m Slide,” the figure said, hands on its hips, “Jaylene. You don’t fuck with me. Nobody in L.A.”she gestured, a window suddenly snap- ping into existence behind her”fucks with me. You got that?”

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