Isa covered it well enough to deserve applause. Whatever misgivings she had, by the time we’d finished the handover, her ruffled feathers had smoothed and she had her laconic Millsport drawl back in place.
‘Did you find Natsume?’ I asked her.
‘Yeah, as it happens I did. But I’m not convinced you’ll want to talk to him.’
‘Why not?’
She grinned. ‘Because he got religion, Kovacs. Lives in a monastery now, over on Whaleback and Ninth.’
‘Whaleback? That the Renouncer place?’
‘Sure is.’ She struck an absurdly solemn, prayerful pose that didn’t match her hair and face. ‘Brotherhood of the Awoken and Aware. Renounce henceforth all flesh, and the world.’
I felt my mouth twitch. Beside me, Mari Ado sat humourless as a ripwing.
‘I got no problem with those guys, Isa. They’re harmless. Way I see it, they’re stupid enough to shun female company, that’s their loss. But I’m surprised someone like Natsume’d buy into something like that.’
‘Ah, but you’ve been away. They take women too, these days.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, started way back, nearly a decade ago. What I heard, they found a couple of covert females in their midst. Been there for years. Figures, right? Anyone who’s re-sleeved could lie about their sex.’ Isa’s voice picked up a beat as she hit her home turf running. ‘No one outside of government’s got the money to run datachecks on stuff like that. If you’ve lived in a male sleeve for long enough, even psychosurgery has a hard time telling the difference. So anyway, back at the Brotherhood, it was either go the NewRev single-sleeve-and-you’re-out route, or come over all modern and desegregate. Lo and behold, the word from on high spake suddenly of change.’
‘Don’t suppose they changed the name too, did they?’
‘Don’t suppose they did. Still the Brotherhood. Brother embraces sister, apparently.’ A teenage shrug. ‘Not sure how the sisters feel about all that embracing, but that’s entry-level dues for you.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Mari Ado. ‘Are we permitted entry?’
‘Yeah, they take visitors. You may have to wait for Natsume, but not so’s you’d notice. That’s the great thing about Renouncing the flesh, isn’t it.’ Isa grinned again. ‘No inconvenient things like Time and Space to worry about.’
‘Good work, Issy.’
She blew me a kiss.
But as we were getting up to leave, she frowned slightly and evidently came to a decision. She raised a hand and cupped her fingers to get us back closer.
‘Listen, guys. I don’t know exactly what you’re after up at Rila, and to be honest with you, I don’t want to know. But I can tell you this for nothing. Old Harlan won’t be coming out of the pod this time around.’
‘No?’ On his birthday, that was unusual.
‘That’s right. Bit of semi-covert court gossip I dipped yesterday. They lost another heirling down at Amami Sands. Hacked to death with a baling tine, apparently. They’re not making it public, but the MPD are a bit sloppy with their encryption these days. I was cruising for Harlan-related stuff so, like that. Picked it out of the flow. Anyway, with that and old Seichi getting toasted in his skimmer last week, they’re not taking any chances. They’ve called off half the family appearances altogether, and looks like even Mitzi Harlan’s getting a doubled Secret Service detachment. And Old Man Harlan stays unsleeved. That’s for definite. Think they’re planning to let him watch the celebrations through a virtual link-up. ’
I nodded slowly. ‘Thanks. That’s good to know.’
‘Yeah, sorry if it’s going to fuck up some spectacular assassination attempt for you. You didn’t ask, so I wasn’t going to say anything, but I’d hate for you to go all that way up there and find nothing to kill.’
Ado smiled thinly.
‘That’s not what we’re here for,’ I said quickly. ‘But thanks anyway. Listen Isa, you don’t remember a couple of weeks back, some other Harlan small-fry got himself killed in the wharf district?’
‘Yep. Marek Harlan-Tsuchiya. Methed out of his head, fell off Karlovy Dock, banged his head and drowned. Heartbreaking.’
Ado made an impatient gesture. I held up a hand to forestall her.
‘Any chance our boy Marek was helped over the edge, do you think?’
Isa pulled a face. ‘Could be, I guess. Karlovy’s not the safest of places after dark. But they’ll have re-sleeved him by now, and there’s been nothing in the air about it being a murder. Then again—’
‘Why should they let the general public in on it. Right.’ I could feel the Envoy intuition twitching, but it was too faint to make anything of. ‘Okay, Isa. Thanks for the newsflash. It doesn’t affect anything at our end, but keep your ears tuned anyway, huh?’
‘Always do, sam.’
We paid the tab and left her there, red-veined eyes and harlequin mask and the coil of light weaving at her elbow like some domesticated demon familiar. She waved as I looked back, and I felt a brief stab of affection for her that lasted me all the way out into the street.
‘Stupid little bitch,’ said Mari Ado as we headed down towards the waterfront. ‘I hate that fucking fake underclass thing.’
I shrugged. ‘Well, rebellion takes a lot of different forms.’
‘Yeah, and that back there was none of them.’
We took a real-keel ferry across the Reach to the platform suburb they’re calling East Akan, apparently in the hope that people who can’t afford the slopes of the Akan district itself will settle there instead. Ado went off to find some tea, and I stayed by the rail, watching the water traffic and the changing perspectives as the ferry sailed. There’s a magic to Millsport that’s easy to forget while you’re away, but get out on the waters of the Reach and the city seems to open to you. Wind in your face and the belaweed tang of the sea combine to scrub away the urban grimness, and you discover in its place a broad, seafarer’s optimism that can sometimes stay with you for hours after you step back on land.
Trying not to let it go to my head, I squinted south to the horizon. There, shrouded to fading in seamist thrown up by the maelstrom, Rila Crags brooded in stacked isolation. Not quite the furthest southerly outcrop of the archipelago, but near enough, twenty klicks of open water back north to the nearest other settled piece of land – the tail end of New Kanagawa – and at least half that to the nearest piece of rock you could even stand on. Most of the First Families had staked out high ground in Millsport early on, but Harlan had trumped them all. Rila, beautiful in glistening black volcanic stone, was a fortress in all but name. An elegant and powerful reminder to the whole city of who was in charge here. An eyrie to supplant those built by our Martian predecessors.
We docked at East Akan with a soft bump that was like waking up. I found Mari Ado again, down by the debarkation ramp, and we threaded our way through the rectilinear streets as rapidly as was conducive to checking we weren’t being followed. Ten minutes later, Virginia Vidaura was letting us into the as yet unfitted loft apartment space that Brasil had chosen as our base of operations. Her eyes passed across us like a clinical wipe.
‘Go okay?’
‘Yeah. Mari here didn’t make any new friends, but what can you do?’
Ado grunted and shouldered past me, then disappeared off into the interior of the warehouse. Vidaura closed the door and secured it while I told her about Natsume.
‘Jack’ll be disappointed,’ she said.
‘Yeah, not what I expected either. So much for legends, eh? You want to come across to Whaleback with me?’ I raised my eyebrows clownishly. ‘Virtual environment.’