They watched the hover burn from the high window at the end of Gentrys loft. He could hear that same amplified voice now: "You think that s pretty fucking funny, huh? Hahahahahahaha, so do we! We think you guys are just tons of fucking fun, so now we re all gonna party!"
Couldnt see anyone, just the flames of the hover.
"We just start walking," Cherry said, close beside him, "take water, some food if you got it." Her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears, but she sounded calm. Too calm, Slick thought. "Come on, Slick, what else we gonna do?"
He glanced back at Gentry, slumped in his chair in front of the holo table, head propped between his hands, staring at the white column that thrust up out of the familiar rainbow jumble of Sprawl cyberspace. Gentry hadnt moved, hadnt said a word, since theyd come back to the loft. The heel of Slicks left boot had left faint dark prints on the floor behind him, Little Birds blood; hed stepped in it on his way back across Factorys floor.
Then Gentry spoke: "I couldnt get the others going." He was looking down at the control unit in his lap.
"You need a unit for each one you wanna work," Slick said.
"Time for the Counts advice," Gentry said, tossing Slick the unit.
"Im not going back in there," Slick said. "You go."
"Dont need to," Gentry said, touching a console on his bench. Bobby the Count appeared on a monitor.
Cherrys eyes widened. "Tell him," she said, "that hes gonna be dead soon. Unless you jack him out of the matrix and stage one quick trip to an intensive care unit. Hes dying."
Bobbys face, on the monitor, grew still. The background came sharply into focus: the neck of the iron deer, long grass dappled with white flowers, the broad trunks of ancient trees.
"Hear that, motherfucker?" Cherry yelled. "Youre dying! Your lungs are filling up with fluid, your kidneys arent working, your hearts fucked . . . You make me wanna puke!"
"Gentry," Bobby said, his voice coming small and tinny from a little speaker on the side of the monitor, "I dont know what kind of setup you people have there, but Ive arranged a little diversion."
"We never checked the bike," Cherry said, her arms around Slick, "we never looked. It might be okay."
"Whats that mean, arranged a little diversion?" Pulling back from her, looking at Bobby on the monitor.
"Im still working it out. Ive rerouted a Borg-Ward cargo drone, out of Newark."
Slick broke away from Cherry. "Dont just sit there," he yelled at Gentry, who looked up at Slick and slowly shook his head. Slick felt the first flickers of Korsakovs, minute increments of memory shuddering out of focus.
"He doesnt want to go anywhere," Bobby said. "Hes found the Shape. He just wants to see how it all works out, what it is in the end. Theres people on their way here. Friends, sort of. Theyll get the aleph off your hands. Meantime, Ill do what I can about these assholes."
"Im not gonna stay here and watch you die," Cherry said.
"Nobodys asking you to. My advice, you get out. Gimme twenty minutes, Ill distract them for you."
Factory never felt emptier.
Little Bird was somewhere on that floor. Slick kept thinking of the tangle of thongs and bones that had hung on Birds chest, feathers and rusty spring-wind watches with the hands all stopped, each one a different time . . . Stupid stringtown shit. But Bird wouldnt be around anymore. Guess I wont be around anymore myself, he thought, leading Cherry down the shaking stairs. Not like before. There wasnt time to move the machines, not without a flatbed and some help, and he figured once he was gone, hed stay gone. Factory wasnt ever going to feel the same again.
Cherry had four liters of filtered water in a plastic jug, a mesh bag of Burmese peanuts, and five individually sealed portions of Big Ginza freeze-dried soup all shed been able to find in the kitchen. Slick had two sleeping bags, the flashlight, and a ball peen hammer.
It was quiet now, just the sounds of the wind across corrugated metal and the scuff of their boots on concrete.
He wasnt sure where hed go, himself. He thought hed take Cherry as far as Marvies place and leave her there. Then maybe hed come back, see what was happening with Gentry. She could get a ride out to a rustbelt town in a day or two. She didnt know that, though; all she could think about was leaving. Seemed as scared of having to watch Bobby the Count die on his stretcher as she was of the men outside. But Slick could see that Bobby didnt care much at all, about dying. Maybe he figured hed just be in there, like that 3Jane. Or maybe he just didnt give a shit; sometimes people got that way.
If he meant to leave for good, he thought, steering Cherry through the dark with his free hand, hed go in now and have a last look at the Judge and the Witch, the Corpsegrinder and the two Investigators. But this way hed get Cherry out, then come back . . . But he knew as he thought it that it didnt make sense, there wasnt time, but hed get her out anyway . . .
"Theres a gap, this side, low down by the floor," he told her. "Well slide out through there, hope nobody notices . . ." She squeezed his hand as he led her through the darkness.
He found the hole by feel, stuffed the sleeping bags through, stuck the ball peen into his belt, lay down on his back, and pulled himself out until his head and chest were through. The sky was low and only marginally lighter than Factorys dark.
He thought he heard a faint drumming of engines, but then it faded.
He worked himself the rest of the way out with his heels and hips and shoulders, then rolled over in the snow.
Something bumped against his foot: Cherry pushing out the water jug. He reached back to take it, and the red firefly lit on the back of his hand. He jerked back and rolled again, as the bullet slammed Factorys wall like a giants sledge.
A white flare, drifting. Above the Solitude. Faint through the low cloud. Drifting down from the swollen gray flank of the cargo drone, Bobbys diversion. Illuminating the second hover, thirty meters out, and the hooded figure with the rifle . . .
The first container struck the ground with a crash, just in front of the hover, and burst, throwing up a cloud of foam packing pellets. The second one, carrying two refrigerators, scored a direct hit, crushing the cab. The hijacked Borg-Ward airship continued to disgorge containers as the flare spun down, fading.
Slick scrambled back through the gap in the wall, leaving the water and the sleeping bags.
Moving fast, in the dark.
Hed lost Cherry. Hed lost the hammer. She mustve slid back into Factory when the guy fired his first shot. Last shot, if hed been under that box when it came down . . .
His feet found the ramp into the room where his machines waited. "Cherry?"
He flicked on the flashlight.
The one-armed Judge was centered in the beam. Before the Judge stood a figure with mirrors for eyes, throwing back the light.
"You wanna die?" A womans voice.
"No . . ."
"Light, out."
Darkness. Run . . .
"I can see in the dark. You just stuck that flash in your jacket pocket. You look like you still wanna run. I gotta gun on you."
Run?
"Dont even think about it. You ever see a Fujiwara HE flechette? Hits something hard, it goes off. Hits something soft, like most of you, buddy, it goes in, then it goes off. Ten seconds later."
"Why?"
"So you get to think about it."
"You with those guys outside?"
"No. You drop all those stoves nshit on them?"
"No."
"Newmark. Bobby Newmark. I cut a deal tonight. I get somebody together with Bobby Newmark, I get my slate cleaned. Youre gonna show me where he is."