He used the fire-key, walked out an emergency exit, waited in the rain. The cruiser nosed up to the curb, black and black-windowed, and swallowed him up.
"Saved the soft drink," Sheila said. "Thought you'd be dry." It was half ice-melt. But it was liquid. It eased a raw throat. He sucked on the straw, leaned his head back. "They calling us in?"
"No," Sheila said. That was all. They didn't want a debrief. They didn't want a truth, they wanted—
—wanted nothing to do with it. Nolan's body to the next-ofs, the live-in . . . to wherever would hide him.
Another mouthful of ice-melt. He shut his eyes, saw wire-schemas, endlessly folding, a pit you could fall into. He blinked on rain and refracted neon. "Ross killed Nolan."
"You and I don't know."
"Was it Ross?"
"Damned convenient a Company mech was in hail. Wasn't it?"
"No presence at all. Nolan—Nolan was shot between the eyes."
"MarsCorp exec—her live-in boyfriend with no record, no visa, no person. Guy who knew The Arlington's underground, who had a pass key—"
"He was keying through the doors?"
"Same as you were. Real at-home in the bottom tiers. You see a weapon on him, you see where he ditched one?"
"No." Raindrops fractured, flickering off the glass. He saw the gray ghost again, the no-Presence that could walk through total black. Or key through any apartment door, or aim a single head-shot with a computer's inhuman, instant accuracy.
He said, "Adds, doesn't it?"
"Adds. Downtown was seeing what I was. I told them. Told them you had bad feelings—"
"What the hell are they going to do? We got a dead mech down there—"
"The live-in shot Nolan. Shot the Company mech. That's your story. They can't say otherwise. What are they going to say? That the guy didn't have a gun? They won't come at us."
"What about our record?"
"Transmission breakup. Lightning or something." Sheila's face showed rain-spots, running shadows, neon glare. "Bad night, D-D, bad shit."
"They erase it?"
"Erase what?" Sheila asked.
Silence then. Rain came down hard.
"They want to bring their damn politics down here," Sheila said, "they can take it back again. Settle it up there."
"Settle what?" he echoed Sheila.
But he kept seeing corridors, still the corridors, folding in on themselves. And sipped the tasteless soft drink. "The guy's shirt was clean."
"Huh?"
"His shirt was clean." Flash on the restroom, red water swirling down and down. "He wasn't in that room. Nolan knew Ross was coming. The guy was living there. His smell's all over. That's why the ammonia trick. Nolan sent him for the stairs, I'll bet it's in the access times. He couldn't have hid from a mech. And all that screaming? The mech wanted something. Something Nolan wasn't giving. Something Ross wanted more than she wanted the guy right then."
"Secession stuff. Documents. Martian Secession. Not illegal, not in Dallas . . ."
"The mech missed the live-in, had to shut Nolan up. Didn't get the records, either. A botch. Thoroughgoing botch. The live-in—who knew the building like that? He wasn't any Company man. Martian with no visa, no regulation entry to the planet? I'll bet Nolan knew what he was, I'll bet Nolan was passing stuff to the Movement."
"An exec in MarsCorp? Over Martian Transport? Ask how the guy got here with no visa."
"Shit," he said. Then he thought about the mech, the kind of tech the rebels didn't have. "They wouldn't want a witness," he said. "The rebels wouldn't. The Company damned sure wouldn't. Ross would've gone for me, except I was linked in. I was recording. So she couldn't snatch the guy—had to shut the guy up somehow. They damn sure couldn't have a Company cop arrested down here. Had to get him shut up for good and get Ross off the planet. . ."
"Dead on," Sheila said. "Dead for sure, if he'd talked. Washington was after the Company for the make and the Company was stonewalling like hell, lay you odds on that—and I'll bet there's a plane seat for Ross tonight on a Guiana flight. What's it take? An hour down there? Half an hour more, if a shuttle's ready to roll, and Ross would have been no-return for this jurisdiction. That's all they needed." She flipped the com back to On again, to the city's ordinary litany of petty crime and larcenies, beneath an uneasy sky. "This is 34, coming on-line, marker 15 on the pike, good evening, HQ. This is a transmission check, think we've got it fixed now, 10-4?" 2002
THE SANDMAN, THE TINMAN, AND THE BETTYB
CRAZYCHARLIE: Got your message, Unicorn. Meet for lunch?
DUTCHMAN: Charlie, what year?
CRAZYCHARLIE: Not you, Dutchman. Talking to the pretty lady.
T_REX: Unicorn's not a lady.
CRAZYCHARLIE: Shut up. Pay no attention to them, Unicorn. They're all jealous. T_REX: Unicorn's not answering. Must be alseep.
CRAZYCHARLIE: Beauty sleep.
UNICORN: Just watching you guys. Having lunch.
LOVER18: What's for lunch, pretty baby?
UNICORN: Chocolate. Loads of chocolate.
T_REX: Don't do that to us. You haven't got chocolate.
UNICORN: I'm eating it now. Dark chocolate. Mmmm.
T_REX: Cruel.
CRAZYCHARLIE: Told you she'd show for lunch. Fudge icing, Unicorn. . . CRAZYCHARLIE: . . . With ice cream.
DUTCHMAN: I remember ice cream.
T_REX: Chocolate ice cream.
FROGPRINCE: Stuff like they've got on B-dock. There's this little shop. . . T_REX: With poofy white stuff.
DUTCHMAN: Strawberry ice cream.
FROGPRINCE: . . . that serves five different flavors.
CRAZYCHARLIE: Unicorn in chocolate syrup.
UNICORN: You wish.
HAWK29: With poofy white stuff.
UNICORN: Shut up, you guys.
LOVER18: Yeah, shut up, you guys. Unicorn and I are going to go off somewhere. CRAZYCHARLIE: In a thousand years, guy.
Ping. Ping-ping. Ping.
Sandwich was done. Sandman snagged it out of the cooker, everted the bag, and put it in for a clean. Tuna san and a coffee fizz, ersatz. He couldn't afford the true stuff, which, by the time the freight ran clear out here, ran a guy clean out of profit—which Sandman still hoped to make but it wasn't the be-all and end-all. Being out here was.
He had a name. It was on the records of his little two-man op, which was down to one, since Alfie'd had enough and gone in for food. Which was the first time little BettyBhad ever made a profit. No mining. Just running the buoy. Took a damn long time running in, a damn long time running out, alternate with Penny-Girl. Which was how the unmanned buoys that told everybody in the solar system where they were kept themselves going. Dozens of buoys, dozens of little tenders making lonely runs out and back, endless cycle. The buoy was a robot. For all practical purposes BettyB's sights, he'd always swear he was going to stay, and by the time six months rolled around and he'd seen every vid and drunk himself stupid and broke, hell, he was ready to go back to the solitude and the quiet.