x x x
And later he’d tell himself that the evening at Sammi’s had felt wrong from the start, that even as he’d followed Molly along that corridor, shuffling through a trampled mulch of ticket stubs and styrofoam cups, he’d sensed it. Linda’s death, waiting….
They’d gone to the Namban, after he’d seen Deane, and paid off his debt to Wage with a roll of Armitage’s New Yen. Wage had liked that, his boys had liked it less, and Molly had grinned at Case’s side with a kind of ecstatic feral intensity, obviously longing for one of them to make a move. Then he’d taken her back to the Chat for a drink. “Wasting your time, cowboy,” Molly said, when Case took an octagon from the pocket of his jacket. “How’s that? You want one?” He held the pill out to her. “Your new pancreas, Case, and those plugs in your liver. Armitage had them designed to bypass that shit.” She tapped the octagon with one burgundy nail. “You’re biochemically incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine.” “Shit,” he said. He looked at the octagon, then at her. “Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing’ll happen.” He did. Nothing did. Three beers later, she was asking Ratz about the fights. “Sammi’s,” Ratz said. “I’ll pass,” Case said, “I hear they kill each other down there.” An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny Thai in a white t-shirt and baggy rugby shorts. Sammi’s was an inflated dome behind a port side warehouse, taut gray fabric reinforced with a net of thin steel cables. The corridor, with a door at either end, was a crude airlock preserving the pressure differential that supported the dome. Fluorescent rings were screwed to the plywood ceiling at intervals, but most of them had been broken. The air was damp and close with the smell of sweat and concrete. None of that prepared him for the arena, the crowd, the tense hush, the towering puppets of light beneath the dome. Concrete sloped away in tiers to a kind of central stage, a raised circle ringed with a glittering thicket of projection gear. No light but the holograms that shifted and flickered above the ring, reproducing the movements of the two men below. Strata of cigarette smoke rose from the tiers, drifting until it struck currents set up by the blowers that supported the dome. No sound but the muted purring of the blowers and the amplified breathing of the fighters. Reflected colors flowed across Molly’s lenses as the men circled. The holograms were ten-power magnifications; at ten, the knives they held were just under a meter long. The knife-fighter’s grip is the fencer’s grip, Case remembered, the fingers curled, thumb aligned with blade. The knives seemed to move of their own accord, gliding with a ritual lack of urgency through the arcs and passes of their dance, point passing point, as the men waited for an opening. Molly’s upturned face was smooth and still, watching. “I’ll go find us some food,” Case said. She nodded, lost in contemplation of the dance. He didn’t like this place. He turned and walked back into the shadows. Too dark. Too quiet. The crowd, he saw, was mostly Japanese. Not really a Night City crowd. Teaks down from the arcologies. He supposed that meant the arena had the approval of some corporate recreational committee. He wondered briefly what it would be like, working all your life for one zaibatsu. Company housing, company hymn, company funeral. He’d made nearly a full circuit of the dome before he found the food stalls. He bought yakitori on skewers and two tall waxy cartons of beer. Glancing up at the holograms, he saw that blood laced one figure’s chest. Thick brown sauce trickled down the skewers and over his knuckles. Seven days and he’d jack in. If he closed his eyes now, he’d see the matrix. Shadows twisted as the holograms swung through their dance. Then the fear began to knot between his shoulders. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down and across his ribs. The operation hadn’t worked. He was still here, still meat, no Molly waiting, her eyes locked on the circling knives, no Armitage waiting in the Hilton with tickets and a new passport and money. It was all some dream, some pathetic fantasy…. Hot tears blurred his vision. Blood sprayed from a jugular in a red gout of light. And now the crowd was screaming, rising, screaming–as one figure crumpled, the hologram fading, flickering…. Raw edge of vomit in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and saw Linda Lee step past him her gray eyes blind with fear. She wore the same French fatigues.