“Delighted.” I made a brief formal bow to both of them. “You’re here to discuss Resolution 653, I imagine.”
The two officials exchanged a glance, then Phiri nodded. “You’re very well informed,” he said gravely. “I’ve heard a lot about the Envoy Corps, but still I’m impressed. How long have you been on Earth, exactly?”
“About a week.” I exaggerated, hoping to play down the usual paranoia elected officials exhibit around Envoys.
“A week, yes. Impressive indeed.” Phiri was a heavy-set black man, apparently in his fifties, with hair that was greying a little and careful brown eyes. Like Dennis Nyman, he affected external eye-wear, but where Nyman’s steely lenses had been designed to enhance the planes of his face, this man wore the glasses to deflect attention. They were heavy-framed and gave him the appearance of a forgetful cleric, but behind the lenses, the eyes missed nothing.
“And are you making progress with your investigation?” This was Ertekin, a handsome Arab woman a couple of decades younger than Phiri, and therefore likely to be on at least her second sleeve. I smiled at her.
“Progress is difficult to define, your honour. As Quell would have it, They come to me with progress reports, but all I see is change, and bodies burnt.”
“Ah, you are from Harlan’s World, then,” Ertekin said politely. “And do you consider yourself a Quellist, Mr Kovacs?”
I let the smile become a grin. “Sporadically. I’d say she had a point.”
“Mr Kovacs has been quite busy, in fact,” said Miriam Bancroft hurriedly. “I imagine he and Laurens have a lot to discuss. Perhaps it might be better if we left them to these matters.”
“Yes, of course.” Ertekin inclined her head. “Perhaps we’ll talk again later.”
The three of them drifted over to commiserate with Miriam’s opponent, who was ruefully stowing his racket and towels in a bag; but for all Miriam’s diplomatic steerage, Nalan Ertekin did not seem unduly concerned to make her escape. I felt a momentary glimmer of admiration for her. Telling a UN executive, in effect an officer of the Protectorate, that you’re a Quellist is a bit like confessing to ritual slaughter at a vegetarian dinner; it’s not really the done thing.
I turned to find Oumou Prescott at my shoulder.
“Shall we?” she said grimly, and pointed up towards the house. Bancroft was already striding ahead. We went after him at what I thought was an excessive pace.
“One question,” I managed, between breathing. “Who’s the kid? The one Mrs Bancroft crucified.”
Prescott flicked me an impatient glance.
“Big secret, huh?”
“No, Mr Kovacs, it is not a secret, large or otherwise. I merely think you might do better occupying your mind with other matters than the Bancrofts’ house guests. If you must know, the other player was Marco Kawahara.”
“Was it, indeed?” Accidentally, I’d slipped into Phiri’s speech patterns. Chalk up a double strike for personality. “So that’s where I’ve seen his face before. Takes after his mother, doesn’t he?”
“I really wouldn’t know,” said Prescott dismissively. “I have never met Ms Kawahara.”
“Lucky you.”
Bancroft was waiting for us in an exotic conservatory pinned to the seaward wing of the house. The glass walls were a riot of alien colours and forms, among which I picked out a young mirrorwood tree and numerous stands of martyrweed. Bancroft was standing next to one of the latter, spraying it carefully with a white metallic dust. I don’t know much about martyrweed beyond its obvious uses as a security device, so I had no idea what the powder was.
Bancroft turned as we came in. “Please keep your voices reasonably low.” His own voice was curiously flat in the sound absorbent environment. “Martyrweed is highly sensitive at this stage of development. Mr Kovacs, I assume you are familiar with it.”
“Yeah.” I glanced at the vaguely hand-shaped cups of the leaves, with the central crimson stains that had given the plant its name. “You sure these are mature?”
“Fully. On Adoracion, you’ll have seen them larger, but I had Nakamura tailor these for indoor use. This is as secure as a Nilvibe cabin and,” he gestured to a trio of steel frame chairs beside the martyrweed, “a great deal more comfortable.”
“You wanted to see me,” I said impatiently. “What about?”
For just a moment that black iron stare bent on me with the full force of Bancroft’s three and a half centuries, and it was like locking gazes with a demon. For that second, the Meth soul was looking out and I saw reflected in those eyes all the myriad ordinary single lives that they had watched die, like the pale flickerings of moths at a flame. It was an experience I’d only had once before, and that was when I’d taken issue with Reileen Kawahara. I could feel the heat on my wings.
Then it was gone, and there was only Bancroft, moving to seat himself and setting the powder spray aside on an adjacent table. He looked up and waited to see if I would sit down as well. When I did not, he steepled his fingers and frowned. Oumou Prescott hovered between us.
“Mr Kovacs, I am aware that by the terms of our contract I agreed to meet all reasonable expenses in this investigation, but when I said that, I did not expect to be paying for a trail of wilful organic damage from one side of Bay City to another. I have spent most of this morning buying off both the West Coast triads and the Bay City police, neither of whom were very well disposed towards me even before you started this carnage. I wonder if you realise how much it is costing me just to keep you alive and out of storage.”
I looked around at the conservatory and shrugged.
“I imagine you can afford it.”
Prescott flinched. Bancroft allowed himself the splinter of a smile.
“Perhaps, Mr Kovacs, I no longer wish to afford it.”
“Then pull the fucking plug.” The martyrweed trembled visibly at the sudden change in tone. I didn’t care. Abruptly, I was no longer in the mood for playing the Bancrofts’ elegant games. I was tired. Discounting the brief period of unconsciousness at the clinic, I had been awake for over thirty hours and my nerves were raw from the continual use of the neurachem system. I had been in a firefight. I had escaped from a moving aircar. I had been subjected to interrogation routines that would have traumatised most human beings for a lifetime. I had committed multiple combat murders. And I had been in the act of crawling into bed when the Hendrix let Bancroft’s curt summons through the call block I’d requested, quote, ‘in the interests of maintaining good client relations and so assuring continued guest status’. Someday, someone was going to have to overhaul the hotel’s antique service industry idiolect; I had weighed the idea of doing it myself with the Nemex when I got off the phone, but my irritation at the hotel’s enslaved responses to guest-holding was overridden by the anger I felt towards Bancroft himself. It was that anger that had stopped me ignoring the call and going to bed anyway, and propelled me out to Suntouch House dressed in the same rumpled clothes I had been wearing since the previous day.
“I beg your pardon, Mr Kovacs?” Oumou Prescott was staring at me. “Are you suggesting—”
“No, I’m not, Prescott. I’m threatening.” I switched my gaze back to Bancroft. “I didn’t ask to join this fucking No dance. You dragged me here, Bancroft. You pulled me out of the store on Harlan’s World and you jacked me into Elias Ryker’s sleeve just to piss Ortega off. You sent me out there with a few vague hints and watched me stumble around in the dark, cracking my shins on your past misdemeanours. Well, if you don’t want to play any more, now the current’s running a little hard, that’s fine with me. I’m through risking my stack for a piece of shit like you. You can just put me back in the box, and I’ll take my chances a hundred and seventeen years from now. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and whoever wants you toasted will have wiped you off the face of the planet by then.”