Neuromancer - Gibson William - Страница 53

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`What is it?'

`This thing,' she gestured around at the fireplace, the dark walls, the dawn outlining the doorway, `where we live. It gets smaller,Case, smaller, closer you get to it.'

Pausing one last time, by the doorway. `You ask your boy about that?'

`Yeah. He said I wouldn't understand, an'~ I was wastin'~ my time. Said it was, was like... an event.An'~ it was our horizon. Event horizon,he called it.'

The words meant nothing to him. He left the bunker and struck out blindly, heading -he knew, somehow -away from the sea. Now the hieroglyphs sped across the sand, fled from his feet, drew back from him as he walked. `Hey,' he said, `it's breaking down. Bet you know, too. What is it? Kuang? Chinese icebreaker eating a hole in your heart? Maybe the Dixie Flatline's no pushover, huh?'

He heard her call his name. Looked back and she was following him, not trying to catch up, the broken zip of the French fatigues flapping against the brown of her belly, pubic hair framed in torn fabric. She looked like one of the girls on the Finn's old magazines in Metro Holografix come to life, only she was tired and sad and human, the ripped costume pathetic as she stumbled over clumps of salt-silver sea grass.

And then, somehow, they stood in the surf, the three of them, and the boy's gums were wide and bright pink against his thin brown face. He wore ragged, colorless shorts, limbs too thin against the sliding blue-gray of the tide.

`I know you,' Case said, Linda beside him.

`No,' the boy said, his voice high and musical, `you do not.'

`You're the other AI. You're Rio. You're the one who wants to stop Wintermute. What's your name? Your Turing code. What is it?'

The boy did a handstand in the surf, laughing. He walked on his hands, then flipped out of the water. His eyes were Riviera's, but there was no malice there. `To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men dreamed that, once, but now it is real in another way. You know that, Case. Your business is to learn the names of programs, the long formal names, names the owners seek to conceal. True names...'

`A Turing code's not your name.'

`Neuromancer,' the boy said, slitting long gray eyes against the rising sun. `The lane to the land of the dead. Where you are, my friend. Marie-France, my lady, she prepared this road, but her lord choked her off before I could read the book of her days. Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead. But no, my friend,' and the boy did a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, `I amthe dead, and their land.' He laughed. A gull cried. `Stay. If your woman is a ghost, she doesn't know it. Neither will you.'

`You're cracking. The ice is breaking up.'

`No,' he said, suddenly sad, his fragile shoulders sagging. He rubbed his foot against the sand. `It is more simple than that. But the choice is yours.' The gray eyes regarded Case gravely. A fresh wave of symbols swept across his vision, one line at a time. Behind them, the boy wriggled, as though seen through heat rising from summer asphalt. The music was loud now, and Case could almost make out the lyrics.

`Case, honey,' Linda said, and touched his shoulder.

`No,' he said. He took off his jacket and handed it to her. `I don't know,' he said, `maybe you're here. Anyway, it gets cold.'

He turned and walked away, and after the seventh step, he'd closed his eyes, watching the music define itself at the center of things. He did look back, once, although he didn't open his eyes.

He didn't need to.

They were there by the edge of the sea, Linda Lee and the thin child who said his name was Neuromancer. His leather jacket dangled from her hand, catching the fringe of the surf.

He walked on, following the music.

Maelcum's Zion dub.

There was a gray place, an impression of fine screens shifting, moire, degrees of half tone generated by a very simple graphics program. There was a long hold on a view through chainlink, gulls frozen above dark water. There were voices. There was a plain of black mirror, that tilted, and he was quicksilver, a bead of mercury, skittering down, striking the angles of an invisible maze, fragmenting, flowing together, sliding again...

`Case? Mon?'

The music.

`You back, mon.'

The music was taken from his ears.

`How long?' he heard himself ask, and knew that his mouth was very dry.

`Five minute, maybe. Too long. I wan'~ pull th'~ jack, Mute seh no. Screen goin'~ funny, then Mute seh put th'~ phones on you.'

He opened his eyes. Maelcum's features were overlayed with bands of translucent hieroglyphs.

`An'~ you medicine,' Maelcum said. `Two derm.'

He was flat on his back on the library floor, below the monitor. The Zionite helped him sit up, but the movement threw him into the savage rush of the betaphenethylamine, the blue derms burning against his left wrist. `Overdose,' he managed.

`Come on, mon,' the strong hands beneath his armpits, lifting him like a child, `I an'~ I mus'~ go.'

The service cart was crying. The betaphenethylamine gave it a voice. It wouldn't stop. Not in the crowded gallery, the long corridors, not as it passed the black glass entrance to the T-A crypt, the vaults where the cold had seeped so gradually into old Ashpool's dreams.

The transit was an extended rush for Case, the movement of the cart indistinguishable from the insane momentum of the overdose. When the cart died, at last, something beneath the seat giving up with a shower of white sparks, the crying stopped.

The thing coasted to a stop three meters from the start of 3Jane's pirate cave.

`How far, mon?' Maelcum helped him from the sputtering cart as an integral extinguisher exploded in the thing's engine compartment, gouts of yellow powder squirting from louvers and service points. The Braun tumbled from the back of the seat and hobbled off across the imitation sand, dragging one useless limb behind it. `You mus'~ walk, mon.' Maelcum took the deck and construct, slinging the shock cords over his shoulder.

The trodes rattled around Case's neck as he followed the Zionite. Riviera's holos waited for them, the torture scenes and the cannibal children. Molly had broken the triptych. Maelcum ignored them.

`Easy,' Case said, forcing himself to catch up with the striding figure. `Gotta do this right.'

Maelcum halted, turned, glowering at him, the Remington in his hands. `Right, mon? How's right?'

`Got Molly in there, but she's out of it. Riviera, he can throw holos. Maybe he's got Molly's fletcher.' Maelcum nodded. `And there's a ninja, a family bodyguard.'

Maelcum's frown deepened. `You listen, Babylon mon,' he said. `I a warrior. But this no m'~ fight, no Zion fight Babylon fightin'~ Babylon, eatin'~ i'self, ya know? But Jah seh I an'~ I t'~ bring Steppin'~ Razor outa this.'

Case blinked.

`She a warrior,' Maelcum said, as if it explained everything. `Now you tell me, mon, who I nott'~ kill.'

`3Jane,' he said, after a pause. `A girl there. Has a kinda white robe thing on, with a hood. We need her.'

When they reached the entrance, Maelcum walked straight in, and Case had no choice but to follow him.

3Jane's country was deserted, the pool empty. Maelcum handed him the deck and the construct and walked to the edge of the pool. Beyond the white pool furniture, there was darkness, shadows of the ragged, waist-high maze of partially demolished walls.

The water lapped patiently against the side of the pool.

`They're here,' Case said. `They gotta be.'

Maelcum nodded.

The first arrow pierced his upper arm. The Remington roared, its meter of muzzle-flash blue in the light from the pool. The second arrow struck the shotgun itself, sending it spinning across the white tiles. Maelcum sat down hard and fumbled at the black thing that protruded from his arm. He yanked at it.

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