Lifeless neon spelled out METRO HOLOGRAFIX in dusty capitals of glass tubing. Case picked at a shred of bacon that had lodged between his front teeth. He’d given up asking her where they were going and why; jabs in the ribs and the sign for silence were all he’d gotten in reply. She talked about the season’s fashions, about sports, about a political scandal in California he’d never heard of. He looked around the deserted dead end street. A sheet of newsprint went cart wheeling past the intersection. Freak winds in the East side; something to do with convection, and an overlap in the domes. Case peered through the window at the dead sign. Her Sprawl wasn’t his Sprawl? he decided. She’d led him through a dozen bars and clubs he’d never seen before, taking care of business, usually with no more than a nod. Maintaining connections. Something was moving in the shadows behind METRO HOLOGRAFIX. The door was a sheet of corrugated roofing. In front of it, Molly’s hands flowed through an intricate sequence of jive that he couldn’t follow. He caught the sign for cash, a thumb brushing the tip of the forefinger. The door swung inward and sheled him into the smell of dust. They stood in a clearing, dense tangles of junk rising on either side to walls lined with shelves of crumbling paperbacks. The junk looked like something that had grown there, a fungus of twisted metal and plastic. He could pick out individual objects, but then they seemed to blur back into the mass: the guts of a television so old it was studded with the glass stumps of vacuum tubes, a crumpled dish antenna, a brown fiber canister stuffed with corroded lengths of alloy tubing. An enormous pile of old magazines had cascaded into the open area, flesh of lost summers staring blindly up as he followed her back through a narrow canyon of impacted scrap. He heard the door close behind them. He didn’t look back.
The tunnel ended with an ancient Army blanket tacked across a doorway. White light flooded out as Molly ducked past it. Four square walls of blank white plastic, ceiling to match, floored with white hospital tile molded in a non slip pattern of small raised disks. In the center stood a square, white-painted wooden table and four white folding chairs. The man who stood blinking now in the doorway behind them, the blanket draping one shoulder like a cape, seemed to have been designed in a wind tunnel. His ears were very small, plastered flat against his narrow skull, and his large front teeth, revealed in something that wasn’t quite a smile, were canted sharply backward. He wore an ancient tweed jacket and held a handgun of some kind in his left hand. He peered at them, blinked, and dropped the gun into a jacket pocket. He gestured to Case, pointed at a slab of white plastic that leaned near the doorway. Case crossed to it and saw that it was a solid sandwich of circuitry, nearly a centimeter thick. He helped the man lift it and position it in the doorway. Quick, nicotine-stained fingers secured it with a white velcro border. A hidden exhaust fan began to purr. “Time,” the man said, straightening up, “and counting. You know the rate, Moll.” “We need a scan, Finn. For implants.” “So get over there between the pylons. Stand on the tape. Straighten up, yeah. Now turn around, gimme a full threesixty.” Case watched her rotate between two fragile-looking stands studded with sensors. The man took a small monitor from his pocket and squinted at it. “Something new in your head, yeah. Silicon. coat of pyrolitic carbons. A clock, right? Your glasses gimme the read they always have, low-temp isotropic carbons. Better biocompatibility with pyrolitics, but that’s your business, right? Same with your claws.” “Get over here, Case.” He saw a scuffed X in black on the white floor. “Turn around. Slow.” “Guy’s a virgin.” The man shrugged. “Some cheap dental work, is all.” “You read for biologicals?” Molly unzipped her green vest and took off the dark glasses. “You think this is the Mayo? Climb on the table, kid, we’ll run a little biopsy.” He laughed, showing more of his yellow teeth. “Nah. Finn’s word, sweetmeat, you got no little bugs, no cortex bombs. You want me to shut the screen down?” “Just for as long as it takes you to leave, Finn. Then we’ll want full screen for as long as we want it.” “Hey, that’s fine by the Finn, Moll. You’re only paying by the second.” They sealed the door behind him and Molly turned one of the white chairs around and sat on it, chin resting on crossed forearms. “We talk now. This is as private as I can afford.” “What about?” “What we’re doing.” “What are we doing?” “Working for Armitage.” “And you’re saying this isn’t for his benefit?” “Yeah. I saw your profile, Case. And I’ve seen the rest of our shopping list, once. You ever work with the dead?” “No.” He watched his reflection in her glasses. “I could, I guess. I’m good at what I do.” The present tense made him nervous. “You know that the Dixie Flatline’s dead?” He nodded. “Heart, I heard.” “You’ll be working with his construct.” She smiled. “Taught you the ropes, huh? Him and Quine. I know Quine, by the way. Real asshole.” “Somebody’s got a recording of McCoy Pauley? Who?” Now Case sat, and rested his elbows on the table. “I can’t see it. He’d never have sat still for it.” “Sense/Net. Paid him mega, you bet your ass.” “Quine dead too?” “No such luck. He’s in Europe. He doesn’t come into this.” “Well, if we can get the Flatline, we’re home free. He was the best. You know he died brain death three times?” She nodded. “Flat lined on his EEG. Showed me tapes. ‘Boy, I was daid.’ ” “Look, Case, I been trying to suss out who it is is backing Armitage since I signed on. But it doesn’t feel like a zaibatsu, a government, or some Yakuza subsidiary. Armitage gets orders. Like something tells him to go off to Chiba, pick up a pillhead who’s making one last wobble throught the burnout belt, and trade a program for the operation that’ll fix him up. We could a bought twenty world class cowboys for what the market was ready to pay for that surgical program. You were good, but not that good….” She scratched the side of her nose. “Obviously makes sense to somebody,” he said. “Somebody big.” “Don’t let me hurt your feelings.” She grinned. “We’re gonna be pulling one hardcore run, Case, just to get the Flatline’s construct. Sense/Net has it locked in a library vault uptown. Tighter than an eel’s ass, Case. Now, Sense/Net, they got all their new material for the fall season locked in there too. Steal that and we’d be richer than shit. But no, we gotta get us the Flatline and nothing else. Weird.” “Yeah, it’s all weird. You’re weird, this hole’s weird, and who’s the weird little gopher outside in the hall?” “Finn’s an old connection of mine. Fence, mostly. Software. This privacy biz is a sideline. But I got Armitage to let him be our tech here, so when he shows up later, you never saw him. Got it?” “So what’s Armitage got dissolving inside you?” “I’m an easy make.” She smiled. “Anybody any good at what they do, that’s what they are, right? You gotta jack, I gotta tussle.” He stared at her. “So tell me what you know about Armitage.” “For starters, nobody named Armitage took part in any Screaming Fist. I checked. But that doesn’t mean much. He doesn’t look like any of the pics of the guys who got out.” She shrugged. “Big deal. And starters is all I got.” She drummed her nails on the back of the chair. “But you are a cowboy, aren’t you? I mean, maybe you could have a little look around.” She smiled. “He’d kill me.” “Maybe. Maybe not. I think he needs you, Case, and real bad. Besides, you’re a clever john, no? You can winkle him, sure.” “What else is on that list you mentioned?” “Toys. Mostly for you. And one certified psychopath name of Peter Riviera. Real ugly customer.” “Where’s he?” “Dunno. But he’s one sick fuck, no lie. I saw his profile.” She made a face. “God awful.” She stood up and stretched, catlike. “So we got an axis going, boy? We’re together in this? Partners?” Case looked at her. “I gotta lotta choice, huh?” She laughed. “You got it, cowboy.”