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PART THREE. MIDNIGHT IN THE RUE JULES VERNE
Rue Jules Verne was a circumferential avenue, looping the
spindle's midpoint, while Desiderata ran its length, terminating
at either end in the supports of the Lado-Acheson light pumps.
If you turned right, off Desiderata, and followed Jules Verne
far enough, you'd find yourself approaching Desiderata from
the left.
Case watched Bruce's trike until it was out of sight, then
turned and walked past a vast, brilliantly lit newsstand, the
covers of dozens of glossy Japanese magazines presenting the
faces of the month's newest simstim stars.
Directly overhead, along the nighted axis, the hologram sky
glittered with fanciful constellations suggesting playing cards,
the faces of dice, a top hat, a martini glass. The intersection
of Desiderata and Jules Verne formed a kind of gulch, the
balconied terraces of Freeside cliff dwellers rising gradually to
the grassy tablelands of another casino complex. Case watched
a drone microlight bank gracefully in an updraft at the green
verge of an artificial mesa, lit for seconds by the soft glow of
the invisible casino. The thing was a kind of pilotless biplane
of gossamer polymer, its wings silkscreened to resemble a giant
butterfly. Then it was gone, beyond the mesa's edge. He'd
seen a wink of reflected neon off glass, either lenses or the
turrets of lasers. The drones were part of the spindle's security
system, controlled by some central computer.
In Straylight? He walked on, past bars named the Hi-Lo,
the Paradise, le Monde, Cricketeer, Shozoku Smith's, Emer-
gency. He chose Emergency because it was the smallest and
most crowded, but it took only seconds for him to realize that
it was a tourist place. No hum of biz here, only a glazed sexual
tension. He thought briefly of the nameless club above Molly's
rented cubicle, but the image of her mirrored eyes fixed on the
little screen dissuaded him. What was Wintermute revealing
there now? The ground plans of the Villa Straylight? The history
of the Tessier-Ashpools?
He bought a mug of Carlsberg and found a place against
the wall. Closing his eyes, he felt for the knot of rage, the pure
small coal of his anger. It was there still. Where had it come
from? He remembered feeling only a kind of bafflement at his
maiming in Memphis, nothing at all when he'd killed to defend
his dealing interests in Night City, and a slack sickness and
loathing after Linda's death under the inflated dome. But no
anger. Small and far away, on the mind's screen, a semblance
of Deane struck a semblance of an office wall in an explosion
of brains and blood. He knew then: the rage had come in the
arcade, when Wintermute rescinded the simstim ghost of Linda
Lee, yanking away the simple animal promise of food, warmth,
a place to sleep. But he hadn't become aware of it until his
exchange with the holo-construct of Lonny Zone.
It was a strange thing. He couldn't take its measure.
"Numb," he said. He'd been numb a long time, years. All
his nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed
and numb at the cold sweating center of every drug deal. But
now he'd found this warm thing, this chip of murder. Meat,
some part of him said. It's the meat talking, ignore it.
"Gangster."
He opened his eyes. Cath stood beside him in a black shift,
her hair still wild from the ride in the Honda.
"Thought you went home," he said, and covered his con-
fusion with a sip of Carlsberg.
"I got him to drop me off at this shop. Bought this." She
ran her palm across the fabric, curve of the pelvic girdle. He
saw the blue derm on her wrist. "Like it?"
"Sure." He automatically scanned the faces around them,
then looked back at her. "What do you think you're up to,
honey?"
"You like the beta you got off us, Lupus?" She was very
close now, radiating heat and tension, eyes slitted over enor-
mous pupils and a tendon in her neck tense as a bowstring.
She was quivering, vibrating invisibly with the fresh buzz.
"You get off?"
"Yeah. But the comedown's a bitch."
"Then you need another one."
"And what's that supposed to lead to?"
"I got a key. Up the hill behind the Paradise, just the cream-
iest crib. People down the well on business tonight, if you
follow me...."
"If I follow you."
She took his hand between hers, her palms hot and dry.
"You're Yak, aren't you, Lupus? Gaijin soldierman for the
Yakuza."
"You got an eye, huh?" He withdrew his hand and fumbled
for a cigarette.
"How come you got all your fingers, then? I thought you
had to chop one off every time you screwed up."
"I never screw up." He lit his cigarette.
"I saw that girl you're with. Day I met you. Walks like
Hideo. Scares me." She smiled too widely. "I like that. She
like it with girls?"
"Never said. Who's Hideo?"
"3Jane's, what she calls it, retainer. Family retainer."
Case forced himself to stare dully at the Emergency crowd
while he spoke. "Dee-Jane?"
"Lady 3Jane. She's triff. Rich. Her father owns all this."
"This bar?"
"Freeside ! "
"No shit. You keepin' some class company, huh?" He raised
an eyebrow. Put his arm around her, his hand on her hip. "So
how you meet these aristos, Cathy? You some kinda closet
deb? You an' Bruce secret heirs to some ripe old credit? Huh?"
He spread his fingers, kneading the flesh beneath the thin black
cloth. She squirmed against him. Laughed.
"Oh, you know," she said, lids half lowered in what must
have been intended as a look of modesty, "she likes to party.
Bruce and I, we make the party circuit.... It gets real boring
for her, in there. Her old man lets her out sometimes, as long
as she brings Hideo to take care of her."
"Where's it get boring?'
"Straylight, they call it. She told me, oh, it's pretty, all the
pools and lilies.It's a castle, a real castle, all stone and sunsets."
She snuggled in against him. "Hey, Lupus, man, you need a
derm. So we can be together."
She wore a tiny leather purse on a slender neck-thong. Her
nails were bright pink against her boosted tan, bitten to the
quick. She opened the purse and withdrew a paperbacked bub-
ble with a blue derm inside. Something white tumbled to the
floor; Case stooped and picked it up. An origami crane.
"Hideo gave it to me," she said. "He tried to show me how,
but I can't ever get it right. The necks come out backwards."
She tucked the folded paper back into her purse. Case watched
as she tore the bubble away, peeled the derm from its backing,
and smoothed it across his inner wrist.
"3Jane, she's got a pointy face, nose like a bird?" He watched
his hands fumble an outline. "Dark hair? Young?"
"I guess. But she's triff, you know? Like, all that money."
The drug hit him like an express train, a white-hot column
of light mounting his spine from the region of his prostate,
illuminating the sutures of his skull with x-rays of short-cir-
cuited sexual energy. His teeth sang in their individual sockets
like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.
His bones, beneath the hazy envelope of flesh, were chromed
and polished, the joints lubricated with a film of silicone. Sand-
storms raged across the scoured floor of his skull, generating
waves of high thin static that broke behind his eyes, spheres
of purest crystal, expanding....
"Come on," she said, taking his hand. "You got it now.
We got it. Up the hill, we'll have it all night."
The anger was expanding, relentless, exponential, riding
out behind the betaphenethylamine rush like a carrier wave, a
seismic fluid, rich and corrosive. His erection was a bar of
lead. The faces around them in Emergency were painted doll
things, the pink and white of mouth parts moving, moving,
words emerging like discrete balloons of sound. He looked at
Cath and saw each pore in the tanned skin, eyes flat as dumb
glass, a tint of dead metal, a faint bloating, the most minute
asymmetries of breast and collarbone, the--something flared
white behind his eyes.
He dropped her hand and stumbled for the door, shoving
someone out of the way.
"Fuck you!" she screamed behind him, "you ripoff shit!"
He couldn't feel his legs. He used them like stilts, swaying
crazily across the flagstone pavement of Jules Verne, a distant
rumbling in his ears, his own blood, razored sheets of light
bisecting his skull at a dozen angles.
And then he was frozen, erect, fists tight against his thighs,
head back, his lips curled, shaking. While he watched the
loser's zodiac of Freeside, the nightclub constellations of the
hologram sky, shift, sliding fluid down the axis of darkness,
to swarm like live things at the dead center of reality. Until
they had arranged themselves, individually and in their hundreds,
to form a vast simple portrait, stippled the ultimate mono-
chrome, stars against night sky. Face of Miss Linda Lee.
When he was able to look away, to lower his eyes, he found
every other face in the street upraised, the strolling tourists
becalmed with wonder. And when the lights in the sky went
out, a ragged cheer went up from Jules Verne, to echo off the
terraces and ranked balconies of lunar concrete.
Somewhere a clock began to chime, some ancient bell out
of Europe.
Midnight.
He walked till morning.
The high wore away, the chromed skeleton corroding hourly,
flesh growing solid, the drug-flesh replaced with the meat of
his life. He couldn't think. He liked that very much, to be
conscious and unable to think. He seemed to become each
thing he saw: a park bench, a cloud of white moths around an
antique streetlight, a robot gardener striped diagonally with
black and yellow.
A recorded dawn crept along the Lado-Acheson system,
pink and lurid. He forced himself to eat an omelette in a De-
siderata cafe, to drink water, to smoke the last of his cigarettes.
The rooftop meadow of the Intercontinental was stirring as he
crossed it, an early breakfast crowd intent on coffee and crois-
sants beneath the striped umbrellas.
He still had his anger. That was like being rolled in some
alley and waking to discover your wallet still in your pocket,
untouched. He warmed himself with it, unable to give it a name
or an object.
He rode the elevator down to his level, fumbling in his
pocket for the Freeside credit chip that served as his key. Sleep
was becoming real, was something he might do. To lie down
on the sand-colored temperfoam and find the blankness again.
They were waiting there, the three of them, their perfect
white sportsclothes and stenciled tans setting off the handwoven
organic chic of the furniture. The girl sat on a wicker sofa, an
automatic pistol beside her on the leaf-patterned print of the
cushion.
"Turing," she said. "You are under arrest."