‘Shall we?’ she said grimly, and pointed up towards the house. Bancroft was already striding ahead. We went after him at what I thought was an excessive pace.
‘One question,’ I managed, between breathing. ‘Who’s the kid? The one Mrs Bancroft crucified.’
Prescott flicked me an impatient glance.
‘Big secret, huh?’
‘No, Mr Kovacs, it is not a secret, large or otherwise. I merely think you might do better occupying your mind with other matters than the Bancrofts’ house guests. If you must know, the other player was Marco Kawahara.’
‘Was it, indeed?’ Accidentally, I’d slipped into Phiri’s speech patterns. Chalk up a double strike for personality. ‘So that’s where I’ve seen his face before. Takes after his mother, doesn’t he?’
‘I really wouldn’t know,’ said Prescott dismissively. ‘I have never met Ms Kawahara.’
‘Lucky you.’
Bancroft was waiting for us in an exotic conservatory pinned to the seaward wing of the house. The glass walls were a riot of alien colours and forms, among which I picked out a young mirrorwood tree and numerous stands of martyrweed. Bancroft was standing next to one of the latter, spraying it carefully with a white metallic dust. I don’t know much about martyrweed beyond its obvious uses as a security device, so I had no idea what the powder was.
Bancroft turned as we came in. ‘Please keep your voices reasonably low.’ His own voice was curiously flat in the sound absorbent environment. ‘Martyrweed is highly sensitive at this stage of development. Mr Kovacs, I assume you are familiar with it.’
‘Yeah.’ I glanced at the vaguely hand-shaped cups of the leaves, with the central crimson stains that had given the plant its name. ‘You sure these are mature?’
‘Fully. On Adoracion, you’ll have seen them larger, but I had Nakamura tailor these for indoor use. This is as secure as a Nilvibe cabin and,’ he gestured to a trio of steel frame chairs beside the martyrweed, ‘a great deal more comfortable.’
‘You wanted to see me,’ I said impatiently. ‘What about?’
For just a moment that black iron stare bent on me with the full force of Bancroft’s three and a half centuries, and it was like locking gazes with a demon. For that second, the Meth soul was looking out and I saw reflected in those eyes all the myriad ordinary single lives that they had watched die, like the pale flickerings of moths at a flame. It was an experience I’d only had once before, and that was when I’d taken issue with Reileen Kawahara. I could feel the heat on my wings.
Then it was gone, and there was only Bancroft, moving to seat himself and setting the powder spray aside on an adjacent table. He looked up and waited to see if I would sit down as well. When I did not, he steepled his fingers and frowned. Oumou Prescott hovered between us.
‘Mr Kovacs, I am aware that by the terms of our contract I agreed to meet all reasonable expenses in this investigation, but when I said that, I did not expect to be paying for a trail of wilful organic damage from one side of Bay City to another. I have spent most of this morning buying off both the West Coast triads and the Bay City police, neither of whom were very well disposed towards me even before you started this carnage. I wonder if you realise how much it is costing me just to keep you alive and out of storage.’
I looked around at the conservatory and shrugged.
‘I imagine you can afford it.’
Prescott flinched. Bancroft allowed himself the splinter of a smile.
‘Perhaps, Mr Kovacs, I no longer wish to afford it.’
‘Then pull the fucking plug.’ The martyrweed trembled visibly at the sudden change in tone. I didn’t care. Abruptly, I was no longer in the mood for playing the Bancrofts’ elegant games. I was tired. Discounting the brief period of unconsciousness at the clinic, I had been awake for over thirty hours and my nerves were raw from the continual use of the neurachem system. I had been in a firefight. I had escaped from a moving aircar. I had been subjected to interrogation routines that would have traumatised most human beings for a lifetime. I had committed multiple combat murders. And I had been in the act of crawling into bed when the Hendrix let Bancroft’s curt summons through the call block I’d requested, quote, ‘in the interests of maintaining good client relations and so assuring continued guest status’. Someday, someone was going to have to overhaul the hotel’s antique service industry idiolect; I had weighed the idea of doing it myself with the Nemex when I got off the phone, but my irritation at the hotel’s enslaved responses to guest-holding was overridden by the anger I felt towards Bancroft himself. It was that anger that had stopped me ignoring the call and going to bed anyway, and propelled me out to Suntouch House dressed in the same rumpled clothes I had been wearing since the previous day.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Kovacs?’ Oumou Prescott was staring at me. ‘Are you suggesting—’
‘No, I’m not, Prescott. I’m threatening.’ I switched my gaze back to Bancroft. ‘I didn’t ask to join this fucking No dance. You dragged me here, Bancroft. You pulled me out of the store on Harlan’s World and you jacked me into Elias Ryker’s sleeve just to piss Ortega off. You sent me out there with a few vague hints and watched me stumble around in the dark, cracking my shins on your past misdemeanours. Well, if you don’t want to play any more, now the current’s running a little hard, that’s fine with me. I’m through risking my stack for a piece of shit like you. You can just put me back in the box, and I’ll take my chances a hundred and seventeen years from now. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and whoever wants you toasted will have wiped you off the face of the planet by then.’
I’d had to check my weapons at the main gate, but I could feel the dangerous looseness of the Envoy combat mode stealing over me as I spoke. If the Meth demon came back and got out of hand, I was going to choke the life out of Bancroft there and then just for the satisfaction.
Curiously, what I said only seemed to make him thoughtful. He heard me out, inclined his head as if in agreement, then turned to Prescott.
‘Ou, can you drop out for a while. There are some things that Mr Kovacs and I need to discuss in private.’
Prescott looked dubious. ‘Shall I post someone outside?’ she queried, with a hard glance at me. Bancroft shook his head.
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary.’
Prescott left, looking dubious, while I struggled not to admire Bancroft’s cool. He’d just heard me say I was happy to go back into storage, he’d been reading my body count all morning, and still he thought he had my specs down tight enough to know whether I was dangerous or not.
I took a seat. Maybe he was right.
‘You’ve got some explaining to do,’ I said evenly. ‘You can start with Ryker’s sleeve, and go on from there. Why’d you do it, and why conceal it from me?’
‘Conceal it?’ Bancroft’s brows arched. ‘We barely discussed it.’
‘You told me you’d left the sleeve selection to your lawyers. You were at pains to stress that. But Prescott insists you made the selection yourself. You should have briefed her a bit better on the lies you were going to tell.’
‘Well.’ Bancroft made a gesture of acceptance. ‘A reflexive caution, then. One tells the truth to so few people in the end, it becomes a habit. But I had no idea it would matter to you so much. After your career in the Corps, and your time in storage, I mean. Do you usually exhibit this much interest in the past history of the sleeves you wear?’
‘No, I don’t. But ever since I arrived, Ortega’s been all over me like anticontaminant plastic. I thought it was because she had something to hide. Turns out, she’s just trying to protect her boyfriend’s sleeve while he’s in the store. Incidentally, did you bother to find out why Ryker was on stack?’