Free Neuromancer by William Gibson Page A

replicated them at odd intervals.
     The Panther Moderns were a softhead variant on the Scientists. If the technology had
     been available, the Big Scientists would all have had sockets stuffed with microsofts.
     It was the style thatmattered and the style was the same. The Moderns were mercenaries, practical jokers,
     nihilistic technofetishists.
    The one who showed up at the loft door with a box of diskettes from the Finn was a
     soft-voiced boy called Angelo. His face was a simple graft grown on collagen and shark-cartilage
     polysaccharides, smooth and hideous. It was one of the nastiest pieces of elective
     surgery Case had ever seen. When Angelo smiled, revealing the razor-sharp canines
     of some large animal, Case was actually relieved. Toothbud transplants. He’d seen
     that before.
    “You can’t let the little pricks generation-gap you,” Molly said. Case nodded, absorbed
     in the patterns of the Sense/Net ice.
    This was it. This was what he was, who he was, his being. He forgot to eat. Molly
     left cartons of rice and foam trays of sushi on the corner of the long table. Sometimes
     he resented having to leave the deck to use the chemical toilet they’d set up in a
     corner of the loft. Ice patterns formed and reformed on the screen as he probed for
     gaps, skirted the most obvious traps, and mapped the route he’d take through Sense/Net’s
     ice. It was good ice. Wonderful ice. Its patterns burned there while he lay with his
     arm under Molly’s shoulders, watching the red dawn through the steel grid of the skylight.
     Its rainbow pixel maze was the first thing he saw when he woke. He’d go straight to
     the deck, not bothering to dress, and jack in. He was cutting it. He was working.
     He lost track of days.
    And sometimes, falling asleep, particularly when Molly was off on one of her reconnaissance
     trips with her rented cadre of Moderns, images of Chiba came flooding back. Faces
     and Ninsei neon. Once he woke from a confused dream of Linda Lee, unable to recall
     who she was or what she’d ever meant to him. When he did remember, he jacked in and
     worked for nine straight hours.
    The cutting of Sense/Net’s ice took a total of nine days.
    “I said a week,” Armitage said, unable to conceal his satisfaction when Case showed
     him his plan for the run. “You took your own good time.”
    “Balls,” Case said, smiling at the screen. “That’s good work, Armitage.”
    “Yes,” Armitage admitted, “but don’t let it go to your head. Compared to what you’ll
     eventually be up against, this is an arcade toy.”
    “L OVE YOU , C AT Mother,” whispered the Panther Modern’s link man. His voice was modulated static
     in Case’s headset. “Atlanta, Brood. Looks go. Go, got it?” Molly’s voice was slightly
     clearer.
    “To hear is to obey.” The Moderns were using some kind of chickenwire dish in New
     Jersey to bounce the link man’s scrambled signal off a Sons of Christ the King satellite
     in geosynchronous orbit above Manhattan. They chose to regard the entire operation
     as an elaborate private joke, and their choice of comsats seemed to have been deliberate.
     Molly’s signals were being beamed up from a one-meter umbrella dish epoxy-ed to the
     roof of a black glass bank tower nearly as tall as the Sense/Net building.
    Atlanta. The recognition code was simple. Atlanta to Boston to Chicago to Denver,
     five minutes for each city. If anyone managed to intercept Molly’s signal, unscramble
     it, synth her voice, the code would tip the Moderns. If she remained in the building
     for more than twenty minutes, it was highly unlikely she’d be coming out at all.
    Case gulped the last of his coffee, settled the trodes in place, and scratched his
     chest beneath his black t-shirt. He had only a vague idea of what the Panther Moderns
     planned as a diversion for the Sense/Net security people. His job was to make sure
     the intrusion program he’d written would link with the Sense/Net