“Fucking clowns,” growled Ortega, elbowing the last of the demonstrators out of her way. “If they provoke the Pubs, they’ll be sorry. I’ve seen these boys in action before and it isn’t pretty.”
I ducked around a shaven-headed young man who was punching violently at the sky with one fist and holding one of the placard generators with the other. His voice was hoarse and he appeared to be working himself into a frenzied trance. I joined Ortega at the upper fringe of the crowd, a little out of breath.
“There isn’t enough organisation here to be a real threat,” I said, raising my voice to compete with the crowd. “They’re just making a noise.”
“Yeah, well that never stopped the Pubs before. They’re likely to break a few skulls just on general principles. What a fucking mess.”
“Price of progress, Kristin. You wanted Resolution 653.” I gestured at the sea of angry faces below. “Now you’ve got it.”
One of the masked and padded men above us broke ranks and came down the steps, riot prod fractionally lifted at his side. His jacket bore a sergeant’s crimson slash at the shoulder. Ortega flipped her badge at him and after a brief, shouted conversation, we were allowed up. The line parted for us and then the double doors into the hall beyond. It was hard to tell which was the most smoothly mechanical, the doors or the black-clad faceless figures that stood guard over them.
Inside, it was quiet and gloomy with the storm light coming through the roof panels. I looked around at the deserted benches and sighed. Whatever world it is, whatever you’ve done there for better or worse, you always leave the same way.
Alone.
“You need a minute?”
I shook my head. “Need a lifetime, Kristin. Maybe then some.”
“Stay out of trouble, maybe you’ll get it.” There was an attempt at humour floating in her voice, rather like a corpse in a swimming pool, and she must have realised how it sounded because the sentence was bitten off. An awkwardness was growing between us, something that had started as soon as they re-sleeved me in Ryker’s body for the real-time committee hearings. During the inquiry we’d been kept too busy to see much of each other and when the proceedings finally closed and we all went home, the pattern had endured. There’d been a few gusty if only superficially satisfying couplings, but even these had stopped once it became clear that Ryker would be cleared and released. Whatever shared warmth we’d been gathered in to was out of control now, unsafe, like the flames from a smashed storm lantern, and trying to hold onto it was only getting us both painfully scorched.
I turned and gave her a faint smile. “Stay out of trouble, huh? That what you told Trepp?”
It was an unkind blow, and I knew it. Against all the odds, it seemed Kawahara had missed Trepp with everything but the edge of the stun beam. The shard gun, I remembered when they told me, had been dialled down to minimum dispersal just before I went in to face Kawahara. Sheer luck I’d left it that way. By the time the rapidly summoned UN forensics team arrived on Head in the Clouds to take evidence under Ortega’s direction, Trepp had vanished, as had my grav harness from the atmosphere sampling turret where I’d come aboard. I didn’t know whether Ortega and Bautista had seen fit to let the mercenary go in view of the testimony she could give concerning the Panama Rose, or if Trepp had simply staggered off stage before the police got there. Ortega had volunteered no information and there wasn’t enough left of our previous intimacy for me to ask her outright. This was the first time we’d discussed it openly.
Ortega scowled at me. “You asking me to equate the two of you?”
“Not asking you to do anything, Kristin.” I shrugged. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t see a lot of ground between her and me.”
“Go on thinking like that, nothing’ll ever change for you.”
“Kristin, nothing ever does change.” I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. “You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves. You’ll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don’t get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules themselves, they’ll send people like Trepp and me to do it. That’s the truth, Kristin. It’s been the truth since I was born a hundred and fifty years ago and from what I read in the history books, it’s never been any different. Better get used to it.”
She looked at me levelly for a moment, then nodded as if coming to an internal decision. “You always meant to kill Kawahara, didn’t you? This confession bullshit was just to get me along for the ride.”
It was a question I’d asked myself a lot, and I still didn’t have a clear answer. I shrugged again.
“She deserved to die, Kristin. To really die. That’s all I know for certain.”
Over my head, a faint pattering sounded from the roof panels. I tipped my head back and saw transparent explosions on the glass. It was starting to rain.
“Got to go,” I said quietly. “Next time you see this face, it won’t be me wearing it, so if there’s anything you want to say…”
Ortega’s face flinched almost imperceptibly as I said it. I cursed myself for the awkwardness and tried to take her hand.
“Look, if it makes it any easier, no one knows. Bautista probably suspects we got it together, but no one really knows.”
“I know,” she said sharply, not giving me her hand. “I remember.”
I sighed. “Yeah, so do I. It’s worth remembering, Kristin. But don’t let it fuck up the rest of your life. Go get Ryker back, and get on to the next screen. That’s what counts. Oh yeah.” I reached into my coat and extracted a crumpled cigarette packet. “And you can have these back. I don’t need them any more, and nor does he, so don’t start him off again. You owe me that much, at least. Just make sure he stays quit.”
She blinked and kissed me abruptly, somewhere between mouth and cheek. It was an inaccuracy I didn’t try to correct either way. I turned away before I could see if there were going to be any tears and started for the doors at the far end of the hall. I looked back once, as I was mounting the steps. Ortega was still standing there, arms wrapped around herself, watching me leave. In the stormlight, it was too far away to see her face clearly.
For a moment something ached in me, something so deep-rooted that I knew to tear it out would be to undo the essence of what held me together. The feeling rose and splashed like the rain behind my eyes, swelling as the drumming on the roof panels grew and the glass ran with water.
Then I had it locked down.
I turned back to the next step, found a chuckle somewhere in my chest and coughed it out. The chuckle fired up and became a laugh of sorts.
Get to the next screen.
The doors were waiting at the top, the needlecast beyond.
Still trying to laugh, I went through.