CHAPTER 45

You’re clean.

He couldn’t work out what she meant, not really. He tried. He tugged at the tightly knotted intricacies of it while he sat in a pool of lamplight in the darkened offices at COLIN and played back the transcript of Gutierrez cracking wide open. He gave up exasperated, left it alone. Came back and tugged at it some more.

That leaves you. Carl. You’re clean.

He felt around the rough contours of it, but it was like searching for holds on one of the improbably towering cliff faces in the Massif Verne. Your fingers told you what was there, gave you something to hold on to or lever off, but that was immediate applicability, not the shape of the whole. It wasn’t understanding. He knew the moves that were coming, what That leaves you, you’re clean meant in terms of what she wanted him to do, but that no more told him what she believed about him, what she thought they were to each other, than a successful series of moves back on that Verne rock gave you a topographic map of the face.

It was like being back in the Osprey compound, puzzling over one of Aunt Chitra’s more obscure training koans.

You’re clean.

The phrase ticked in his head like a bomb.

         

Norton left, presumably to get some sleep before he collapsed. He offered no comment other than See you in the morning. His tone was hesitant, if not friendly then a close analog, buffered soft by exhaustion. Somewhere in the last few hours, the tension between them had shifted in some indefinable way, and something else was emerging to take its place.

Carl sat in the empty offices, listening to the transcript over and over, staring into space, until the floor he was on started to shut itself down for the night. Overhead lighting blinked out panel by panel, and the darkness beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows washed quietly in to fill the work spaces like dark water. Unused systems dropped into standby mode, screens locked to the COLIN acronym, and small red lights gleamed to life in the gloom. No one came up to see what he was doing. Like most COLIN facilities, the Oakland offices were manned around the clock, but by night the staffing went down to skeleton levels and an enabled smart system in the basement. Security was down there—Norton must just have told them to leave him alone.

Gutierrez confessed, hasty and disjointed, backing up, self-correcting, probably lying and embellishing along the way. A picture emerged anyway.

…someone in the familias…had to break ranks sooner or later…the war’s just fucking stupid…

…I don’t know, Marsalis, they didn’t feed me that much fucking information…just had to fake the guy through, that’s what I do, you know… At some point in the protracted, half-hour-gapped interrogation, something tipped over in Gutierrez. Fear, the dangled promise of COLIN protection, maybe some griping sense of betrayal for his time in custody, waiting for a familia rescue that hadn’t yet come—resentment built from smoldering, sparked, and finally flared into open, angry revolt…Look, I’m a fucking cormorant, man, a wire hire, it’s not like I’ve got blood with any of them, why are they going to tell me a fucking thing they don’t have to…

…well, obviously someone who stands to gain from a cessation of hostilities with Mars…you don’t need me to tell you that, right…

…yeah, yeah, jump the docking protocols, put the guy down off the California coast…

…no, they didn’t say why…like I said……yeah, of course I showed him how to jump-start the cryocap gel…how else was he going to survive a splashdown…

And with the resentment, a steadily leaking pool of self-pity and justification…yeah, fucking right, that was an accident. You think I planned to send him home awake like that? Think that’s the kind of work I do from choice? Should have woken up two weeks from home, not from Mars…fucking would have, too, if I’d had my way. I told them it was risky, killing the n-djinn two weeks into the trajectory, told them it might knock on and trigger the other stuff, but hey, why the fuck listen to the expert, what does he fucking know…

…because, if you shut the n-djinn down two weeks from home, COLIN Earth sends a rescue ship up to find out what the fuck happened. Guaranteed. They don’t want to take the risk of a docking fuckup, can’t afford the bad publicity. But if it shuts down two weeks into the trajectory, and then the ship runs silent but smooth all the way home, then they’re going to trust the auto systems and let it go. You know how those fuckers are about costs…

There were a couple of hours of it, even when you cut out the transmission delay. The datahawk’s resistance had gone like a dam wall failing. Carl went back through it, time after time, because the alternative was to start thinking about Sevgi Ertekin. He listened until what Gutierrez was saying started to rub smooth in his head, until it was just patterned noise, with no more meaning than the stamped geometric light and dark of windows, lit and not, in the other buildings outside the window.

He saw her walk back in through the door of the bar once more, wry grimace and the slow ooze of blood on her shoulder and sleeve. The kick in his throat when he saw it, the relief when she said she was okay, the—

…blood, said the transcript for the nth time…. not like I’ve got blood with any of them…

He frowned. Hit pause, rewind. The transcript gibbered backward, rolled again.

Gutierrez sulked once more. Look, I’m a fucking cormorant, man, a wire hire, it’s not like I’ve got blood with any of them…

He heard his own voice and Bambarén’s, worried at by the wind across Sacsayhuamán.

My familiares share a common dislike of your kind, Marsalis. You cannot be unaware of this.

“Yes. You also share a sentimental attachment to ties of blood, but that—

He sat up suddenly straight from his slump. He played it back again, listened once more to the juxtaposition he’d never spotted before.

That’s got to be it.

He reeled back some more, backed up through the datahawk’s rambling…. obviously someone who stands to gain from a cessation of hostilities with Mars…you don’t need me to tell you that, right…

Fucking got to be. He stared at the revelation as it unfolded in the LCLS blast of the desk lamp. Bambarén’s image-tight knowledge of Project Lawman’s weaning procedures. Greta Jurgens, boasting, Bambarén’s suave understated confirmation when called on it. The two items collided in his head.

…you’ve made a niche career out of coexisting with the Initiative, and from what Greta said it’s a flourishing relationship.

I don’t believe Greta Jurgens discussed my business associations with you.

No, but she tried to threaten me with them. The implication was that you have bigger friends these days, and you keep them closer.

…someone who stands to gain……a sentimental attachment to ties of blood…

Fucking had to be.

The realization of how close to the mystery he’d been digging at the time came in across waves of tiredness and made him giddy with exhilaration.

All the time, all the fucking time we were that close. Just fucking wait till I tell—

Sevgi.

And then, abruptly, it was all worth nothing again, and all he had was rage.

         

He checked the files, rang Matthew with it.

“Gayoso.” The datahawk seemed to be tasting the name. “Okay, but it may take awhile, especially if people have been hiding things the way you say they have.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

Slight pause at the other end of the line. “That’s not like you, Carl.”

“No.” He stared at his reflected self in the nighttime glass of the office windows. Grimaced. “I don’t suppose it is.”

More silence. Matthew didn’t like change, at least not among his human colleagues. Carl could feel his discomfort crawling on the line.

“Sorry, Matt. I’m kind of tired.”

“Matthew.”

“Yeah, Matthew. Sorry again. Like I said, tired. I’m waiting for some things to shake out at this end, so I’m in no rush for this stuff. That’s all I meant.”

“Okay.” Matthew’s voice went back to sunny as if he’d thrown a switch. “Listen, you want to know a secret?”

“A secret?”

“Yes. Confidential data. Would you like to know it?”

Carl frowned. He didn’t often use video when he talked to Matthew; the datahawk didn’t seem to like it much, for one thing, and for another the calls were usually purely functional, so it seemed pointless. But now, for the first time, he wished he could see Matthew’s face.

“Confidential data’s usually the reason I ring you,” he said carefully. “So, yeah. Let’s hear it.”

“Well, you’re in trouble with the Brussels office. Gianfranco di Palma is very angry with you.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes. He told me not to communicate with you anymore, not until you come back from the Rim.”

A slow-leaking anger trickled in Carl’s belly. “Did he now.”

“Yes, he did.”

“I notice you’re not doing what he told you.”

“Of course not,” Matthew said serenely. “I don’t work for UNGLA, I’m part of the interagency liaison. And you are my friend.”

Carl blinked.

“That’s good to know,” he said finally.

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Listen, Matthew.” The anger was shifting, colored with something altogether less certain. The flush of understanding he’d had earlier seemed to recede, drowning out by new factors. “If di Palma talks to you again—”

“I know, I know. Don’t tell him I’m checking on Gayoso for you.”

“Yeah, that.” Creeping sense of unease now. “But you tell him also that we’re friends, okay. That you’re my friend.”

“He’ll know that already, Carl. It’s obvious just looking at the data that—”

“Yeah, well he may not have looked too closely at the data, you know. You tell him you’re my friend. You tell him I said that, and that I told you to tell him that, too.” Carl stared somberly at the night outside. “Just so he’s clear.”

         

A little later, he let himself out of the building, looking for a cab to get him back to the hotel. He walked down through the cool of the evening on big successive rectangles of crystalline violet light from the street’s LCLS overheads. It felt like crossing a series of small theater stages, each one lit for a performance he refused to stop and give. His head was fogged with lack of sleep. Weary speculative whirl in there that just wouldn’t quit, still jostling for position with an expansive, freewheeling anger.

Fucking di Palma.

He didn’t realize how much rage must show on his face until he knocked into a street entertainer coming the other way and loaded down with what seemed like random pieces of junk. They cannoned, shoulder-to-shoulder, and his bulk sent her sprawling. The junk clattered and scattered right across the pavement. A single steel wheel from a child’s bike rolled away glinting in the LCLS, hit the curb, and keeled over abruptly in the gutter beyond. The entertainer looked up at him from where she’d fallen, face-painted features sullen.

“Why don’t you…”

And her voice dried up.

He stood looking down at the garish clown-masked face and rigid copper pageboy wig for a silent moment, then realized that his mouth was tight, jaw still set with undischarged anger at di Palma, at Onbekend, at a whole host of shadowy targets he still couldn’t clearly make out.

Yeah, none of whom is this girl. Get a grip, Carl.

He grunted and offered her his hand.

“Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention. My fault.”

He hauled her to her feet. The fear stayed in her eyes, and she snatched her hand away as soon as she was upright. He moved to help her gather up the scattered bits and pieces of her act from the pavement, saw how she flinched, was still afraid of this big, black man on the violet-paneled, deserted street. Gritty irritation flared through him.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he told her curtly.

He got the feeling she was watching him out of sight as he walked away. Something nagged at him about the encounter, but he couldn’t be bothered to chase the thread. A cab cruised by on the cross-street ahead, and he yelled and signaled. The sensors registered him and the cab executed a natty, machine-perfect U-turn across the oncoming traffic, pulling sedately in to collect him. The door hinged out.

He got in, low light and slit windows, leatherette fittings. The rush of memory from his cab ride the night before, the one that Sevgi Ertekin had spotted him getting into and followed, came and did him some tiny, inexplicable harm inside.

The generic female interface rezzed up. “Welcome to Merritt Cabs. What will—”

“Red Sands International,” he said roughly.

“The Red Sands chain operates on both sides of the bay. Which do you require?”

“San Francisco.”

“In transit,” the ’face said smoothly. The features composed, once again he thought of Carmen Ren and her generic Rim States beauty, the smooth—

The clown.

The fucking clown.

“Stop the cab,” he snapped.

They glided to a halt. He wrestled with the door.

“You want to fucking let me out?”

“The engagement fee is outstanding,” said the cab diffidently. “Regardless of trajectory, Merritt Cabs reserves—”

“I’m coming back, I’m fucking coming back. Just hold it here.”

The door clunked free and hinged. He spilled out, sprinted back up the crossstreet for the corner. Before he reached it, he already knew what he’d find. He cornered at speed anyway, ran on, back up the long line of crystalline violet stage panels, back toward the COLIN block.

The street was empty, just the way he’d known it would be. Bits and pieces of junk lay unrecovered exactly where they’d fallen. The bicycle wheel sat gaunt and canted, in the gutter. The face-painted woman was gone.

He pivoted about, scanned the street in both directions.

Pale crystalline stages, lit for performance, marching away in both directions. He stood in the pale violet fall of the LCLS, utterly alone. Tilting sense of the unreal. For one fragmented moment, he expected to see Elena Aguirre come drifting toward him over the narrow bands of gloom that interspersed the panels of light.

Come to collect him after all.