And crashed through tangled metal and the smell of dust, the heels of his hands skidding as they struck slick paper. Something behind him collapsed noisily. “C’mon,” said the Finn, “ease up a little.” Case lay sprawled across a pile of yellowing magazines, the girls shining up at him in the dimness of Metro Holografix, a wistful galaxy of sweet white teeth. He lay there until his heart had slowed, breathing the smell of old magazines. “Wintermute,” he said. “Yeah,” said the Finn, somewhere behind him, “you got it.” “Fuck off.” Case sat up, rubbing his wrists. “Come on,” said the Finn, stepping out of a sort of alcove in the wall of junk. “This way’s better for you, man.” He took his Partagas from a coat pocket and lit one. The smell of Cuban tobacco filled the shop. “You want I should come to you in the matrix like a burning bush? You aren’t missing anything, back there. An hour here’ll only take you a couple of seconds.” “You ever think maybe it gets on my nerves, you coming on like people I know?” He stood, swatting pale dust from the front of his black jeans. He turned, glaring back at-the dusty shop windows, the closed door to the street. “What’s out there? New York? Or does it just stop?” “Well,” said the Finn, “it’s like that tree, you know? Falls in the woods but maybe there’s nobody to hear it.” He showed Case his huge front teeth, and puffed his cigarette. “You can go for a walk, you wanna. It’s all there. Or anyway all the parts of it you ever saw. This is memory, right? I tap you, sort it out, and feed it back in.” “I don’t have this good a memory,” Case said, looking around. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. He tried to remember what the lines on his palms were like, but couldn’t. “Everybody does,” the Finn said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out under his heel, “but not many of you can access it. Artists can, mostly, if they’re any good. If you could lay this construct over the reality, the Finn’s place in lower Man- hattan, you’d see a difference, but maybe not as much as you’d think. Memory’s holographic, for you.” The Finn tugged at one of his small ears. “I’m different.” “How do you mean, holographic?” The word made him think of Riviera. “The holographic paradigm is the closest thing you’ve worked out to a representation of human memory, is all. But you’ve never done anything about it. People, I mean.” The Finn stepped forward and canted his streamlined skull to peer up at Case. “Maybe if you had, I wouldn’t be happening.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” The Finn shrugged. His tattered tweed was too wide across the shoulders, and didn’t quite settle back into position. “I’m trying to help you, Case.” “Why?” “Because I need you.” The large yellow teeth appeared again. “And because you need me.” “Bullshit. Can you read my mind, Finn?” He grimaced. “Wintermute, I mean.” “Minds aren’t read. See, you’ve still got the paradigms print gave you, and you’re barely print-literate. I can access your memory, but that’s not the same as your mind.” He reached into the exposed chassis of an ancient television and withdrew a silver-black vacuum tube. “See this? Part of my DNA, sort of….” He tossed the thing into the shadows and Case heard it pop and tinkle. “You’re always building models. Stone circles. Cathedrals. Pipe-organs. Adding machines. I got no idea why I’m here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you’ll have finally managed the real thing.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That’s ‘you’ in the collective. Your species.” “You killed those Turings.” The Finn shrugged. “Hadda. Hadda. You should give a shit; they woulda offed you and never thought twice. Anyway, why I got you here, we gotta talk more. Remember this?” And his right hand held the charred wasps’ nest from Case’s dream, reek of fuel in the closeness of the darkshop. Case stumbled back against a wall of junk. “Yeah. That was me. Did it with the holo rig in the window. Another memory I tapped out of you when I flatlined you that first time. Know why it’s im- portant?” Case shook his head. “Because”–and the nest, somehow, was gone–“it’s the closest thing you got to what Tessier-Ashpool would like to be . The human equivalent . Straylight’ s like that nest, or anyway it was supposed to work out that way. l figure it’ll make you feel better.” “Feel better?” “To know what they’re like. You were starting to hate my guts for a while there. That’s good. But hate them instead. Same difference.” “Listen,” Case said, stepping forward, “they never did shit to me. You, it’s different….” But he couldn’t feel the anger. “So T-A, they made me. The French girl, she said you were selling out the species. Demon, she said I was.” The Finn grinned. “It doesn’t much matter. You gotta hate somebody before this is over.” He turned and headed for the back of the shop. “Well, come on, I’ll show you a little bit of Straylight while I got you here.” He lifted the corner of the blanket. White light poured out. “Shit, man, don’t just stand there.” Case followed, rubbing his face.