You mean he knew I was going to get killed if I plugged into that base?
No, Bobby, but he knew it was a possibility if the package didnt work. What he mainly wanted was to watch you try. Which he didnt bother to do himself, just put a couple of cowboys on it. It couldve gone a couple different ways. Say, if that icebreaker had done its number on the black ice, youd have gotten in, found a bunch of figures that meant dick to you, youd have gotten back out, maybe with-out leaving any trace at all. Well, youd have come back to Leons and told Two-a-Day that hed fingered the wrong data. Oh, hed have been real apologetic, for sure, and youd have gotten a new target and a new icebreaker, and hed have taken the first one back to the Sprawl and said it looked okay. Meanwhile, hed have an eye cocked in your direction, just to monitor your health, make sure nobody came looking for the icebreaker they mightve heard youd used. Another way it might have gone, the way it nearly did go, something couldve been funny with the icebreaker, the ice couldve fried you dead, and one of those cowboys wouldve had to break into your mommas place and get that software back before any-body found your body.
I dunno, Beauvoir, thats pretty fucking hard to
Hard my ass. Life is hard. I mean, were talkin biz, you know? Beauvoir regarded him with some severity, the plastic frames far down his slender nose. He was lighter than either Two-a-Day or the big man, the color of coffee with only a little whitener, his forehead high and smooth beneath close-cropped black fizz. He looked skinny, under his gray sharkskin robe, and Bobby didnt really find him threatening at all. But our problem, the reason were here, the reason youre here, is to figure out what did happen. And thats something else.
But you mean he set me up, Two-a-Day set me up so Id get my ass killed? Bobby was still in the St Marys Maternity wheelchair, although he no longer felt like he needed it. And hes in deep shit with these guys, these heavies from the Sprawl?
You got it now.
And thats why he was acting that way, like he doesnt give a shit, or maybe hates my guts, right? And hes real scared?
Beauvoir nodded.
And, Bobby said, suddenly seeing what Two-a-Day was really pissed about, and why he was scared, its because I got my ass jumped, down by Big Playground, and those Lobe fucks ripped me for my deck! And their software, it was still in my deck! He leaned forward, excited at having put it together. And these guys, its like theyll kill him or some-thing, unless he gets it back for them, right?
I can tell you watch a lot of kino, Beauvoir said, but thats about the size of it, definitely.
Right, Bobby said, settling back in the wheelchair and putting his bare feet up on the edge of the table. Well, Beauvoir, who are these guys? Whatchacallem, hoonguns? Sorcerers, you said? What the fucks that supposed to mean?
Well, Bobby, Beauvoir said Im one, and the big fella you can call him Lucas hes the other.
Youve probably seen one of these before, Beauvoir said, as the man he called Lucas put the projection tank down on the table, having methodically cleared a space for it.
In school, Bobby said.
You go to school, man? Two-a-Day snapped Why the fuck didnt you stay there? Hed been chain-smoking since he came back with Lucas, and seemed in worse shape than hed been in before.
Shut up, Two-a-Day, Beauvoir said. Little education might do you some good -
They used one to teach us our way around in the matrix, how to access stuff from the print library, like that...
Well, then, Lucas said, straightening up and brushing nonexistent dust from his big pink palms, did you ever use it for that, to access print books? Hed removed his immaculate black suit coat, his spotless white shirt was traversed by a pair of slender maroon suspenders, and hed loosened the knot of his plain black tie.
I dont read too well, Bobby said. I mean, I can, but its work. But yeah, I did I looked at some real old books on the matrix and stuff
I thought you had, Lucas said, jacking some kind of small deck into the console that formed the base of the tank. Count Zero. Count zero interrupt. Old programmer talk. He passed the deck to Beauvoir, who began to tap commands into it.
Complex geometric forms began to click into place in the tank, aligned with the nearly invisible planes of a three-dimensional grid. Beauvoir was sketching in the cyberspace coordinates for Barrytown, Bobby saw. Well call you this blue pyramid, Bobby. There you are. A blue pyramid began to pulse softly at the very center of the tank. Now well show you what Two-a-Days cowboys saw, the ones who were watching you. From now on, youre seeing a recording An interrupted line of blue light extruded from the pyramid, following a grid line Bobby watched, seeing himself alone in his mothers living room, the Ono-Sendai on his lap, the curtains drawn, his fingers moving across the deck
Icebreaker on its way, Beauvoir said. The line of blue dots reached the wall of the tank. Beauvoir tapped the deck, and the coordinates changed. A new set of geometrics replaced the first arrangement Bobby recognized the cluster of orange rectangles centered in the grid. Thats it, he said.
The blue line progressed from the edge of the tank, headed for the orange base. Faint planes of ghost-orange flickered around the rectangles, shifting and strobing, as the line grew closer.
You can see somethings wrong right there. Lucas said. Thats their ice, and it was already hip to you. Rumbled you before you even got a lock.
As the line of blue dots touched the shifting orange plane, it was surrounded by a translucent orange tube of slightly greater diameter The tube began to lengthen, traveling back, along the line, until it reached the wall of the tank...
Meanwhile, Beauvoir said, back home in Barrytown... He tapped the deck again and now Bobbys blue pyramid was in the center. Bobby watched as the orange tube emerged from the wall of the projection tank, still following the blue line, and smoothly approached the pyramid. Now at this point, you were due to start doing some serious dying, cowboy. The tube reached the pyramid; triangular orange planes snapped up, walling it in. Beauvoir froze the projection.
Now, Lucas said, when Two-a-Days hired help, who are all in all a pair of tough and experienced console jockeys, when they saw what you are about to see, my man, they decided that their deck was due for that big overhaul in the sky. Being pros, they had a backup deck. When they brought it on line, they saw the same thing. It was at that point that they decided to phone their employer, Mr. Two-a-Day, who, as we can see from this mess, was about to throw himself a party..
Man, Two-a-Day said, his voice tight with hysteria, I told you. I had some clients up here needed entertaining. I paid those boys to watch, they were watching, and they phoned me. I phoned you. What the hell you want, anyway?
Our property, Beauvoir said softly. Now watch this, real close. This motherfucker is what we call an anomalous phenomenon, no shit... He tapped the deck again, starting the recording.
Liquid flowers of milky white blossomed from the floor of the tank; Bobby, craning forward, saw that they seemed to consist of thousands of tiny spheres or bubbles, and then they aligned perfectly with the cubical grid and coalesced, forming a top-heavy, asymmetrical structure, a thing like a rectilinear mushroom. The surfaces, facets, were white, perfectly blank. The image in the tank was no longer than Bobbys open hand. but to anyone jacked into a deck it would have been enormous. The thing unfolded a pair of horns; these lengthened, curved, became pincers that arced out to grasp the pyramid. He saw the tips sink smoothly through the flickering orange planes of the enemy ice.