Neuromancer (Chapter 8)

PART THREE
MIDNIGHT IN THE RUE JULES VERNE

8

Archipelago.
The islands. Torus, spindle, cluster. Human DNA spreading out from gravity's steep well like an oilslick.
Call up a graphics display that grossly simplifies the ex change of data in the L-5 archipelago. One segment clicks in as red solid, a massive rectangle dominating your screen.
Freeside. Freeside is many things, not all of them evident to the tourists who shuttle up and down the well. Freeside is brothel and banking nexus, pleasure dome and free port, bor der town and spa. Freeside is Las Vegas and the hanging gar dens of Babylon, an orbital Geneva and home to a family inbred and most carefully refined, the industrial clan of Tessier and Ashpool.

On the _THY_ liner to Paris, they sat together in First Class, Molly in the window seat, Case beside her, Riviera and Ar mitage on the aisle. Once, as the plane banked over water, Case saw the jewel-glow of a Greek island town. And once, reaching for his drink, he caught the flicker of a thing like a giant human sperm in the depths of his bourbon and water.
Molly leaned across him and slapped Riviera's face, once. `No, baby. No games. You play that subliminal shit around me, I'll hurt you real bad. I can do it without damaging you at all. I _like_ that.'
Case turned automatically to check Armitage's reaction. The smooth face was calm, the blue eyes alert, but there was no anger. `That's right, Peter. Don't.'
Case turned back, in time to catch the briefest flash of a black rose, its petals sheened like leather, the black stem thorned with bright chrome.
Peter Riviera smiled sweetly, closed his eyes, and fell in stantly asleep.
Molly turned away, her lenses reflected in the dark window.

`You been up, haven't you?' Molly asked, as he squirmed his way back into the deep temperfoam couch on the _JAL_ shuttle.
`Nah. Never travel much, just for biz.' The steward was attaching readout trodes to his wrist and left ear.
`Hope you don't get SAS,' she said.
`Airsick? No way.'
`It's not the same. Your heartbeat'll speed up in zero-g, and your inner ear'll go nuts for a while. Kicks in your flight reflex, like you'll be getting signals to run like hell, and a lot of adrenaline.' The steward moved on to Riviera, taking a new set of trodes from his red plastic apron.
Case turned his head and tried to make out the outline of the old Orly terminals, but the shuttle pad was screened by graceful blast-deflectors of wet concrete. The one nearest the window bore an Arabic slogan in red spraybomb.
He closed his eyes and told himself the shuttle was only a big airplane, one that flew very high. It smelled like an airplane, like new clothes and chewing gum and exhaustion. He listened to the piped koto music and waited.
Twenty minutes, then gravity came down on him like a great soft hand with bones of ancient stone.

Space adaptation syndrome was worse than Molly's de scription, but it passed quickly enough and he was able to sleep. The steward woke him as they were preparing to dock at _JAL_'s terminal cluster.
`We transfer to Freeside now?' he asked, eyeing a shred of Yeheyuan tobacco that had drifted gracefully up out of his shirt pocket to dance ten centimeters from his nose. There was no smoking on shuttle flights.
`No, we got the boss's usual little kink in the plans, you know? We're getting this taxi out to Zion, Zion cluster.' She touched the release plate on her harness and began to free herself from the embrace of the foam. `Funny choice of venue, you ask me.'
`How's that?'
`Dreads. Rastas. Colony's about thirty years old now.'
`What's that mean?'
`You'll see. It's an okay place by me. Anyway, they'll let you smoke your cigarettes there.'

Zion had been founded by five workers who'd refused to return, who'd turned their backs on the well and started build ing. They'd suffered calcium loss and heart shrinkage before rotational gravity was established in the colony's central torus. Seen from the bubble of the taxi, Zion's makeshift hull re minded Case of the patchwork tenements of Istanbul, the ir regular, discolored plates laser-scrawled with Rastafarian symbols and the initials of welders.
Molly and a skinny Zionite called Aerol helped Case ne gotiate a freefall corridor into the core of a smaller torus. He'd lost track of Armitage and Riviera in the wake of a second wave of SAS vertigo. `Here,' Molly said, shoving his legs into a narrow hatchway overhead. `Grab the rungs. Make like you're climbing backward, right? You're going toward the hull, that's like you're climbing down into gravity. Got it?'
Case's stomach churned.
`You be fine, mon,' Aerol said, his grin bracketed with gold incisors.
Somehow, the end of the tunnel had become its bottom. Case embraced the weak gravity like a drowning man finding a pocket of air.
`Up,' Molly said, `you gonna kiss it next?' Case lay flat on the deck, on his stomach, arms spread. Something struck him on the shoulder. He rolled over and saw a fat bundle of elastic cable. `Gotta play house,' she said. `You help me string this up.' He looked around the wide, featureless space and noticed steel rings welded on every surface, seemingly at ran dom.
When they'd strung the cables, according to some complex scheme of Molly's, they hung them with battered sheets of yellow plastic. As they worked, Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed constantly through the cluster. It was called dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop; it was worship, Molly said, and a sense of community. Case heaved at one of the yellow sheets; the thing was light but still awkward. Zion smelled of cooked vegetables, humanity, and ganja.
`Good,' Armitage said, gliding loose-kneed through the hatch and nodding at the maze of sheets. Riviera followed, less certain in the partial gravity.
`Where were you when it needed doing?' Case asked Ri viera.
The man opened his mouth to speak. A small trout swam out, trailing impossible bubbles. It glided past Case's cheek. `In the head,' Riviera said, and smiled.
Case laughed.
`Good,' Riviera said, `you can laugh. I would have tried to help you, but I'm no good with my hands.' He held up his palms, which suddenly doubled. Four arms, four hands.
`Just the harmless clown, right, Riviera?' Molly stepped between them.
`Yo,' Aerol said, from the hatch, `you wan' come wi' me, cowboy mon.'
`It's your deck,' Armitage said, `and the other gear. Help him get it in from the cargo bay.'
`You ver' pale, mon,' Aerol said, as they were guiding the foam-bundled Hosaka terminal along the central corridor. `Maybe you wan' eat somethin'.'
Case's mouth flooded with saliva; he shook his head.

Armitage announced an eighty-hour stay in Zion. Molly and Case would practice in zero gravity, he said, and acclimatize themselves to working in it. He would brief them on Freeside and the Villa Straylight. It was unclear what Riviera was sup posed to be doing, but Case didn't feel like asking. A few hours after their arrival, Armitage had sent him into the yellow maze to call Riviera out for a meal. He'd found him curled like a cat on a thin pad of temperfoam, naked, apparently asleep, his head orbited by a revolving halo of small white geometric forms, cubes, spheres, and pyramids. `Hey, Ri viera.' The ring continued to revolve. He'd gone back and told Armitage. `He's stoned,' Molly said, looking up from the disassembled parts of her fletcher. `Leave him be.'
Armitage seemed to think that zero-g would affect Case's ability to operate in the matrix. `Don't sweat it,' Case argued, `I jack in and I'm not here. It's all the same.'
`Your adrenaline levels are higher,' Armitage said. `You've still got SAS. You won't have time for it to wear off. You're going to learn to work with it.'
`So I do the run from here?'
`No. Practice, Case. Now. Up in the corridor...'

Cyberspace, as the deck presented it, had no particular re lationship with the deck's physical whereabouts. When Case jacked in, he opened his eyes to the familiar configuration of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority's Aztec pyramid of data.
`How you doing, Dixie?'
`I'm dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one.'
`How's it feel?'
`It doesn't.'
`Bother you?'
`What bothers me is, nothin' does.'
`How's that?'
`Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he's tossin' all night. Elroy, I said, what's eatin' you? Goddam thumb's itchin', he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it's the _other_ goddam thumb.' When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case's spine. `Do me a favor, boy.'
`What's that, Dix?'
`This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam thing.'

Case didn't understand the Zionites.
Aerol, with no particular provocation, related the tale of the baby who had burst from his forehead and scampered into a forest of hydroponic ganja. `Ver' small baby, mon, no long' you finga.' He rubbed his palm across an unscarred expanse of brown forehead and smiled.
`It's the ganja,' Molly said, when Case told her the story. `They don't make much of a difference between states, you know? Aerol tells you it happened, well, it happened to _him._ It's not like bullshit, more like poetry. Get it?'
Case nodded dubiously. The Zionites always touched you when they were talking, hands on your shoulder. He didn't like that.
`Hey, Aerol,' Case called, an hour later, as he prepared for a practice run in the freefall corridor. `Come here, man. Wanna show you this thing.' He held out the trodes.
Aerol executed a slow-motion tumble. His bare feet struck the steel wall and he caught a girder with his free hand. The other held a transparent waterbag bulging with blue-green al gae. He blinked mildly and grinned.
`Try it,' Case said.
He took the band, put it on, and Case adjusted the trodes. He closed his eyes. Case hit the power stud. Aerol shuddered. Case jacked him back out. `What did you see, man?'
`Babylon,' Aerol said, sadly, handing him the trodes and kicking off down the corridor.

Riviera sat motionless on his foam pad, his right arm ex tended straight out, level with his shoulder. A jewel-scaled snake, its eyes like ruby neon, was coiled tightly a few millimeters behind his elbow. Case watched the snake, which was finger-thick and banded black and scarlet, slowly contract, tightening around Riviera's arm.
`Come then,' the man said caressingly to the pale waxy scorpion poised in the center of his upturned palm. `Come.' The scorpion swayed its brownish claws and scurried up his arm its feet tracking the faint dark telltales of veins. When it reached the inner elbow, it halted and seemed to vibrate. Ri viera made a soft hissing sound. The sting came up, quivered, and sank into the skin above a bulging vein. The coral snake relaxed, and Riviera sighed slowly as the injection hit him.
Then the snake and the scorpion were gone, and he held a milky plastic syringe in his left hand. ``If God made anything better, he kept it for himself.' You know the expression, Case?'
`Yeah,' Case said. `I heard that about lots of different things. You always make it into a little show?'
Riviera loosened and removed the elastic length of surgical tubing from his arm. `Yes. It's more fun.' He smiled, his eyes distant now, cheeks flushed. `I've a membrane set in, just over the vein, so I never have to worry about the condition of the needle.'
`Doesn't hurt?'
The bright eyes met his. `Of course it does. That's part of it, isn't it?'
`I'd just use derms,' Case said.
`Pedestrian,' Riviera sneered, and laughed, putting on a short-sleeved white cotton shirt.
`Must be nice,' Case said, getting up.
`Get high yourself, Case?'
`I hadda give it up.'

`Freeside,' Armitage said, touching the panel on the little Braun hologram projector. The image shivered into focus, nearly three meters from tip to tip. `Casinos here.' He reached into the skeletal representation and pointed. `Hotels, strata-title property, big shops along here.' His hand moved. `Blue areas are lakes.' He walked to one end of the model. `Big cigar. Narrows at the ends.'
`We can see that fine,' Molly said.
`Mountain effect, as it narrows. Ground seems to get higher, more rocky, but it's an easy climb. Higher you climb, the lower the gravity. Sports up there. There's velodrome ring here.' He pointed.
`A what?' Case leaned forward.
`They race bicycles,' Molly said. `Low grav, high-traction tires, get up over a hundred kilos an hour.'
`This end doesn't concern us,' Armitage said with his usual utter seriousness.
`Shit,' Molly said, `I'm an avid cyclist.'
Riviera giggled.
Armitage walked to the opposite end of the projection. `This end does.' The interior detail of the hologram ended here, and the final segment of the spindle was empty. `This is the Villa Straylight. Steep climb out of gravity and every approach is kinked. There's a single entrance, here, dead center. Zero grav ity.'
`What's inside, boss?' Riviera leaned forward, craning his neck. Four tiny figures glittered, near the tip of Armitage's finger. Armitage slapped at them as if they were gnats.
`Peter,' Armitage said, `you're going to be the first to find out. You'll arrange yourself an invitation. Once you're in, you see that Molly gets in.'
Case stared at the blankness that represented Straylight, remembering the Finn's story: Smith, Jimmy, the talking head, and the ninja.
`Details available?' Riviera asked. `I need to plan a ward robe, you see.'
`Learn the streets,' Armitage said, returning to the center of the model. `Desiderata Street here. This is the Rue Jules Verne.'
Riviera rolled his eyes.
While Armitage recited the names of Freeside avenues, a dozen bright pustules rose on his nose, cheeks, and chin. Even Molly laughed.
Armitage paused, regarded them all with his cold empty eyes.
`Sorry,' Riviera said, and the sores flickered and vanished.

Case woke, late into the sleeping period, and became aware of Molly crouched beside him on the foam. He could feel her tension. He lay there confused. When she moved, the sheer speed of it stunned him. She was up and through the sheet of yellow plastic before he'd had time to realize she'd slashed it open.
`Don't you move, friend.'
Case rolled over and put his head through the rent in the plastic. `Wha...?'
`Shut up.'
`You th' one, mon,' said a Zion voice. `Cateye, call 'em, call 'em Steppin' Razor. I Maelcum, sister. Brothers wan' converse wi' you an' cowboy.'
`What brothers?'
`Founders, mon. Elders of Zion, ya know...'
`We open that hatch, the light'll wake bossman,' Case whispered.
`Make it special dark, now,' the man said. `Come. I an' I visit th' Founders.'
`You know how fast I can cut you, friend?'
`Don' stan' talkin', sister. Come.'

The two surviving Founders of Zion were old men, old with the accelerated aging that overtakes men who spend too many years outside the embrace of gravity. Their brown legs, brittle with calcium loss, looked fragile in the harsh glare of reflected sunlight. They floated in the center of a painted jungle of rainbow foliage, a lurid communal mural that completely cov ered the hull of the spherical chamber. The air was thick with resinous smoke.
`Steppin' Razor,' one said, as Molly drifted into the cham ber. `Like unto a whippin' stick.'
`That is a story we have, sister,' said the other, `a religion story. We are glad you've come with Maelcum.'
`How come you don't talk the patois?' Molly asked.
`I came from Los Angeles,' the old man said. His dread locks were like a matted tree with branches the color of steel wool. `Long time ago, up the gravity well and out of Babylon. To lead the Tribes home. Now my brother likens you to Step pin' Razor.'
Molly extended her right hand and the blades flashed in the smoky air.
The other Founder laughed, his head thrown back. `Soon come, the Final Days... Voices. Voices cryin' inna wilder ness, prophesyin' ruin unto Babylon...'
`Voices.' The Founder from Los Angeles was staring at Case. `We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.'
`Call 'em Winter Mute,' said the other, making it two words.
Case felt the skin crawl on his arms.
`The Mute talked to us,' the first Founder said. `The Mute said we are to help you.'
`When was this?' Case asked.
`Thirty hours prior you dockin' Zion.'
`You ever hear this voice before?'
`No,' said the man from Los Angeles, `and we are uncertain of its meaning. If these are Final Days, we must expect false prophets...'
`Listen,' Case said, `that's an AI, you know? Artificial intelligence. The music it played you, it probably just tapped your banks and cooked up whatever it thought you'd like to --'
`Babylon,' broke in the other Founder, `mothers many de mon, I an' I know. Multitude horde!'
`What was that you called me, old man?' Molly asked.
`Steppin' Razor. An' you bring a scourge on Babylon, sis ter, on its darkest heart...'
`What kinda message the voice have?' Case asked.
`We were told to help you,' the other said, `that you might serve as a tool of Final Days.' His lined face was troubled. `We were told to send Maelcum with you, in his tug _Garvey_ to the Babylon port of Freeside. And this we shall do.'
`Maelcum a rude boy,' said the other, `an' a righteous tug pilot.'
`But we have decided to send Aerol as well, in _Babylon Rocker,_ to watch over _Garvey.'_
An awkward silence filled the dome.
`That's it?' Case asked. `You guys work for Armitage or what?'
`We rent you space,' said the Los Angeles Founder. `We have a certain involvement here with various traffics, and no regard for Babylon's law. Our law is the word of Jah. But this time, it may be, we have been mistaken.'
`Measure twice, cut once,' said the other, softly.
`Come on, Case,' Molly said. `Let's get back before the man figures out we're gone.'
`Maelcum will take you. Jah love, sister.'