"Gibson, William- CyberPunk 1- Neuromancer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

"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 temper foam. "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 nun chucks. "
"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 sur-gically 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 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 glove leather jeans and a bulky black jacket cut from some matte fabric that seemed to absorb light. "If I put this dart gun 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, four-centimeter 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 coffee maker 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 rice paper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled.
"Get your coffee, Case," Molly said. "You're okay, but you're not going anywhere 'til Armitage has his say." She sat cross legged on a silk futon and began to fieldstrip the fletcher without bothering to look at it. Twin mirrors tracking as he crossed to the table and refilled his cup.
"Too young to remember the war, aren't you, Case?" Ar-mitage ran a large hand back through his cropped brown hair. A heavy gold bracelet flashed on his wrist. "Leningrad, Kiev, Siberia. We invented you in Siberia, Case." "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Screaming Fist, Case. You've heard the name." "Some kind of run, wasn't it? Tried to burn this Russian nexus with virus programs. Yeah, I heard about it. And nobody got out."
He sensed abrupt tension. Armitagc walkcd to the window and looked out over Tokyo Bay. "That isn't true. One unit made it back to Helsinki, Case."
Case shrugged, sipped coffee.
"You're a console cowboy. The prototypes of the programs you use to crack industrial banks were developed for Screaming Fist. For the assault on the Kirensk computer nexus. Basic module was a Nightwing micro light, a pilot, a matrix deck, a jockey. We were running a virus called Mole. The Mole series was the first generation of real intrusion programs." "Icebreakers," Case said, over the rim of the red mug.
"Ice from ICE, intrusion countermeasures electronics." "Problem is, mister, I'm no jockey now, so I think I'll just be going...."
"I was there, Case; I was there when they invented your kind."
"You got zip to do with me and my kind, buddy. You're rich enough to hire expensive razor girls to haul my ass up here, is all. I'm never gonna punch any deck again, not for you or anybody else." He crossed to the window and looked down. "That's where I live now."
"Our profile says you're trying to con the street into killing you when you're not looking."
"Profile?"
"We've built up a detailed model. Bought a go-to for each of your aliases and ran the skim through some military software. You're suicidal, Casc. The model gives you a month on the outside. And our medical projection says you'll need a new pancreas inside a year."
"'We.'" He met the faded blue eyes. "'We' who?" "What would you say if I told you we could correct your neural damage, Case'?" Armitage suddenly looked to Case as if he were carved from a block of metal; inert, enormously heavy. A statue. He knew now that this was a dream, and that soon he'd wake. Armitage wouldn't speak again. Case's dreams always ended in these freeze frames, and now this one was over.
"What would you say, Case?"
Case looked out over the Bay and shivered.
"I'd say you were full of shit."
Arrnitage nodded.
"Then I'd ask what your terms were."
"Not very different than what you're used to, Case." "Let the man get some sleep, Armitage," Molly said from her futon, the components of the fletcher spread on the silk like some expensive puzzle. "He's coming apart at the seams." "Terms," Case said, "and now. Right now."
He was still shivering. He couldn't stop shivering.
The clinic was nameless, expensively appointed, a cluster of sleek pavilions separated by small formal gardens. He re-membered the place from the round he'd made his first month in Chiba.
"Scared, Case. You're real scared." It was Sunday afternoon and he stood with Molly in a sort of courtyard. White boulders, a stand of green bamboo, black gravel raked into smooth waves. A gardener, a thing like a large metal crab, was tending the bamboo.
"It'll work, Case. You got no idea, the kind of stuff Ar-mitage has. Like he's gonna pay these nerve boys for fixing you with the program he's giving them to tell them how to do it. He'll put them three years ahead of the competition. You got any idea what that's worth?" She hooked thumbs in the belt loops of her leather jeans and rocked backward on the lacquered heels of cherry red cowboy boots. The narrow toes were sheathed in bright Mexican silver. The lenses were empty quicksilver, regarding him with an insect calm. "You're street samurai," he said. "How long you work for him?"
"Couple of months."
"What about before that?"
"For somebody else. Working girl, you know?"
He nodded.
"Funny, Case."
"What's funny?"
"It's like I know you. That profile he's got. I know how you're wired."