They’d all heard of Pauley, the redneck jockey from the ’Lanta fringes, who’d survived braindeath behind black ice. The grapevine—slender, street level, and the only one going—had little to say about Pauley, other than that he’d done the impossible. "It was big," another would-be told Case, for the price of a beer, "but who knows what? I hear maybe a Brazilian payroll net. Anyway, the man was dead, flat down braindeath." Case stared across the crowded bar at a thickset man in shirt-sleeves, something leaden about the shade of his skin.