Black Man (28 page)

“Sort of thing that makes a COLIN salary very attractive, I imagine.”

“Yeah.” Her expression hardened. “Sort of thing that makes working for an organization that doesn’t give a fuck about UNGLA very attractive, too.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m freelance.”

“Yes. But it was someone like you in UNGLA liaison at City Hall that came looking for Ethan, that put the SWATs onto him. It was someone like you that authorized inducing my fucking baby at six and a half months and sticking it in a cryocap until UNGLA’s legal team can get a ruling to have it fucking murdered.”

Her voice caught on the last word. She buried herself in her drink. Wouldn’t look at him anymore.

He didn’t try to disabuse her and deflate the jagged anger she’d fenced herself in with, because it looked like she needed it. He didn’t point out the obvious flaws.

In fact, Sevgi,
he didn’t say,
it probably wasn’t someone like me, because in the first place there aren’t that many like me around. Four other licensed thirteens working UNGLA that I know of, and none of them in a liaison capacity
.

And more to the point, Sevgi Ertekin, if it
had
been someone like me hunting Ethan Conrad, that someone would have shown up in person. He wouldn’t have handed it to a mob of SWAT cudlips and stood on the sidelines like some fucking sheep hierarch supervising
.

Someone like me would have done his killing himself.

Instead he sat quietly and watched as Ertekin slid from brooding silence into a rakı-sodden doze.

Awareness of where he was made its way back into his consciousness, the darkened apartment in the cloven city, the distant lights, the sleeping woman at barely arm’s length but curled away from him now, the quiet—Hey, Marsalis. How you been?

—the tidal fucking quiet, like swells of black water, the seeping silence and Elena Aguirre, back again, talking softly to him—

Remember
Felipe Souza?
Stars and silent, empty corridors and safely dreaming faces behind glass that locked you out in the alone. That little whining I made in the pits of your ears, the way I’d come up behind you and whisper up out of it. Thought I’d gone away, did you? No chance. I found you out there, Marsalis, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. You and me, Marsalis. You and me
.

They kept him waiting at reception. Not entirely an unpleasant experience; like a lot of Rim States v-formats, the Human Cost Foundation’s site was subtly peopled with short-loop secondary ’faces, hardwired into the system to provide the environs with what product brochure enthusiasm liked to call
a more authentic feel
. Sitting across from him in the waiting area, a svelte young woman in a short business skirt crossed one long thigh over the other and gave him a friendly smile.

“Do you work for the foundation?” she asked.

“Uh, no. My brother does.”

“You’re here to see him?”

“Yes.” The format sculpters had done their work well. He felt positively rude stopping on the dry monosyllable. “We don’t see each other that much these days.”

“You’re not local then?”

“No. Wiring in from New York.”

“Oh, that is a long way. So how do you like it out there?”

“It isn’t out there for me, it’s home. We both grew up in the city. My brother’s the one who moved.” Tiny flicker of sibling rivalry riding a base of Manhattan exceptionalism, and the tiny adrenal shock as he recognized both. He began to see how the interface psychiatry he’d always sneered at might work quite well after all.

“So, uh.” The question rose to his lips; he tasted its idiocy but weariness let it through anyway, part challenge, part deflection from more talk about Jeff. “Where are
you
from?”

She smiled again. “That’s almost a metaphysical question, isn’t it. I suppose I’d have to say I’m from Jakarta. Conceptually, anyway. Have you ever been there?”

“Couple of times, wiring in. Not for real.”

“You should go. It’s beautiful now the nanobuild is finished. Best to try to see it in…”

And so on, effortlessly evading any conversational currents that might bring them up too hard against the fact of what she was. He guessed that this must be how high-class prostitution worked as well, but he was too tired to really care. He let go, let himself be lulled by the erudite flow of what she knew, the participative dynamic she ran the conversation on, the stocking-sheathed geometry of her elegantly crossed legs. There seemed to be a reactive subroutine that measured how much he wanted to talk and adjusted the response output accordingly. He found, oddly enough, that he wanted to talk quite a lot.

He wasn’t aware of Jeff approaching until his brother stood almost over him, smiling wearily.

“Okay.” He fumbled to his feet, recovered himself. “At last.”

“Yeah, sorry. Whole boatload of washups came in from Wenzhou a couple of days ago, it’s going to put us way over budget for the quarter. Been negotiating with the legislature all fucking day.” He nodded at the still-seated woman. “I see you’ve met Sharleen.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Lovely, isn’t she. You know, sometimes I’ll come out here and talk to her just for the fun of it.”

Norton looked at the ’face. She smiled up at the two of them, head lifted, expression gone very slightly vacant, as if what they were saying was birdsong, or a played segment of some symphony she liked.

“Need to talk to you,” he said uncomfortably.

“Sure.” Jeff Norton gestured. “Come on through. Bye, Sharleen.”

“Good-bye.”

She smiled over her shoulder as they left, then swiveled and sat immobile and silent as they passed out of trigger range. Jeff led him past the reception island and down a truncated corridor with a watercooler at the end. Half a dozen steps along, the passageway grayed out around them and became Jeff’s office. It was pretty much as Norton remembered the actual suite from a visit a couple of years back, a few décor differences in the pastel shades of the walls and fittings, maybe one or two ornaments on shelves that he didn’t recall. A photo of Megan on the desk. He drew a compressed breath and seated himself on the right-angled sofa facing the window and the skyline view of Golden Gate Park. His brother leaned across the desk and punched something out on the deck.

“So?”

“I need some more advice. You heard about Ortiz?”

“No.” Jeff leaned against the side of his desk. “What’s he up to, more UN handholding tours?”

“He’s been shot, Jeff.”

“Shot?”

“Yeah. It’s all over the feeds. Where have you been? I thought you’d know. I gave a COLIN press conference all about it yesterday afternoon.”

Jeff sighed. Shook his head as if it weren’t working properly. He crossed to the adjacent angle of the sofa and collapsed into it.

“Christ, I’m tired,” he muttered. “Been on this Wenzhou thing for the last day and a half solid. I didn’t even go home from the office last night. Been in virtual most of this morning. Is he still alive?”

“Yeah, holding up. They’ve got him wired into intensive-care life support over at Weill Cornell. Medical n-djinn says he’s going to be okay.”

“Can he talk?”

“Not yet. They’re going to patch him into a v-format once he regains consciousness, but that might be awhile.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Jeff gave him a haggard look. “So what’s this got to do with me? What do you need?”

“For Ortiz, nothing. I don’t think you could help right now anyway. Like I said, he’s not even conscious.

They’ve got family and close friends at the hospital but—”

His brother gave him the corner of a smile. “Yeah, I know. Not my world anymore. Blew my chance at the Union power game, didn’t I.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Ran west and ended up a bleeding-heart charity chump.”

Norton gestured impatiently. ’That’s not what this is about. I want to talk to you about Marsalis. You know, the thirteen we levered out of South Florida State?”

“Oh. Right.” Jeff rubbed at his face. “So how’s that working out?”

Norton hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“You got problems with him?”

“I don’t…” He lifted his hands. “Look, the guy signed up okay. You were right about that much.”

“What, that he’d bite your hand off for the chance to get out of a Jesusland jail?” Jeff shrugged. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Yeah, well I guess I owe you for the suggestion. And I’ve got to say, he lives up to the hype. He was there when they tried to hit Ortiz, and it looks like this guy’s the only reason Ortiz is still breathing. He took out two of the three shooters and chased the third one off. Unarmed. You believe that?”

“Yes,” said Jeff shortly. “I do believe that. I told you, these guys are fucking terrifying. So what’s the problem?”

Norton looked at his hands. He hesitated again, then shook his head irritably and raised his eyes to meet his brother’s curious gaze.

“You remember I told you I’ve got a partner now? Ex-NYPD detective, a woman?”

“Who you want to get horizontal with, but won’t admit it. Yeah, I remember.”

“Yeah, well, there’s something I didn’t tell you about her. She had a relationship with a renegade thirteen a few years back. Didn’t work out, and there were some, uh, complications.”

Jeff raised his brows. “Uh—oh.”

“Yeah. I didn’t give it much thought, even when we hired this guy.”

“Bullshit.”

Norton sighed. “Okay, I gave it some thought. But you know, I figured, she’s tough, she’s smart, she’s got a handle on the situation. Nothing to worry about.”

“Sure.” Jeff leaned forward. “So what are you worrying about?”

Norton stared around the office miserably. “I don’t know.” He threw up his arms. “I don’t know, I don’t
fucking
know.”

His brother smiled, sighed.

“You ever chew coca leaves, Tom?”

Norton blinked. “Coca leaves?”

“Yeah.”

“What has that got—”

“I’m trying to help here. Just answer the question. You ever chew coca leaves?”

“Of course I have. Every time we have to go down to the prep camps for a Marstech swoop, they give us a big bag at the airport and recommend it for the altitude. Tastes like shit. So what has that got to do with—”

“Do you get high when you chew coca?”

“Oh come on—”

“Answer the question.”

Norton set his jaw. “No. I don’t get high. Sometimes your mouth goes numb, but that’s it. It’s just to give you energy, stop you feeling tired.”

“Right. Now listen. That energizing effect is part of an evolved working relationship between humans and the coca plant. Coca gives humans medicinal benefits, humans ensure that there’s plenty of coca being cultivated. Everybody wins. And human physiology copes very comfortably with the effects the leaf provides. It’s a benefit that doesn’t interfere with any of your other necessary survival dynamics. You’re not going to do anything stupid just because you’re chewing those leaves.”

“Why is it,” Norton asked heavily, “that every time I come to you for help, you have to lecture me?”

Jeff grinned at him. “Because I’m your older brother, stupid. Now pay attention. If you extract the alkaloid from the coca leaf, if you take it through the artificial chemical processes that give you cocaine, and then you slam that stuff into the human brain, well, then you’re going to see a whole different story.

You do a couple of lines of that shit, and you surely
will
get high. You’ll also probably do some stupid things, things that might get you killed in a more unforgiving evolutionary environment than New York.

You won’t pay attention to the social and emotional cues of the people around you, or you’ll misread them. Fail to remember useful personal detail. You’ll maybe hit on the wrong woman, pick a fight with the wrong guy. Misjudge speeds, angles, and distances. And long-term, of course, you’ll put your heart under too much strain as well. All good ways to get yourself killed. What it comes down to is that we’re not evolved to deal with the substance at the level our technology can give it to us. Age-old story, same thing with sugar, salt, synadrive, you name it.”

“And variant thirteen,” Norton said drearily.

“Right. Though this is a software issue we’re talking about now, rather than a hardware problem. At least to the extent that you can make that distinction when it comes to brain chemistry. Anyway, look—by all the accounts I’ve read, the Project Lawman originators reckoned that variant thirteens would actually have been pretty damn successful in a hunter-gatherer context. Being big, tough, and violent is an unmitigated plus in those societies. You get more meat, you get more respect, you get more women. You breed more as a result. It’s only once humans settle down in agricultural communities that these guys start to be a serious problem. Why? Because they won’t fucking do as they’re told. They won’t work in the fields and bring in the harvest for some kleptocratic old bastard with a beard. That’s when they start to get bred out, because the rest of us, the wimps and conformists, band together under that self-same kleptocratic bastard’s paternal holy authority, and we go out with
our torches and our farming implements, and we exterminate those poor fuckers.”

“Apart from the kleptocrats.” Legacy of a lifetime in sibling rivalry, Norton tugged at the loose threads in his brother’s theorizing. “I mean, they’ve got to be variant thirteen themselves, right? Otherwise, how do they get to be in charge in the first place?”

Jeff shrugged. “Jury’s still out on that, apparently. The odd thing is the gene profiles for a kleptocrat and a thirteen don’t look as similar as you might think. Thirteens don’t seem to be much interested in material wealth for one thing. Anything they can’t carry over one shoulder, they show very limited enthusiasm for.”

“Oh come on. How are you going to measure something like that?”

“Wouldn’t be that hard. Involuntary mental response to visual stimulus, maybe. We do that here with the washups when they come in. Helps us to profile them. Anyway, there’s observational evidence as well—apparently before Jacobsen and the roundup, most of these guys were living in small apartments with not much more stuff than you’d fit in a decent-size backpack. So maybe the kleptocrats weren’t thirteens at all, they were just smart guys like us who figured out a socially constructed way to beat the big bad motherfuckers to the pick of the women.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Speaking for all of us, Tom. Because for the last twenty thousand years or so, these guys have been gone. We wiped them out. And by wiping them out, we lost any evolved capacity we might have had for dealing with them.”

“Which means what?”

“Well, what’s the preeminent quality of any good leader, any successfully dominant member of the group?”

“I don’t know. Networking skills?”

Jeff laughed. “You are such a fucking New Yorker, Tom.”

“So were you, once.”

“Charisma!” Jeff snapped his fingers, struck a pose. “Leaders are charismatic. Persuasive, imposing, charming despite their forcefulness. Easy to follow. Sexually attractive to women.”

“What if they
are
women?”

“Come on, I’m talking about hunter-gatherer societies here.”

“I thought you were talking about now.”

“Hunter-gatherer society
is
now, in terms of human evolution. We haven’t changed that much in the last fifty to a hundred thousand years.”

“Apart from wiping out the thirteens.”

“Yeah, that’s not evolution. That’s civilization getting an early start.”

Norton frowned. It was an abrupt bitterness you didn’t often hear in Jeff’s voice. “Kind of sour about it all of a sudden, aren’t we?”

His brother sighed. “Yeah, what can I tell you? Work for Human Cost long enough, it starts to corrode your fucking soul. Anyway, point is variant thirteen seems to come with a whole suite of genetic predisposition toward charismatic dominance, and it operates at levels the rest of us haven’t had to handle for twenty thousand years. It’s like they carry around an emotional vortex that tears up everyone they touch. Women get pit-of-the-stomach attraction for them, men hate their guts. The weak and the easily influenced follow them, give in, do what they want. The violently inclined kick back. The rest of us quietly hate them but don’t dare do anything about it. I mean, you’re talking about so much force of personality that if one of these guys ran for any elected office, he’d flatten anyone you ran against him.

They’d be pure political Marstech, guaranteed black-label winners every time. Why do you think Jacobsen wanted them interned and chemically castrated? The way he saw it, let them out into general population and within a couple of decades they’d be running every democratic nation-state on the planet.