Case's mouth flooded with saliva; he shook his head.
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 supposed 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, Riviera.' 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...'
Cyberspace, as the deck presented it, had no particular relationship with the deck's physical whereabouts. When Case jacked in, he opened his eyes to the familiar configuration of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority's Aztec pyramid of data.
`How you doing, Dixie?'
`I'm dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one.'
`How's it feel?'
`It doesn't.'
`Bother you?'
`What bothers me is, nothin'~ does.'
`How's that?'
`Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he's tossin'~ all night. Elroy, I said, what's eatin'~ you? Goddam thumb's itchin'~, he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it's the othergoddam thumb.' When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case's spine. `Do me a favor, boy.'
`What's that, Dix?'
`This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam thing.'
Case didn't understand the Zionites.
Aerol, with no particular provocation, related the tale of the baby who had burst from his forehead and scampered into a forest of hydroponic ganja. `Ver'~ small baby, mon, no long'~ you finga.' He rubbed his palm across an unscarred expanse of brown forehead and smiled.
`It's the ganja,' Molly said, when Case told her the story. `They don't make much of a difference between states, you know? Aerol tells you it happened, well, it happened to him.It's not like bullshit, more like poetry. Get it?'
Case nodded dubiously. The Zionites always touched you when they were talking, hands on your shoulder. He didn't like that.
`Hey, Aerol,' Case called, an hour later, as he prepared for a practice run in the freefall corridor. `Come here, man. Wanna show you this thing.' He held out the trodes.
Aerol executed a slow-motion tumble. His bare feet struck the steel wall and he caught a girder with his free hand. The other held a transparent waterbag bulging with blue-green algae. He blinked mildly and grinned.
`Try it,' Case said.
He took the band, put it on, and Case adjusted the trodes. He closed his eyes. Case hit the power stud. Aerol shuddered. Case jacked him back out. `What did you see, man?'
`Babylon,' Aerol said, sadly, handing him the trodes and kicking off down the corridor.
Riviera sat motionless on his foam pad, his right arm extended straight out, level with his shoulder. A jewel-scaled snake, its eyes like ruby neon, was coiled tightly a few millimeters behind his elbow. Case watched the snake, which was finger-thick and banded black and scarlet, slowly contract, tightening around Riviera's arm.
`Come then,' the man said caressingly to the pale waxy scorpion poised in the center of his upturned palm. `Come.' The scorpion swayed its brownish claws and scurried up his arm its feet tracking the faint dark telltales of veins. When it reached the inner elbow, it halted and seemed to vibrate. Riviera made a soft hissing sound. The sting came up, quivered, and sank into the skin above a bulging vein. The coral snake relaxed, and Riviera sighed slowly as the injection hit him.
Then the snake and the scorpion were gone, and he held a milky plastic syringe in his left hand. ``If God made anything better, he kept it for himself.' You know the expression, Case?'
`Yeah,' Case said. `I heard that about lots of different things. You always make it into a little show?'
Riviera loosened and removed the elastic length of surgical tubing from his arm. `Yes. It's more fun.' He smiled, his eyes distant now, cheeks flushed. `I've a membrane set in, just over the vein, so I never have to worry about the condition of the needle.'
`Doesn't hurt?'
The bright eyes met his. `Of course it does. That's part of it, isn't it?'
`I'd just use derms,' Case said.
`Pedestrian,' Riviera sneered, and laughed, putting on a short-sleeved white cotton shirt.
`Must be nice,' Case said, getting up.
`Get high yourself, Case?'
`I hadda give it up.'
`Freeside,' Armitage said, touching the panel on the little Braun hologram projector. The image shivered into focus, nearly three meters from tip to tip. `Casinos here.' He reached into the skeletal representation and pointed. `Hotels, strata-title property, big shops along here.' His hand moved. `Blue areas are lakes.' He walked to one end of the model. `Big cigar. Narrows at the ends.'
`We can see that fine,' Molly said.
`Mountain effect, as it narrows. Ground seems to get higher, more rocky, but it's an easy climb. Higher you climb, the lower the gravity. Sports up there. There's velodrome ring here.' He pointed.
`A what?' Case leaned forward.
`They race bicycles,' Molly said. `Low grav, high-traction tires, get up over a hundred kilos an hour.'
`This end doesn't concern us,' Armitage said with his usual utter seriousness.
`Shit,' Molly said, `I'm an avid cyclist.'
Riviera giggled.
Armitage walked to the opposite end of the projection. `This end does.' The interior detail of the hologram ended here, and the final segment of the spindle was empty. `This is the Villa Straylight. Steep climb out of gravity and every approach is kinked. There's a single entrance, here, dead center. Zero gravity.'
`What's inside, boss?' Riviera leaned forward, craning his neck. Four tiny figures glittered, near the tip of Armitage's finger. Armitage slapped at them as if they were gnats.
`Peter,' Armitage said, `you're going to be the first to find out. You'll arrange yourself an invitation. Once you're in, you see that Molly gets in.'
Case stared at the blankness that represented Straylight, remembering the Finn's story: Smith, Jimmy, the talking head, and the ninja.
`Details available?' Riviera asked. `I need to plan a wardrobe, you see.'
`Learn the streets,' Armitage said, returning to the center of the model. `Desiderata Street here. This is the Rue Jules Verne.'
Riviera rolled his eyes.
While Armitage recited the names of Freeside avenues, a dozen bright pustules rose on his nose, cheeks, and chin. Even Molly laughed.
Armitage paused, regarded them all with his cold empty eyes.
`Sorry,' Riviera said, and the sores flickered and vanished.
Case woke, late into the sleeping period, and became aware of Molly crouched beside him on the foam. He could feel her tension. He lay there confused. When she moved, the sheer speed of it stunned him. She was up and through the sheet of yellow plastic before he'd had time to realize she'd slashed it open.
`Don't you move, friend.'
Case rolled over and put his head through the rent in the plastic. `Wha...?'
`Shut up.'
`You th'~ one, mon,' said a Zion voice. `Cateye, call 'em, call 'em Steppin'~ Razor. I Maelcum, sister. Brothers wan'~ converse wi'~ you an'~ cowboy.'