Count Zero Read Online Free PDF Page A

edges. Conroy spun the wheel that dogged the door shut; someone had oiled it recently.
    “Name’s Oakey,” Turner said, taking in the new room. Smaller. Two of the lanterns, folding tables, chairs, all new. On the tables, instrumentation of some kind, under black plastic dustcovers.
    “Friend of yours?”
    “No,” Turner said. “He worked for me once.” He went to the nearest table and flipped back a dustcover. “What’s this?” The console had the blank, half-finished look of a factory prototype.
    “Maas-Neotek cyberspace deck.”
    Turner raised his eyebrows. “Yours?”
    “We got two. One’s on site. From Hosaka. Fastest thing in the matrix, evidently, and Hosaka can’t even de-engineer the chips to copy them. Whole other technology.”
    “They got them from Mitchell?”
    “They aren’t saying. The fact they’d let go of ’em just to give our jockeys an edge is some indication of how badly they want the man.”
    “Who’s on console, Conroy?”
    “Jaylene Slide. I was talking to her just now.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “The site man’s out of L.A., kid called Ramirez.”
    “They any good?” Turner replaced the dustcover.
    “Better be, for what they’ll cost. Jaylene’s gotten herself a hot rep the past two years, and Ramirez is her understudy.Shit”—Conroy shrugged—“you know these cowboys. Fucking crazy . . .”
    “Where’d you get them? Where’d you get Oakey for that matter?”
    Conroy smiled. “From your agent, Turner.”
    Turner stared at Conroy, then nodded. Turning, he lifted the edge of the next dustcover. Cases, plastic and styrofoam, stacked neatly on the cold metal of the table. He touched a blue plastic rectangle stamped with a silver monogram: S&W.
    “Your agent,” Conroy said, as Turner snapped the case open. The pistol lay there in its molded bed of pale blue foam, a massive revolver with an ugly housing that bulged beneath the squat barrel. “S&W Tactical, .408, with a xenon projector,” Conroy said. “What he said you’d want.”
    Turner took the gun in his hand and thumbed the batterytest stud for the projector. A red LED in the walnut grip pulsed twice. He swung the cylinder out. “Ammunition?”
    “On the table. Hand-loads, explosive tips.”
    Turner found a transparent cube of amber plastic, opened it with his left hand, and extracted a cartridge. “Why did they pick me for this, Conroy?” He examined the cartridge, then inserted it carefully into one of the cylinder’s six chambers.
    “I don’t know,” Conroy said. “Felt like they had you slotted from go, whenever they heard from Mitchell . . .”
    Turner spun the cylinder rapidly and snapped it back into the frame. “I said, ‘Why did they pick me for this, Conroy?’ ” He raised the pistol with both hands and extended his arms, pointing it directly at Conroy’s face. “Gun like this, sometimes you can see right down the bore, if the light’s right, see if there’s a bullet there.”
    Conroy shook his head, very slightly.
    “Or maybe you can see it in one of the other chambers . . .”
    “No,” Conroy said, very softly, “no way.”
    “Maybe the shrinks screwed up, Conroy. How about that?”
    “No,” Conroy said, his face blank. “They didn’t, and you won’t.”
    Turner pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Conroy blinked once, opened his mouth, closed it, watched as Turner lowered the Smith & Wesson. A single bead of sweat rolled down from Conroy’s hairline and lost itself in an eyebrow.
    “Well?” Turner asked, the gun at his side.
    Conroy shrugged. “Don’t do that shit,” he said.
    “They want me that bad?”
    Conroy nodded. “It’s your show, Turner.”
    “Where’s Mitchell?” He opened the cylinder again and began to load the five remaining chambers.
    “Arizona. About fifty kilos from the Sonora line, in a mesatop research arcology. Maas Biolabs North America. They own everything around there, right