He took his time climbing the stairs of Deane’s office. No rush, he told himself, no hurry. The sagging face of the Dali clock still told the wrong time. There was dust on the Kandinsky table and the Neo-Aztec bookcases. A wall of white fiberglass shipping modules filled the room with a smell of ginger. “Is the door locked?” Case waited for an answer, but none came. He crossed to the office door and tried it. “Julie?” The green-shaded brass lamp cast a circle of light on Deane’s desk. Case stared at the guts of an ancient typewriter, at cas- settes, crumpled printouts, at sticky plastic bags filled with ginger samples. There was no one there. Case stepped around the broad steel desk and pushed Deane’s chair out of the way. He found the gun in a cracked leather holster fastened beneath the desk with silver tape. It was an antique, a .357 Magnum with the barrel and trigger-guard sawn off. The grip had been built up with layers of masking tape. The tape was old, brown, shiny with a patina of dirt. He flipped the cylinder out and examined each of the six cartridges. They were handloads. The soft lead was still bright and untarnished. With the revolver in his right hand, Case edged past the cabinet to the left of the desk and stepped into the center of the cluttered office, away from the pool of light. “I guess I’m not in any hurry. I guess it’s your show. But all this shit, you know, it’s getting kind of . . . old.” He raised the gun with both hands, aiming for the center of the desk, and pulled the trigger. The recoil nearly broke his wrist. The muzzle-flash lit the office like a flashbulb. With his ears ringing, he stared at the jagged hole in the front of the desk. Explosive bullet. Azide. He raised the gun again. “You needn’t do that, old son,” Julie said, stepping out of the shadows. He wore a three-piece drape suit in silk her ing- bone, a striped shirt, and a bow tie. His glasses winked in the light. Case brought the gun around and looked down the line of sight at Deane’s pink, ageless face. “Don’t,” Deane said. “You’re right. About what this all is. What I am. But there are certain internal logics to be honored. If you use that, you’ll see a lot of brains and blood, and it would take me several hours–your subjective-time–to effect another spokesperson. This set isn’t easy for me to maintain. Oh, and I’m sorry about Linda, in the arcade. I was hoping to speak through her, but I’m generating all this out of your memories, and the emotional charge…. Well, it’s very tricky. I slipped. Sorry.” Case lowered the gun. “This is the matrix. You’re Winter- mute.” – “Yes. This is all coming to you courtesy of the simstim unit wired into your deck, of course. I’m glad I was able to cut you off before you’d managed to jack out.” Deane walked around the desk, straightened his chair, and sat down. “Sit, old son. We have a lot to talk about.” “Do we?” “Of course we do. We have had for some time. I was ready when I reached you by phone in Istanbul. Time’s very short now. You’ll be making your run in a matter of days, Case.” Deane picked up a bonbon and stripped off its checkered wrap- pcr, popped h into his mouth. “Sit,” he said around the candy. Case lowered himself into the swivel chair in front of the desk without taking his eyes off Deane. He sat with the gun in his hand, resting it on his thigh. “Now,” Deane said briskly, “order of the day. ‘What,’ you’re asking yourself, ‘is Wintermute?’ Am I right?” “More or less.” “An artificial intelligence, but you know that. Your mistake, and it’s quite a logical one, is in confusing the Winterrnute mainframe, Berne, with the Wintermute entity.” Deane sucked his bonbon noisily. “You’re already aware of the other AI in Tessier-Ashpool’s link-up, aren’t you? Rio. I, insofar as I have an ‘I’–this gets rather metaphysical, you see–I am the one who arranges things for Armitage. Or Corto, who, by the way, is quite unstable. Stable enough,” said Deane and withdrew an ornate gold watch from a vest pocket and flicked it open, “For the next day or so.” “You make about as much sense as anything in this deal ever has,” Case said, massaging his temples with his free hand. “If you’re so goddam smart. . .” “Why ain’t I rich?” Deane laughed, and nearly choked on his bonbon. “Well, Case, all I can say to that, and I really don’t have nearly as many answers as you imagine I do, is that what you think of as Wintermute is only a part of another, a, shall we say, potential entity. I, let us say, am merely one aspect of that entity’s brain. It’s rather like dealing, from your point of view, with a man whose lobes have been severed. Let’s say you’re dealing with a small part of the man’s left brain. Difficult to say if you’re dealing with the man at all, in a case like that.” Deane smiled. “Is the Corto story true? You got to him through a micro in that French hospital?” “Yes. And I assembled the file you accessed in London. I try to plan. in your sense of the word, but that isn’t my basic mode, really. I improvise. It’s my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans, you see…. Really, I’ve had to deal with givens. I can sort a great deal of information, and sort it very quickly. It’s taken a very long time to assemble the team you’re a part of. Corto was the first, and he very nearly didn’t make it. Very far gone, in Toulon. Eating, excreting, and mastur- bating were the best he could manage. But the underlying structure of obsessions was there: Screaming Fist, his betrayal the Congressional hearings.” “Is he still crazy?” “He’s not quite a personality.” Deane smiled. “But I’m sure you’re aware of that. But Corto is in there, somewhere, and I can no longer maintain that delicate balance. He’s going to come apart on you, Case. So I’ll be counting on you….” “That’s good, motherfucker,” Case said, and shot him in the mouth with the .357. He’d been right about the brains. And the blood.