Neuromancer, page 27
“From where?”
“Centauri system.”
“Oh,” Case said. “Yeah? No shit?”
“No shit.”
And then the screen was blank.
He left the vodka on the cabinet. He packed his things. She’d bought him a lot of clothes he didn’t really need, but something kept him from just leaving them there. He was closing the last of the expensive calfskin bags when he remembered the shuriken. Pushing the flask aside, he picked it up, her first gift.
“No,” he said, and spun, the star leaving his fingers, flash of silver, to bury itself in the face of the wall screen. The screen woke, random patterns flickering feebly from side to side, as though it were trying to rid itself of something that caused it pain.
“I don’t need you,” he said.
HE SPENT THE bulk of his Swiss account on a new pancreas and liver, the rest on a new Ono-Sendai and a ticket back to the Sprawl.
He found work.
He found a girl who called herself Michael.
And one October night, punching himself past the scarlet tiers of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority, he saw three figures, tiny, impossible, who stood at the very edge of one of the vast steps of data. Small as they were, he could make out the boy’s grin, his pink gums, the glitter of the long gray eyes that had been Riviera’s. Linda still wore his jacket; she waved, as he passed. But the third figure, close behind her, arm across her shoulders, was himself.
Somewhere, very close, the laugh that wasn’t laughter.
He never saw Molly again.
Vancouver
July 1983
MY THANKS
to Bruce Sterling, to Lewis Shiner, to John Shirley, Helden. And to Tom Maddox, the inventor of ICE. And to the others, who know why.
Gibson, William, Neuromancer
