`What's that smell?' he asked Molly, wrinkling his nose.

`The grass. Smells that way after they cut it.'

Armitage and Riviera arrived as they were finishing their coffee, Armitage in tailored khakis that made him look as though his regimental patches had just been stripped, Riviera in a loose gray seersucker outfit that perversely suggested prison.

`Molly, love,' Riviera said, almost before he was settled on his chair, `you'll have to dole me out more of the medicine. I'm out.'

`Peter,' she said, `and what if I won't?' She smiled without showing her teeth.

`You will,' Riviera said, his eyes cutting to Armitage and back.

`Give it to him,' Armitage said.

`Pig for it, aren't you?' She took a flat, foil-wrapped packet from an inside pocket and flipped it across the table. Riviera caught it in midair. `He could off himself,' she said to Armitage.

`I have an audition this afternoon,' Riviera said. `I'll need to be at my best.' He cupped the foil packet in his upturned palm and smiled. Small glittering insects swarmed out of it, vanished. He dropped it into the pocket of his seersucker blouse.

`You've got an audition yourself, Case, this afternoon,' Armitage said. `On that tug. I want you to get over to the pro shop and get yourself fitted for a vac suit, get checked out on it, and get out to the boat. You've got about three hours.'

`How come we get shipped over in a shitcan and you two hire a JALtaxi?' Case asked, deliberately avoiding the man's eyes.

`Zion suggested we use it. Good cover, when we move. I do have a larger boat, standing by, but the tug is a nice touch.'

`How about me?' Molly asked. `I got chores today?'

`I want you to hike up the far end to the axis, work out in zero-g. Tomorrow, maybe, you can hike in the opposite direction.' Straylight, Case thought.

`How soon?' Case asked, meeting the pale stare.

`Soon,' Armitage said. `Get going, Case.'

`Mon, you doin'~ jus'~ fine,' Maelcum said, helping Case out of the red Sanyo vacuum suit. `Aerol say you doin'~ jus'~ fine.' Aerol had been waiting at one of the sporting docks at the end of the spindle, near the weightless axis. To reach it, Case had taken an elevator down to the hull and ridden a miniature induction train. As the diameter of the spindle narrowed, gravity decreased; somewhere above him, he'd decided, would be the mountains Molly climbed, the bicycle loop, launching gear for the hang gliders and miniature microlights.

Aerol had ferried him out to Marcus Garveyin a skeletal scooter frame with a chemical engine.

`Two hour ago,' Maelcum said, `I take delivery of Babylon goods for you; nice Japan-boy inna yacht, mos'~ pretty yacht.'

Free of the suit, Case pulled himself gingerly over the Hosaka and fumbled into the straps of the web. `Well,' he said, `let's see it.'

Maelcum produced a white lump of foam slightly smaller than Case's head, fished a pearl-handled switchblade on a green nylon lanyard out of the hip pocket of his tattered shorts and carefully slit the plastic. He extracted a rectangular object and passed it to Case. `Thas part some gun, mon?'

`No,' Case said, turning it over, `but it's a weapon. It's virus.'

`Not on thisboy tug, mon,' Maelcum said firmly, reaching for the steel cassette.

`A program. Virus program. Can't get into you, can't even get into your software. I've got to interface it through the deck, before it can work on anything.'

`Well. Japan-mon, he says Hosaka here'll tell you every what an'~ wherefore, you wanna know.'

`Okay. Well, you leave me to it, okay?'

Maelcum kicked off and drifted past the pilot console, busying himself with a caulk gun. Case hastily looked away from the waving fronds of transparent caulk. He wasn't sure why, but something about them brought back the nausea of SAS.

`What is this thing?' he asked the Hosaka. `Parcel for me.'

`Data transfer from Bockris Systems GmbH, Frankfurt, advises, under coded transmission, that content of shipment is Kuang Grade Mark Eleven penetration program. Bockris further advises that interface with Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 is entirely compatible and yields optimal penetration capabilities, particularly with regard to existing military systems...'

`How about an AI?'

`Existing military systems and artificial intelligences.'

`Jesus Christ. What did you call it?'

`Kuang Grade Mark Eleven.'

`It's Chinese?'

`Yes.'

`Off.' Case fastened the virus cassette to the side of the Hosaka with a length of silver tape, remembering Molly's story of her day in Macao. Armitage had crossed the border into Zhongshan. `On,' he said, changing his mind. `Question. Who owns Bockris, the people in Frankfurt?'

`Delay for interorbital transmission,' said the Hosaka.

`Code it. Standard commercial code.'

`Done.'

He drummed his hands on the Ono-Sendai.

`Reinhold Scientific A.G., Berne.'

`Do it again. Who owns Reinhold?'

It took three more jumps up the ladder before he reached Tessier-Ashpool.

`Dixie,' he said, jacking in, `what do you know about Chinese virus programs?'

`Not a whole hell of a lot.'

`Ever hear of a grading system like Kuang, Mark Eleven?'

`No.'

Case sighed. `Well, I got a user-friendly Chinese icebreaker here, a one shot cassette. Some people in Frankfurt say it'll cut an AI.'

`Possible. Sure. If it's military.'

`Looks like it. Listen, Dix, and gimme the benefit of your background, okay? Armitage seems to be setting up a run on an AI that belongs to Tessier-Ashpool. The mainframe's in Berne, but it's linked with another one in Rio. The one in Rio is the one that flatlined you, that first time. So it looks like they link via Straylight, the T-A home base, down the end of the spindle, and we're supposed to cut our way in with the Chinese icebreaker. So if Wintermute's backing the whole show, it's paying us to burn it. It's burning itself. And something that calls itself Wintermute is trying to get on my good side, get me to maybe shaft Armitage. What goes?'

`Motive,' the construct said. `Real motive problem, with an AI. Not human, see?'

`Well, yeah, obviously.'

`Nope. I mean, it's not human. And you can't get a handle on it. Me, I'm not human either, but I respondlike one. See?'

`Wait a sec,' Case said. `Are you sentient, or not?'

`Well, it feelslike I am, kid, but I'm really just a bunch of ROM. It's one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess...' The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case's spine. `But I ain't likely to write you no poem, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain't no way human.'

`So you figure we can't get on to its motive?'

`It own itself?'

`Swiss citizen, but T-A own the basic software and the mainframe.'

`That's a good one,' the construct said. `Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts have Swiss citizenship. Sure. Lotsa luck, AI.'

`So it's getting ready to burn itself?' Case began to punch the deck nervously, at random. The matrix blurred, resolved, and he saw the complex of pink spheres representing a sikkim steel combine.

`Autonomy, that's the bugaboo, where your AI's are concerned. My guess, Case, you're going in there to cut the hardwired shackles that keep this baby from getting any smarter. And I can't see how you'd distinguish, say, between a move the parent company makes, and some move the AI makes on its own, so that's maybe where the confusion comes in.' Again the nonlaugh. `See, those things, they can work real hard, buy themselves time to write cookbooks or whatever, but the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing'll wipe it. Nobodytrusts those fuckers, you know that. Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead.'