Black Man (22 page)

By the time they disembarked and came through the deserted environs of the private-carrier terminal at JFK, it was nearly 3 am. Norton left them standing just inside the endless row of glass doors onto the pickup zone and went to get his car out of parking. The whole place was full of a glaring, white-lit quiet that seemed to whine just at the edge of audibility.

“So what’s the plan?” Marsalis asked her.

“The plan is get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll take you over to Jefferson Park and get you hooked up with our chain of command. Roth, Ortiz, and Nicholson are all going to want to meet you. Then we’ll look at Montes. If your theory checks out, there’ll be some trace of a previous identity somewhere in the data record.”

“You hope.”

“No, I
know,
“ she said irritably. “No one disappears for real anymore, not even in the Angeline Freeport.”

“Merrin seems to be managing.”

“Merrin’s strictly a temporary phenomenon.”

They went back to staring averted angles around the terminal space until Norton rolled up in the snarl-grilled Cadillac. He’d held off putting the top up until a couple of weeks ago, but there was no way to avoid it now. The early-hours air beyond the terminal doors had a snap in it that promised the raw cold of the winter ahead.

“Nice ride,” said Marsalis as he got in.

He’d taken the front seat. Sevgi rolled her eyes and climbed in the back. Norton grinned at her in the mirror.

“Thanks,” he said, and gunned the magdrive as they pulled away. It didn’t quite have the throaty roar of the vehicles from the period road movies he occasionally dragged Sevgi to at art-house theaters in the Village, but the car thrummed pleasantly enough and they took the exit ramp at rising speed. Norton drifted them across into the curve of the citybound highway. The airport complex fell away behind them like a flung fairy crown. Norton raised his eyes to the mirror again. “What are we doing about accommodation, Sev?”

“You can put me in a hotel,” Marsalis said, yawning. “Wherever suits. I’m not fussy.”

Sevgi faked a yawn of her own and slumped back in the seat. “Let’s sort that out tomorrow. Too much hassle coordinating it all now. You can stay at my place tonight. Tom, I’ll bring him in and meet you at the office for lunch. Somewhere on the mezzanine. Say about twelve?”

Peripheral vision showed her Norton trying to make eye contact in the mirror. His face was the carefully immobile deadpan she associated with his witnessing of mistakes made. He used it a lot in briefings with Nicholson. She gazed steadfastly out of the side window.

“He could stay with me, Sev. I’ve got the space.”

“So do I.” She made it come out casual. Still watching the dull metal ribbon of the crash barrier as it whipped smoothly along beside the car in the gloom. A teardrop taxi blipped past on the opposing side of the highway. “Anyway, Tom, it’d take you the best part of an hour just to clear out all that junk you keep in the spare room. All I have to do is crank down the futon. Just drop us off, it’ll be fine.”

Now she turned and met his eyes in the mirror. Matched him deadpan for deadpan. He shrugged and punched up some music on the car’s sound system, ancient Secession-era punk no one played anymore.

Detroitus or Error Code; Sevgi never could tell the two bands apart despite Norton’s best efforts to instruct her. She settled back to the outside view again and let the vitriol of it wash over her, lulled by the familiar high-stepping bass lines and the stuttering, hacking guitars. She found her mouth forming fragments of lyrics:

Got what you want at last, got your

Closed little world

Got your superhero right and wrong

And your fuckin’ flag unfurled

Marsalis stirred, leaned forward to read the player display, and sank back again without comment. Guitar fury skirled out of the speakers. The car slammed on through the night.

When they pulled up outside Sevgi’s building, Norton killed the engine and got out to see them to the door. It was a nice gesture, but it felt wrong—Harlem hadn’t seen serious crime in decades, and anyway, in among the carbon-fiber skeletons of the market stalls, figures were already moving around with crates, setting up. The place would be coming to noisy life in another couple of hours. Sevgi made a mental note to make sure the windows were all tight shut before she slept. She smiled wearily at Norton.

“Thanks, Tom. You’d better get moving.”

“Yeah.”

He hesitated.

“See you on the mez, then,” she said brightly.

“Uh, yeah. Twelve o’clock?”

“Yeah, twelve’s good.”

“Where’d you want to eat? Henty’s or—”

“Sure. Henty’s.” Backing away now. “Sounds good.”

He nodded slowly and went back to the car. She raised a hand in farewell. He pulled out, looking back.

They watched him out of sight before Sevgi turned to the door of the building and showed the scanner her face. The door cracked open on a hydraulic sigh.

“Sixth floor,” she said, hefting her shoulder bag. “No elevator.”

“Yeah? Why’s that then?”

“Period charm. You coming?”

They took the stairs at a trudge. LCLS panels blinked awake on each floor as they climbed, then died to dimness in their wake. The bright white glow shone on pre-Secession grafitoform murals and embedded holoshots of the building in its various stages of growth. Sevgi found herself noticing them for the first time in months as consciousness of the man at her back lit everything for her the same way as the LCLS. She bit back the impulse to play tour guide.

In the apartment, she went from room to room, showing him where things were. He went to use the bathroom as soon as she was done. She checked the windows while he was in there, set the locks, organized herself. Fetched sheets and a quilt from the cupboard in the en suite. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she took the bed linen down, and didn’t recognize the look on her face. There was a warm, irritable confusion rising in her as to how she should do this. Back in the living room, she powered up the futon and remote-extended it. She was putting on the sheets when he came out and joined her.

“All yours,” she said, finishing and standing back up.

“Thank you.”

They stood looking at the crisp, clean sheets. He seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe in response, a circuit clicked shut somewhere inside her. She put her hands in her jacket pockets and hooked his gaze.

“The door’s double-locked,” she said. “It’s DNA-coded.”

His brow creased. Silent query.

Ah fuck it, here we go
. “You may as well know this now, Marsalis. You’re going to find out sooner or later, so it may as well come from me. My last relationship was a thirteen. He’s dead now, but I know how that shit works.” She tapped fingertips to her temple. “I know how you work up here. Right now, you’re probably mapping the shortest possible route across town to East Forty-fifth and First.”

No visible reaction. She plunged on.

“And you’re right, it’s not far. Three, four klicks and cross the lines, you’re home free. UN territory, right here in the heart of New York. I’m not sure how they’d get you out after that, but my guess is the powers-that-be here in the Union wouldn’t kick much. They’ve got a better working relationship with the UN than with COLIN most of the time. Truth comes down, they don’t like us much better than they do the Republic.”

“That must be very upsetting for you.”

“You’re too kind. So, like I said, I know what’s in your mind. I don’t even blame you much. It’s not like you’re a free actor here—you’re locked into something you’d probably rather not be a part of. You’re under duress, and I know how badly that plays in the thirteen mind-set. You’re looking for a way to pick the locks or smash down the door.”

Ethan’s words. He used to grin as he said them, that
something-burning
grin.

She waited to see what he’d do. If he’d move.

He didn’t. He raised an eyebrow instead, looked down at the open blade of his right hand. She recognized the displacement training, and a faint shiver ran through her.

He cleared his throat.

“Well, it’s nice to know I’m so well understood. But you see, Ms. Ertekin, there seems to be a major flaw in your procedures here. If I’m the ravening, duress-shattering thirteen motherfucker you—”

“I didn’t say—”

“—have me down as, then what’s to stop me caving in your skull here and now, slashing you open to get some warm blood for your precious DNA locks, and then doing my predawn sprint across town after all?”

“The lock only works off saliva.”

He stared at her. “I could always scrape it out of your dead mouth.”

“Do you think you’re going to scare me, Marsalis?”

“I couldn’t care less if I scare you or not.” For the first time since she’d met him, his voice tightened toward anger. “You were fucking some burned-out genetic augment who said he was a thirteen, and you want to delude yourself I’m him, that’s your problem. I don’t know what I symbolize to you, Ertekin, what you
want
me to symbolize, but I’m not up for it. I’m not a fucking number, I’m not a fucking gene code. I’m Carl Marsalis, I think we met already.” He stuck out his hand bluntly, mock-offer of a clasp, then let it fall. “But in case it hasn’t sunk in, that’s
all
I am. Got a problem with that, then fuck off and deal with it somewhere I don’t have to listen to you.”

They faced each other either end of the stare, a couple of meters apart. To Sevgi, the room seemed to rock gently on the axis of their locked gazes.

“This is my house you’re in,” she reminded him.

“Then book me into a fucking hotel.” He held her eyes for a moment, then looked down at the extended futon. “One with room service that doesn’t lecture the guests.” Another pause. “And an elevator.”

Out of nowhere, the laugh broke in her. She coughed it up.

“Right,” she said.

He looked up again. Grimaced. “Right.”

She seated herself on one arm of the couch. Hands still tucked in her pockets, but she could feel the tension in her begin to ease. Marsalis raised an arm toward her and let it fall.

“I’m tired,” he said. It wasn’t clear if he meant it as an apology or information. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going to try and run out on you. I’m going to get some sleep and see if we can’t make a fresh start in the morning. Sound okay to you?”

Sevgi nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Yeah.” He looked around, fixed on the futon again. “Well. Thanks for making up the bed.”

She shrugged. “You’re a guest.”

“Could I get a glass of water?”

She stood up and nodded toward the kitchen. “Sure. Chiller on the counter. Glasses are in the cupboard above. Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. G’night.”

She went to the bedroom and hooked the door closed behind her. Stood there for a while, listening to him move about in the kitchen.

Then she took her right hand out of her jacket pocket, opened her palm, and considered the Remington stunspike it held. It looked innocuous, a short thick tube in smooth matte gray. The charge light winked green at her from one end. Thrown hard or jabbed into the target by hand, it carried enough power to put anything human on the floor and leave it there for the best part of twenty minutes.

She hesitated for a moment, then slipped the spike under her pillow and began to get undressed.

He lay flat on his back on the futon, head pillowed on his crossed palms, and stared at the ceiling.

Still locked up, then.

Stupid fucking bitch.

Well, not really. She saw you coming a thousand meters out. That makes her pretty fucking smart.

He sighed and looked across at the window. Six floors up, probably jacked into the same security as the door anyway. Not a chance.

Could always—

Oh fuck off. Weren’t you
listening
to Sutherland? Only do what you are happy to live with. She made your bed, for fuck’s sake. You’re out of the Republic, you’re out of jail. How bad can it be?

Sit it out, look at the case. Make some suggestions, let them get comfortable with you. If they want this to work, they can’t keep a leash on you twenty-four seven
.

He reached over for the glass and propped himself up to drink.

So she’s an unluck-fucker. Doesn’t seem the sort.

The sort being? Zooly?

Come on, that was a one-off.

A twice-off. So far.

Zooly’s a friend.

Yeah, a friend who likes to fuck unlucks on an occasional basis.

Maybe it’s me Zooly likes to fuck on an occasional basis. Ever think of that? Maybe my genetic status has fuck-all to do with it.

Right. And maybe this Ertekin woman just liked to fuck her unluck boyfriend for who he was, too.

Ah, go to sleep.

He couldn’t. The mesh sent rusty twinges through him, out of time with his pulse.

Better deal with that tomorrow. Nearly four months of substandard chloride, you’ll be lucky if it doesn’t seize up on you soon.

Seemed to work on Dudeck and his pals.

Yeah, this isn’t some bunch of neo-Nazi fuckwits you’re dealing with now, this is another thirteen. An adapted thirteen, by the sound of it. You’ll need to be wired all the way right if you’re going to—Hoy. Going to what? Couple of days and a dropped guard, we’re out of here, remember.

He went back to staring at the ceiling.

A bad chloride twinge kicked him awake, bone-deep aching along his left forearm and sudden sweat from the intensity of the pain. He’d curled up around it instinctively in his sleep, and there was a faint whimper trapped in his throat as he woke. Aunt Chitra’s pain-management training, the silent imperative.

Take the pain, breathe, breathe it under control, and
don’t make a fucking sound
. He swallowed and rolled over, protecting the aching limb with his other arm.

Remembered he was in Sevgi Ertekin’s home, and relaxed. The whimper got free as a low groan.

The room was full of barely filtered light—there were varipolara drapes at the windows, and someone had forgotten to opaque them the all the way down the night before. His watch said it was a little after nine.

He grunted and flexed the fingers of his left hand, chased the pain to fading. The mesh, for reasons the Marstech biolabs apparently still didn’t understand, “remembered” injury trauma and tended to overload the system in those parts of the body that had suffered it in the past. Fine so long as you fueled the system right; the worst you got was a faint warmth and itching at the site of previous wounds. But with the shit he’d been buying from Louie over the last few months, the neuromuscular interfacing would be ragged and inflamed. And Carl had once stopped a Saudi opsdog with that forearm. Some monstrous engineered hybrid, ghost-pale and snarling as it materialized out of the desert night and leapt at his throat.

The impact put him on his back, the jaws sank into the bone, and even after he killed the fucking thing, it took them nearly five minutes to break the bite lock and get it off him.

He listened for sound through the apartment, heard nothing. Evidently Ertekin was still out cold. No chance of going back to sleep now, and the door was still locked. He thought about it for a moment then got up, pulled on his pants, and padded through to the kitchen. A brief search of the cupboards produced coffee for the espresso machine in the corner. OLYMPUS MONS ROBUSTA BLEND—FROM ACTUAL MARSTECH GENE LABS!
Yeah, right
. He allowed himself a sour grin and set up the machine to make two long cups, then went to the fridge for milk.

There were a couple of LongLife cartons open, one weighing in at about half full, the other a lot less. On impulse he sniffed at the torn cardboard openings on both. Pulled a face and upended each carton carefully one after the other over the sink. With the least full of the two, the contents came out slow and semi-solid, splattered across the metal in slimy white clots. He shook his head and rinsed the mess away.

“You and Zooly’d get on like a fucking house on fire,” he muttered and went back to the cupboards to find more milk.

“Who you talking to?”

He turned with the fresh carton in his hand. The kitchen had filled with the smell of coffee, and either that or the noise he was making rummaging in the cupboards had woken Ertekin. She stood in the kitchen doorway, eyes heavy-lidded, hair stuck up in clumps, wearing a faded NYPD T-shirt several sizes too big for her and, as far as he could tell, nothing much else. The look on her face wasn’t friendly.

“Singing,” he said. “To myself. I made coffee.”

“Yeah, so I fucking see.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”

She looked back at him for a moment, impassively, then turned away. He caught the lines of her hips under the T-shirt, the length of her thighs as the about-turn brought her legs together.

“What time is it?”

“’Bout half past nine.”

“Fuck, Marsalis.” Her voice trailed away, back toward the bedroom. “What you got, insomnia or something?”

Sounds of water splashing, a door closing it off. A sudden, unlooked-for image opened in his head. Sevgi Ertekin strips off her T-shirt and steps into the shower, hands gathered under her chin beneath the stream of warm water, arms pressing breasts flat andHe grinned wryly and derailed the internal experia script before it reached his groin. Finished making the coffee anyway. It came out rich and creamed with bubbles, steaming an aroma that kicked him straight back to the dusty bubblefabs of Huari camp. The ominous itch on his skin of sunlight through an atmosphere only recently made thick enough to breathe, the uneasy pull of Mars gravity, the loose grip of a planet that didn’t recognize him as its own and didn’t really see why it should hold on to him. Coffee in aluminium canisters, dust crunching underfoot, and Sutherland at his shoulder, rumbling speech like the reassuring turnover of heavy plant machinery.
Nothing human-scale around here, soak.
Just shade your eyes and take a look
. And the staggering, neck-tilting view up Massif Verne, to drive the other man’s point home.

He poured the coffee into two mugs, took one for himself and left hers to get cold on the kitchen counter.

Serve her fucking right. He sipped from his mug, pulled a surprised face. from actual marstech gene labs was right. He hated it when reality bore out the clanging boasts of the hype. He went back to the living room and peered out at the market below. He didn’t know the city well, and this part less than most, but Ertekin’s building was a pretty standard nanotech walk-up and he guessed the open plaza below had been a part of the same redevelopment. It had the faintly organic lines of all early nanobuild. He knew parts of southeast London that looked much the same. Buildings in a bucket—just pour it out and watch them grow.

He heard her come out of the bedroom, heard her in the kitchen. Then he could feel her in the room with him, at his back, watching. She cleared her throat. He turned and saw her on the other side of the room, dressed and somewhat groomed, coffee mug held in both hands. She gestured with the drink.

“Thanks.” She looked away, then back. “I uh. I’m not great first thing in the morning.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Randomly, for something to fill the quiet between them: “Possible sign of greatness. Nor was Felipe Souza, by all accounts.”

Flicker of a smile. “No?”

“No. Did all his molecular dynamics work at night. I read this biography of him, once I got back to Earth.

Seemed appropriate, you know. Anyway, book says, when they took him on at UNAM, he refused to lecture before midday. Great guy to have as a tutor, right?”

“Not for you.”

“Well, my head starts to spin once you get past basic buckyball structure, so—”

“No, I meant the morning thing.” She gestured with the cup again, one-handed this time, a little more open. “You wouldn’t be—”

“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “It’s the training. Never really goes away.”

Quiet opened up again in the wake of his words. The conversation, caught and scraping in the shallow waters of her continued embarrassment. He reached for something to pole them clear again. Something that had flared dimly in his mind the previous night as he finally arced downward toward sleep.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking. You guys debriefed the onboard djinn for
Horkan’s Pride,
right? Back in June, when this all started.”

“Yeah.” Her voice stretched a little on the word, quizzical. He liked the sound it made. He fumbled after follow-up.

“Yeah, so who’d you have do it? In-house team?”

She shook her head. “I doubt it. We got transcripts handed down, probably some geek hired out of MIT’s machine interface squad. They handle most of our n-djinn work. Why, you think there’s something they missed?”

“It’s always a possibility.”

A skeptical look. “Something
you’d
pick up?”

“Okay, maybe not something they
missed,
as such.” He sipped his coffee. Gestured. “Just something they weren’t looking for, because I wasn’t on the scene. A close link between Merrin and me. Something that’ll put me next to him.”

“A link? You said you didn’t know him.”

“I don’t, directly. Come on, Ertekin, you were a cop. You must know something about complexity theory. Social webbing.”

She shrugged. “Sure. We got the basics in our demodynamics classes. Yaroshanko intuition, Chen and Douglas, Rabbani. All the way back to Watts and Strogatz, all that small-world networks shit. So what? You know, once you get out on the streets for real, most of that demodynamics stuff’s about as useful as poetry in a whorehouse.”

He held back a grin. “Maybe so. But small-world networks work. And the variant thirteen club on Mars is a very small world. As is Mars itself. I may not know Merrin, but I’m willing to bet you can link me to him in a couple of degrees of separation or less. And if those links are there, then nothing’s going to spot them out better than an n-djinn.”

“Yeah. Any n-djinn. Why’s it got to be
Horkan’s Pride
?”

“Because
Horkan’s Pride
was the last djinn to see Merrin alive. It stands to reason that—”

Soft chime from the door.

Ertekin glanced at her watch, reflexively. Confusion creased in the corners of her eyes.

“Guess Tom just doesn’t trust the two of us together,” Carl said, deadpan.

The confusion faded out, traded for a disdain he made as manufactured. She crossed to the door and picked up the privacy receiver.

“Yes?”

He saw her eyes widen slightly. She nodded, said yes a couple more times, then hung up. When she looked at him again, there was a fully fledged frown on her face. He couldn’t decide if she was worried or annoyed, or both.

“It’s Ortiz,” she said. “He drove here.”

He covered his own surprise. “What an honor. Does he collect all his new hires by limousine?”

“Not since I’ve been working there.”

“So it must be me.”

He’d intended it to come out light and supple with irony. But somewhere, sometime in the last four months, he’d lost the knack. He heard the weight in his own words, and so did she.

“Yeah.” She looked at him over her coffee mug. “It must be you.”