Maelcum was hunched over Garvey’s controls, tapping out commands for a docking sequence. The module’s central screen displayed a fixed red square that represented the Straylight dock. Garvey was a larger square, green, that shrank slowly, wavering from side to side with Maelcum’s commands. To the left, a smaller screen displayed a skeletal graphic of Garvey and Haniwa as they approached the curvature of the spindle. “We got an hour, man,” Case said, pulling the ribbon of fiberoptics from the Hosaka. His deck’s back-up batteries were good for ninety minutes, but the Flatline’s construct would be an additional drain. He worked quickly, mechanically, fasten- ing the construct to the bottom of the Ono-Sendai with micro- pore tape. Maelcum’s workbelt drifted past. He snagged it, unclipped the two lengths of shock cord, with their gray rec- tangular suction pads, and hooked the jaws of one clip through the other. He held the pads against the sides of his deck and worked the thumb lever that created suction. With the deck, construct, and improvised shoulder strap suspended in front of him, he struggled into his leather jacket, checking the contents of his pockets. The passport Armitage had given him, the bank chip in the same name, the credit chip he’d been issued when he’d entered Freeside, two derms of the betaphenethylamine he’d bought from Bruce, a roll of New Yen, half a pack of Yeheyuans, and the shuriken. He tossed the Freeside chip over his shoulders, heard it click off the Russian scrubber. He was about to do the same with the steel star, but the rebounding credit chip clipped the back of his skull, spun off, struck the ceiling, and tumbled past Maelcum’s left shoulder. The Zionite interrupted his piloting to glare back at him. Case looked at the shuriken, then tucked it into his jacket pocket, hearing the lining tear. “You missin’ th’ Mute, mon,” Maelcum said. “Mute say he messin’ th’ security for Garvey. Garvey dockin’ as ‘nother boat, boat they ‘spectin’ out of Babylon. Mute broadcastin’ codes for us.” “We gonna wear the suits?” “Too heavy.” Maelcum shrugged. “Stay in web ’til I tell you.” He tapped a final sequence into the module and grabbed the worn pink handholds on either side of the navigation board. Case saw the green square shrink a final few millimeters to overlap the red square. On the smaller screen, Haniwa lowered her bow to miss the curve of the spindle and was snared. Garvey was still slung beneath her like a captive grub. The tug rang, shuddered. Two stylized arms sprang out to grip the slender wasp shape. Straylight extruded a tentative yellow rectangle that curved, groping past Haniwa for Garvey. There was a scraping sound from the bow, beyond the trem- bling fronds of caulk. “Mon,” Maelcum said, “mind we got gravity.” A dozen small objects struck the floor of the cabin simultaneously, as though drawn there by a magnet. Case gasped as his internal organs were pulled into a different configuration. The deck and construct had fallen painfully to his lap. They were attached to the spindle now, rotating with it. Maelcum spread his arms, flexed tension from his shoulders, and removed his purple dreadbag, shaking out his locks. “Come now, mon, if you seh time be mos’ precious.”
19
The Villa Straylight was a parasitic structure, Case reminded himself, as he stepped past the tendrils of caulk and through Marcus Garvey’s forward hatch. Straylight bled air and water out of Freeside, and had no ecosystem of its own. The gangway tube the dock had extended was a more elab- orate version of the one he’d tumbled through to reach Haniwa, designed for use in the spindle’s rotation gravity. A corrugated tunnel, articulated by integral hydraulic members, each seg- ment ringed with a loop of tough, nonslip plastic, the loops serving as the rungs of a ladder. The gangway had snaked its way around Haniwa; it was horizontal , where it joined Garvey’ s lock, but curved up sharply and to the left, a vertical climb around the curvature of the yacht’s hull. Maelcum was already making his way up the rings, pulling himself up with his left hand, the Remington in his right. He wore a stained pair of baggy fatigues, his sleeveless green nylon jacket, and a pair of ragged canvas sneakers with bright red soles. The gangway shifted slightly, each time he climbed to another ring. The clips on Case’s makeshift strap dug into his shoulder with the weight of the Ono-Sendai and the Flatline’s construct. All he felt now was fear, a generalized dread. He pushed it away, forcing himself to replay Armitage’s lecture on the spin- dle and Villa Straylight. He started climbing. Freeside’s eco- system was limited, not closed. Zion was a closed system, capable of cycling for years without the introduction of external materials. Freeside produced its own air and water, but relied on constant shipments of food, on the regular augmentation of soil nutrients. The Villa Straylight produced nothing at all. “Mon,” Maelcum said quietly, “get up here, ‘side me.” Case edged sideways on the circular ladder and climbed the last few rungs. The gangway ended in a smooth, slightly convex hatch, two meters in diameter. The hydraulic members of the tube vanished into flexible housings set into the frame of the hatch. “So what do we–” Case’s mouth shut as the hatch swung up, a slight differential in pressure puffing fine grit into his eyes. Maelcum scrambled up, over the edge, and Case heard the tiny click of the Remington’s safety being released. “You th’ mon in th’ hurry….” Maelcum whispered, crouching there. Then Case was beside him. The hatch was centered in a round, vaulted chamber floored with blue nonslip plastic tiles. Maelcum nudged him, pointed, and he saw a monitor set into a curved wall. On the screen, a tall young man with the Tessier-Ashpool features was brushing something from the sleeves of his dark suitcoat. He stood beside an identical hatch, in an identical chamber. “Very sorry, sir,” said a voice from a grid centered above the hatch. Case glanced up. “Expected you later, at the axial dock. One moment, please.” On the monitor, the young man tossed his head impatiently. Maelcum spun as a door slid open to their left, the shotgun ready. A small Eurasian in orange coveralls stepped through and goggled at them. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He closed his mouth. Case glanced at the monitor. Blank. “Who?” the man managed. “The Rastafarian navy,” Case said, standing up, the cyber- space deck banging against his hip, “and all we want’s a jack into your custodial system.” The man swallowed. “Is this a test? It’s a loyalty check. It must be a loyalty check.” He wiped the palms of his hands on the thighs of his orange suit. “No, mon, this a real one.” Maelcum came up out of his crouch with the Remington pointed at the Eurasian’s face. “You move it.” They followed the man back through the door, into a corridor whose polished concrete walls and irregular floor of overlap- ping carpets were perfectly familiar to Case. “Pretty rugs,” Maelcum said, prodding the man in the back. “Smell like church.” They came to another monitor, an antique Sony, this one mounted above a console with a keyboard and a complex array of jack panels. The screen lit as they halted, the Finn grinning tensely out at them from what seemed to be the front room of Metro Holografix. “Okay,” he said, “Maelcum takes this guy down the corridor to the open locker door, sticks him in there, I’ll lock it. Case, you want the fifth socket from the left, top panel. There’s adaptor plugs in the cabinet under the console. Needs Ono-Sendai twenty-point into Hitachi forty.” As Mael- cum nudged his captive along, Case knelt and fumbled through an assortment of plugs, finally coming up with the one he needed. With his deck jacked into the adaptor, he paused. “Do you have to look like that, man?” he asked the face on the screen. The Finn was erased a line at a time by the image of Lonny Zone against a wall of peeling Japanese posters. “Anything you want, baby,” Zone drawled, “just hop it for Lonny….” “No,” Case said, “use the Finn.” As the Zone image van- ished, he shoved the Hitachi adaptor into its socket and settled the trodes across his forehead.