Case looked up at him through the ache and bitterness of betaphenethylamine. `How old are you, boss?'

`Old enough to know that you are fucked, burnt, that this is over and you are in the way.'

`One thing,' Case said, and drew on his cigarette. He blew the smoke up at the Turing Registry agent. `Do you guys have any real jurisdiction out here? I mean, shouldn't you have the Freeside security team in on this party? It's their turf, isn't it?' He saw the dark eyes harden in the lean boy face and tensed for the blow, but Pierre only shrugged.

`It doesn't matter,' Roland said. `You will come with us. We are at home with situations of legal ambiguity. The treaties under which our arm of the Registry operates grant us a great deal of flexibility. And we createflexibility, in situations where it is required.' The mask of amiability was down, suddenly, Roland's eyes as hard as Pierre's.

`You are worse than a fool,' Michle said, getting to her feet, the pistol in her hand. `You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?' There was a knowing weariness in her young voice that no nineteen-year-old could have mustered. `You will dress now. You will come with us. Along with the one you call Armitage, you will return with us to Geneva and give testimony in the trial of this intelligence. Otherwise, we kill you. Now.' She raised the pistol, a smooth black Walther with an integral silencer.

`I'm dressing already,' he said, stumbling toward the bed. His legs were still numb, clumsy. He fumbled with a clean t-shirt.

`We have a ship standing by. We will erase Pauley's construct with a pulse weapon.'

`Sense/Net'll be pissed,' Case said, thinking: and all the evidence in the Hosaka.

`They are in some difficulty already, for having owned such a thing.'

Case pulled the shirt over his head. He saw the shuriken on the bed, lifeless metal, his star. He felt for the anger. It was gone. Time to give in, to roll with it... He thought of the toxin sacs. `Here comes the meat,' he muttered.

In the elevator to the meadow, he thought of Molly. She might already be in Straylight. Hunting Riviera. Hunted, probably, by Hideo, who was almost certainly the ninja clone of the Finn's story, the one who'd come to retrieve the talking head.

He rested his forehead against the matte black plastic of a wall panel and closed his eyes. His limbs were wood, old, warped and heavy with rain.

Lunch was being served beneath the trees, under the bright umbrellas. Roland and Michle fell into character, chattering brightly in French. Pierre came behind. Michle kept the muzzle of her pistol close to his ribs, concealing the gun with a white duck jacket she draped over her arm.

Crossing the meadow, weaving between the tables and the trees, he wondered if she would shoot him if he collapsed now. Black fur boiled at the borders of his vision. He glanced up at the hot white band of the Lado-Acheson armature and saw a giant butterfly banking gracefully against recorded sky.

At the edge of the meadow they came to railinged cliffside, wild flowers dancing in the updraft from the canyon that was Desiderata. Michle tossed her short dark hair and pointed, saying something in French to Roland. She sounded genuinely happy. Case followed the direction of her gesture and saw the curve of planing lakes, the white glint of casinos, turquoise rectangles of a thousand pools, the bodies of bathers, tiny bronze hieroglyphs, all held in serene approximation of gravity against the endless curve of Freeside's hull.

They followed the railing to an ornate iron bridge that arched over Desiderata. Michle prodded him with the muzzle of the Walther.

`Take it easy, I can't hardly walk today.'

They were a little over a quarter of the way across when the microlight struck, its electric engine silent until the carbon fiber prop chopped away the top of Pierre's skull.

They were in the thing's shadow for an instant, Case felt the hot blood spray across the back of his neck, and then someone tripped him. He rolled, seeing Michle on her back, knees up, aiming the Walther with both hands. That's a waste of effort,he thought, with the strange lucidity of shock. She was trying to shoot down the microlight.

And then he was running. He looked back as he passed the first of the trees. Roland was running after him. He saw the fragile biplane strike the iron railing of the bridge, crumple, cartwheel, sweeping the girl with it down into Desiderata.

Roland hadn't looked back. His face was fixed, white, his teeth bared. He had something in his hand.

The gardening robot took Roland as he passed that same tree. It fell straight out of the groomed branches, a thing like a crab, diagonally striped with black and yellow.

`You killed 'em,' Case panted, running. `Crazy motherfucker, you killed 'em all...'

The little train shot through its tunnel at eighty kilometers per hour. Case kept his eyes closed. The shower had helped, but he'd lost his breakfast when he'd looked down and seen Pierre's blood washing pink across the white tiles.

Gravity fell away as the spindle narrowed. Case's stomach churned.

Aerol was waiting with his scooter beside the dock.

`Case, mon, big problem.' The soft voice faint in his phones. He chinned the volume control and peered into the Lexan face-plate of Aerol's helmet.

`Gotta get to Garvey,Aerol.'

`Yo. Strap in, mon. But Garveycaptive. Yacht, came before, she came back. Now she lockin'~ steady on Marcus Garvey.'

Turing? `Came before?' Case climbed into the scooter's frame and began to fasten the straps.

`Japan yacht. Brought you package...'

Armitage.

Confused images of wasps and spiders rose in Case's mind as they came in sight of Marcus Garvey.The little tug was snug against the gray thorax of a sleek, insectile ship five times her length. The arms of grapples stood out against Garvey's patched hull with the strange clarity of vacuum and raw sunlight. A pale corrugated gangway curved out of the yacht, snaked sideways to avoid the tug's engines, and covered the aft hatch. There was something obscene about the arrangement, but it had more to do with ideas of feeding than of sex.

`What's happening with Maelcum?'

`Maelcum fine. Nobody come down the tube. Yacht pilot talk to him, say relax.'

As they swung past the gray ship, Case saw the name HANIWA in crisp white capitals beneath an oblong cluster of Japanese.

`I don't like this, man. I was thinking maybe it's time we got our ass out of here anyway.'

`Maelcum thinkin'~ that precise thing, mon, but Garveynot be goin'~ far like that.'

Maelcum was purring a speeded-up patois to his radio when Case came through the forward lock and removed his helmet.

`Aerol's gone back to the Rocker,'Case said.

Maelcum nodded, still whispering to the microphone.

Case pulled himself over the pilot's drifting tangle of dreadlocks and began to remove his suit. Maelcum's eyes were closed now; he nodded as he listened to some reply over a pair of phones with bright orange pads, his brow creased with concentration. He wore ragged jeans and an old green nylon jacket with the sleeves ripped out. Case snapped the red Sanyo suit to a storage hammock and pulled himself down to the g-web.

`See what th'~ ghost say, mon,' Maelcum said. `Computer keeps askin'~ for you.'

`So who's up there in that thing?'

`Same Japan-boy came before. An'~ now he joined by you Mister Armitage, come out Freeside...'

Case put the trodes on and jacked in.

`Dixie?'