Marsalis shuttled a sour look between the two women.
‘All right,’ he said ungraciously. ‘So let’s all watch the fucking thing, shall we?’
But in the screening chamber, she saw how the quick-flaring irritation damped down to an intent stare that might have passed for boredom if she hadn’t seen him looking the same way after the third skater in New York, the man he’d failed to kill. She had no way of knowing where exactly Marsalis’s attention fell – the file was a standard split-screen interrogation tape, six or seven facets slotted together on the LCLS display, frontal on Gutierrez, face and body from the tabletop up, vital signs in longitudinal display below, minimised footage of the whole interview room from two or three different angles, voice profiles in drop down to the left, cop custom had her skimming detail from the whole thing in random snatches. But if she’d had to guess, she’d say the thirteen at her side was riveted on the slightly gaunt, sunblasted features of the familia datahawk as he sat unimpressed and smoking his way through the interrogation.
‘They let him take fucking cigarettes in there?’ asked Rovayo, outraged.
‘It’s not a cigarette as such,’ Sevgi told her patiently. She’d been a little shocked the first time she saw it too. ‘That’s a gill. You know, like in the settler flicks. Chemical ember, gives off oxygen instead of burning it. Like a lung supercharger.’
Rovayo snapped her fingers. ‘O-kay. Like, Kwame Oviedo’s always got one stuck in the corner of his mouth, practically every scene in that Upland Heroes trilogy.’
Sevgi nodded. ‘Yeah, same with Marisa Mansour. Even in Marineris Queen, which when you think about it, is pretty—’
‘Weren’t we supposed to be watching this?’ said Marsalis loudly.
Sevgi cocked an expressive eyebrow at the Rim cop and they turned back towards the screen. Gutierrez was settling comfortably into his role of career criminal cool. Upland dialect Quechua drawled out of him – the language monitor tagged it in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, provided a machine-speed simultaneous subtitle in Amanglic, but for the original interrogators it would have been hard work. They’d have some street Quechua, Sevgi supposed – you’d have to, to be a decent cop out there – but you could see they were uncomfortable with it. Instead, they fell back repeatedly on Amanglic or Spanish – both of which the file said Gutierrez spoke well – and listened constantly to their sleek black earplug whisperers. The datahawk smirked through it.
‘Look, let’s cut the bouncing about, Nicki,’ he said, apparently. ‘There is no motherfucking way you have anything on me. You’ll have to give me my phone call sooner or later. So why not save us all a lot of fucking about and do it now?’
The ranking officer on the other side of the table sat back in her chair and fixed the ex-datahawk with a sombre stare.
‘I think you’ve forgotten which planet you’re on, Franklin. You’ll get to make a phone call when I say you can.’
Her companion got up out of his chair and began to pace a slow circle around the table. Gutierrez tipped his head back a little to watch the move, drew on his gill and puffed a long feather of fumes up into the air, then went back to looking at the woman. He shook his head.
‘They’ll come and dig me out of here before breakfast, Nicki. You know that.’
The other cop hit him, dropped body weight into the swing, one cupped striking hand to the datahawk’s ear and side of the head. The gill went flying. In the slack grip of Mars gravity, so did Gutierrez and the chair. Clatter of plastic on evercrete, soft human yelp. Rovayo flinched – Sevgi caught it peripherally from two seats over. On screen, Gutierrez rolled to a halt and the cop was on him. The datahawk was shaking his head muzzily, trying to pick himself up – his assailant locked a thick-muscled arm around his throat, hauled him upright by it. The ranking officer watched impassively.
‘Wrong guess, fuckwit,’ hissed the strongarm cop, into the ear he hadn’t deafened. ‘See, we got a lot of leeway on this one. You really fucked up with Horkan’s Pride, and I mean big time. There’s a lot more juice coming down from COLIN right now than your buddies over in Wells know how to soak up. I’d say we’ve got you down here for a fortnight at least.’
The datahawk choked out a reply. ‘Reyes,’ said the subtitles. ‘You’re confusing your wet dreams with reality again.’
The cop bared his teeth in a grin. He reached down and grabbed Gutierrez by the crotch. Twisted. A suffocated screech made it up the datahawk’s throat.
‘Can he—’ Rovayo began numbly.
Marsalis rolled his head slightly in her direction. Met her eye. ‘Colony police. Oh, yeah. He can.’
The ranking officer made a tiny motion with her head. Her companion let go of Gutierrez’s testicles and dumped the datahawk forward onto the table top like a load of laundry. He lay there, face to one side, breath whistling hoarsely in and out of his teeth. The cop called Reyes pressed a flat palm down hard against their suspect’s cheek, leaned on it, and then closer, over him.
‘You’d better fucking learn to behave, Franklin,’ he said conversationally. ‘What they tell me, we can blow this whole year’s compensation budget on you if we have to.’ He looked at the woman. ‘What’s the rate for testicular damage these days, Nick?’
The ranking officer shrugged. ‘Thirty-seven grand.’
Reyes grinned again. ‘Right. Now that’s for each one, right?’
‘No, that’s for both.’ The woman leaned forward a little. ‘I hear the restorative surgery’s a bitch, Franklin. Not something you’d want to go through at all.’
‘Yeah, so how about you speak English to us for a change.’ Reyes marked the emphasis, skidding his palm hard off the datahawk’s face, as if wiping it clean. His face wrinkled up with disgust. ‘Because we all know you can, sort of. Just wrap the fucking upland chatter for a while. Do us that small favour, huh? Maybe then I leave your cojones intact.’
He stepped back. A thin sound trickled out of Gutierrez. Sevgi, disbelieving, made it as laughter. The datahawk was chuckling.
Reyes hooked back round to stare. ‘Something amusing you, pendejo?’
Gutierrez got up off the table. He straightened his clothes. Nodded, as if he’d just had something entirely reasonable explained to him. His ear, Sevgi knew, must still have been singing like a fire alarm.
‘Only the dialogue.’ His English was lightly accented, otherwise flawless. ‘You say you got me down here indef. Okay, I’ll bite. Nicki, you want to put a leash on your dog?’
Reyes tensed, but the woman made another barely perceptible motion with her head, and he slackened off again. Gutierrez lowered himself gingerly back into his chair, wincing. He padded his pockets for the pack of gills, found them and fitted a new one into his mouth. He twisted the end ’til it tore open, puffed it to life. Breathed the fumes out of his mouth and up his nose. Sevgi made it for buying time. The datahawk shrugged.
‘So what do you want to know?’
‘Horkan’s Pride,’ said Reyes evenly.
‘Yeah, you mentioned it. Big spaceship, went home last year. Crashed into the sea, they say.’ He plumed pale smoke ‘So what?’
‘So why’d you do it?’
‘Why’d I do what?’
The two Colony cops swapped a glance of theatrical exasperation. Reyes took a couple of steps forward, hands lifting.
‘Hold it,’ said the woman. It rang staged, patently false after the imperceptible signals the two cops had exchanged before.
‘Yeah, hold it,’ agreed Gutierrez. ‘You’re going to tie me to some systems crash on another fucking planet? I mean, back in the day I was good. But not that good.’