Нейромант

She stood up and stretched, catlike.

Armitage gets orders. Like something tells him to go off to Chiba, pick up a pillhead who's making one last wobble through the burnout belt, and trade a program for the operation that'll fix him up. We coulda bought twenty world class cowboys for what the market was ready to pay for that surgical program. You were good, but not that good..."

You know he died braindeath three times?"

In front of it, Molly's hands flowed through an intricate sequence of jive that he couldn't follow.

Her Sprawl wasn't his Sprawl, he decided. She'd led him through a dozen bars and clubs he'd never seen before,

Case picked at a shred of bacon that had lodged between his front teeth. He'd given up asking her where they were going and why; jabs in the ribs and the sign for silence were all he'd gotten in reply.

I saw you stroking that Sendai; man, it was pornographic." She laughed.

"Now go down to the freight elevator and bring up the cases you find there." Armitage handed him the magnetic key. "Go on. You'll enjoy this, Case. Like Christmas morning."

Case felt as though his brain were jammed.

Afterimage of a single hair-fine line of red light. Seared concrete beneath the thin soles of his shoes.

Seven days and he'd jack in. If he closed his eyes now, he'd see the matrix.

He wondered briefly what it would be like, working all your life for one zaibatsu. Company housing, company hymn, company funeral.

The holograms were ten-power magnifications;

Reflected colors flowed across Molly's lenses

No sound but the muted purring of the blowers and the amplified breathing of the fighters.

The air was damp and close with the smell of sweat and concrete.

Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen."
He did. Nothing did.

"Why I'm doing you the favor."

"Bitch," he said to the rose tint over Shiga. Down on Ninsei the holograms were vanishing like ghosts, and most of the neon was already cold and dead. He sipped thick black coffee from a street vendor's foam thimble and watched the sun come up.

Case felt the weight of the night come down on him like a bag of wet sand settling behind his eyes.