`How's it go Dixie?'
`Fine. Too slick. Thing's amazing... Shoulda had one that time in Singapore. Did the old New Bank of Asia for a good fiftieth of what they were worth. But that's ancient history. This baby takes all the drudgery out of it. Makes you wonder what a real war would be like, now...'
`If this kinda shit was on the street; we'd be out a job,' Case said.
`You wish. Wait'll you're steering that thing upstairs through black ice.'
`Sure.'
Something small and decidedly nongeometric had just appeared on the far end of one of the emerald arches.
`Dixie...'
`Yeah. I see it. Don't know if I believe it.'
A brownish dot, a dull gnat against the green wall of the T-A cores. It began to advance, across the bridge built by Kuang Grade Mark Eleven, and Case saw that it was walking. As it came, the green section of the arch extended, the polychrome of the virus program rolling back, a few steps ahead of the cracked black shoes.
`Gotta hand it to you, boss,' the Flatline said, when the short, rumpled figure of the Finn seemed to stand a few meters away. `I never seen anything this funny when I was alive.' But the eerie nonlaugh didn't come.
`I never tried it before,' the Finn said, showing his teeth, his hands bunched in the pockets of his frayed jacket.
`You killed Armitage,' Case said.
`Corto. Yeah. Armitage was already gone. Hadda do it. I know, I know, you wanna get the enzyme. Okay. No sweat. I was the one gave it to Armitage in the first place. I mean I told him what to use. But I think maybe it's better to let the deal stand. You got enough time. I'll give it to you. Only a coupla hours now, right?'
Case watched blue smoke billow in cyberspace as the Finn lit up one of his Partagas.
`You guys,' the Finn said, `you're a pain. The Flatline here, if you were all like him, it would be real simple. He's a construct, just a buncha ROM, so he always does what I expect him to. My projections said there wasn't much chance of Molly wandering in on Ashpool's big exit scene, give you one example.' He sighed.
`Why'd he kill himself?' Case asked.
`Why's anybody kill himself?' The figure shrugged. `I guess I know, if anybody does, but it would take me twelve hours to explain the various factors in his history and how they interrelate. He was ready to do it for a long time, but he kept going back into the freezer. Christ, he was a tedious old fuck.' The Finn's face wrinkled with disgust. `It's all tied in with why he killed his wife, mainly, you want the short reason. But what sent him over the edge for good and all, little 3Jane figured a way to fiddle the program that controlled his cryogenic system. Subtle, too. So basically, shekilled him. Except he figured he'd killed himself, and your friend the avenging angel figures she got him with an eyeball full of shellfish juice.' The Finn flicked his butt away into the matrix below. `Well, actually, I guess I did give 3Jane the odd hint, a little of the old how to, you know?'
`Wintermute,' Case said, choosing the words carefully, `you told me you were just a part of something else. Later on, you said you wouldn't exist, if the run goes off and Molly gets the word into the right slot.'
The Finn's streamlined skull nodded.
`Okay, then who we gonna be dealing with then? If Armitage is dead, and you're gonna be gone, just who exactly is going to tell me how to get these fucking toxin sacs out of my system? Who's going to get Molly back out of there? I mean, where, where exactly, are all our asses gonna be,we cut you loose from the hardwiring?'
The Finn took a wooden toothpick from his pocket and regarded it critically, like a surgeon examining a scalpel. `Good question,' he said, finally. `You know salmon? Kinda fish? These fish, see, they're compelledto swim upstream. Got it?'
`No,' Case said.
`Well, I'm under compulsion myself. And I don't know why. If I were gonna subject you to my very own thoughts, let's call 'em speculations, on the topic, it would take a couple of your lifetimes. Because I've given it a lot of thought. And I just don't know. But when this is over, we do it right, I'm gonna be part of something bigger. Much bigger,' The Finn glanced up and around the matrix. `But the parts of me that are me now, that'll still be here. And you'll get your payoff.'
Case fought back an insane urge to punch himself forward and get his fingers around the figure's throat, just above the ragged knot in the rusty scarf. His thumbs deep in the Finn's larynx.
`Well, good luck,' the Finn said. He turned, hands in pockets and began trudging back up the green arch.
`Hey, asshole,' the Flatline said, when the Finn had gone a dozen paces. The figure paused, half turned. `What about me? What about my payoff?'
`You'll get yours,' it said.
`What's that mean?' Case asked, as he watched the narrow tweed back recede.
`I wanna be erased,' the construct said. `I told you that, remember?'
Straylight reminded Case of deserted early morning shopping centers he'd known as a teenager, low-density places where the small hours brought a fitful stillness, a kind of numb expectancy, a tension that left you watching insects swarm around caged bulbs above the entrance of darkened shops. Fringe places, just past the borders of the Sprawl, too far from the all-night click and shudder of the hot core. There was that same sense of being surrounded by the sleeping inhabitants of a waking world he had no interest in visiting or knowing, of dull business temporarily suspended, of futility and repetition soon to wake again.
Molly had slowed now, either knowing that she was nearing her goal or out of concern for her leg. The pain was starting to work its jagged way back through the endorphins, and he wasn't sure what that meant. She didn't speak, kept her teeth clenched, and carefully regulated her breathing. She'd passed many things that Case hadn't understood, but his curiosity was gone. There had been a room filled with shelves of books, a million flat leaves of yellowing paper pressed between bindings of cloth or leather, the shelves marked at intervals by labels that followed a code of letters and numbers; a crowded gallery where Case had stared, through Molly's incurious eyes, at a shattered, dust-stenciled sheet of glass, a thing labeled -her gaze had tracked the brass plaque automatically -`La marie mise nu par ses clibataires, mme.'She'd reached out and touched this, her artificial nails clicking against the Lexan sandwich protecting the broken glass. There had been what was obviously the entrance to Tessier-Ashpool's cryogenic compound, circular doors of black glass trimmed with chrome.
She'd seen no one since the two Africans and their cart, and for Case they'd taken on a sort of imaginary life; he pictured them gliding gently through the halls of Straylight, their smooth dark skulls gleaming, nodding, while the one still sang his tired little song. And none of this was anything like the Villa Straylight he would have expected, some cross between Cath's fairy tale castle and a half-remembered childhood fantasy of the Yakuza's inner sanctum.
07:02:18.
One and a half hours.
`Case,' she said, `I wanna favor.' Stiffly, she lowered herself to sit on a stack of polished steel plates, the finish of each plate protected by an uneven coating of clear plastic. She picked at a rip in the plastic on the topmost plate, blades sliding from beneath thumb and forefinger. `Leg's not good, you know? Didn't figure any climb like that, and the endorphin won't cut it, much longer. So maybe -just maybe, right? -I got a problem here. What it is, if I buy it here, before Riviera does' -and she stretched her leg, kneaded the flesh of her thigh through Modern polycarbon and Paris leather -`I want you to tell him. Tell him it was me. Got it? Just say it was Molly. He'll know. Okay?' She glanced around the empty hallway, the bare walls. The floor here was raw lunar concrete and the air smelled of resins. `Shit, man, I don't even know if you're listening.'