William Gibson. Neuromancer

“On our left,” said the Mercedes, as it steered through a maze of rainy streets, “is Kapali Carsi, the grand bazaar.” Beside Case, the Finn made an appreciative noise, but he was looking in the wrong direction. The right side of the street was lined with miniature scrapyards. Case saw a gutted loco- motive atop rust-stained, broken lengths of fluted marble. Headless marble statues were stacked like firewood. “Homesick?” Case asked. “Place sucks,” the Finn said. His black silk tie was starting to resemble a worn carbon ribbon. There were medallions of kebab gravy and fried egg on the lapels of the new suit. “Hey, Jersey,” Case said to the Armenian, who sat behind them, “where’d this guy get his stuff installed?” “In Chiba City. He has no left lung. The other is boosted, is how you say it? Anyone might buy these implants, but this one is most talented.” The Mercedes swerved, avoiding a bal- loon-tired dray stacked with hides. “I have followed him in the street and seen a dozen cycles fall, near him, in a day. Find the cyclist in a hospital, the story is always the same. A scorpion poised beside a brake lever….” “‘What you see is what you get,’ yeah,” the Finn said. “I seen the schematics on the guy’s silicon. Very flash. What he imagines, you see. I figure he could narrow it to a pulse and fry a retina over easy.” “You have told this to your woman friend?” Terzibashjian leaned forward between the ultrasuede buckets. “In Turkey, women are still women. This one. . .” The Finn snorted. “She’d have you wearing your balls for a bow tie if you looked at her cross-eyed.” “I do not understand this idiom.” “That’s okay,” Case said. “Means shut up.” The Armenian sat back, leaving a metallic edge of after- shave. He began to whisper to a Sanyo transceiver in a strange salad of Greek, French, Turkish, isolated fragments of English. The transceiver answered in French. The Mercedes swung smoothly around a corner. “The spice bazaar, sometimes called the Egyptian bazaar,” the car said, “was erected on the site of an earlier bazaar erected by Sultan Hatice in 1660. This is the city’s central market for spices, software, perfumes, drugs….” “Drugs,” Case said, watching the car’s wipers cross and recross the bulletproof Lexan. “What’s that you said before, Jersey, about this Riviera being wired?” “A mixture of cocaine and meperidine, yes.” The Armenian went back to the conversation he was having with the Sanyo. ‘ Demerol, they used to call that,” said the Finn. “He’s a speedball artist. Funny class of people you’re mixing with, Case.” “Never mind,” Case said, turning up the collar of his jacket, “we’ll get the poor fucker a new pancreas or something.”

Once they entered the bazaar, the Finn brightened notice- ably, as though he were comforted by the crowd density and the sense of enclosure. They walked with the Armenian along a broad concourse, beneath soot-stained sheets of plastic and green-painted ironwork out of the age of steam. A thousand suspended ads writhed and flickered. “Hey, Christ,” the Finn said, taking Case’s arm, “looka that.” He pointed. “It’s a horse, man. You ever see a horse?” Case glanced at the embalmed animal and shook his head. It was displayed on a sort of pedestal, near the entrance to a place that sold birds and monkeys. The thing’s legs had been worn black and hairless by decades of passing hands. “Saw one in Maryland once,” the Finn said, “and that was a good three years after the pandemic. There’s Arabs still trying to code ’em up from the DNA, but they always croak.” The animal’s brown glass eyes seemed to follow them as they passed. Terzibashjian led them into a cafe near the core of the market, a low-ceilinged room that looked as though it had been in continuous operation for centuries. Skinny boys in soiled white coats dodged between the crowded tables, bal- ancing steel trays with bottles of Turk-Tuborg and tiny glasses of tea. Case bought a pack of Yeheyuans from a vendor by the door. The Armenian was muttering to his Sanyo. “Come,” he said, “he is moving. Each night he rides the tunel to the bazaar, to purchase his mixture from Ali. Your woman is close. Come.”

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