Case glared at the pink spheres of Sikkim.

`Okay,' he said, finally, `I'm slotting this virus. I want you to scan its instruction face and tell me what you think.'

The half sense of someone reading over his shoulder was gone for a few seconds, then returned. `Hot shit. Case. It's a slow virus. Take six hours, estimated, to crack a military target.'

`Or an AI.' He sighed. `Can we run it?'

`Sure,' the construct said, `unless you got a morbid fear of dying.'

`Sometimes you repeat yourself, man.'

`It's my nature.'

Molly was sleeping when he returned to the Intercontinental. He sat on the balcony and watched a microlight with rainbow polymer wings as it soared up the curve of Freeside, its triangular shadow tracking across meadows and rooftops, until it vanished behind the band of the Lado-Acheson system.

`I wanna buzz,' he said to the blue artifice of the sky. `I truly do wanna get high, you know? Trick pancreas, plugs in my liver, little bags of shit melting, fuck it all. I wanna buzz.'

He left without waking Molly, he thought. He was never sure, with the glasses. He shrugged tension from his shoulders and got into the elevator. He rode up with an Italian girl in spotless whites, cheekbones and nose daubed with something black and nonreflective. Her white nylon shoes had steel cleats; the expensive-looking thing in her hand resembled a cross between a miniature oar and an orthopedic brace. She was off for a fast game of something, but Case had no idea what.

On the roof meadow, he made his way through the grove of trees and umbrellas, until he found a pool, naked bodies gleaming against turquoise tiles. He edged into the shadow of an awning and pressed his chip against a dark glass plate. `Sushi,' he said, `whatever you got.' Ten minutes later, an enthusiastic Chinese waiter arrived with his food. He munched raw tuna and rice and watched people tan. `Christ,' he said, to his tuna, `I'd go nuts.'

`Don't tell me,' someone said, `I know it already. You're a gangster, right?'

He squinted up at her, against the band of sun. A long young body and a melanin-boosted tan, but not one of the Paris jobs.

She squatted beside his chair, dripping water on the tiles. `Cath,' she said.

`Lupus,' after a pause.

`What kind of name is that?'

`Greek,' he said.

`Are you really a gangster?' The melanin boost hadn't prevented the formation of freckles.

`I'm a drug addict, Cath.'

`What kind?'

`Stimulants. Central nervous system stimulants. Extremely powerful central nervous system stimulants.'

`Well, do you haveany?' She leaned closer. Drops of chlorinated water fell on the leg of his pants.

`No. That's my problem, Cath. Do you know where we can get some?'

Cath rocked back on her tanned heels and licked at a strand of brownish hair that had pasted itself beside her mouth. `What's your taste?'

`No coke, no amphetamines, but up,gotta be up.'And so much for that, he thought glumly, holding his smile for her.

`Betaphenethylamine,' she said. `No sweat, but it's on your chip.'

`You're kidding,' said Cath's partner and roommate, when Case explained the peculiar properties of his Chiba pancreas. `I mean, can't you sue them or something? Malpractice?' His name was Bruce. He looked like a gender switch version of Cath, right down to the freckles.

`Well,' Case said, `it's just one of those things, you know? Like tissue matching and all that.' But Bruce's eyes had already gone numb with boredom. Got the attention span of a gnat, Case thought, watching the boy's brown eyes.

Their room was smaller than the one Case shared with Molly, and on another level, closer to the surface. Five huge Cibachromes of Tally Isham were taped across the glass of the balcony, suggesting an extended residency.

`They're def triff, huh?' Cath asked seeing him eye the transparencies. `Mine. Shot 'em at the S/N Pyramid, last time we went down the well. She was thatclose, and she just smiled, sonatural. And it was badthere, Lupus, day after these Christ the King terrs put angel in the water, you know?'

`Yeah,' Case said, suddenly uneasy, `terrible thing.'

`Well,' Bruce cut in, `about this beta you want to buy...'

`Thing is, can I metabolize it?' Case raised his eyebrows.

`Tell you what,' the boy said. `You do a taste. If you pancreas passes on it, it's on the house. First time's free.'

`I heard that one before,' Case said, taking the bright blue derm that Bruce passed across the black bedspread.

`Case?' Molly sat up in bed and shook the hair away from her lenses.

`Who else, honey?'

`What's got into you?' The mirrors followed him across the room.

`I forget how to pronounce it,' he said, taking a tighty rolled strip of bubble-packed blue derms from his shirt pocket.

`Christ,' she said, `just what we needed.'

`Truer words were never spoken.'

`I let you out of my sight for two hours and you score.' She shook her head. `I hope you're gonna be ready for our big dinner date with Armitage tonight. This Twentieth Century place. We get to watch Riviera strut his stuff, too.'

`Yeah,' Case said, arching his back, his smile locked into a rictus of delight, `beautiful.'

`Man,' she said, `if whatever that is can get in past what those surgeons did to you in Chiba, you are gonna be in sad ass shape when it wears off.'

`Bitch, bitch, bitch,' he said, unbuckling his belt. `Doom. Gloom. All I ever hear.' He took his pants off, his shirt, his underwear. `I think you oughta have sense enough to take advantage of my unnatural state.' He looked down. `I mean, lookat this unnatural state.'

She laughed. `It won't last.'

`But it will,' he said, climbing into the sand-colored temperfoam, `that's what's so unnaturalabout it.'

`Case, what's wrong with you?' Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtime Sicle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental.

Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. `Something I ate, maybe.'

`I want you checked out by a medic,' Armitage said.

`Just this hystamine reaction,' Case lied. `Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.'

Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. `I've ordered for you,' he said.

Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing.

`Jesus,' Molly said, her own plate empty, `gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. `They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff.' She forked a mouthful up and chewed.

`Not hungry,' Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain.

`You look fucking awful,' Molly said cheerfully.

Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine.

The lights dimmed.

`Le Restaurant Vingtime Sicle,' said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, `proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr.~ Peter Riviera.' Scattered applause from the other tables. A waiter lit a single candle and placed it in the center of their table, then began to remove the dishes. Soon a candle flickered at each of the restaurant's dozen tables, and drinks were being poured.