x x x
Space adaptation syndrome was worse than Molly’s de- scription, but it passed quickly enough and he was able to sleep. The steward woke him as they were preparing to dock at JAL’s terminal cluster. We transfer to Freeside now?” he asked, eyeing a shred of Yeheyuan tobacco that had drifted gracefully up out of his shirt pocket to dance ten centimeters from his nose. There was no smoking on shuttle flights. “No, we got the boss’s usual little kink in the plans, you know? We’re getting this taxi out to Zion, Zion cluster.” She touched the release plate on her harness and began to free herself from the embrace of the foam. “Funny choice of venue, you ask me.” “How’s that?” “Dreads. Rastas. Colony’s about thirty years old now.” “What’s that mean?” “You’ll see. It’s an okay place by me. Anyway, they’ll let you smoke your cigarettes there.”
Zion had been founded by five workers who’d refused to return, who’d turned their backs on the well and started build- ing. They’d suffered calcium loss and heart shrinkage before rotational gravity was established in the colony’s central torus. Seen from the bubble of the taxi, Zion’s makeshift hull re- minded Case of the patchwork tenements of Istanbul, the ir- regular, discolored plates laser-scrawled with Rastafarian symbols and the initials of welders. Molly and a skinny Zionite called Aerol helped Case ne- gotiate a freefall corridor into the core of a smaller torus. He’d lost track of Armitage and Riviera in the wake of a second wave of SAS vertigo. “Here,” Molly said, shoving his legs into a narrow hatchway overhead. “Grab the rungs. Make like you’re climbing backward, right? You’re going toward the hull, that’s like you’re climbing down into gravity. Got it?” Case’s stomach churned. “You be fine, mon,” Aerol said, his grin bracketed with gold incisors. Somehow, the end of the tunnel had become its bottom. Case embraced the weak gravity like a drowning man finding a pocket of air. “Up,” Molly said, “you gonna kiss it next?” Case lay flat on the deck, on his stomach, arms spread. Something struck him on the shoulder. He rolled over and saw a fat bundle of elastic cable. “Gotta play house,” she said. “You help me string this up.” He looked around the wide, featureless space and noticed steel rings welded on every surface, seemingly at ran- dom. When they’d strung the cables, according to some complex scheme of Molly’s, they hung them with battered sheets of yellow plastic. As they worked, Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed constantly through the cluster. It was called dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop; it was worship, Molly said, and a sense of community. Case heaved at one of the yellow sheets; the thing was light but still awkward. Zion smelled of cooked vegetables, humanity, and ganja. “Good,” Armitage said, gliding loose-kneed through the hatch and nodding at the maze of sheets. Riviera followed, less certain in the partial gravity. “Where were you when it needed doing?” Case asked Ri- viera. The man opened his mouth to speak. A small trout swam out, trailing impossible bubbles. It glided past Case’s cheek. “In the head,” Riviera said, and smiled. Case laughed. “Good,” Riviera said, “you can laugh. I would have tried to help you, but I’m no good with my hands.” He held up his palms, which suddenly doubled. Four arms, four hands. “Just the harmless clown, right, Riviera?” Molly stepped between them. “Yo,” Aerol said, from the hatch, “you wan’ come wi’ me, cowboy mon.” “It’s your deck,” Armitage said, “and the other gear. Help him get it in from the cargo bay.” “You ver’ pale, mon,” Aerol said, as they were guiding the foam-bundled Hosaka terminal along the central corridor. “Maybe you wan’ eat somethin’.” Case’s mouth flooded with saliva; he shook his head.
x x x
Armitage announced an eighty-hour stay in Zion. Molly and Case would practice in zero gravity, he said, and acclimatize themselves to working in it. He would brief them on Freeside and the Villa Straylight. It was unclear what Riviera was sup- posed to be doing, but Case didn’t feel like asking. A few hours after their arrival, Armitage had sent him into the yellow maze to call Riviera out for a meal. He’d found him curled like a cat on a thin pad of temperfoam, naked, apparently asleep, his head orbited by a revolving halo of small white geometric forms, cubes, spheres, and pyramids. “Hey, Ri- viera.” The ring continued to revolve. He’d gone back and told Armitage. “He’s stoned,” Molly said, looking up from the disassembled parts of her fletcher. “Leave him be.” Armitage seemed to think that zero-g would affect Case’s ability to operate in the matrix. ‘Don’t sweat it,” Case argued, “I jack in and I’m not here. It’s all the same.” “Your adrenaline levels are higher,” Armitage said. “You’ve still got SAS. You won’t have time for it to wear off. You’re going to learn to work with it. ‘ “So I do the run from here’?” “No. Practice, Case. Now. Up in the corridor….”