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neuromancer
william gibson

for deb
 who made it possible
 with love

part one
 chiba city blues

the sky above the port was the color of television tuned
to a dead channel
 its not like im using case heard someone say as he
shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the
chat its like my bodys developed this massive drug defi
ciency it was a sprawl voice and a sprawl joke the chatsubo
was a bar for professional expatriates you could drink there
for a week and never hear two words in japanese
 ratz was tending bar his prosthetic arm jerking monoto
nously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft kirin he saw
case and smiled his teeth a webwork of east european steel
and brown decay case found a place at the bar between the
unlikely tan on one of lonny zones whores and the crisp naval
uniform of a tall african whose cheekbones were ridged with
precise rows of tribal scars wage was in here early with two
joeboys ratz said shoving a draft across the bar with his
good hand maybe some business with you case
 case shrugged the girl to his right giggled and nudged
him
 the bartenders smile widened his ugliness was the stuff
of legend in an age of affordable beauty there was something
heraldic about his lack of it the antique arm whined as he
reached for another mug it was a russian military prosthesis
a sevenfunction forcefeedback manipulator cased in grubby
pink plastic you are too much the artiste herr case ratz
grunted the sound served him as laughter he scratched his
overhang of whiteshirted belly with the pink claw you are
the artiste of the slightly funny deal
 sure case said and sipped his beer somebodys gotta
be funny around here sure the fuck isnt you
 the whores giggle went up an octave
 isnt you either sister so you vanish okay zone hes
a close personal friend of mine
 she looked case in the eye and made the softest possible
spitting sound her lips barely moving but she left
 jesus case said what kinda creepjoint you running here 
man cant have a drink
 ha ratz said swabbing the scarred wood with a rag
zone shows a percentage you i let work here for entertain
ment value
 as case was picking up his beer one of those strange
instants of silence descended as though a hundred unrelated
conversations had simultaneously arrived at the same pause 
then the whores giggle rang out tinged with a certain hysteria
 ratz grunted an angel passed
 the chinese bellowed a drunken australian chinese
bloody invented nervesplicing give me the mainland for a
nerve job any day fix you right mate
 now that case said to his glass all his bitterness suddenly
rising in him like bile that is so much bullshit

the japanese had already forgotten more neurosurgery than
the chinese had ever known the black clinics of chiba were
the cutting edge whole bodies of technique supplanted monthly
and still they couldnt repair the damage hed suffered in that
memphis hotel
 a year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace hope fading
nightly all the speed he took all the turns hed taken and the
corners hed cut in night city and still hed see the matrix in
his sleep bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless
void the sprawl was a long strange way home over the
pacific now and he was no console man no cyberspace cow
boy just another hustler trying to make it through but the
dreams came on in the japanese night like livewire voodoo
and hed cry for it cry in his sleep and wake alone in the
dark curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel his hands
clawed into the bedslab temperfoam bunched between his fin
gers trying to reach the console that wasnt there

i saw your girl last night ratz said passing case his
second kirin
 i dont have one he said and drank
 miss linda lee
 case shook his head
 no girl nothing only biz friend artiste dedication to
commerce the bartenders small brown eyes were nested
deep in wrinkled flesh i think i liked you better with her 
you laughed more now some night you get maybe too ar
tistic you wind up in the clinic tanks spare parts
 youre breaking my heart ratz he finished his beer
paid and left high narrow shoulders hunched beneath the rain
stained khaki nylon of his windbreaker threading his way
through the ninsei crowds he could smell his own stale sweat

case was twentyfour at twentytwo hed been a cowboy
a rustler one of the best in the sprawl hed been trained by
the best by mccoy pauley and bobby quine legends in the
biz hed operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high a
byproduct of youth and proficiency jacked into a custom cy
berspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness
into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix a thief
hed worked for other wealthier thieves employers who pro
vided the exotic software required to penetrate the bright walls
of corporate systems opening windows into rich fields of data
 hed made the classic mistake the one hed sworn hed
never make he stole from his employers he kept something
for himself and tried to move it through a fence in amsterdam 
he still wasnt sure how hed been discovered not that it
mattered now hed expected to die then but they only smiled 
of course he was welcome they told him welcome to the
money and he was going to need it because still smiling 
they were going to make sure he never worked again
 they damaged his nervous system with a wartime russian
mycotoxin
 strapped to a bed in a memphis hotel his talent burning
out micron by micron he hallucinated for thirty hours
 the damage was minute subtle and utterly effective
 for case whod lived for the bodiless exultation of cyber
space it was the fall in the bars hed frequented as a cowboy
hotshot the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt
for the flesh the body was meat case fell into the prison of
his own flesh

his total assets were quickly converted to new yen a fat
sheaf of the old paper currency that circulated endlessly through
the closed circuit of the worlds black markets like the seashells
of the trobriand islanders it was difficult to transact legitimate
business with cash in the sprawl in japan it was already
illegal
 in japan hed known with a clenched and absolute certainty
hed find his cure in chiba either in a registered clinic or in
the shadowland of black medicine synonymous with implants
nervesplicing and microbionics chiba was a magnet for the
sprawls technocriminal subcultures
 in chiba hed watched his new yen vanish in a twomonth
round of examinations and consultations the men in the black
clinics his last hope had admired the expertise with which
hed been maimed and then slowly shaken their heads
 now he slept in the cheapest coffins the ones nearest the
port beneath the quartzhalogen floods that lit the docks all
night like vast stages where you couldnt see the lights of
tokyo for the glare of the television sky not even the towering
hologram logo of the fuji electric company and tokyo bay
was a black expanse where gulls wheeled above drifting shoals
of white styrofoam behind the port lay the city factory domes
dominated by the vast cubes of corporate arcologies port and
city were divided by a narrow borderland of older streets an
area with no official name night city with ninsei its heart 
by day the bars down ninsei were shuttered and featureless
the neon dead the holograms inert waiting under the poisoned
silver sky

two blocks west of the chat in a teashop called the jarre
de th case washed down the nights first pill with a double
espresso it was a flat pink octagon a potent species of bra
zilian dex he bought from one of zones girls
 the jarre was walled with mirrors each panel framed in
red neon
 at first finding himself alone in chiba with little money
and less hope of finding a cure hed gone into a kind of terminal
overdrive hustling fresh capital with a cold intensity that had
seemed to belong to someone else in the first month hed
killed two men and a woman over sums that a year before
would have seemed ludicrous ninsei wore him down until the
street itself came to seem the externalization of some death
wish some secret poison he hadnt known he carried
 night city was like a deranged experiment in social dar
winism designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb
permanently on the fastforward button stop hustling and you
sank without a trace but move a little too swiftly and youd
break the fragile surface tension of the black market either
way you were gone with nothing left of you but some vague
memory in the mind of a fixture like ratz though heart or
lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger
with new yen for the clinic tanks
 biz here was a constant subliminal hum and death the
accepted punishment for laziness carelessness lack of grace
the failure to heed the demands of an intricate protocol
 alone at a table in the jarre de thÄ‚Å  with the octagon coming
on pinheads of sweat starting from his palms suddenly aware
of each tingling hair on his arms and chest case knew that at
some point hed started to play a game with himself a very
ancient one that has no name a final solitaire he no longer
carried a weapon no longer took the basic precautions he ran
the fastest loosest deals on the street and he had a reputation
for being able to get whatever you wanted a part of him knew
that the arc of his selfdestruction was glaringly obvious to his
customers who grew steadily fewer but that same part of him
basked in the knowledge that it was only a matter of time and
that was the part of him smug in its expectation of death that
most hated the thought of linda lee
 hed found her one rainy night in an arcade
 under bright ghosts burning through a blue haze of cigar
ette smoke holograms of wizards castle tank war europa
the new york skyline and now he remembered her that
way her face bathed in restless laser light features reduced to
a code her cheekbones flaring scarlet as wizards castle burned
forehead drenched with azure when munich fell to the tank
war mouth touched with hot gold as a gliding cursor struck
sparks from the wall of a skyscraper canyon he was riding
high that night with a brick of wages ketamine on its way
to yokohama and the money already in his pocket hed come
in out of the warm rain that sizzled across the ninsei pavement
and somehow shed been singled out for him one face out of
the dozens who stood at the consoles lost in the game she
played the expression on her face then had been the one
hed seen hours later on her sleeping face in a portside coffin
her upper lip like the line children draw to represent a bird in
flight
 crossing the arcade to stand beside her high on the deal
hed made he saw her glance up gray eyes rimmed with
smudged black paintstick eyes of some animal pinned in the
headlights of an oncoming vehicle
 their night together stretching into a morning into tickets
at the hoverport and his first trip across the bay the rain kept
up falling along harajuku beading on her plastic jacket the
children of tokyo trooping past the famous boutiques in white
loafers and clingwrap capes until shed stood with him in the
midnight clatter of a pachinko parlor and held his hand like a
child
 it took a month for the gestalt of drugs and tension he moved
through to turn those perpetually startled eyes into wells of
reflexive need hed watched her personality fragment calving
like an iceberg splinters drifting away and finally hed seen
the raw need the hungry armature of addiction hed watched
her track the next hit with a concentration that reminded him
of the mantises they sold in stalls along shiga beside tanks of
blue mutant carp and crickets caged in bamboo
 he stared at the black ring of grounds in his empty cup it
was vibrating with the speed hed taken the brown laminate
of the tabletop was dull with a patina of tiny scratches with
the dex mounting through his spine he saw the countless random
impacts required to create a surface like that the jarre was
decorated in a dated nameless style from the previous century
an uneasy blend of japanese traditional and pale milanese plas
tics but everything seemed to wear a subtle film as though
the bad nerves of a million customers had somehow attacked
the mirrors and the once glossy plastics leaving each surface
fogged with something that could never be wiped away
 hey case good buddy
 he looked up met gray eyes ringed with paintstick she
was wearing faded french orbital fatigues and new white sneak
ers
 i been lookin for you man she took a seat opposite
him her elbows on the table the sleeves of the blue zipsuit
had been ripped out at the shoulders he automatically checked
her arms for signs of derms or the needle want a cigarette
 she dug a crumpled pack of yeheyuan filters from an ankle
pocket and offered him one he took it let her light it with a
red plastic tube you sleepin okay case you look tired 
her accent put her south along the sprawl toward atlanta 
the skin below her eyes was pale and unhealthylooking but
the flesh was still smooth and firm she was twenty new lines
of pain were starting to etch themselves permanently at the
corners of her mouth her dark hair was drawn back held by
a band of printed silk the pattern might have represented
microcircuits or a city map
 not if i remember to take my pills he said as a tangible
wave of longing hit him lust and loneliness riding in on the
wavelength of amphetamine he remembered the smell of her
skin in the overheated darkness of a coffin near the port her
fingers locked across the small of his back
 all the meat he thought and all it wants
 wage she said narrowing her eyes he wants to see
you with a hole in your face she lit her own cigarette
 who says ratz you been talking to ratz
 no mona her new squeeze is one of wages boys
 i dont owe him enough he does me hes out the money
anyway he shrugged
 too many people owe him now case maybe you get to
be the example you seriously better watch it
 sure how about you linda you got anywhere to sleep
 sleep she shook her head sure case she shivered
hunched forward over the table her face was filmed with
sweat
 here he said and dug in the pocket of his windbreaker
coming up with a crumpled fifty he smoothed it automatically
under the table folded it in quarters and passed it to her
 you need that honey you better give it to wage there
was something in the gray eyes now that he couldnt read
something hed never seen there before
 i owe wage a lot more than that take it i got more
coming he lied as he watched his new yen vanish into a
zippered pocket
 you get your money case you find wage quick
 ill see you linda he said getting up
 sure a millimeter of white showed beneath each of her
pupils sanpaku you watch your back man
 he nodded anxious to be gone
 he looked back as the plastic door swung shut behind him
saw her eyes reflected in a cage of red neon

friday night on ninsei
 he passed yakitori stands and massage parlors a franchised
coffee shop called beautiful girl the electronic thunder of an
arcade he stepped out of the way to let a darksuited sarariman
by spotting the mitsubishigenentech logo tattooed across the
back of the mans right hand
 was it authentic if thats for real he thought hes in for
trouble if it wasnt served him right mg employees above
a certain level were implanted with advanced microprocessors
that monitored mutagen levels in the bloodstream gear like
that would get you rolled in night city rolled straight into a
black clinic
 the sarariman had been japanese but the ninsei crowd was
a gaijin crowd groups of sailors up from the port tense solitary
tourists hunting pleasures no guidebook listed sprawl heavies
showing off grafts and implants and a dozen distinct species
of hustler all swarming the street in an intricate dance of desire
and commerce
 there were countless theories explaining why chiba city
tolerated the ninsei enclave but case tended toward the idea
that the yakuza might be preserving the place as a kind of
historical park a reminder of humble origins but he also
saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies
require outlaw zones that night city wasnt there for its in
habitants but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for
technology itself
 was linda right he wondered staring up at the lights 
would wage have him killed to make an example it didnt
make much sense but then wage dealt primarily in proscribed
biologicals and they said you had to be crazy to do that
 but linda said wage wanted him dead cases primary
insight into the dynamics of street dealing was that neither the
buyer nor the seller really needed him a middlemans business
is to make himself a necessary evil the dubious niche case
had carved for himself in the criminal ecology of night city
had been cut out with lies scooped out a night at a time with
betrayal now sensing that its walls were starting to crumble
he felt the edge of a strange euphoria
 the week before hed delayed transfer of a synthetic glan
dular extract retailing it for a wider margin than usual he
knew wage hadnt liked that wage was his primary supplier
nine years in chiba and one of the few gaijin dealers whod
managed to forge links with the rigidly stratified criminal es
tablishment beyond night citys borders genetic materials and
hormones trickled down to ninsei along an intricate ladder of
fronts and blinds somehow wage had managed to trace some
thing back once and now he enjoyed steady connections in a
dozen cities
 case found himself staring through a shop window the
place sold small bright objects to the sailors watches flic
knives lighters pocket vtrs simstim decks weighted man
riki chains and shuriken the shuriken had always fascinated
him steel stars with knifesharp points some were chromed
others black others treated with a rainbow surface like oil on
water but the chrome stars held his gaze they were mounted
against scarlet ultrasuede with nearly invisible loops of nylon
fishline their centers stamped with dragons or yinyang sym
bols they caught the streets neon and twisted it and it came
to case that these were the stars under which he voyaged his
destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome
 julie he said to his stars time to see old julie hell
know

julius deane was one hundred and thirtyfive years old his
metabolism assiduously warped by a weekly fortune in serums
and hormones his primary hedge against aging was a yearly
pilgrimage to tokyo where genetic surgeons reset the code
of his dna a procedure unavailable in chiba then hed fly
to hongkong and order the years suits and shirts sexless and
inhumanly patient his primary gratification seemed to lie in
his devotion to esoteric forms of tailorworship case had never
seen him wear the same suit twice although his wardrobe
seemed to consist entirely of meticulous reconstructions of gar
ments of the previous century he affected prescription lenses
framed in spidery gold ground from thin slabs of pink synthetic
quartz and beveled like the mirrors in a victorian dollhouse
 his offices were located in a warehouse behind ninsei part
of which seemed to have been sparsely decorated years before
with a random collection of european furniture as though
deane had once intended to use the place as his home neo 
aztec bookcases gathered dust against one wall of the room
where case waited a pair of bulbous disneystyled table lamps
perched awkwardly on a low kandinskylook coffee table in
scarletlacquered steel a dali clock hung on the wall between
the bookcases its distorted face sagging to the bare concrete
floor its hands were holograms that altered to match the con
volutions of the face as they rotated but it never told the correct
time the room was stacked with white fiberglass shipping
modules that gave off the tang of preserved ginger
 you seem to be clean old son said deanes disembodied
voice do come in
 magnetic bolts thudded out of position around the massive
imitationrosewood door to the left of the bookcases julius
deane import export was lettered across the plastic in
peeling selfadhesive capitals if the furniture scattered in
deanes makeshift foyer suggested the end of the past century
the office itself seemed to belong to its start
 deanes seamless pink face regarded case from a pool of
light cast by an ancient brass lamp with a rectangular shade of
dark green glass the importer was securely fenced behind a
vast desk of painted steel flanked on either side by tall draw
ered cabinets made of some sort of pale wood the sort of
thing case supposed that had once been used to store written
records of some kind the desktop was littered with cassettes
scrolls of yellowed printout and various parts of some sort of
clockwork typewriter a machine deane never seemed to get
around to reassembling
 what brings you around boyo deane asked offering
case a narrow bonbon wrapped in blueandwhite checked pa
per try one ting ting djahe the very best case refused
the ginger took a seat in a yawing wooden swivel chair and
ran a thumb down the faded seam of one black jeansleg julie
i hear wage wants to kill me
 ah well then and where did you hear this if i may
 people
 people deane said around a ginger bonbon what sort
of people friends
 case nodded
 not always that easy to know who your friends are is it
 i do owe him a little money deane he say anything to
you
 havent been in touch of late then he sighed if i did
know of course i might not be in a position to tell you things
being what they are you understand
 things
 hes an important connection case
 yeah he want to kill me julie
 not that i know of deane shrugged they might have
been discussing the price of ginger if it proves to be an
unfounded rumor old son you come back in a week or so and
ill let you in on a little something out of singapore
 out of the nan hai hotel bencoolen street
 loose lips old son deane grinned the steel desk was
jammed with a fortune in debugging gear
 be seeing you julie ill say hello to wage
 deanes fingers came up to brush the perfect knot in his
pale silk tie

he was less than a block from deanes office when it hit
the sudden cellular awareness that someone was on his ass
and very close
 the cultivation of a certain tame paranoia was something
case took for granted the trick lay in not letting it get...

Top topics in this doc (% words in doc assigned to this topic)

	(11%)	hed ratz wage night bar plastic city cheap tokyo long ...
	(8%)	case deane ninsei money japanese arcade desk deanes console im ...
	(7%)	eyes man hed black face dark past good open back ...
	(5%)	hand youre looked hands back time wall place small whats ...

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