‘Good to know.’
She left him staring out across the COLIN defences at the crowd and made her way back down the caged staircase to the ground. There was an ominous quiet around the facility, in contrast to the noise outside. They’d suspended nanorack operations while the crisis lasted and the storage hangars were all closed up. Tracked freight loaders ten metres broad squatted immobile on the evercrete aprons and access paths, like massive, scalped tanks, abandoned at the end of some colossal urban conflict. Their mortar-board lifting platforms were all empty.
At the other end of the complex, the ’rack thrust up into the cloud cover like a god-sized fire-escape. It made everything on the ground feel like toys. They’d built Perez early on, back when Mars was still a barely scratched desert and Bradbury a collection of pressurised ’fabs. Now it looked used and grim, all mottled greys and blacks and over-stated support structure. Compared to the cheery, brightly coloured minimalism at Sagan or Kaku, Perez was a relic. Even for Sevgi, who didn’t like the ’racks whatever fucking colour they came in, it was a melancholy sight.
‘Ever been up?’
She looked round and saw Marsalis had got within two metres of her back without giving himself away. Now he stood watching her with a blank speculation that reminded her of Ethan so much it sent shivers up from the base of her spine.
‘Not this one, no.’ She nodded vaguely northward. ‘They trained me in New York. Kaku ’rack, mostly. I’ve been up Sagan and Hawking as well, and what they’ve built of Levin.’
‘You don’t sound overenthusiastic.’
‘No.’
It made him smile. ‘But the money’s good. Right?’
‘The money’s good,’ she agreed.
He looked away, towards the gate. The smile faded out.
‘Is all that noise out there for me?’
‘Yes, it is.’ She felt oddly embarrassed, as if the Republicans on the other side of the wire were acquaintances whose bad behaviour she had to cover for. ‘Blame your old friend, Parris. Apparently, he took exception to your departure after all. He’s fed the whole thing to the local media.’
‘Smart of you to bring us here last night, then.’
She shrugged. ‘I worked witness protection for a while. You learn never to take anything for granted.’
‘I see.’ He seemed to consider for a moment. ‘Are you people going to give me a gun?’
‘That’s not part of the deal. Didn’t you read the fine print?’
‘No.’
It brought her up short. ‘You didn’t?’
‘Ever spent time in a Jesusland justice facility?’ He put on a gentle smile, but his eyes were hard with memory. ‘It’s not the sort of place you quibble over detail if they come to let you out.’
‘Right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Well, the fine print says that you’re retained by COLIN in an advisory capacity, not for actual enforcement. So ah, you don’t need a gun.’
‘I will if our Jesusland friends decide to storm the fences.’
‘That’s not going to happen here.’
‘Your confidence is inspiring. Can we fly out of here?’
‘It doesn’t look like it. Tom’s working the diplomatic angle, but it’ll be a while before we know if we can take the risk. In this part of the world, the Air Nationals tend to shoot first and sift wreckage afterwards.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard that.’ He turned away from the powered fences and the gate, looked out across the shimmering surface of the Atlantic. ‘Speaking of which, any idea why the skycops in the Rim didn’t shove a heatseeker up Horkan’s arse when it crossed the line? I hear those boys are pretty jumpy too, and it must have profiled pretty much like a threat.’
‘Local COLIN liaison talked them out of it, apparently.’
‘Yeah?’ Marsalis raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes. Relations with the Rim are pretty good these days. It’s not like down here. We negotiated a direct AI interface last year, high-level trust protocols, minimal buffering. The Sagan n-djinn mapped the trajectory, and shunted it straight to the Rim air authority. No blocks, no datachecks above basic. It cleared the buffers in a couple of nanoseconds.’ Sevgi spread her hands. ‘Everyone’s happy.’
‘Especially Merrin.’
She said nothing. The sporadic chanting at the gate reached them between gusts of wind coming off the ocean. After a couple of seconds Marsalis started away from her in the direction of the water. He didn’t speak or look back. It took her his first three steps to understand he’d been waiting for her to continue the conversation, and now she hadn’t he was leaving.
‘Where are you going?’ It came out a lot less casually than she would have liked.
He stopped and turned back to her.
‘Why?’ he asked gravely. ‘Am I in some kind of protective custody?’
Fuck it. ‘No, it’s just.’ She gestured awkwardly. ‘In case I need to find you later, in a hurry.’
He weighed it, the way he had the comment about her work for WP.
‘I’m going for another walk on the beach,’ he said. ‘Want to come?’
‘Ah… no.’ She hesitated. He was waiting. ‘I need to go over the Montes crime scene while we’ve got the time. See if there’s anything that jumps out.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘No, but you never know. I’ve been looking at Merrin’s handiwork for the last four months, Angeline PD haven’t. There might be something.’
‘No direct data interface there, then?’
‘No. Technically, they’re not part of RimSec. It’s the Freeport legislation, Angeline PD have autonomy, they work pretty much like any city police department over in the Republic.’
‘And you’re not sharing what you’ve got on this with any of those guys?’
‘No. I told you, we don’t want a panic on our hands.’ She threw out a weary signpost arm, towards the chanting. ‘Listen to that. How do you think people like that are going to react to the news that there’s a cannibal thirteen loose in North America, murdering selected citizens at his leisure. Remember Sundersen?’
‘Eric Sundersen?’ A shrug. ‘Sure. I spent a couple of months looking for him last year, just like everybody else.’
‘Then you’ll remember what it was like. Seven weeks, and we nearly had martial law declared in five states of the Republic. Media screaming off the screen about clone monsters. Armed mobs trying to break into the tract at Cimarron and slaughter everyone there. Emergency measures all along the Rim frontier. If Sundersen hadn’t broken cover when he did, it would have been Zhang fever all over again. And all he did was escape. He hadn’t killed anybody. With this one, the mobs would go fucking crazy.’
‘Yeah, mobs. You humans have got that trick down, haven’t you.’
Sevgi ignored the jibe.
‘We just don’t want another bloodbath,’ she said doggedly. ‘We make local police aware that we have an interest, and we give them what help we can. But we can’t afford anyone to know the whole picture.’
He nodded. His walk on the beach seemed forgotten. ‘So what picture are they getting?’
‘The cover story in the Republic is Marstech. A heist gang and a distribution network, squabbling over product.’ The words tasted stale on her tongue, as concocted and unconvincing as some corporate mission statement. She forced down a grimace and pressed on. ‘With scumbags like Eddie Tanaka that’s been easy to sell. Elsewhere, when the victim’s respectable, we’re playing the collateral damage angle. Innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, or cases of mistaken identity.’
‘Sounds a little creaky. What are you doing about the genetic trace?’