The lights dimmed.
“Le Restaurant Vingtième Siècle,” said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, “proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr. Peter Riviera.” Scattered applause from the other tables. A waiter lit a single candle and placed it in the center of their table, then began to remove the dishes. Soon a candle flickered at each of the restaurant’s dozen tables, and drinks were being poured.
“What’s happening?” Case asked Armitage, who said nothing.
Molly picked her teeth with a burgundy nail.
“Good evening,” Riviera said, stepping forward on a small stage at the far end of the room. Case blinked. In his discomfort, he hadn’t noticed the stage. He hadn’t seen where Riviera had come from. His uneasiness increased.
At first he assumed the man was illuminated by a spotlight.
Riviera glowed. The light clung around him like a skin, lit the dark hangings behind the stage. He was projecting.
Riviera smiled. He wore a white dinner jacket. On his lapel, blue coals burned in the depths of a black carnation. His fingernails flashed as he raised his hands in a gesture of greeting, an embrace for his audience. Case heard the shallow water lap against the side of the restaurant.
“Tonight,” Riviera said, his long eyes shining, “I would like to perform an extended piece for you. A new work.” A cool ruby of light formed in the palm of his upraised right hand. He dropped it. A gray dove fluttered up from the point of impact and vanished into the shadows. Someone whistled. More applause.
“The title of the work is ‘The Doll.’ ” Riviera lowered his hands. “I wish to dedicate its première here, tonight, to Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool.” A wave of polite applause. As it died, Riviera’s eyes seemed to find their table. “And to another lady.”
The restaurant’s lights died entirely, for a few seconds, leaving only the glow of candles. Riviera’s holographic aura had faded with the lights, but Case could still see him, standing with his head bowed.
Lines of faint light began to form, verticals and horizontals, sketching an open cube around the stage. The restaurant’s lights had come back up slightly, but the framework surrounding the stage might have been constructed of frozen moonbeams. Head bowed, eyes closed, arms rigid at his sides, Riviera seemed to quiver with concentration. Suddenly the ghostly cube was filled, had become a room, a room lacking its fourth wall, allowing the audience to view its contents.
Riviera seemed to relax slightly. He raised his head, but kept his eyes closed. “I’d always lived in the room,” he said. “I couldn’t remember ever having lived in any other room.” The room’s walls were yellowed white plaster. It contained two pieces of furniture. One was a plain wooden chair, the other an iron bedstead painted white. The paint had chipped and flaked, revealing the black iron. The mattress on the bed was bare. Stained ticking with faded brown stripes. A single bulb dangled above the bed on a twisted length of black wire. Case could see the thick coating of dust on the bulb’s upper curve. Riviera opened his eyes.
“I’d been alone in the room, always.” He sat on the chair, facing the bed. The blue coals still burned in the black flower on his lapel. “I don’t know when I first began to dream of her,” he said, “but I do remember that at first she was only a haze, a shadow.”
There was something on the bed. Case blinked. Gone.
“I couldn’t quite hold her, hold her in my mind. But I wanted to hold her, hold her and more. . . .” His voice carried perfectly in the hush of the restaurant. Ice clicked against the side of a glass. Someone giggled. Someone else asked a whispered question in Japanese. “I decided that if I could visualize some part of her, only a small part, if I could see that part perfectly, in the most perfect detail. . . .”
A woman’s hand lay on the mattress now, palm up, the white fingers pale.
Riviera leaned forward, picked up the hand, and began to stroke it gently. The fingers moved. Riviera raised the hand to his mouth and began to lick the tips of the fingers. The nails were coated with a burgundy lacquer.
A hand, Case saw, but not a severed hand; the skin swept back smoothly, unbroken and unscarred. He remembered a tattooed lozenge of vatgrown flesh in the window of a Ninsei surgical boutique. Riviera was holding the hand to his lips, licking its palm. The fingers tentatively caressed his face. But now a second hand lay on the bed. When Riviera reached for it, the fingers of the first were locked around his wrist, a bracelet of flesh and bone.
The act progressed with a surreal internal logic of its own. The arms were next. Feet. Legs. The legs were very beautiful. Case’s head throbbed. His throat was dry. He drank the last of the wine.
Riviera was in the bed now, naked. His clothing had been a part of the projection, but Case couldn’t remember seeing it fade away. The black flower lay at the foot of the bed, still seething with its blue inner flame. Then the torso formed, as Riviera caressed it into being, white, headless, and perfect, sheened with the faintest gloss of sweat.
Molly’s body. Case stared, his mouth open. But it wasn’t Molly; it was Molly as Riviera imagined her. The breasts were wrong, the nipples larger, too dark. Riviera and the limbless torso writhed together on the bed, crawled over by the hands with their bright nails. The bed was thick now with folds of yellowed, rotting lace that crumbled at a touch. Motes of dust boiled around Riviera and the twitching limbs, the scurrying, pinching, caressing hands.
Case glanced at Molly. Her face was blank; the colors of Riviera’s projection heaved and turned in her mirrors. Armitage was leaning forward, his hands round the stem of a wineglass, his pale eyes fixed on the stage, the glowing room.
Now limbs and torso had merged, and Riviera shuddered. The head was there, the image complete. Molly’s face, with smooth quicksilver drowning the eyes. Riviera and the Molly-image began to couple with a renewed intensity. Then the image slowly extended a clawed hand and extruded its five blades. With a languorous, dreamlike deliberation, it raked Riviera’s bare back. Case caught a glimpse of exposed spine, but he was already up and stumbling for the door.
He vomited over a rosewood railing into the quiet waters of the lake. Something that had seemed to close around his head like a vise had released him now. Kneeling, his cheek against the cool wood, he stared across the shallow lake at the bright aura of the Rue Jules Verne.
Case had seen the medium before; when he’d been a teenager in the Sprawl, they’d called it “dreaming real.” He remembered thin Puerto Ricans under East Side streetlights, dreaming real to the quick beat of a salsa, dreamgirls shuddering and turning, the onlookers clapping in time. But that had needed a van full of gear and a clumsy trode helmet.
What Riviera dreamed, you got. Case shook his aching head and spat into the lake.
He could guess the end, the finale. There was an inverted symmetry: Riviera puts the dreamgirl together, the dreamgirl takes him apart. With those hands. Dreamblood soaking the rotten lace.
Cheers from the restaurant, applause. Case stood and ran his hands over his clothes. He turned and walked back into the Vingtième Siècle.
Molly’s chair was empty. The stage was deserted. Armitage sat alone, still staring at the stage, the stem of the wineglass between his fingers.
“Where is she?” Case asked.
“Gone,” Armitage said.
“She go after him?”
“No.” There was a soft tink. Armitage looked down at the glass. His left hand came up holding the bulb of glass with its measure of red wine. The broken stem protruded like a sliver of ice. Case took it from him and set it in a water glass.
“Tell me where she went, Armitage.”
The lights came up. Case looked into the pale eyes. Nothing there at all. “She’s gone to prepare herself. You won’t see her again. You’ll be together during the run.”
“Why did Riviera do that to her?”
Armitage stood, adjusting the lapels of his jacket. “Get some sleep, Case.”
“We run, tomorrow?”
Armitage smiled his meaningless smile and walked away, toward the exit.
Case rubbed his forehead and looked around the room. The diners were rising, women smiling as men made jokes. He noticed the balcony for the first time, candles still flickering there in private darkness. He heard the clink of silverware, muted conversation. The candles threw dancing shadows on the ceiling.
The girl’s face appeared as abruptly as one of Riviera’s projections, her small hands on the polished wood of the balustrade; she leaned forward, face rapt, it seemed to him, her dark eyes intent on something beyond. The stage. It was a striking face, but not beautiful. Triangular, the cheekbones high yet strangely fragile-looking, mouth wide and firm, balanced oddly by a narrow, avian nose with flaring nostrils. And then she was gone, back into private laughter and the dance of candles.
As he left the restaurant, he noticed the two young Frenchmen and their girlfriend, who were waiting for the boat to the far shore and the nearest casino.
THEIR ROOM WAS silent, the temperfoam smooth as some beach after a retreating tide. Her bag was gone. He looked for a note. There was nothing. Several seconds passed before the scene beyond the window registered through his tension and unhappiness. He looked up and saw a view of Desiderata, expensive shops: Gucci, Tsuyako, Hermes, Liberty.
He stared, then shook his head and crossed to a panel he hadn’t bothered examining. He turned the hologram off and was rewarded with the condos that terraced the far slope.
He picked up the phone and carried it out to the cool balcony.
“Get me a number for the Marcus Garvey,” he told the desk. “It’s a tug, registered out of Zion cluster.”
The chip voice recited a ten-digit number. “Sir,” it added, “the registration in question is Panamanian.”
Maelcum answered on the fifth tone. “Yo?”
“Case. You got a modem, Maelcum?”
“Yo. On th’ navigation comp, ya know.”
“Can you get it off for me, man? Put it on my Hosaka. Then turn my deck on. It’s the stud with the ridges on it.”
“How you doin’ in there, mon?”
“Well, I need some help.”
“Movin’, mon. I get th’ modem.”
Case listened to faint static while Maelcum attached the simple phone link. “Ice this,” he told the Hosaka, when he heard it beep.
“You are speaking from a heavily monitored location,” the computer advised primly.
“Fuck it,” he said. “Forget the ice. No ice. Access the construct. Dixie?”
“Hey, Case.” The Flatline spoke through the Hosaka’s voice chip, the carefully engineered accent lost entirely.
“Dix, you’re about to punch your way in here and get something for me. You can be as blunt as you want. Molly’s in here somewhere and I wanna know where. I’m in 335W, the Intercontinental. She was registered here too, but I don’t know what name she was using. Ride in on this phone and do their records for me.”
“No sooner said,” the Flatline said. Case heard the white sound of the invasion. He smiled. “Done. Rose Kolodny. Checked out. Take me a few minutes to screw their security net deep enough to get a fix.”
“Go.”
The phone whined and clicked with the construct’s efforts. Case carried it back into the room and put the receiver face up on the temperfoam. He went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. As he was stepping back out, the monitor on the room’s Braun audiovisual complex lit up. A Japanese pop star reclining against metallic cushions. An unseen interviewer asked a question in German. Case stared. The screen jumped with jags of blue interference. “Case, baby, you lose your mind, man?” The voice was slow, familiar.
The glass wall of the balcony clicked in with its view of Desiderata, but the street scene blurred, twisted, became the interior of the Jarre de Thé, Chiba, empty, red neon replicated to scratched infinity in the mirrored walls.
Lonny Zone stepped forward, tall and cadaverous, moving with the slow undersea grace of his addiction. He stood alone among the square tables, his hands in the pockets of his gray sharkskin slacks. “Really, man, you’re lookin’ very scattered.”
The voice came from the Braun’s speakers.
“Wintermute,” Case said.
The pimp shrugged languidly and smiled.
“Where’s Molly?”
“Never you mind. You’re screwing up tonight, Case. The Flatline’s ringing bells all over Freeside. I didn’t think you’d do that, man. It’s outside the profile.”
“So tell me where she is and I’ll call him off.”
Zone shook his head.
“You can’t keep too good track of your women, can you, Case? Keep losin’ ’em, one way or another.”
“I’ll bring this thing down around your ears,” Case said.
“No. You aren’t that kind, man. I know that. You know something, Case? I figure you’ve got it figured out that it was me told Deane to off that little cunt of yours in Chiba.”
“Don’t,” Case said, taking an involuntary step toward the window.
“But I didn’t. What’s it matter, though? How much does it really matter to Mr. Case? Quit kidding yourself. I know your Linda, man. I know all the Lindas. Lindas are a generic product in my line of work. Know why she decided to rip you off? Love. So you’d give a shit. Love? Wanna talk love? She loved you. I know that. For the little she was worth, she loved you. You couldn’t handle it. She’s dead.”
Case’s fist glanced off the glass.
“Don’t fuck up the hands, man. Soon you punch deck.”
Zone vanished, replaced by Freeside night and the lights of the condos. The Braun shut off.
From the bed, the phone bleated steadily.
“Case?” The Flatline was waiting. “Where you been? I got it, but it isn’t much.” The construct rattled off an address. “Place had some weird ice around it for a nightclub. That’s all I could get without leaving a calling card.”
“Okay,” Case said. “Tell the Hosaka to tell Maelcum to disconnect the modem. Thanks, Dix.”
“A pleasure.”
He sat on the bed for a long time, savoring the new thing, the treasure.
Rage.
“HEY. LUPUS. HEY, Cath, it’s friend Lupus.” Bruce stood naked in his doorway, dripping wet, his pupils enormous. “But we’re just having a shower. You wanna wait? Wanna shower?”
“No. Thanks. I want some help.” He pushed the boy’s arm aside and stepped into the room.
“Hey, really, man, we’re . . .”
“Going to help me. You’re really glad to see me. Because we’re friends, right? Aren’t we?”
Bruce blinked. “Sure.”
Case recited the address the Flatline had given him.
“I knew he was a gangster,” Cath called cheerfully from the shower.
“I gotta Honda trike,” Bruce said, grinning vacantly.
“We go now,” Case said.
“THAT LEVEL’S THE CUBICLES,” Bruce said, after asking Case to repeat the address for the eighth time. He climbed back into the Honda. Condensation dribbled from the hydrogen-cell exhaust as the red fiberglass chassis swayed on chromed shocks. “You be long?”
“No saying. But you’ll wait.”
“We’ll wait, yeah.” He scratched his bare chest. “That last part of the address, I think that’s a cubicle. Number forty-three.”
“You expected, Lupus?” Cath craned forward over Bruce’s shoulder and peered up. The drive had dried her hair.
“Not really,” Case said. “That’s a problem?”
“Just go down to the lowest level and find your friend’s cubicle. If they let you in, fine. If they don’t wanna see you . . .” She shrugged.
Case turned and descended a spiral staircase of floral iron. Six turns and he’d reached a nightclub. He paused and lit a Yeheyuan, looking over the tables. Freeside suddenly made sense to him. Biz. He could feel it humming in the air. This was it, the local action. Not the high-gloss facade of the Ru
e Jules Verne, but the real thing. Commerce. The dance. The crowd was mixed; maybe half were tourists, the other half residents of the islands.
“Downstairs,” he said to a passing waiter, “I want to go downstairs.” He showed his Freeside chip. The man gestured toward the rear of the club. He walked quickly past the crowded tables, hearing fragments of half a dozen European languages as he passed.
“I want a cubicle,” he said to the girl who sat at the low desk, a terminal on her lap. “Lower level.” He handed her his chip.
“Gender preference?” She passed the chip across a glass plate on the face of the terminal.
“Female,” he said automatically.
“Number thirty-five. Phone if it isn’t satisfactory. You can access our special services display beforehand, if you like.” She smiled. She returned his chip.
An elevator slid open behind her.
The corridor lights were blue. Case stepped out of the elevator and chose a direction at random. Numbered doors. A hush like the halls of an expensive clinic.
He found his cubicle. He’d been looking for Molly’s; now, confused, he raised his chip and placed it against a black sensor set directly beneath the number plate.
Magnetic locks. The sound reminded him of Cheap Hotel.
The girl sat up in bed and said something in German. Her eyes were soft and unblinking. Automatic pilot. A neural cutout. He backed out of the cubicle and closed the door.
The door of forty-three was like all the others. He hesitated. The silence of the hallway said that the cubicles were soundproof. It was pointless to try the chip. He rapped his knuckles against enameled metal. Nothing. The door seemed to absorb the sound.
He placed his chip against the black plate.
The bolts clicked.
She seemed to hit him, somehow, before he’d actually gotten the door open. He was on his knees, the steel door against his back, the blades of her rigid thumbs quivering centimeters from his eyes. . . .
“Jesus Christ,” she said, cuffing the side of his head as she rose. “You’re an idiot to try that. How the hell you open those locks, Case? Case? You okay?” She leaned over him.
“Chip,” he said, struggling for breath. Pain was spreading from his chest. She helped him up and shoved him into the cubicle.
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