Count Zero by William Gibson Page A

It would seem possible that the greatest danger would lie in that direction . . .”
    “It’s currently quite fashionable to equip top employees with modified insulin-pump subdermals,” his partner broke in. “The subject’s system can be tricked into an artificial reliance on certain synthetic enzyme analogs. Unless the subdermal is recharged at regular intervals, withdrawal from the source—the employer—can result in trauma.”
    “We are prepared to deal with that as well,” said the other.
    “Neither of you are even remotely prepared to deal with what I suspect we will encounter,” the black medic said, her voice as cold as the wind that blew out of the east now. Turner heard sand hissing across the rusted sheet of steel above them.
    “You,” Turner said to her, “come with me.” Then he turned, without looking back, and walked away. It was possible that she might not obey his command, in which case he’d lose face with the other two, but it seemed the right move. When he was ten meters from the surgery pod, he halted. He heard her feet on the gravel.
    “What do you know?” he asked without turning.
    “Perhaps no more than you do,” she said, “perhaps more.”
    “More than your colleagues, obviously.”
    “They are extremely talented men. They are also . . . servants.”
    “And you are not.”
    “Neither are you, mercenary. I was hired out of the finest unlicensed clinic in Chiba for this. I was given a great deal of material to study in preparation for my meeting with this illustrious patient. The black clinics of Chiba are the cutting edge of medicine; not even Hosaka could know that my position in black medicine would allow me to guess what it is that your defector carries in his head. The street tries to find its own uses for things, Mr. Turner. Already, several times, I’ve been hired to attempt the removal of these new implants. A certain amount of advanced Maas biocircuitry has found its way into the market. These attempts at implanting are a logical step. I suspect Maas may leak these things deliberately.”
    “Then explain it to me.”
    “I don’t think I could,” she said, and there was a strange hint of resignation in her voice. “I told you, I’ve seen it. I didn’t say that I understood it.” Fingertips suddenly brushed the skin beside his skull jack. “This, compared with biochip implants, is like a wooden staff beside a myoelectric limb.”
    “But will it be life-threatening, in his case?”
    “Oh, no,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “not for him  . . .” And then he heard her trudging back toward the surgery.
     
    Conroy sent a runner in with the software package that would allow Turner to pilot the jet that would carry Mitchell to Hosaka’s Mexico City compound. The runner was a wild-eyed, sun-blackened man Lynch called Harry, a rope-muscled apparition who came cycling in from the direction of Tucson on a sand-scoured bike with balding lug tires and bone-yellow rawhide laced around its handlebars. Lynch led Harry across the parking lot. Harry was singing to himself, a strange sound in the enforced quiet of the site, and his song, if you could call it that, was like someone randomly tuning a broken radio up and down midnight miles of dial, bringing in gospel shouts and snatches of twenty years of international pop. Harry had his bike slung across one burnt, bird-thin shoulder.
    “Harry’s got something for you from Tucson,” Lynch said.
    “You two know each other?” Turner asked, looking at Lynch. “Maybe have a friend in common?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lynch asked.
    Turner held his stare. “You know his name.”
    “He told me his fucking name, Turner.”
    “Name’s Harry,” the burnt man said. He tossed the bicycle down on a clump of brush. He smiled vacantly, exposing badly spaced, eroded teeth. His bare chest was filmed with sweat and dust, and hung with loops of fine steel chain, rawhide, bits of animal horn and fur,