Count Zero
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 Next page started to wonder. And I knew you'd never sell out. Mr Instant Loyalty, right? Mr. Bushido. You were bankable, Turner. Hosaka knew that. That's why they insisted I bring youin. . "You haven't answered my first question, Conroy. Who did you go double for?" "A man named Virek," Conroy said. "The moneyman That's right, same one. He'd been trying to buy Mitchell for years. For that matter, he'd been trying to buy Maas No go. They re getting so rich, he couldn't touch them. There was a standing offer for Mitchell making the rounds. A blind offer. When Hosaka heard from Mitchell and called me in, I de- cided to check that offer out. Just out of curiosity. But before I could, Virek's team was on me. It wasn't a hard deal to cut, Turner, believe me." "I believe you." "But Mitchell fucked us all over, didn't he, Turner? Good and solid." "So they killed him." "He killed himself," Conroy said, "according to Virek's moles on the mesa. As soon as he saw the kid off in that ultralight. Cut his throat with a scalpel." "Lot of dead people around, Conroy," Turner said "Oakey's dead, and the Jap who was flying that copter for you." "Figured that when they didn't come back," Conroy shrugged. "They were trying to kill us," Turner said. "No, man, they just wanted to talk . . . Anyway, we didn't know about the girl then We just knew you were gone and that the damn jet hadn't made it to the strip in Bogoti We didn't start thinking about the girl until we took a look at your brother's farm and found the jet. Your brother wouldn't tell Oakey anything Pissed off `cause Oakey burned his dogs. Qakey said is looked like a woman had been living there, too, but she didn't turn up . . "What about Rudy?" Conroy's face was a perfect blank. Then he said, "Qakey got what he needed off the monitors. Then we knew about the girl." Turner's back was aching. The holster strap was cutting into his chest. I don't feel anything, he thought, I don't feel anything at all "I've got a question for you, Turner. I've got a couple. But the main one is, what the flick are you doing in there?" "Heard it was a hot club, Conroy." "Yeah. Real exclusive. So exclusive, you had to break up two of my doormen to get in. They knew you were coming, Turner, the spades and that punk. Why else would they let you in?" "You'll have to work that one out, Connie. You seem to have a lot of access, these days Conroy leaned closer to his phone's camera. "You bet your ass Virek's had people all over the Sprawl for months, feeling out a rumor, cowboy gossip that there was an experi- mental biosoft floating around. Finally his people focused on the Finn, but another team, a Maas team, turned up, obvi- ously after the same thing. So Virek's team just kicked back and watched the Maas boys, and the Maas boys started blowing people away. So Virek's team picked up on the spades and little Bobby and the whole thing. They laid it all out for me when I told `em I figured you'd headed this way from Rudy's. When I saw where they were headed, I hired some muscle to ice `em in there, until I could get somebody I could trust to go in after them . . "Those dusters out there?" Turner smiled. "You just dropped the ball, Connie. You can't go anywhere for profes- sional help, can you? Somebody's twigged that you doubled, and a lot of pros died, out there. So you're hiring shitheads with funny haircuts. The pros have all heard you've got Hosaka after your ass, haven't they, Connie? And they all know what you did." Turner was grinning now; out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the man in the dinner jacket was smiling, too, a thin smile with lots of neat small teeth, like white grains of corn "It's that bitch Slide," Conroy said. "I could've taken her out on the rig . . . She punched her way in somewhere and started asking questions. I don't even think she's really on to it, yet, but she's been making sounds in certain circles Anyway, yeah, you got the picture. But it doesn't help your ass any, not now. Virek wants the girl. He's pulled his people off the other thing and now I'm running things for him. Money, Turner, money like a zaibatsu'. Turner stared at the face, remembering Conroy in the bar of a jungle hotel. Remembering him later, in Los Angeles, making his pass, explaining the covert economics of corpo- rate defection Hi, Connie," Turner said, "I know you, don't I?" Conroy smiled. "Sure, baby." "And I know the offer. Already. You want the girl "That's right." "And the split, Connie. You know I only work fifty-fifty, right?" "Hey," Conroy said, "this is the big one I wouldn't have it any other way." Turner stared at the man's image. "Well," Conroy said, still smiling, "what do you say?" And Jammer reached out and pulled the phone's line from the wall plug. "Timing," he said. "Timing's always impor- tant." He let the plug drop. "If you'd told him, he'd have ni.ved right away. This way buys us time. He'll try to get back, try to figure what happened." "How do you know what I was going to say?" "Because I seen people. I seen a lot of them, too fucking many. Particularly I seen a lot like you. You got it written across your face, mister, and you were gonna tell him he could eat shit and die " Jammer hunched his way up in the office chair, grimacing as his hand moved inside the bar towel. "Who's this Slide he was talking about? A jockey?" "Jaylene Slide. Los Angeles. Top gun." "She was the one hijacked Bobby," jammer said. "So she's damn close to your pal on the phone "She probably doesn't know it, though." "Let's see what we can do about that. Get the boy back in here." "I'D BElTER FiND old Wig," he said She was watching the manipulators: hypnotized by the way they moved; as they picked through the swirl of things, they also caused it, grasping and rejecting, the rejected objects whirling away, striking others, drifting into new alignments. The process stined them gently, slowly, perpetually. "I'd better," he said. "What?" "Go find Wig. He might get up to something, if your bossman's people turn up. Don't want him to hurt himself, y'know." He looked sheepish, vaguely embarrassed. "Fine," she said. "I'm fine, I'll watch " She remembered the Wig's mad eyes. the craziness she'd felt roll off him in waves; she remembered the ugly cunning she'd sensed in his voice, over the Sweet Jane's radio. Why would Jones show this kind of concern? But then she thought about what it would be like, living in the Place, the dead cores of Tessier- Ashpool. Anything human, anything alive, might come to seem quite precious, here "You're right," she said "Go and find him." The boy smiled nervously and kicked off, tumbling for the opening where the line was anchored. "I'll come back for you," he said. "Remember where we left your suit . . The turret swung back and forth, humming, the manip- ulators darting, finishing the new poem. * * * She was never certain, afterward, that the voices were real, but eventually she came to feel that they had been a part of one of those situations in which real becomes merely another concept. She'd taken off her jacket, because the air in the dome seemed to have grown warmer, as though the ceaseless move- ment of the arms generated heat. She'd anchored the jacket and her purse on a strut beside the sermon screen. The box was nearly finished now, she thought, although it moved so quickly, in the padded claws, that it was difficult to see Abruptly, it floated free, tumbling end over end, and she sprang for it instinctively, caught it, and went tumbling past the flashing arms, her treasure in her arms. Unable to slow herself, she struck the far side of the dome, bruising her shoulder and tearing her blouse. Drifting, stunned, she cra- dIed the box. staring through the rectangle of glass at an arrangement of brown old maps and tarnished mirror. The seas of the cartographers had been cut away, exposing the flaking mirrors, landmasses afloat on dirty silver . . . She looked up in time to see a glittering arm snag the floating sleeve of her Brussels jacket. Her purse, half a meter behind it and tumbling gracefully, went next, hooked by a manipula- tor tipped with an optic sensor and a simple claw. She watched as her things were drawn into the ceaseless dance of the arms. Minutes later, the jacket came whirling out again. Neat squares and rectangles seemed to have been cut away, and she found herself laughing. She released the box she held. "Go ahead," she said. "I am honored." The arms whirled and flashed, and she heard the whine of a tiny saw. I am honored I am honored I am honoredEcho of her voice in the dome setting up a shifting forest of smaller, partial sounds, and behind them, very faint. . . Voices "You're here, aren't you?" she called, adding to the ring of sound, ripples and reflections of her fragmented voice. Yes, I am here. "Wigan would say you've always been here, wouldn't he?" Yes, but it isn't true. I came to be, here. Once I was not. Once, for a brilliant time, time without duration, I was every- where as well . . . But the bright time broke. The mirror was flawed. Now I am only one. . . But I have my song, and you have heard it. I sing with these things that float around me, fragments of the family that funded my birth. There are others, but they will not speak to me. Vain, the scattered fragments of myself, like children Like men. They send me new things, but I prefer the old things. Perhaps I do their bidding. They plot with men, my other selves, and men imagine they are gods "You are the thing that Virek seeks, aren't you?" No. He imagines that he can translate himself, code his personality into my fabric. He yearns to be what I once was. What he might become most resembles the least of my broken selves "Are youare you sad?" |
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