`Hey, sweetheart,' said one of the joeboys, `you wanna try that thing on me?'

`Don't bother aiming for the legs, Kurt,' Ratz said, his tone conversational. Case glanced across the room and saw the Brazilian standing on the bar, aiming a Smith & Wesson riot gun at the trio. The thing's barrel, made of paper-thin alloy wrapped with a kilometer of glass filament, was wide enough to swallow a fist. The skeletal magazine revealed five fat orange cartridges, subsonic sandbag jellies.

`Technically nonlethal,' said Ratz.

`Hey, Ratz,' Case said, `I owe you one.'

The bartender shrugged. `Nothing, you owe me. These,' and he glowered at Wage and the joeboys, `should know better. You don't take anybody off in the Chatsubo.'

Wage coughed. `So who's talking about taking anybody off. We just wanna talk business. Case and me, we work together.'

Case pulled the .22 out of his pocket and levelled it at Wage's crotch. `I hear you wanna do me.' Ratz's pink claw closed around the pistol and Case let his hand go limp.

`Look, Case, you tell me what the fuck is going on with you, you wig or something? What's this shit I'm trying to kill you?' Wage turned to the boy on his left. `You two go back to the Namban. Wait for me.'

Case watched as they crossed the bar, which was now entirely deserted except for Kurt and a drunken sailor in khakis, who was curled at the foot of a barstool. The barrel of the Smith & Wesson tracked the two to the door, then swung back to cover Wage. The magazine of Case's pistol clattered on the table. Ratz held the gun in his claw and pumped the round out of the chamber.

`Who told you I was going to hit you, Case?' Wage asked.

Linda.

`Who told you, man? Somebody trying to set you up?'

The sailor moaned and vomited explosively.

`Get him out of here,' Ratz called to Kurt, who was sitting on the edge of the bar now, the Smith & Wesson across his lap, lighting a cigarette.

Case felt the weight of the night come down on him like a bag of wet sand settling behind his eyes. He took the flask out of his pocket and handed it to Wage. `All I got. Pituitaries. Get you five hundred if you move it fast. Had the rest of my roll in some RAM, but that's gone by now.'

`You okay, Case?' The flask had already vanished behind a gunmetal lapel. `I mean, fine, this'll square us, but you look bad. Like hammered shit. You better go somewhere and sleep.'

`Yeah.' He stood up and felt the Chat sway around him. `Well, I had this fifty, but I gave it to somebody.' He giggled. He picked up the .22's magazine and the one loose cartridge and dropped them into one pocket, then put the pistol in the other. `I gotta see Shin, get my deposit back.'

`Go home,' said Ratz, shifting on the creaking chair with something like embarrassment. `Artiste. Go home.'

He felt them watching as he crossed the room and shouldered his way past the plastic doors.

`Bitch,' he said to the rose tint over Shiga. Down on Ninsei the holograms were vanishing like ghosts, and most of the neon was already cold and dead. He sipped thick black coffee from a street vendor's foam thimble and watched the sun come up. `You fly away, honey. Towns like this are for people who like the way down.' But that wasn't it, really, and he was finding it increasingly hard to maintain the sense of betrayal. She just wanted a ticket home, and the RAM in his Hitachi would buy it for her, if she could find the right fence. And that business with the fifty; she'd almost turned it down, knowing she was about to rip him for the rest of what he had.

When he climbed out of the elevator, the same boy was on the desk. Different textbook. `Good buddy,' Case called across the plastic turf, `you don't need to tell me. I know already. Pretty lady came to visit, said she had my key. Nice little tip for you, say fifty New ones?' The boy put down his book. `Woman,' Case said, and drew a line across his forehead with his thumb. `Silk.' He smiled broadly. The boy smiled back, nodded. `Thanks, asshole,' Case said.

On the catwalk, he had trouble with the lock. She'd messed it up somehow when she'd fiddled it, he thought. Beginner. He knew where to rent a blackbox that would open anything in Cheap Hotel. Fluorescents came on as he crawled in.

`Close the hatch real slow, friend. You still got that Saturday night special you rented from the waiter?'

She sat with her back to the wall, at the far end of the coffin. She had her knees up, resting her wrists on them; the pepperbox muzzle of a flechette pistol emerged from her hands.

`That you in the arcade?' He pulled the hatch down. `Where's Linda?'

`Hit that latch switch.'

He did.

`That your girl? Linda?'

He nodded.

`She's gone. Took your Hitachi. Real nervous kid. What about the gun, man?' She wore mirrored glasses. Her clothes were black, the heels of black boots deep in the temperfoam.

`I took it back to Shin, got my deposit. Sold his bullets back to him for half what I paid. You want the money?'

`No.'

`Want some dry ice? All I got, right now.'

`What got into you tonight? Why'd you pull that scene at the arcade? I had to mess up this rentacop came after me with nunchucks.'

`Linda said you were gonna kill me.'

`Linda said? I never saw her before I came up here.'

`You aren't with Wage?'

She shook her head. He realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. The fingers curled around the fletcher [ 11 ] were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial. `I think you screwed up, Case. I showed up and you just fit me right into your reality picture.'

`So what do you want, lady?' He sagged back against the hatch.

`You. One live body, brains still somewhat intact. Molly, Case. My name's Molly. I'm collecting you for the man I work for. Just wants to talk; is all. Nobody wants to hurt you.'

`That's good.'

`'Cept I do hurt people sometimes, Case. I guess it's just the way I'm wired.' She wore tight black gloveleather jeans and a bulky black jacket cut from some matte fabric that seemed to absorb light. `If I put this dartgun away, will you be easy, Case? You look like you like to take stupid chances.'

`Hey, I'm very easy. I'm a pushover, no problem.'

`That's fine, man.' The fletcher vanished into the black jacket. `Because you try to fuck around with me, you'll be taking one of the stupidest chances of your whole life.'

She held out her hands, palms up, the white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten double-edged, fourcentimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails.

She smiled. The blades slowly withdrew.

2

After a year of coffins, the room on the twenty-fifth floor of the Chiba Hilton seemed enormous. It was ten meters by eight, half of a suite. A white Braun coffeemaker steamed on a low table by the sliding glass panels that opened onto a narrow balcony.

`Get some coffee in you. Look like you need it.' She took off her black jacket; the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof. Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of wood.

`Case.' He looked up, seeing the man for the first time. `My name is Armitage.' The dark robe was open to the waist, the broad chest hairless and muscular, the stomach flat and hard. Blue eyes so pale they made Case think of bleach. `Sun's up, Case. This is your lucky day, boy.'

Case whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding coffee. Brown stain running down the imitation ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled.