‘That’s all that matters to you, Jan, isn’t it?’ she said in a low voice. ‘Sliding out from under with heavy credit. The quick-fix, short-cut, easy-solution route to some swimming-pool existence at the top of the pile. What happened to you, Jan? I mean, you were always shallow, but…’
She gestured helplessly.
‘Thanks, Tanya.’ Schneider knocked back his shot, and when I could see his face again, he was grinning fiercely. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t be so selfish. I ought to have stuck with Kemp for a while longer. After all, what’s the worst that can happen?’
‘Don’t be childish.’
‘No, really. I see it all so much more clearly now. Takeshi, let’s go tell Hand we’ve changed our minds. Let’s all go down fighting, it’s so much more significant.’ He stabbed a finger at Wardani. ‘And you. You can go back to the camp we pulled you out of because I wouldn’t want you to miss out on any of this noble suffering.’
‘You pulled me out of the camp because you needed me, Jan, so don’t pretend any different.’
Schneider’s open hand was well into the swing before I realised he intended to hit her. My neurachem-aided responses got me there in time to lock down the slap, but I had to lunge across Wardani to do it and my shoulder must have knocked her off the stool. I heard her yelp as she hit the floor. Her drink went over and spilled across the bar.
‘That’s enough,’ I told Schneider quietly. I had his forearm flattened to the bar under mine, and my other hand floating in a loose fist back at my left ear. My face was close enough to his to see the faint tear sheen on his eyes. ‘I thought you didn’t want to fight any more.’
‘Yeah.’ It came out strangled. He cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
I felt him relax, and unlocked on his arm. Turning, I saw Wardani picking her stool and herself up from the floor. Behind her, a few of the bar’s table occupants had come to their feet and were watching uncertainly. I met their eyes, and they seated themselves hurriedly. A graft-heavy tactical marine in one corner lasted longer than the rest, but in the end even she sat down, unwilling to tussle with the Wedge uniform. Behind me, I felt more than saw the bartender clearing up the spilled drink. I leaned back on the newly dried surface.
‘I think we’d better all calm down, agreed?’
‘Suits me.’ The archaeologue set her stool back on its feet. ‘You’re the one that knocked me over. You and your wrestling partner.’
Schneider had hooked the bottle and was pouring himself another shot. He downed it and pointed at Wardani with the empty glass.
‘You want to know what happened to me, Tanya? You—’
‘I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.’
‘—really want to know? I got to watch a six-year-old-girl. Fucking die of shrapnel. Fucking shrapnel wounds that I fucking inflicted because she was hiding in an automated bunker I rolled fucking grenades into.’ He blinked and trickled more rum into his glass. ‘And I’m not going to fucking watch anything like that ever again. I’m out, whatever it takes. However shallow that makes me. For your fucking information.’
He looked back and forth between us for a couple of seconds, as if he couldn’t honestly remember who either of us were. Then he got off his stool and walked an almost straight line to the door and out. His last drink stood untouched on the muted glow of the bar top.
‘Oh shit,’ said Wardani, into the small silence left beside the drink. She was peering into her own empty glass as if there might be an escape hatch at the bottom.
‘Yeah.’ I wasn’t about to help her get off the hook with this one.
‘You think I should go after him?’
‘Not really, no.’
She put down the glass and fumbled for cigarettes. The Landfall Lights pack I’d noticed in the virtuality came out and she fed herself one mechanically. ‘I didn’t mean…’
‘No, I thought you probably didn’t. So will he, once he sobers up. Don’t worry about it. He’s most likely been carrying that memory around in sealwrap since it happened. You just fed him enough catalyst to vomit it up. Probably better that way.’
She breathed the cigarette into life and glanced sideways at me through the smoke. ‘Does none of this touch you any more?’ she asked. ‘How long does it take to get like that?’
‘Thank the Envoys. It’s their speciality. How long is a meaningless question. It’s a system. Psychodynamic engineering.’
This time she turned on her stool and stayed facing me. ‘Doesn’t that ever make you angry? That you’ve been tampered with like that?’
I reached across for the bottle, and topped up both our drinks. She made no move to stop me. ‘When I was younger, I didn’t care. In fact, I thought it was great. A testosterone wet dream. See, before the Envoys, I served in the regular forces and I’d already used a lot of quickplant jack-in software. This just seemed like a super-ramped version of the same thing. Body armour for the soul. And by the time I got old enough to think any differently, the conditioning was in to stay.’
‘You can’t beat it? The conditioning?’
I shrugged. ‘Most of the time, I don’t want to. That’s the nature of good conditioning. And this is a very superior product. I work better when I go with it. Fighting it is hard work, and it slows me down. Where did you get those cigarettes?’
‘These?’ She looked down at the packet absently. ‘Oh, Jan, I think. Yeah, he gave them to me.’
‘That was nice of him.’
If she noticed the sarcasm in my voice, she didn’t react. ‘You want one?’
‘Why not? By the look of it, I’m not going to be needing this sleeve much longer.’
‘You really think we’re going to get as far as Latimer City.’ She watched me shake out a cigarette and draw it to life. ‘You trust Hand to keep his side of this bargain?’
‘There’s really very little point in him double crossing us.’ I exhaled and stared at the smoke as it drifted away across the bar. A massive sense of departure from something was coursing unlooked-for through my mind, a sense of unnamed loss. I groped after the words to sew everything back together again. ‘The money’s already gone, Mandrake can’t get it back. So if it cuts us out, all Hand saves himself is the cost of the hypercast and three off-the-rack sleeves. In return for which he gets to worry forever about automated reprisals.’
Wardani’s gaze dropped to the resonance scrambler on the bar. ‘Are you sure this thing is clean?’
‘Nope. I got it from an indie dealer, but she came Mandrake-recommended, so it could be tagged for all I know. It doesn’t really matter. I’m the only person who knows how the reprisals are set up, and I’m not about to tell you about it.’
‘Thanks.’ There was no appreciable irony in her tone. An internment camp teaches you things about the value of not knowing.
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘And what about silencing us after the event?’
I spread my hands. ‘What for? Mandrake isn’t interested in silence. This’ll be the biggest coup a single corporate entity have ever pulled off. It’ll want it known. Those time-locked data launches we set are going to be the oldest news on the block when they finally decay. Once Mandrake has got your starship hidden away somewhere safe, it’ll be dropping the fact through every major corporate dataport on Sanction IV. Hand’s going to use this to swing instant membership of the Cartel, and probably a seat on the Protectorate Commercial Council into the bargain. Mandrake’ll be a major player overnight. Our significance in that particular scheme of things will be nil.’
‘Got it all worked out, huh?’