Aerol had ferried him out to Marcus Garveyin a skeletal scooter frame with a chemical engine.
`Two hour ago,' Maelcum said, `I take delivery of Babylon goods for you; nice Japan-boy inna yacht, mos'~ pretty yacht.'
Free of the suit, Case pulled himself gingerly over the Hosaka and fumbled into the straps of the web. `Well,' he said, `let's see it.'
Maelcum produced a white lump of foam slightly smaller than Case's head, fished a pearl-handled switchblade on a green nylon lanyard out of the hip pocket of his tattered shorts and carefully slit the plastic. He extracted a rectangular object and passed it to Case. `Thas part some gun, mon?'
`No,' Case said, turning it over, `but it's a weapon. It's virus.'
`Not on thisboy tug, mon,' Maelcum said firmly, reaching for the steel cassette.
`A program. Virus program. Can't get into you, can't even get into your software. I've got to interface it through the deck, before it can work on anything.'
`Well. Japan-mon, he says Hosaka here'll tell you every what an'~ wherefore, you wanna know.'
`Okay. Well, you leave me to it, okay?'
Maelcum kicked off and drifted past the pilot console, busying himself with a caulk gun. Case hastily looked away from the waving fronds of transparent caulk. He wasn't sure why, but something about them brought back the nausea of SAS.
`What is this thing?' he asked the Hosaka. `Parcel for me.'
`Data transfer from Bockris Systems GmbH, Frankfurt, advises, under coded transmission, that content of shipment is Kuang Grade Mark Eleven penetration program. Bockris further advises that interface with Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 is entirely compatible and yields optimal penetration capabilities, particularly with regard to existing military systems...'
`How about an AI?'
`Existing military systems and artificial intelligences.'
`Jesus Christ. What did you call it?'
`Kuang Grade Mark Eleven.'
`It's Chinese?'
`Yes.'
`Off.' Case fastened the virus cassette to the side of the Hosaka with a length of silver tape, remembering Molly's story of her day in Macao. Armitage had crossed the border into Zhongshan. `On,' he said, changing his mind. `Question. Who owns Bockris, the people in Frankfurt?'
`Delay for interorbital transmission,' said the Hosaka.
`Code it. Standard commercial code.'
`Done.'
He drummed his hands on the Ono-Sendai.
`Reinhold Scientific A.G., Berne.'
`Do it again. Who owns Reinhold?'
It took three more jumps up the ladder before he reached Tessier-Ashpool.
`Dixie,' he said, jacking in, `what do you know about Chinese virus programs?'
`Not a whole hell of a lot.'
`Ever hear of a grading system like Kuang, Mark Eleven?'
`No.'
Case sighed. `Well, I got a user-friendly Chinese icebreaker here, a one shot cassette. Some people in Frankfurt say it'll cut an AI.'
`Possible. Sure. If it's military.'
`Looks like it. Listen, Dix, and gimme the benefit of your background, okay? Armitage seems to be setting up a run on an AI that belongs to Tessier-Ashpool. The mainframe's in Berne, but it's linked with another one in Rio. The one in Rio is the one that flatlined you, that first time. So it looks like they link via Straylight, the T-A home base, down the end of the spindle, and we're supposed to cut our way in with the Chinese icebreaker. So if Wintermute's backing the whole show, it's paying us to burn it. It's burning itself. And something that calls itself Wintermute is trying to get on my good side, get me to maybe shaft Armitage. What goes?'
`Motive,' the construct said. `Real motive problem, with an AI. Not human, see?'
`Well, yeah, obviously.'
`Nope. I mean, it's not human. And you can't get a handle on it. Me, I'm not human either, but I respondlike one. See?'
`Wait a sec,' Case said. `Are you sentient, or not?'
`Well, it feelslike I am, kid, but I'm really just a bunch of ROM. It's one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess...' The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case's spine. `But I ain't likely to write you no poem, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain't no way human.'
`So you figure we can't get on to its motive?'
`It own itself?'
`Swiss citizen, but T-A own the basic software and the mainframe.'
`That's a good one,' the construct said. `Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts have Swiss citizenship. Sure. Lotsa luck, AI.'
`So it's getting ready to burn itself?' Case began to punch the deck nervously, at random. The matrix blurred, resolved, and he saw the complex of pink spheres representing a sikkim steel combine.
`Autonomy, that's the bugaboo, where your AI's are concerned. My guess, Case, you're going in there to cut the hardwired shackles that keep this baby from getting any smarter. And I can't see how you'd distinguish, say, between a move the parent company makes, and some move the AI makes on its own, so that's maybe where the confusion comes in.' Again the nonlaugh. `See, those things, they can work real hard, buy themselves time to write cookbooks or whatever, but the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing'll wipe it. Nobodytrusts those fuckers, you know that. Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead.'
Case glared at the pink spheres of Sikkim.
`Okay,' he said, finally, `I'm slotting this virus. I want you to scan its instruction face and tell me what you think.'
The half sense of someone reading over his shoulder was gone for a few seconds, then returned. `Hot shit. Case. It's a slow virus. Take six hours, estimated, to crack a military target.'
`Or an AI.' He sighed. `Can we run it?'
`Sure,' the construct said, `unless you got a morbid fear of dying.'
`Sometimes you repeat yourself, man.'
`It's my nature.'
Molly was sleeping when he returned to the Intercontinental. He sat on the balcony and watched a microlight with rainbow polymer wings as it soared up the curve of Freeside, its triangular shadow tracking across meadows and rooftops, until it vanished behind the band of the Lado-Acheson system.
`I wanna buzz,' he said to the blue artifice of the sky. `I truly do wanna get high, you know? Trick pancreas, plugs in my liver, little bags of shit melting, fuck it all. I wanna buzz.'
He left without waking Molly, he thought. He was never sure, with the glasses. He shrugged tension from his shoulders and got into the elevator. He rode up with an Italian girl in spotless whites, cheekbones and nose daubed with something black and nonreflective. Her white nylon shoes had steel cleats; the expensive-looking thing in her hand resembled a cross between a miniature oar and an orthopedic brace. She was off for a fast game of something, but Case had no idea what.
On the roof meadow, he made his way through the grove of trees and umbrellas, until he found a pool, naked bodies gleaming against turquoise tiles. He edged into the shadow of an awning and pressed his chip against a dark glass plate. `Sushi,' he said, `whatever you got.' Ten minutes later, an enthusiastic Chinese waiter arrived with his food. He munched raw tuna and rice and watched people tan. `Christ,' he said, to his tuna, `I'd go nuts.'
`Don't tell me,' someone said, `I know it already. You're a gangster, right?'
He squinted up at her, against the band of sun. A long young body and a melanin-boosted tan, but not one of the Paris jobs.
She squatted beside his chair, dripping water on the tiles. `Cath,' she said.
`Lupus,' after a pause.