The tunnel ended with an ancient Army blanket tacked across a doorway. White light flooded out as Molly ducked past it.
Four square walls of blank white plastic, ceiling to match, floored with white hospital tile molded in a nonslip pattern of small raised disks. In the center stood a square, white-painted wooden table and four white folding chairs.
The man who stood blinking now in the doorway behind them, the blanket draping one shoulder like a cape, seemed to have been designed in a wind tunnel. His ears were very small, plastered flat against his narrow skull, and his large front teeth, revealed in something that wasn't quite a smile, were canted sharply backward. He wore an ancient tweed jacket and held a handgun of some kind in his left hand. He peered at them, blinked, and dropped the gun into a jacket pocket. He gestured to Case, pointed at a slab of white plastic that leaned near the doorway. Case crossed to it and saw that it was a solid sandwich of circuitry, nearly a centimeter thick. He helped the man lift it and position it in the doorway. Quick, nicotine-stained fingers secured it with a white velcro border. A hidden exhaust fan began to purr.
`Time,' the man said, straightening up, `and counting. You know the rate, Moll.'
`We need a scan, Finn. For implants.'
`So get over there between the pylons. Stand on the tape. Straighten up, yeah. Now turn around, gimme a full threesixty.' Case watched her rotate between two fragile-looking stands studded with sensors. The man took a small monitor from his pocket and squinted at it. `Something new in your head, yeah. Silicon, coat of pyrolitic carbons. A clock, right? Your glasses gimme the read they always have, low-temp isotropic carbons. Better biocompatibility with pyrolitics, but that's your business, right? Same with your claws.'
`Get over here, Case.' He saw a scuffed X in black on the white floor. `Turn around. Slow.'
`Guy's a virgin.' The man shrugged. `Some cheap dental work, is all.'
`You read for biologicals?' Molly unzipped her green vest and took off the dark glasses.
`You think this is the Mayo? Climb on the table, kid, we'll run a little biopsy.' He laughed, showing more of his yellow teeth. `Nah. Finn's word, sweetmeat, you got no little bugs, no cortex bombs. You want me to shut the screen down?'
`Just for as long as it takes you to leave, Finn. Then we'll want full screen for as long as we want it.'
`Hey, that's fine by the Finn, Moll. You're only paying by the second.'
They sealed the door behind him and Molly turned one of the white chairs around and sat on it, chin resting on crossed forearms. `We talk now. This is as private as I can afford.'
`What about?'
`What we're doing.'
`What are we doing?'
`Working for Armitage.'
`And you're saying this isn't for his benefit?'
`Yeah. I saw your profile, Case. And I've seen the rest of our shopping list, once. You ever work with the dead?'
`No.' He watched his reflection in her glasses. `I could. I guess. I'm good at what I do.' The present tense made him nervous.
`You know that the Dixie Flatline's dead?'
He nodded. `Heart, I heard.'
`You'll be working with his construct.' She smiled. `Taught you the ropes, huh? Him and Quine. I know Quine, by the way. Real asshole.'
`Somebody's got a recording of McCoy Pauley? Who?' Now Case sat, and rested his elbows on the table. `I can't see it. He'd never have sat still for it.'
`Sense/Net. Paid him mega, you bet your ass.'
`Quine dead too?'
`No such luck. He's in Europe. He doesn't come into this.'
`Well, if we can get the Flatline, we're home free. He was the best. You know he died braindeath three times?'
She nodded.
`Flatlined on his EEG. Showed me tapes. Boy, I was daid.'
`Look, Case, I been trying to suss out who it is is backing Armitage since I signed on. But it doesn't feel like a zaibatsu, a government, or some Yakuza subsidiary. Armitage gets orders. Like something tells him to go off to Chiba, pick up a pillhead who's making one last wobble through the burnout belt, and trade a program for the operation that'll fix him up. We coulda bought twenty world class cowboys for what the market was ready to pay for that surgical program. You were good, but not thatgood...' She scratched the side of her nose.
`Obviously makes sense to somebody,' he said. `Somebody big.'
`Don't let me hurt your feelings.' She grinned. `We're gonna be pulling one hardcore run, Case, just to get the Flatline's construct. Sense/Net has it locked in a library vault uptown. Tighter than an eel's ass, Case. Now, Sense/Net, they got all their new material for the fall season locked in there too. Steal that and we'd be richer than shit. But no, we gotta get us the Flatline and nothing else. Weird.'
`Yeah, it's all weird. You're weird, this hole's weird, and who's the weird little gopher outside in the hall?'
`Finn's an old connection of mine. Fence, mostly. Software. This privacy biz is a sideline. But I got Armitage to let him be our tech here, so when he shows up later, you never saw him. Got it?'
`So what's Armitage got dissolving inside you?'
`I'm an easy make.' She smiled. `Anybody any good at what they do, that's what they are,right? You gotta jack, I gotta tussle.'
He stared at her. `So tell me what you know about Armitage.'
`For starters, nobody named Armitage took part in any Screaming Fist. I checked. But that doesn't mean much. He doesn't look like any of the pics of the guys who got out.' She shrugged. `Big deal. And starters is all I got.' She drummed her nails on the back of the chair. `But you area cowboy, aren't you? I mean, maybe you could have a little look around.' She smiled.
`He'd kill me.'
`Maybe. Maybe not. I think he needs you, Case, and real bad. Besides, you're a clever john, no? You can winkle him, sure.'
`What else is on that list you mentioned?'
`Toys. Mostly for you. And one certified psychopath name of Peter Riviera. Real ugly customer.'
`Where's he?'
`Dunno. But he's one sick fuck, no lie. I saw his profile.' She made a face. `Godawful.' She stood up and stretched, catlike. `So we got an axis going, boy? We're together in this? Partners?'
Case looked at her. `I gotta lotta choice, huh?'
She laughed. `You got it, cowboy.'
`The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,' said the voice-over, `in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks.' On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spacial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. `Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...'