Count Zero

by William Gibson

  Eyes wide, Marly watched the uncounted things swing past.

  A yellowing kid glove, the faceted crystal stopper from some vial of vanished perfume, an armless doll with a face of French porcelain, a fat, gold-fitted black fountain pen, rectangular segments of perf board, the crumpled red and green snake of a silk cravat . . . Endless, the slow swarm, the spinning things . . .

  Jones tumbled up through the silent storm, laughing, grabbing an arm tipped with a glue gun. “Always makes me want to laugh, to see it. But the boxes always make me sad . . .”

  “Yes,” she said, “they make me sad, too. But there are sadnesses and sadnesses . . .”

  “Quite right.” He grinned. “No way to make it go, though. Guess the spirit has to move it, or anyway that’s how old Wig has it. He used to come out here a lot. I think the voices are stronger for him here. But lately they’ve been talking to him wherever, it seems like . . .”

  She looked at him through the thicket of manipulators. He was very dirty, very young, with his wide blue eyes under a tangle of brown curls. He wore a stained gray zipsuit, its collar shiny with grime. “You must be mad,” she said with something like admiration in her voice, “you must be totally mad, to stay here . . .”

  He laughed. “Wigan’s madder than a sack of bugs. Not me.”

  She smiled. “No, you’re crazy. I’m crazy, too . . .”

  “Hello then,” he said, looking past her. “What’s this? One of Wig’s sermons, looks like, and no way we can shut it off without me cutting the power . . .”

  She turned her head and saw diagonals of color strobe across the rectangular face of a large screen glued crookedly to the curve of the dome. The screen was occluded, for a second, by the passage of a dressmaker’s dummy, and then the face of Josef Virek filled it, his soft blue eyes glittering behind round lenses.

  “Hello, Marly,” he said. “I can’t see you, but I’m sure I know where you are . . .”

  “That’s one of Wig’s sermon screens,” Jones said, rubbing his face. “Put ’em up all over the Place, ’cause he figured one day he’d have people up here to preach to. This geezer’s linked in through Wig’s communication gear, I guess. Who is he?”

  “Virek,” she said.

  “Thought he was older . . .”

  “It’s a generated image,” she said. “Ray tracing, texture mapping . . .” She stared as the face smiled out at her from the curve of the dome, beyond the slow-motion hurricane of lost things, minor artifacts of countless lives, tools and toys and gilded buttons.

  “I want you to know,” the image said, “that you have fulfilled your contract. My psychoprofile of Marly Krushkhova predicted your response to my gestalt. Broader profiles indicated that your presence in Paris would force Maas to play their hand. Soon, Marly, I will know exactly what it is that you have found. For four years I’ve known something that Maas didn’t know. I’ve known that Mitchell, the man Maas and the world regards as the inventor of the new biochip processes, was being fed the concepts that resulted in his breakthroughs. I added you to an intricate array of factors, Marly, and things came to a most satisfying head. Maas, without understanding what they were doing, surrendered the location of the conceptual source. And you have reached it. Paco will be arriving shortly . . .”

  “You said you wouldn’t follow,” she said. “I knew you lied . . .”

  “And now, Marly, at last I think I shall be free. Free of the four hundred kilograms of rioting cells they wall away behind surgical steel in a Stockholm industrial park. Free, eventually, to inhabit any number of real bodies, Marly. Forever.”

  “Shit,” Jones said, “this one’s as bad as Wig. What’s he think he’s talking about?”

  “About his jump,” she said, remembering her talk with Andrea, the smell of cooking prawns in the cramped little kitchen. “The next stage of his evolution . . .”

  “You understand it?”

  “No,” she said, “but I know that it will be bad, very bad . . .” She shook her head.

  “Convince the inhabitants of the cores to admit Paco and his crew, Marly,” Virek said. “I purchased the cores an hour before you departed Orly, from a contractor in Pakistan. A bargain, Marly, a great bargain. Paco will oversee my interests, as usual.”

  And then the screen was dark.

  “Here now,” Jones said, pivoting around a folded manipulator and taking her hand, “what’s so bad about all that? He owns it now, and he said you’d done your bit . . . I don’t know what old Wig’s good for, except to listen to the voices, but he’s not long for this side anyway. Me, I’m as easy for out as not . . .”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “You can’t. He’s found his way to something, something he’s sought for years. But nothing he wants can be good. For anyone . . . I’ve seen him, I’ve felt it . . .”

  And then the steel arm she held vibrated and began to move, the whole turret rotating with a muted hum of servos.

  30

  HIRED MAN

  TURNER STARED AT Conroy’s face on the screen of the office phone. “Go on,” he said to Angie. “You go with her.” The tall black girl with the resistors woven into her hair stepped forward and gently put her arm around Mitchell’s daughter, crooning something in that same click-infested creole. The kid in the T-shirt was still gaping at her, his jaw slack. “Come on, Bobby,” the black girl said. Turner glanced across the desk at the man with the wounded hand, who wore a wrinkled white evening jacket and a bolo tie with thongs of braided black leather. Jammer, Turner decided, the club owner. Jammer cradled his hand in his lap, on a blue-striped towel from the bar. He had a long face, the kind of beard that needed constant shaving, and the hard, narrow eyes of a stone professional. As their eyes met, Turner realized that the man sat well out of the line of the phone’s camera, his swivel chair pushed back into a corner.

  The kid in the T-shirt, Bobby, shuffled out behind Angie and the black girl, his mouth still open.

  “You could’ve saved us both a lot of hassle, Turner,” Conroy said. “You could’ve called me. You could’ve called your agent in Geneva.”

  “How about Hosaka,” Turner said, “could I have called them?”

  Conroy shook his head, slowly.

  “Who are you working for, Conroy? You went double on this one, didn’t you?”

  “But not on you, Turner. If it had gone down the way I planned it, you’d have been in Bogotá, with Mitchell. The railgun couldn’t fire until the jet was out, and if we cut it right, Hosaka would have figured Maas took the whole sector out to stop Mitchell. But Mitchell didn’t make it, did he, Turner?”

  “He never planned to,” Turner said.

  Conroy nodded. “Yeah. And the security on the mesa picked up the girl, going out. That’s her, isn’t it, Mitchell’s daughter . . .”

  Turner was silent.

  “Sure,” Conroy said, “figures . . .”

  “I killed Lynch,” Turner said, to steer the subject away from Angie. “But just before the hammer came down, Webber told me she was working for you . . .”

  “They both were,” Conroy said, “but neither one knew about the other.” He shrugged.

  “What for?”

  Conroy smiled. “Because you’d have missed ’em if they weren’t there, wouldn’t you? Because you know my style, and if I hadn’t been flying all my usual colors, you’d have started to wonder. And I knew you’d never sell out. Mr. Instant Loyalty, right? Mr. Bushido. You were bankable, Turner. Hosaka knew that. That’s why they insisted I bring you in . . .”

  “You haven’t answered my first question, Conroy. Who did you go double for?”

  “A man named Virek,” Conroy said. “The moneyman. That’s right, same one. He’d been trying to buy Mitchell for years. For that matter, he’d been trying to buy Maas. No go. They’re getting so rich, he couldn’t touch them. There was a standing offer for Mitchell making the rounds. A blind offer. When Hosaka heard from Mitchell and called me in, I decided to check that offer out. Just out
of curiosity. But before I could, Virek’s team was on me. It wasn’t a hard deal to cut, Turner, believe me.”

  “I believe you.”

  “But Mitchell fucked us all over, didn’t he, Turner? Good and solid.”

  “So they killed him.”

  “He killed himself,” Conroy said, “according to Virek’s moles on the mesa. As soon as he saw the kid off in that ultralight. Cut his throat with a scalpel.”

  “Lot of dead people around, Conroy,” Turner said.

  “Oakey’s dead, and the Jap who was flying that copter for you.”

  “Figured that when they didn’t come back,” Conroy shrugged.

  “They were trying to kill us,” Turner said.

  “No, man, they just wanted to talk . . . Anyway, we didn’t know about the girl then. We just knew you were gone and that the damn jet hadn’t made it to the strip in Bogotá. We didn’t start thinking about the girl until we took a look at your brother’s farm and found the jet. Your brother wouldn’t tell Oakey anything. Pissed off ’cause Oakey burned his dogs. Oakey said it looked like a woman had been living there, too, but she didn’t turn up . . .”

  “What about Rudy?”

  Conroy’s face was a perfect blank. Then he said, “Oakey got what he needed off the monitors. Then we knew about the girl.”

  Turner’s back was aching. The holster strap was cutting into his chest. I don’t feel anything, he thought, I don’t feel anything at all . . .

  “I’ve got a question for you, Turner. I’ve got a couple. But the main one is, what the fuck are you doing in there?”

  “Heard it was a hot club, Conroy.”

  “Yeah. Real exclusive. So exclusive, you had to break up two of my doormen to get in. They knew you were coming, Turner, the spades and that punk. Why else would they let you in?”

  “You’ll have to work that one out, Connie. You seem to have a lot of access, these days . . .”

  Conroy leaned closer to his phone’s camera. “You bet your ass. Virek’s had people all over the Sprawl for months, feeling out a rumor, cowboy gossip that there was an experimental biosoft floating around. Finally his people focused on the Finn, but another team, a Maas team, turned up, obviously after the same thing. So Virek’s team just kicked back and watched the Maas boys, and the Maas boys started blowing people away. So Virek’s team picked up on the spades and little Bobby and the whole thing. They laid it all out for me when I told ’em I figured you’d headed this way from Rudy’s. When I saw where they were headed, I hired some muscle to ice ’em in there, until I could get somebody I could trust to go in after them . . .”

  “Those dusters out there?” Turner smiled. “You just dropped the ball, Connie. You can’t go anywhere for professional help, can you? Somebody’s twigged that you doubled, and a lot of pros died, out there. So you’re hiring shitheads with funny haircuts. The pros have all heard you’ve got Hosaka after your ass, haven’t they, Connie? And they all know what you did.” Turner was grinning now; out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the man in the dinner jacket was smiling, too, a thin smile with lots of neat small teeth, like white grains of corn . . .

  “It’s that bitch Slide,” Conroy said. “I could’ve taken her out on the rig . . . She punched her way in somewhere and started asking questions. I don’t even think she’s really on to it, yet, but she’s been making sounds in certain circles . . . Anyway, yeah, you got the picture. But it doesn’t help your ass any, not now. Virek wants the girl. He’s pulled his people off the other thing and now I’m running things for him. Money, Turner, money like a zaibatsu . . .”

  Turner stared at the face, remembering Conroy in the bar of a jungle hotel. Remembering him later, in Los Angeles, making his pass, explaining the covert economics of corporate defection . . . “Hi, Connie,” Turner said, “I know you, don’t I?”

  Conroy smiled. “Sure, baby.”

  “And I know the offer. Already. You want the girl.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the split, Connie. You know I only work fifty-fifty, right?”

  “Hey,” Conroy said, “this is the big one. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Turner stared at the man’s image.

  “Well,” Conroy said, still smiling, “what do you say?”

  And Jammer reached out and pulled the phone’s line from the wall plug. “Timing,” he said. “Timing’s always important.” He let the plug drop. “If you’d told him, he’d have moved right away. This way buys us time. He’ll try to get back, try to figure what happened.”

  “How do you know what I was going to say?”

  “Because I seen people. I seen a lot of them, too fucking many. Particularly I seen a lot like you. You got it written across your face, mister, and you were gonna tell him he could eat shit and die.” Jammer hunched his way up in the office chair, grimacing as his hand moved inside the bar towel. “Who’s this Slide he was talking about? A jockey?”

  “Jaylene Slide. Los Angeles. Top gun.”

  “She was the one hijacked Bobby,” Jammer said. “So she’s damn close to your pal on the phone . . .”

  “She probably doesn’t know it, though.”

  “Let’s see what we can do about that. Get the boy back in here.”

  31

  VOICES

  “I’D BETTER FIND old Wig,” he said.

  She was watching the manipulators, hypnotized by the way they moved; as they picked through the swirl of things, they also caused it, grasping and rejecting, the rejected objects whirling away, striking others, drifting into new alignments. The process stirred them gently, slowly, perpetually.

  “I’d better,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Go find Wig. He might get up to something, if your bossman’s people turn up. Don’t want him to hurt himself, y’know.” He looked sheepish, vaguely embarrassed.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m fine, I’ll watch.” She remembered the Wig’s mad eyes, the craziness she’d felt roll off him in waves; she remembered the ugly cunning she’d sensed in his voice, over the Sweet Jane’s radio. Why would Jones show this kind of concern? But then she thought about what it would be like, living in the Place, the dead cores of Tessier-Ashpool. Anything human, anything alive, might come to seem quite precious, here . . . “You’re right,” she said. “Go and find him.”

  The boy smiled nervously and kicked off, tumbling for the opening where the line was anchored. “I’ll come back for you,” he said. “Remember where we left your suit . . .”

  The turret swung back and forth, humming, the manipulators darting, finishing the new poem . . .

  She was never certain, afterward, that the voices were real, but eventually she came to feel that they had been a part of one of those situations in which real becomes merely another concept.

  She’d taken off her jacket, because the air in the dome seemed to have grown warmer, as though the ceaseless movement of the arms generated heat. She’d anchored the jacket and her purse on a strut beside the sermon screen. The box was nearly finished now, she thought, although it moved so quickly, in the padded claws, that it was difficult to see . . . Abruptly, it floated free, tumbling end over end, and she sprang for it instinctively, caught it, and went tumbling past the flashing arms, her treasure in her arms. Unable to slow herself, she struck the far side of the dome, bruising her shoulder and tearing her blouse. Drifting, stunned, she cradled the box, staring through the rectangle of glass at an arrangement of brown old maps and tarnished mirror. The seas of the cartographers had been cut away, exposing the flaking mirrors, landmasses afloat on dirty silver . . . She looked up in time to see a glittering arm snag the floating sleeve of her Brussels jacket. Her purse, half a meter behind it and tumbling gracefully, went next, hooked by a manipulator tipped with an optic sensor and a simple claw.

  She watched as her things were drawn into the ceaseless dance of the arms. Minutes later, the jacket came whirling out again. Neat squares and rectangles seemed to have be
en cut away, and she found herself laughing. She released the box she held. “Go ahead,” she said. “I am honored.” The arms whirled and flashed, and she heard the whine of a tiny saw.

  I am honored I am honored I am honored—Echo of her voice in the dome setting up a shifting forest of smaller, partial sounds, and behind them, very faint . . . Voices . . .

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” she called, adding to the ring of sound, ripples and reflections of her fragmented voice.

  —Yes, I am here.

  “Wigan would say you’ve always been here, wouldn’t he?”

  —Yes, but it isn’t true. I came to be, here. Once I was not. Once, for a brilliant time, time without duration, I was everywhere as well . . . But the bright time broke. The mirror was flawed. Now I am only one . . . But I have my song, and you have heard it. I sing with these things that float around me, fragments of the family that funded my birth. There are others, but they will not speak to me. Vain, the scattered fragments of myself, like children. Like men. They send me new things, but I prefer the old things. Perhaps I do their bidding. They plot with men, my other selves, and men imagine they are gods . . .

  “You are the thing that Virek seeks, aren’t you?”

  —No. He imagines that he can translate himself, code his personality into my fabric. He yearns to be what I once was. What he might become most resembles the least of my broken selves . . .

  “Are you—are you sad?”

  —No.

  “But your—your songs are sad.”

  —My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you. Watch my arms. There is only the dance. These things you treasure are shells.