“Or?”
“Or incorporation. What you would call political sanctuary. Into the Syndicate of your choice.”
“Christ, Korchow. I’ve seen the Syndicates. I’ve seen how you people live. Why the hell would I want that?”
“I’ll leave you to answer that question for yourself, Major.”
The bells on the shop door tinkled. Li turned just in time to see a new customer walk in. A tall man, dressed in ministerial gray. A diplomat or banker. Definitely not local.
“Mr. Lind!” Korchow beamed at the new arrival. “You’ve come back to look at the Heyerdal again? I’ll be at your disposal momentarily.” He pulled a knickknack off the shelf above his desk and began wrapping it in hand-printed rice paper. “I know you’ll enjoy this,” he told Li as he tied the package with a length of green ribbon. “It’s really quite an exceptional little piece. One of my personal favorites.” He smiled. “Consider it a symbol of my good intentions. And… other things.”
Li took the package without having actually seen what was in it, let herself be propelled to the counter, swiped her palm across the portable scanner Korchow held up. She wondered how he explained the absence of a credit implant to his clients. Probably faked allergies or religious objections.
“How can I reach you?” she asked.
Korchow smiled a bland, guiltless shopkeeper’s smile. “I’ll put you on the mailing list,” he said—and Li felt his hand in the small of her back, politely but firmly propelling her out into the street.
When she turned the corner, she stopped, looked back to make sure she couldn’t be seen from the shop, and unraveled the elaborately folded rice paper. Korchow had sold her a generation-ship-era figurine, molded in plastic. It had once been brightly colored, but the paint had flaked and faded, leaving the figure’s skin—or were those scales?—mottled.
It was a woman, or rather a caricature of one. Long hair cascaded over her bare shoulders, and her breasts were only hinted at. Instead of legs, she had a silver tail with fins and scales. A mermaid. Half one thing, half the other, at home in neither world.
Li felt the ridges of raised lettering on the base of the figurine. She turned it over and read MADE IN CHINA, in block letters, and, immediately below it, DISNEY ®.
She rewrapped the figurine carefully, returned it to the bag, and unfolded the credit slip Korchow had tucked into the wrapping.
“Son of a bitch!” she said when she read the figure at the bottom of the printout.
It was for four times her monthly salary. And it was a credit, not a debit. A transfer into an account Li had never opened, in a Freetown bank she had never heard of. It looked like Korchow had decided to pay in advance… and leave Li to do the explaining if anyone put the pieces together.
Zona Libre: 20 Mar 48.
Even shunted through an organic interface, an Emergent as vast as Cohen left a wide wake in streamspace.
Li found him in the Zona Libre, at a back table in a place called the 5th Column. She had to flash ID to get past the bouncers, and when she finally convinced them to let her in, she thought at first she’d come to the wrong place. Then someone called her name, and she looked over and saw Roland’s coppery curls gleaming against the oxblood velvet of a long banquette that curved along the shadowy back wall.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, sliding onto the empty place beside him. “Now.”
He smiled—an open, uncomplicated smile that was a million light-years away from any look that had ever crossed Cohen’s face. “Sorry,” Roland said. “I’m just the hired help.”
“Where’s Cohen, then?”
“He stepped out for a moment. Drop him a line and let him know you’re here.”
“No, I’ll just wait.”
“Okay.” Roland shrugged. “He’ll figure it out soon enough. And he won’t be gone long anyway; dinner’s waiting.”
Li followed Roland’s glance and saw pale creamy butter over ice, bread rolls as crisp and brown as chickens’ eggs, an open wine bottle with a French label. Two waiters hovered expectantly in the wings, waiting for the sign to serve the next course.
Roland offered Li wine, though he himself drank nothing. He gamely made small talk with her, but Li got the distinct impression that he thought she was some kind of not very interesting old person. For her part, she watched Roland with bemused embarrassment. What had she seen in him? He was nothing, except for those golden eyes. A cookie-cutter college boy with pretty hair. Barely worth looking twice at.
She glanced around the big room, keeping half an ear on Roland’s chatter. The place wasn’t really a nightclub; more of a fancy restaurant with live music. All velvet and carefully pressed linen and carefully dressed customers. Everything plush, flash, top-shelf. The guests all laughed a little too often and talked a little too loud, as if they had come there in order to be seen and were determined to get their money’s worth. The women wore smart dresses, programmed to cling to the right curves and camouflage the wrong curves. A few people wore formal jumpsuits—Corps brass or officers off rich merchant ships who couldn’t quite get out of the habit of low-g clothing—but Li’s Security Council black fatigues were out-of-place enough to make people stare.
The stage lights came up. Someone tapped a glass for silence, and the crowd hushed reluctantly. A live band walked onto the stage, went through the usual tuning-up ritual, and launched into a song that everyone but Li seemed to have heard before.
The singer was a woman. Small, vaguely familiar-looking, with a headful of black cowlicks and heavy-framed glasses that could only, in these days of cheap genework, be vanity. She was good; good enough that several songs had gone by before Li remembered to check the time and wonder what the hell Cohen was doing.
She took out a cigarette, and Roland leapt to light it for her. He’d probably be helping her across the street next. She smoked the cigarette down slowly while the singer’s smoky voice wound around them, talking about failed love affairs, lonely roads, new beginnings.
“I thought that was you,” Cohen murmured just beside her.
When she turned around Roland was gone. His wide-open face had turned into a shadowy territory of shifting planes and angles, fleeting expressions. His long-fingered hands rested on the table with inhuman stillness. Even the golden eyes now seemed dark, dangerous, deeper than oceans.
“Christ,” Li said. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, and smiled slyly. “Oh, you mean my animal magnetism and natural charisma?” The smile turned into a full-blown grin. “Don’t be too hard on Roland. After all, he’s all of twenty-three. When I was that age, I lived in a government-subsidized lab with bad lighting, couldn’t put two sentences together, and played chess twenty-four hours a day. A game which, I might add, you couldn’t get me to play now for anything—” He stopped and smiled up at the ceiling. “Well… almost anything.”
He unfolded Li’s napkin with a flourish and handed it to her. “So,” he said, refilling her wineglass, “to what do I owe this exceptional and unexpected happiness? Are you here for the pleasure of my company, or do you just need something?”
“What I need,” Li said, “is advice.”
“And you shall have it. After you’ve had dinner with me. Deal?”
“Deal,” Li said, but when the waiter handed her the menu, she quickly realized two things. First, there were no prices on it. Second, even though it was written in plain Spanish, she’d never heard of half the foods it listed.