`No sooner said,' the Flatline said. Case heard the white sound of the invasion. He smiled. `Done. Rose Kolodny. Checked out. Take me a few minutes to screw their security net deep enough to get a fix.'
`Go.'
The phone whined and clicked with the construct's efforts. Case carried it back into the room and put the receiver face up on the temperfoam. He went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. As he was stepping back out, the monitor on the room's Braun audiovisual complex lit up. A Japanese pop star reclining against metallic cushions. An unseen interviewer asked a question in German. Case stared. The screen jumped with jags of blue interference. `Case, baby, you lose your mind, man?' The voice was slow, familiar.
The glass wall of the balcony clicked in with its view of Desiderata, but the street scene blurred, twisted, became the interior of the Jarre de Th, Chiba, empty, red neon replicated to scratched infinity in the mirrored walls.
Lonny Zone stepped forward, tall and cadaverous, moving with the slow undersea grace of his addiction. He stood alone among the square tables, his hands in the pockets of his gray sharkskin slacks. `Really, man, you're lookin'~ very scattered.'
The voice came from the Braun's speakers.
`Wintermute,' Case said.
The pimp shrugged languidly and smiled.
`Where's Molly?'
`Never you mind. You're screwing up tonight, Case. The Flatline's ringing bells all over Freeside. I didn't think you'd do that, man. It's outside the profile.'
`So tell me where she is and I'll call him off.'
Zone shook his head.
`You can't keep too good track of your women, can you, Case. Keep losin'~ 'em, one way or another.'
`I'll bring this thing down around your ears,' Case said.
`No. You aren't that kind, man. I know that. You know something, Case? I figure you've got it figured out that it was me told Deane to off that little cunt of yours in Chiba.'
`Don't,' Case said, taking an involuntary step toward the window.
`But I didn't. What's it matter, though? How much does it really matter to Mr.~ Case? Quit kidding yourself. I know your Linda, man. I know all the Lindas. Lindas are a generic product in my line of work. Know why she decided to rip you off? Love. So you'd give a shit. Love? Wanna talk love? She loved you. I know that. For the little she was worth, she loved you. You couldn't handle it. She's dead.'
Case's fist glanced off the glass.
`Don't fuck up the hands, man. Soon you punch deck.'
Zone vanished, replaced by Freeside night and the lights of the condos. The Braun shut off.
From the bed, the phone bleated steadily.
`Case?' The Flatline was waiting. `Where you been? I got it, but it isn't much.' The construct rattled off an address. `Place had some weird ice around it for a nightclub. That's all I could get without leaving a calling card.'
`Okay,' Case said. `Tell the Hosaka to tell Maelcum to disconnect the modem. Thanks, Dix.'
`A pleasure.'
He sat on the bed for a long time, savoring the new thing, the treasure.
Rage.
`Hey. Lupus. Hey, Cath, it's friend Lupus.' Bruce stood naked in his doorway, dripping wet, his pupils enormous. `But we're just having a shower. You wanna wait? Wanna shower?'
`No. Thanks. I want some help.' He pushed the boy's arm aside and stepped into the room.
`Hey, really, man, we're...'
`Going to help me. You're really glad to see me. Because we're friends, right? Aren't we?'
Bruce blinked. `Sure.'
Case recited the address the Flatline had given him.
`I knew he was a gangster,' Cath called cheerfully from the shower.
`I gotta Honda trike,' Bruce said, grinning vacantly.
`We go now,' Case said.
`That level's the cubicles,' Bruce said, after asking Case to repeat the address for the eighth time. He climbed back into the Honda. Condensation dribbled from the hydrogen-cell exhaust as the red fiberglass chassis swayed on chromed shocks. `You be long?'
`No saying. But you'll wait.'
`We'll wait, yeah.' He scratched his bare chest. `That last part of the address, I think that's a cubicle. Number forty three.'
`You expected, Lupus?' Cath craned forward over Bruce's shoulder and peered up. The drive had dried her hair.
`Not really,' Case said. `That's a problem?'
`Just go down to the lowest level and find your friend's cubicle. If they let you in, fine. If they don't wanna see you...' She shrugged.
Case turned and descended a spiral staircase of floral iron. Six turns and he'd reached a nightclub. He paused and lit a Yeheyuan looking over the tables. Freeside suddenly made sense to him. Biz. He could feel it humming in the air. This was it, the local action. Not the high-gloss facade of the Rue Jules Verne, but the real thing. Commerce. The dance. The crowd was mixed; maybe half were tourists, the other half residents of the islands.
`Downstairs,' he said to a passing waiter, `I want to go downstairs.' He showed his Freeside chip. The man gestured toward the rear of the club.
He walked quickly past the crowded tables, hearing fragments of half a dozen European languages as he passed.
`I want a cubicle,' he said to the girl who sat at the low desk, a terminal on her lap. `Lower level.' He handed her his chip.
`Gender preference?' She passed the chip across a glass plate on the face of the terminal.
`Female,' he said automatically.
`Number thirty-five. Phone if it isn't satisfactory. You can access our special services display beforehand, if you like.' She smiled. She returned his chip.
An elevator slid open behind her.
The corridor lights were blue. Case stepped out of the elevator and chose a direction at random. Numbered doors. A hush like the halls of an expensive clinic.
He found his cubicle. He'd been looking for Molly's, now, confused, he raised his chip and placed it against a black sensor set directly beneath the number plate.
Magnetic locks. The sound reminded him of Cheap Hotel.
The girl sat up in bed and said something in German. Her eyes were soft and unblinking. Automatic pilot. A neural cut out. He backed out of the cubicle and closed the door.
The door of forty-three was like all the others. He hesitated. The silence of the hallway said that the cubicles were soundproof. It was pointless to try the chip. He rapped his knuckles against enameled metal. Nothing. The door seemed to absorb the sound.
He placed his chip against the black plate.
The bolts clicked.
She seemed to hit him, somehow, before he'd actually gotten the door open. He was on his knees, the steel door against his back, the blades of her rigid thumbs quivering centimeters from his eyes...
`Jesus Christ,' she said, cuffing the side of his head as she rose. `You're an idiot to try that. How the hell you open those locks, Case? Case? You okay?' She leaned over him.
`Chip,' he said, struggling for breath. Pain was spreading from his chest. She helped him up and shoved him into the cubicle.
`You bribe the help, upstairs?'
He shook his head and fell across the bed.
`Breathe in. Count. One, two, three, four. Hold it. Now out. Count.'
He clutched his stomach.
`You kicked me,' he managed.
`Shoulda been lower. I wanna be alone. I'm meditating, right?' She sat beside him. `And getting a briefing.' She pointed at a small monitor set into the wall opposite the bed. `Wintermute's telling me about Straylight.'
`Where's the meat puppet?'
`There isn't any. That's the most expensive special service of all.' She stood up. She wore her leather jeans and a loose dark shirt. `The run's tomorrow, Wintermute says.'
`What was that all about, in the restaurant? How come you ran?'
`'Cause, if I'd stayed, I might have killed Riviera.'
`Why?'
`What he did to me. The show.'
`I don't get it.'
`This cost a lot,' she said, extending her right hand as though it held an invisible fruit. The five blades slid out, then retracted smoothly. `Costs to go to Chiba, costs to get the surgery, costs to have them jack your nervous system up so you'll have the reflexes to go with the gear... You know how I got the money, when I was starting out? Here. Not here, but a place like it, in the Sprawl. Joke, to start with, 'cause once they plant the cut-out chip, it seems like free money. Wake up sore, sometimes, but that's it. Renting the goods, is all. You aren't in, when it's all happening. House has software for whatever a customer wants to pay for...' She cracked her knuckles. `Fine. I was getting my money. Trouble was, the cut-out and the circuitry the Chiba clinics put in weren't compatible. So the worktime started bleeding in, and I could remember it... But it was just bad dreams, and not all bad.' She smiled. `Then it started getting strange.' She pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. `The house found out what I was doing with the money. I had the blades in, but the fine neuromotor work would take another three trips. No way I was ready to give up puppet time.' She inhaled, blew out a stream of smoke, capping it with three perfect rings. `So the bastard who ran the place, he had some custom software cooked up. Berlin, that's the place for snuff, you know? Big market for mean kicks, Berlin. I never knew who wrote the program they switched me to, but it was based on all the classics.'