Neuromancer by William Gibson Read Free Book Online

Julie. And a go-to on somebody.”
    “What’s moving, old son?” Deane’s shirt was candy-striped cotton, the collar white
     and rigid, like porcelain.
    “Me, Julie. I’m leaving. Gone. But do me the favor, okay?”
    “Go-to on whom, old son?”
    “Gaijin name of Armitage, suite in the Hilton.”
    Deane put the pistol down. “Sit still, Case.” He tapped something out on a lap terminal.
     “It seems as though you know as much as my net does, Case. This gentleman seems to
     have a temporary arrangement with the Yakuza, and the sons of the neon chrysanthemum
     have ways of screening their allies from the likes of me. I wouldn’t have it any other
     way. Now, history. You said history.” He picked up the gun again, but didn’t point
     it directly at Case. “What sort of history?”
    “The war. You in the war, Julie?”
    “The war? What’s there to know? Lasted three weeks.”
    “Screaming Fist.”
    “Famous. Don’t they teach you history these days? Great bloody postwar political football,
     that was. Watergated all to hell and back. Your brass, Case, your Sprawlside brass
     in, where was it, McLean? In the bunkers, all of that . . . great scandal. Wasted
     a fair bit of patriotic young flesh in order to test some new technology. They knew
     about the Russians’ defenses, it came out later. Knew about the emps, magnetic pulse
     weapons. Sent these fellows in regardless, just to see.” Deane shrugged. “Turkey shoot
     for Ivan.”
    “Any of those guys make it out?”
    “Christ,” Deane said, “it’s been bloody years. . . . Though I do think a few did.
     One of the teams. Got hold of a Sov gunship. Helicopter, you know. Flew it back to
     Finland. Didn’t have entry codes, of course, and shot hell out of the Finnish defense
     forces in the process. Special Forces types.” Deane sniffed. “Bloody hell.”
    Case nodded. The smell of preserved ginger was overwhelming.
    “I spent the war in Lisbon, you know,” Deane said, putting the gun down. “Lovely place,
     Lisbon.”
    “In the service, Julie?”
    “Hardly. Though I did see action.” Deane smiled his pink smile. “Wonderful what a
     war can do for one’s markets.”
    “Thanks, Julie. I owe you one.”
    “Hardly, Case. And goodbye.”
    A ND LATER HE ’ D tell himself that the evening at Sammi’s had felt wrong from the start, that even
     as he’d followed Molly along that corridor, shuffling through a trampled mulch of
     ticket stubs and styrofoam cups, he’d sensed it. Linda’s death, waiting. . . .
    They’d gone to the Namban, after he’d seen Deane, and paid off his debt to Wage with
     a roll of Armitage’s New Yen. Wage had liked that, his boys had liked it less, and
     Molly had grinned at Case’s side with a kind of ecstatic feral intensity, obviously
     longing for one of them to make a move. Then he’d taken her back to the Chat for a
     drink.
    “Wasting your time, cowboy,” Molly said, when Case took an octagon from the pocket
     of his jacket.
    “How’s that? You want one?” He held the pill out to her.
    “Your new pancreas, Case, and those plugs in your liver. Armitage had them designed
     to bypass that shit.” She tapped the octagon with one burgundy nail. “You’re biochemically
     incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine.”
    “Shit,” he said. He looked at the octagon, then at her.
    “Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing’ll happen.”
    He did. Nothing did.
    Three beers later, she was asking Ratz about the fights.
    “Sammi’s,” Ratz said.
    “I’ll pass,” Case said, “I hear they kill each other down there.”
    An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny Thai in a white t-shirt and baggy
     rugby shorts.
    Sammi’s was an inflated dome behind a portside warehouse, taut gray fabric reinforced
     with a net of thin steel cables. The corridor, with a door at either end, was a crude
     airlock preserving the pressuredifferential that supported the dome. Fluorescent rings were screwed to