“Miller,” said Jerry.
“What exactly is going on here? Courault,” the tall man turned to the female medic, “you know better than to bring subjects through here unsedated.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Sedaka insisted that there was no risk involved. He said he was in a hurry. To see director Chung.”
“I don’t care how much of a hurry he’s in.” Miller swung on Jerry, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Are you insane, Sedaka? What do you think this is, the visitors’ gallery? I’ve got clients in there. Recognisable faces. Courault, sedate this man immediately.”
Oh, well. No one’s lucky for ever.
I was already moving. Before Courault could lift the hypospray from her hip sack, I yanked both the Nemex and the blaster from Jerry’s waistband and spun, firing. Courault and her two colleagues went down, multiply injured. Blood splattered on antiseptic white behind them. Miller had time for one outraged yell and then I shot him in the mouth with the Nemex. Jerry was just backing away from me, the unloaded Philips gun still dangling from his hand. I threw up the blaster.
“Look, I did my fucking best, I—”
The beam cut loose and his head exploded.
In the sudden quiet that followed, I retraced my steps to the doors of the surgery and pushed through them. The little knot of figures, immaculately suited to a man and woman, had left the table on which a young female sleeve was laid out, and were gaping at me behind forgotten surgical masks. Only the autosurgeon continued working unperturbed, making smooth incisions and cauterising wounds with abrupt little sizzlings. Indistinct lumps of raw red poked out of an array of small metal dishes collected at the subject’s head. It looked unnervingly like the start of some arcane banquet.
The woman on the table was Louise.
There were five men and women in the theatre, and I killed them all while they stared at me. Then I shot the autosurgeon to pieces with the blaster, and raked the beam over the rest of the equipment in the room. Alarms sirened into life from every wall. In the storm of their combined shrieking, I went round and inflicted Real Death on everyone there.
Outside, there were more alarms and two of the medical crew were still alive. Courault had succeeded in crawling a dozen metres down the corridor in a broad trail of her own blood, and one of her male colleagues, too weak to escape, was trying to prop himself up against the wall. The floor was slippery under him and he kept sliding back down. I ignored him and went after the woman. She stopped when she heard my footsteps, twisted her head to look round and then began to crawl again, frantically. I stamped a foot down between her shoulders to make her stop and then kicked her onto her back.
We looked at each other for a long moment while I remembered her impassive face as she had put me under the night before. I lifted the blaster for her to see.
“Real Death,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
I walked back to the remaining medic who had seen and was now scrabbling desperately backwards away from me. I crouched down in front of him. The screaming of the alarms rose and fell over our heads like lost souls.
“Jesus Christ,” he moaned as I pointed the blaster at his face. “Jesus Christ, I only work here.”
“Good enough,” I told him.
The blaster was almost inaudible against the alarms.
Working rapidly, I took care of the third medic in similar fashion, dealt with Miller a little more at length, stripped Jerry’s headless corpse of its jacket and tacked the garment under my arm. Then I scooped up the Philips gun, tacked it into my waistband and left. On my way out along the screaming corridors of the clinic, I killed every person that I met, and melted their stacks to slag.
Personal.
The police were landing on the roof as I let myself out of the front door and walked unhurriedly down the street. Under my arm, Miller’s severed head was beginning to seep blood through the lining of Jerry’s jacket.
PART 3: ALLIANCE
(APPLICATION UPGRADE)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was quiet and sunny in the gardens at Suntouch House, and the air smelled of mown grass. From the tennis courts came the faint popping of a game in progress and once I heard Miriam Bancroft’s voice raised in excitement. Flash of tanned legs beneath a flaring white skirt and a puff of shell-pink dust where the driven ball buried itself in the back of her opponent’s court. There was a polite ripple of applause from the seated figures watching. I made my way down towards the courts, flanked by heavily armed security men with blank faces.
The players were taking a game break when I arrived, feet planted wide in front of their seats, heads down. As my feet crunched on the gravel surround, Miriam Bancroft looked up through tangled blonde hair and met my eye. She said nothing, but her hands worked at the handle of her racket and a smile split her lips. Her opponent, who also glanced up, was a slim young man with something about him that suggested he might genuinely be as young as his body. He looked vaguely familiar.
Bancroft was seated at the middle of a row of deck chairs, Oumou Prescott on his right and a man and woman I’d never met on his left. He didn’t get up when I reached him; in fact he barely looked at me. One hand gestured to the seat next to Prescott.
“Sit down, Kovacs. It’s the last game.”
I twitched a smile, resisting the temptation to kick his teeth down his throat, and folded myself into the deck chair. Oumou Prescott leaned across to me and murmured behind her hand.
“Mr. Bancroft has had some unwanted attention from the police today. You are being less subtle than we had hoped.”
“Just warming up,” I muttered back.
By some prior agreed time limit, Miriam Bancroft and her opponent shrugged off their towels and took up position. I settled back and watched the play, eyes mostly on the woman’s taut body as it surged and swung within the white cotton, remembering how it looked unclothed, how it had writhed against me. Once, just before a service, she caught me looking at her and her mouth bent in fractional amusement. She was still waiting for an answer from me, and now she thought she had it. When the match finished, in a flurry of hard-fought but visibly inevitable points, she came off court glowing.
She was talking to the man and woman I didn’t know when I approached to offer my congratulations. She saw me coming and turned to include me in the little group.
“Mr. Kovacs.” Her eyes widened the slightest bit. “Did you enjoy watching?”
“Very much,” I said truthfully. “You’re quite merciless.”
She tipped her head on one side and began to towel her sweat-soaked hair with one hand. “Only when required,” she said. “You won’t know Nalan or Joseph, of course. Nalan, Joseph, this is Takeshi Kovacs, the Envoy Laurens hired to look into his murder. Mr. Kovacs is from offworld. Mr. Kovacs, this is Nalan Ertekin, Chief Justice of the UN Supreme Court, and Joseph Phiri from the Commission of Human Rights.”
“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.