‘Well, lucky you don’t have the money for a re-sleeve then. It’d be a shame to get tempted, wouldn’t it.’
Shame to see your parents again, I didn’t add.
‘That’s right,’ he said, apparently oblivious to the irony. ‘That’s the point. Once you understand you’ve only got the one life, you try so much harder to do things right. You forget about all that material stuff, all that decadence. You worry about this life, not what you might be able to do in your next body. You focus on what matters. Family. Community. Friendship.’
‘And, of course, Observance.’ The mildness in my voice was oddly unfaked. We needed to keep a low profile for the next few hours, but it wasn’t that. I reached curiously inside me and I found I’d lost my grip on the customary contempt I summoned into situations like this. I looked across the table at him, and all I felt was tired. He hadn’t let Sarah and her daughter die for good, he maybe hadn’t even been born when it happened. Maybe, given the same situation, he’d take the same bleating-sheep option his parents had, but right now I couldn’t make that matter. I couldn’t hate him enough to take him into that alley, tell him the truth about who I was and give him his chance.
‘That’s right, Observance.’ His face lit up. ‘That’s the key, that’s what underwrites all the rest. See, science has betrayed us here, it’s got out of hand, got so we don’t control it any more. It’s made things too easy. Not ageing naturally, not having to die and account for ourselves before our Maker, that’s blinded us to the real values. We spend our whole lives scraping away trying to find the money for re-sleeving, and we waste the real time we have to live this life right. If people would only—’
‘Hey, Mikulas.’ I glanced up. Another man about the same age as my new companion was striding towards us, behind the cheerful yell. ‘You finished bending that poor guy’s ear or what? We’ve got hull to scrape, man.’
‘Yeah, just coming.’
‘Ignore him,’ said the newcomer with a wide grin. ‘Likes to think he knows everyone, and if your face doesn’t fit the list, he has to damn well find out who you are. Bet he’s done that already, right?’
I smiled. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘Knew it. I’m Toyo.’ A thick, extended hand. ‘Welcome to Kuraminato. Maybe see you around town if you’re staying long.’
‘Yeah, thanks. That’d be good.’
‘Meantime, we’ve got to go. Nice talking to you.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Mikulas, getting to his feet. ‘Nice talking to you. You should think about what I was saying.’
‘Maybe I will.’ A final twist of caution made me stop him as he was turning away. ‘Tell me something. How come you knew I wasn’t off the rayhunter?’
‘Oh, that. Well, you were watching them like you were interested in what they were doing. No one watches their own ship in dock that closely. I was right, huh?’
‘Yeah. Good call.’ The tiny increment of relief soaked through me. ‘Maybe you should be a detective after all. New line for work for you. Doing the right thing. Catching bad guys.’
‘Hey, it’s a thought.’
‘Nah, he’d be way too nice to them once he’d caught them. Soft as shit, he is. Can’t even discipline his own wife.’
General laughter as they left. I joined in. Let it fade slowly out to a smile, and then nothing but the small relief inside.
I really wouldn’t have to follow him and kill him.
I gave it half an hour, then wandered out of the ’fab and onto the wharf. There were still figures on the decks and superstructure of the rayhunter. I stood and watched for a few minutes, and finally a crewmember came down the forward gangplank towards me. His face wasn’t friendly.
‘Something I can do for you?’
‘Yeah,’ I told him. ‘Sing the hymn of dreams gone down from Alabardos’ sky. I’m Kovacs. The others are at the hotel. Tell your skipper. We’ll move as soon as it’s dark.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The rayhunter Angelfire Flirt, like most vessels of its type, cut a mean and rakish figure at sea. Part warship, part oversized racing skiff, combining a razor sharp real-keel centre of gravity and ludicrous quantities of grav lift in twin outrigger pods, it was built above all for reckless speed and piracy. Elephant rays and their smaller relatives are swift in the water, but more importantly their flesh tends to spoil if left untreated for any length of time. Freeze the bodies and you can sell the meat well enough, but get it back fast enough to the big fresh-catch auctions in centres of affluence like Millsport, and you can make a real killing. For that you need a fast boat. Shipyards all over Harlan’s World understand this and build accordingly. Tacitly understood in the same yards is the fact that some of the best elephant ray stock lives and breeds in waters set aside for the exclusive use of the First Families. Poaching there is a serious offence, and if you’re going to get away with it your fast boat also needs to present a low, hard-to-spot profile both visually and on radar.
If you’re going to run from Harlan’s World law enforcement, there are worse ways to do it than aboard a rayhunter.
On the second day out, secure in the knowledge we were so far from the Millsport Archipelago that no aircraft had the range to overfly us, I went up on deck and stood on the left-hand outrigger gantry, watching the ocean rip past underneath me. Spray on the wind, and the sense of events rushing towards me too fast to assimilate. The past and its cargo of dead, falling behind in our wake, taking with them options and solutions it was too late to try.
Envoys are supposed to be good at this shit.
Out of nowhere, I saw Virginia Vidaura’s elfin new face. But this time there was no voice in my head, no instilled trainer confidence. I wasn’t getting any more help from that particular ghost, it seemed.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’
It was called out, over the sound of wind and keel-slashed waves. I looked right, towards the centre deck and saw her bracing herself at the entrance to the gantry, dressed in coveralls and a jacket she’d borrowed from Sierra Tres. The gripped pose made her look ill and unsteady on her feet. The silver grey hair blew back from her face in the wind, but weighted by the heavier strands it stayed low, like a drenched flag. Her eyes were dark hollows in the pale of her face.
Another fucking ghost.
‘Sure. Why not?’
She made her way out onto the gantry, showing more strength in motion than she had standing. By the time she reached me, there was an ironic twist to her lips and her voice when she spoke was solid in the rushing slipstream. Brasil’s medication had shrunk the wound on her cheek to a fading line.
‘You don’t mind talking to a fragment, then?’
Once, in a porn construct in Newpest, I’d got wrecked on take with a virtual whore in a – failed – attempt to break the system’s desire fulfilment programming. I was very young then. Once, not so young, in the aftermath of the Adoracion campaign, I’d sat and talked drunken forbidden politics with a military AI. Once, on Earth, I’d got equally drunk with a copy of myself. Which, in the end, was probably what all those conversations had been about.
‘Don’t read anything into it,’ I told her. ‘I’ll talk to pretty much anybody.’
She hesitated. ‘I’m remembering a lot of detail.’
I watched the sea. Said nothing.