Case sat in the loft with the dermatrodes strapped across his forehead, watching motes dance in the diluted sunlight that filtered through the grid overhead. A countdown was in progress in one corner of the monitor screen. Cowboys didn’t get into Simstim, he thought, because it was basically a meat toy. He knew that the trodes he used and the little plastic tiara dangling from a Simstim deck were basically the same, and that the cyberspace matrix was actually a drastic simplification of the human sensorium, at least in terms of presentation, but Simstim itself struck him as a gratuitous multiplication of flesh input. The commercial stuff was edited, of course, so that if Tally Isham got a headache in the course of a segment, you didn’t feel it. The screen bleeped a two-second warning. The new switch was patched into his Sendai with a thin ribbon of fiber optics. And one and two and–
Cyberspace slid into existence from the cardinal points.
Smooth, he thought, but not smooth enough. Have to work on it. Then he keyed the new switch. The abrupt jolt into other flesh. Matrix gone, a wave of sound and color…. She was moving through a crowded street, past stalls vending discount software, prices felt penned on sheets of plastic, fragments of music from countless speakers. Smells of urine, free monomers, perfume, patties of frying krill. For a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her body. Then he willed himself into passivity, became the passenger behind her eyes. The glasses didn’t seem to cut down the sunlight at all. He wondered if the built-in amps compensated automatically. Blue alphanumerics winked the time, low in her left peripheral field. Showing off, he thought. Her body language was disorienting, her style foreign. She seemed continually on the verge of colliding with someone, but people melted out of her way, stepped sideways, made room. “How you doing, Case?” He heard the words and felt her form them. She slid a hand into her jacket, a fingertip circling a nipple under warm silk. The sensation made him catch his breath. She laughed. But the link was one-way. He had no way to reply. Two blocks later, she was threading the outskirts of Memory Lane. Case kept trying to jerk her eyes toward landmarks he would have used to find his way. He began to find the passivity of the situation irritating. The transition to cyberspace, when he hit the switch, was instantaneous. He punched himself down a wall of primitive ice belonging to the New York Public Library, automatically counting potential windows. Keying back into her sensorium, into the sinuous flow of muscle, senses sharp and bright. He found himself wondering about the mind he shared these sensations with. What did he know about her? That she was another professional; that she said her being, like his, was the thing she did to make a living. He knew the way she’d moved against him, earlier, when she woke, their mutual grunt of unity when he’d entered her, and that she liked her coffee black, afterward…. Her destination was one of the dubious software rental complexes that lined Memory Lane. There was a stillness, a hush. Booths lined a central hall. The clientele were young, few of them out of their teens. They all seemed to have carbon sockets planted behind the left ear, but she didn’t focus on them. The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white cardboard. Molly went to the seventh booth along the south wall. Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear. “Larry, you in, man?” She positioned herself in front of him. The boy’s eyes focused. He sat up in his chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail . “Hey, Larry.” “Molly.” He nodded. “I have some work for some of your friends, Larry.” Larry took a flat plastic case from the pocket of his red sport shirt and flicked it open, slotting the microsoft beside a dozen others. His hand hovered, selected a glossy black chip that was slightly longer than the rest, and inserted it smoothly into his head. His eyes narrowed. “Molly’s got a rider,” he said, “and Larry doesn’t like that.” “Hey,” she said, “I didn’t know you were so . . . sensitive. I’m impressed. Costs a lot, to get that sensitive.” “I know you, lady?” The blank look returned. “You looking to buy some softs?” “I’m looking for the Moderns.” “You got a rider, Molly. This says.” He tapped the black splinter. “Somebody else using your eyes.” “My partner.” “Tell your partner to go.” “Got something for the Panther Moderns, Larry.” “What are you talking about, lady?” “Case, you take off,” she said, and he hit the switch, instantly back in the matrix. Ghost impressions of the software complex hung for a few seconds in the buzzing calm of cyberspace. “Panther Moderns,” he said to the Hosaka, removing the trodes. “Five minute precis.” “Ready,” the computer said.