PART ONE - CHIBA CITY
BLUES
1
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
"It's not like I'm using," Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way
through the crowd around the door of the Chat. "It's like my body's
developed this massive drug deficiency." It was a Sprawl voice and a
Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you
could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.
Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a
tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a
webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the
bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and the crisp
naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise
rows of tribal scars. "Wage was in here early, with two joeboys," Ratz said,
shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand. "Maybe some business
with you, Case?"
Case shrugged. The girl to his right giggled and nudged him.
The bartender's smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an
age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.
The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian
military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in
grubby pink plastic. "You are too much the artiste, Herr Case." Ratz
grunted; the sound served him as laughter. He scratched his overhang of
white-shirted belly with the pink claw. "You are the artiste of the slightly
funny deal."
"Sure," Case said, and sipped his beer. "Somebody's gotta be funny around
here. Sure the ♥♥♥♥ isn't you."
The ♥♥♥♥♥'s giggle went up an octave.
"Isn't you either, sister. So you vanish, okay? Zone, he's a close personal
friend of mine."
She looked Case in the eye and made the softest possible spitting sound, her
lips barely moving. But she left.
"Jesus," Case said, "what kinda creepjoint you running here? Man can't
have a drink."
"Ha," Ratz said, swabbing the scarred wood with a rag, "Zone shows a
percentage. You I let work here for entertainment value."
As Case was picking up his beer, one of those strange instants of silence
descended, as though a hundred unrelated conversations had simultaneously
arrived at the same pause. Then the ♥♥♥♥♥'s giggle rang out, tinged with a
certain hysteria.
Ratz grunted. "An angel passed."
"The Chinese," bellowed a drunken Australian, "Chinese bloody invented
nerve-splicing. Give me the mainland for a nerve job any day. Fix you right,
mate..."
"Now that," Case said to his glass, all his bitterness suddenly rising in him
like bile, "that is _so_ much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥."
The Japanese had already forgotten more neurosurgery than the Chinese
had ever known. The black clinics of Chiba were the cutting edge, whole
bodies of technique supplanted monthly, and still they couldn't repair the
damage he'd suffered in that Memphis hotel.
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the
speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City,
and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding