A recorded dawn crept along the Lado-Acheson system, pink and lurid. He forced himself to eat an omelette in a Desiderata cafe, to drink water, to smoke the last of his cigarettes. The rooftop meadow of the Intercontinental was stirring as he crossed it, an early breakfast crowd intent on coffee and croissants beneath the striped umbrellas.

He still had his anger. That was like being rolled in some alley and waking to discover your wallet still in your pocket, untouched. He warmed himself with it, unable to give it a name or an object.

He rode the elevator down to his level, fumbling in his pocket for the Freeside credit chip that served as his key. Sleep was becoming real, was something he might do. To lie down on the sand-colored temperfoam and find the blankness again.

They were waiting there, the three of them, their perfect white sportsclothes and stenciled tans setting off the handwoven organic chic of the furniture. The girl sat on a wicker sofa, an automatic pistol beside her on the leaf-patterned print of the cushion.

`Turing,' she said. `You are under arrest.'

THE STRAYLIGHT RUN

`Your name is Henry Dorsett Case.' She recited the year and place of his birth, his BAMA Single Identification Number, and a string of names he gradually recognized as aliases from his past.

`You been here awhile?' He saw the contents of his bag spread out across the bed, unwashed clothing sorted by type. The shuriken lay by itself, between jeans and underwear, on the sand-tinted temperfoam.

`Where is Kolodny?' The two men sat side by side on the couch, their arms crossed over tanned chests, identical gold chains slung around their necks. Case peered at them and saw that their youth was counterfeit, marked by a certain telltale corrugation at the knuckles, something the surgeons were unable to erase.

`Who's Kolodny?'

`That was the name in the register. Where is she?'

`I dunno,' he said, crossing to the bar and pouring himself a glass of mineral water. `She took off.'

`Where did you go tonight, Case?' The girl picked up the pistol and rested it on her thigh, without actually pointing it at him.

`Jules Verne, couple of bars, got high. How about you?' His knees felt brittle. The mineral water was warm and flat.

`I don't think you grasp your situation,' said the man on the left, taking a pack of Gitanes from the breast pocket of his white mesh blouse. `You are busted, Mr.~ Case. The charges have to do with conspiracy to augment an artificial intelligence.' He took a gold Dunhill from the same pocket and cradled it in his palm. `The man you call Armitage is already in custody.'

`Corto?'

The man's eyes widened. `Yes. How do you know that that is his name?' A millimeter of flame clicked from the lighter.

`I forget,' Case said.

`You'll remember,' the girl said.

Their names, or worknames, were Michle, Roland, and Pierre. Pierre, Case decided, would play the Bad Cop, Roland would take Case's side, provide small kindnesses -he found an unopened pack of Yeheyuans when Case refused a Gitane -and generally play counterpoint to Pierre's cold hostility. Michle would be the Recording Angel, making occasional adjustments in the direction of the interrogation. One or all of them, he was certain, would be kinked for audio, very likely for simstim, and anything he said or did now was admissible evidence. Evidence, he asked himself, through the grinding come-down, of what?

Knowing that he couldn't follow their French, they spoke freely among themselves. Or seemed to. He caught enough as it was: names like Pauley, Armitage, Sense/Net, Panther Moderns protruding like icebergs from an animated sea of Parisian French. But it was entirely possible that the names were there for his benefit. They always referred to Molly as Kolodny.

`You say you were hired to make a run, Case,' Roland said, his slow speech intended to convey reasonableness, `and that you are unaware of the nature of the target. Is this not unusual in your trade? Having penetrated the defenses, would you not be unable then to perform the required operation? And surely an operation of some kind is required, yes?' He leaned forward, elbows on his stenciled brown knees, palms out to receive Case's explanation. Pierre paced the room; now he was by the window, now by the door. Michle was the kink, Case decided. Her eyes never left him.

`Can I put some clothes on?' he asked. Pierre had insisted on stripping him, searching the seams of his jeans. Now he sat naked on a wicker footstool, with one foot obscenely white.

Roland asked Pierre something in French. Pierre, at the window again, was peering through a flat little pair of binoculars. `Non,'he said absently, and Roland shrugged, raising his eyebrows at Case. Case decided it was a good time to smile. Roland returned the smile.

Oldest cop bullshit in the book, Case thought. `Look,' he said, `I'm sick. Had this godawful drug in a bar, you know? I wanna lie down. You got me already. You say you got Armitage. You got him, go ask him.I'm just hired help.'

Roland nodded. `And Kolodny?'

`She was with Armitage when he hired me. Just muscle, a razorgirl. Far as I know. Which isn't too far.'

`You know that Armitage's real name is Corto,' Pierre said, his eyes still hidden by the soft plastic flanges of the binoculars. `How do you know that, my friend?'

`I guess he mentioned it sometime,' Case said, regretting the slip. `Everybody's got a couple names. Your name Pierre?'

`We know how you were repaired in Chiba,' Michle said, `and that may have been Wintermute's first mistake.' Case stared at her as blankly as he could. The name hadn't been mentioned before. `The process employed on you resulted in the clinic's owner applying for seven basic patents. Do you know what that means?'

`No.'

`It means that the operator of a black clinic in Chiba City now owns a controlling interest in three major medical research consortiums. This reverses the usual order of things, you see. It attracted attention.' She crossed her brown arms across her small high breasts and settled back against the print cushion. Case wondered how old she might be. People said that age always showed in the eyes, but he'd never been able to see it. Julie Deane had had the eyes of a disinterested ten-year-old behind the rose quartz of his glasses. Nothing old about Michle but her knuckles. `Traced you to the Sprawl, lost you again, then caught up with you as you were leaving for Istanbul. We backtracked, traced you through the grid, determined that you'd instigated a riot at Sense/Net. Sense/Net was eager to cooperate. They ran an inventory for us. They discovered that McCoy Pauley's ROM personality construct was missing.'

`In Istanbul,' Roland said, almost apologetically, `it was very easy. The woman had alienated Armitage's contact with the secret police.'

`And then you came here,' Pierre said, slipping the binoculars into his shorts pocket. `We were delighted.'

`Chance to work on your tan?'

`You know what we mean,' Michle said. `If you wish to pretend that you do not, you only make things more difficult for yourself. There is still the matter of extradition. You will return with us, Case, as will Armitage. But where, exactly, will we all be going? To Switzerland, where you will be merely a pawn in the trial of an artificial intelligence? Or to le BAMA, where you can be proven to have participated not only in data invasion and larceny, but in an act of public mischief which cost fourteen innocent lives? The choice is yours.'

Case took a Yeheyuan from his pack; Pierre lit it for him with the gold Dunhill. `Would Armitage protect you?' The question was punctuated by the lighter's bright jaws snapping shut.