was gettin' closer, an' I saw what it
was. Sometimes that day it had looked kinda like it was wrecked,
or maybe nobody there, an' other times I thought I'd see light
flashin' off a machine, cars or somethin' ...." Her voice trailed
off.
"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 ъio. 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
ъiviera'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 he;
days. Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. ъomancer. Nec-
romancer. I call up the dead. But no, my friend," and the boy
did a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, "I am the 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 shift-
ing, 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 man-
aged.
"Come on, mon," the strong hands beneath his armpits,
lifting him like a child, "I an' I mus' go."

        22

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 shoul-
der.

The trodes rattled around Case's neck as he followed the
Zionite. ъiviera'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 ъemington
in his hands. "ъight, mon? How's right?"
"Got Molly in there, but she's out of it. ъiviera, he can
throw holos. Maybe he's got Molly's fletcher." Maelcum nod-
ded. "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' ъazor outa this."
Case blinked.
"She a warrior," Maelcum said, as if it explained everything.
"Now you tell me, mon, who I not t' 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 dark-
ness, 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 ъemington 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.
Hideo stepped out of the shadows, a third arrow ready in a
slender bamboo bow. He bowed.
Maelcum stared, his hand still on the steel shaft.
"The artery is intact," the ninja said. Case remembered
Molly's description of the man who-d killed her lover. Hideo
was another. Ageless, he radiated a sense of quiet, an utter
calm. He wore clean, frayed khaki workpants and soft dark
shoes that fit his feet like gloves, split at the toes like tabi
socks. The bamboo bow was a museum piece, but the black
alloy quiver that protruded above his left shoulder had the look
of the best Chiba weapons shops. His brown chest was bare
and smooth.
"You cut my thumb, mon, wi' secon' one," Maelcum said.
"Coriolis force," the ninja said, bowing again. "Most dif-
ficult, slow-moving projectile in rotational gravity. It was not
intended."
"Where's 3Jane?" Case crossed to stand beside Maelcum.
He saw that the tip of the arrow in the ninja's bow was like a
double-edged razor. "Where's Molly?"
"Hello, Case." ъiviera came strolling out of the dark behind
Hideo, Molly's fletcher in his hand. "I would have expected
Armitage, somehow. Are we hiring help out of that ъasta
cluster now?"
"Armitage is dead."
"Armitage never existed, more to the point, but the news
hardly comes as a shock."
"Wintermute killed him. He's in orbit around the spindle."
ъiviera nodded, his long gray eyes glancing from Case to
Maelcum and back. "I think it ends here, for you," he said.
"Where's Molly?"
The ninja relaxed his pull on the fine, braided string, low-
ering the bow. He crossed the tiles to where the ъemington
lay and picked it up. "This is without subtlety," he said, as if
to himself. His voice was cool and pleasant. His every move
was part of a dance, a dance that never ended, even when his
body was still, at rest, but for all the power it suggested, there
was also a humility, an open simplicity.
"It ends here for her, too," ъiviera said.
"Maybe 3Jane won't go for that, Peter," Case said, uncertain
of the impulse. The derms still raged in his system, the old
fever starting to grip him, Night City craziness. He remembered
moments of grace, dealing out on the edge of things, where
he'd found that he could sometimes talk faster than he could
think.

The gray eyes narrowed. "Why, Case? Why do you think
that?"
Case smiled. ъiviera didn't know about the simstim rig.
He'd missed it in his hurry to find the drugs she carried for
him. But how could Hideo have missed it? And Case was
certain the ninja would never have let 3Jane treat Molly without
first checking her for kinks and concealed weapons. No, he
decided, the ninja knew. So 3Jane would know as well.
"Tell me, Case," ъiviera said, raising the pepperbox muzzle
of the fletcher.
Something creaked, behind him, creaked again. 3Jane pushed
Molly out of the shadows in an ornate Victorian bathchair, its
tall, spidery wheels squeaking as they turned. Molly was bun-
dled deep in a red and black striped blanket, the narrow, caned
back of the antique chair towering above her. She looked very
small. Broken. A patch of brilliantly white micropore covered
her damaged lens; the other flashed emptily as her head bobbed
with the motion of the chair.
"A familiar face," 3Jane said, "I saw you the night of Peter's
show. And who is this?"
"Maelcum," Case said.
"Hideo, remove the arrow and bandage Mr. Malcolm's
wound."
Case was staring at Molly, at the wan face.
The ninja walked to where Maelcum sat, pausing to lay his
bow and the shotgun well out of reach, and took something
from his pocket. A pair of bolt cutters. "I must cut the shaft,"
he said. "It is too near the artery." Maelcum nodded. His face
was grayish and sheened with sweat.
Case looked at 3Jane. "There isn't much time," he said.
"For whom, exactly?"
"For any of us." There was a snap as Hideo cut through the
metal shaft of the arrow. Maelcum groaned.
"ъeally," ъiviera said, "it won't amuse you to hear this
failed con artist make a last desperate pitch. Most distasteful,
1 can assure you. He'll wind up on his knees, offer to sell you
his mother, perform the most boring sexual favors...."
3Jane threw back her head and laughed. "Wouldn't 1, Pe-
ter?"
"The ghosts are gonna mix it tonight, lady," Case said.
"Wintermute's going up against the other one, Neuromancer.
For keeps. You know that?"
3Jane raised her eyebrows. "Peter's suggested something
like that, but tell me more."
"I met Neuromancer. He talked about your mother. I think
he's something like a giant ъOM construct, for recording per-
sonality, only it's full ъAM. The constructs think they're there,
like it's real, but it just goes on forever."
3Jane stepped from behind the bathchair. "Where? Describe
the place, this construct."
"A beach. Gray sand, like silver that needs polishing. And
a concrete thing, kinda bunker...." He hesitated. "It's nothing
fancy. Just old, falling apart. If you walk far enough, you come
back to where you started."
"Yes," she said. "Morocco. When Marie-France was a girl,
years before she married Ashpool, she spent a summer alone
on that beach, camping in an abandoned blockhouse. She for-
mulated the basis of her philosophy there."
Hideo straightened, slipping the cutters into his workpants.
He held a section of the arrow in either hand. Maelcum had
his eyes closed, his hand clapped tight around his bicep. "I
will bandage it," Hideo said.
Case managed to fall before ъiviera could level the fletcher
for a clear shot. The darts whined past his neck like supersonic
gnats. He rolled, seeing Hideo pivot through yet another step
of his dance, the razored point of the arrow reversed in his
hand, shaft flat along palm and rigid fingers. He flicked it
underhand, wrist blurring, into the back of ъiviera's hand. The
fletcher struck the tiles a meter away.
ъiviera screamed. But not in pain. It was a shriek of rage,
so pure, so refined, that it lacked all humanity.
Twin tight beams of light, ruby red needles, stabbed from
the region of ъiviera's sternum.
The ninja grunted, reeled back, hands to his eyes, then found
his balance.
"Peter," 3Jane said, "Peter, what have you done?"
"He's blinded your clone boy," Molly said flatly.
Hideo lowered his cupped hands. Frozen on the white tile
Case saw whisps of steam drift from the ruined eyes.
ъiviera smiled.

Hideo swung into his dance, retracing his steps. When he
stood above the bow, the arrow, and the ъemington, ъiviera's
smile had faded. He bent--bowing, it seemed to Case--and
found the bow and arrow.
"You're blind," ъiviera said, taking a step backward.
"Peter," 3Jane said, "don't you know he does it in the dark?
Zen. It's the way he practices."
The ninja notched his arrow. "Will you distract me with your
holograms now?"
ъiviera was backing away, into the dark beyond the pool.
He brushed against a white chair; its feet rattled on the tile.
Hideo's arrow twitched.
ъiviera broke and ran, throwing himself over a low, jagged
length of wall. The ninja's face was rapt, suffused with a quiet
ecstasy.
Smiling, he padded off into the shadows beyond the wall,
his weapon held ready.
"Jane-lady," Maelcum whispered, and Case turned, to see
him scoop the shotgun from the tiles, blood spattering the white
ceramic. He shook his locks and lay the fat barrel in the crook
of his wounded arm. "This take your head off, no Babylon
doctor fix it."
3Jane stared at the ъemington. Molly freed her arms from
the folds of the striped blanket, raising the black sphere that
encased her hands. "Off," she said, "get it off."
Case rose from the tiles, shook himself. "Hideo'll get him,
even blind?" he asked 3Jane.
"When I was a child," she said, "we loved to blindfold him.
He put arrows through the pips in playing cards at ten meters."
"Peter's good as dead anyway," Molly said. "In another
twelve hours, he'll start to freeze up. Won't be able to move,
his eyes is all."
"Why?" Case turned to her.
"I poisoned his shit for him," she said. "Condition's like
Parkinson's disease, sort of."
3Jane nodded. "Yes. We ran the usual medical scan, before
he was admitted." She touched the ball in a certain way and
it sprang away from Molly's hands. "Selective destruction of
the cells of the substantia nigra. Signs of the formation of a
Lewy body. He sweats a great deal, in his sleep."

"Ali," Molly said, ten blades glittering, exposed for an
instant. She tugged the blanket away from her legs, revealing
the inflated cast. "It's the meperidine. I had Ali make me up
a custom batch. Speeded up the reaction times with higher
temperatures. N-methyl-4-phenyl-1236," she sang, like a child
reciting the steps of a sidewalk game, "tetra-hydro-pyridene."
"A hotshot," Case said.
"Yeah," Molly said, "a real slow hotshot."
"That's appalling," 3Jane said, and giggled.

It was crowded in the elevator. Case was jammed pelvis to
pelvis with 3Jane, the muzzle of the ъemington under her chin.
She grinned and ground against him. "You stop," he said,
feeling helpless. He had the gun's safety on, but he was terrified
of injuring her, and she knew it. The elevator was a steel
cylinder, under a meter in diameter, intended for a single pas-
senger. Maelcum had Molly in his arms. She'd bandaged his
wound, but it obviously hurt him to carry her. Her hip was
pressing the deck and construct into Case's kidneys.
They rose out of gravity, toward the axis, the cores.
The entrance to the elevator had been concealed beside the
stairs to the corridor, another touch in 3Jane's pirate cave decor.
"I don't suppose I should tell you this," 3Jane said, craning
her head to allow her chin to clear the muzzle of the gun, "but
I don't have a key to the room you want. I never have had
one. One of my father's Victorian awkwardnesses. The lock
is mechanical and extremely complex."
"Chubb lock," Molly said, her voice muffled by Maelcum's
shoulder, "and we got the fucking key, no fear."
"That chip of yours still working?" Case asked her.
"It's eight twenty-five, PM, Greenwich fucking Mean," she
said.
"We got five minutes," Case said, as the door snapped open
behind 3Jane. She flipped backward in a slow somersault, the
pale folds of her djellaba billowing around her thighs.
They were at the axis, the core of Villa Straylight.
Molly fished the key out on its loop of nylon.
"You know," 3Jane said, craning forward with interest, "I
was under the impression that no duplicate existed. I sent Hideo
to search my father's things, after you killed him. He couldn't
find the original."
"Wintermute managed to get it stuck in the back of a drawer,"
Molly said, carefully inserting the Chubb key's cylindrical shaft
into the notched opening in the face of the blank, rectangular
door. "He killed the little kid who put it there." The key rotated
smoothly when she tried it.
"The head," Case said, "there's a panel in the back of the
head. Zircons on it. Get it off. That's where I'm jacking in."
And then they were inside.

"Christ on a crutch," the Flatline drawled, "you do believe
in takin' your own good time, don't you, boy?"
"Kuang's ready?"
"Hot to trot."
"Okay." He flipped.

And found himself staring down, through Molly's one good
eye, at a white-faced, wasted figure, afloat in a loose fetal
crouch, a cyberspace deck between its thighs, a band of silver
trodes above closed, shadowed eyes. The man's cheeks were
hollowed with a day's growth of dark beard, his face slick with
sweat.
He was looking at himself.
Molly had her fletcher in her hand. Her leg throbbed with
each beat of her pulse, but she could still maneuver in zero-g.
Maelcum drifted nearby, 3Jane's thin arm gripped in a large
brown hand.
A ribbon of fiberoptics looped gracefully fro