`Jane, love,' Riviera asked cheerfully, from somewhere out of sight, `are you enjoying yourself?'
`Leave us alone, Peter.'
`Playing doctor...' Suddenly Molly stared into her own face, the image suspended ten centimeters from her nose. There were no bandages. The left implant was shattered, a long finger of silvered plastic driven deep in a socket that was an inverted pool of blood.
`Hideo,' 3Jane said, stroking Molly's stomach,
`Books,' Maelcum said.
The library, the white steel shelves with their labels.
`I know where we are,' Case said. He looked back at the service cart. A curl of smoke was rising from the carpet. `So come on,' he said. `Cart. Cart?' It remained stationary. The Braun was plucking at the leg of his jeans, nipping at his ankle. He resisted a strong urge to kick it. `Yeah?'
It ticked its way around the door. He followed it.
The monitor in the library was another Sony, as old as the first one. The Braun paused beneath it and executed a sort of jig.
`Wintermute?'
The familiar features filled the screen. The Finn smiled.
`Time to check in, Case,' the Finn said, his eyes screwed up against the smoke of a cigarette. `C'mon, jack.'
The Braun threw itself against his ankle and began to climb his leg, its manipulators pinching his flesh through the thin black cloth. `Shit!' He slapped it aside and it struck the wall. Two of its limbs began to piston repeatedly, uselessly, pumping the air. `What's wrong with the goddam thing?'
`Burned out,' the Finn said. `Forget it. No problem. Jack in now.'
There were four sockets beneath the screen, but only one would accept the Hitachi adaptor.
He jacked in.
Nothing. Gray void.
No matrix, no grid. No cyberspace.
The deck was gone. His fingers were...
And on the far rim of consciousness, a scurrying, a fleeting impression of something rushing toward him, across leagues of black mirror.
He tried to scream.
There seemed to be a city, beyond the curve of beach, but it was far away.
He crouched on his haunches on the damp sand, his arms wrapped tight across his knees, and shook.
He stayed that way for what seemed a very long time, even after the shaking stopped. The city, if it was a city, was low and gray. At times it was obscured by banks of mist that came rolling in over the lapping surf. At one point he decided that it wasn't a city at all, but some single building, perhaps a ruin; he had no way of judging its distance. The sand was the shade of tarnished silver that hadn't gone entirely black. The beach was made of sand, the beach was very long, the sand was damp, the bottoms of his jeans were wet from the sand... He held himself and rocked, singing a song without words or tune.
The sky was a different silver. Chiba. Like the Chiba sky. Tokyo Bay? He turned his head and stared out to sea, longing for the hologram logo of Fuji Electric, for the drone of a helicopter, anything at all.
Behind him, a gull cried. He shivered.
A wind was rising. Sand stung his cheek. He put his face against his knees and wept, the sound of his sobbing as distant and alien as the cry of the searching gull. Hot urine soaked his jeans, dribbled on the sand, and quickly cooled in the wind off the water. When his tears were gone, his throat ached.
`Wintermute,' he mumbled to his knees, `Wintermute...'
It was growing dark, now, and when he shivered, it was with a cold that finally forced him to stand.
His knees and elbows ached. His nose was running; he wiped it on the cuff of his jacket, then searched one empty pocket after another. `Jesus,' he said, shoulders hunched, tucking his fingers beneath his arms for warmth. `Jesus.' His teeth began to chatter.