Hand cleared his throat. “Would you like to tell us why you did it?”
She frowned. “Again?”
“That,” said Hand through slightly gritted teeth, “was a debriefing construct, not me.”
“Oh.”
The eyes slanted sideways and up, searching, I guessed, for a retina-wired peripheral scrolldown. The virtuality had been written not to render internal hardware, except in Mandrake personnel, but she showed no surprise at a lack of response so maybe she was just remembering it the old-fashioned way.
“It was a squadron of automated armor. Spider tanks. I was trying to undermine their response parameters, but there was a viral booby trap wired into the control systems. A Rawling variant, I believe.” The mild grimace again. “There was very little time to take stock, as you can probably imagine, so I can’t be sure. In any event, there was no time to jack out; the primary baffles of the virus had already welded me in. In the time I had before it downloaded fully, I could only come up with the one option.”
“Very impressive,” said Hand.
• • •
When it was done, we went back up to the roof to clear our heads. I leaned on a parapet and looked out over the curfewed quiet of Landfall while Hand went off to find some coffee. The terraces behind me were deserted, chairs and tables scattered like some hieroglyphic message left for orbital eyes. The night had cooled off while we were below, and the breeze made me shiver. Sun Liping’s words came back to me.
Rawling variant.
It was the Rawling virus that had killed the Innenin beachhead. Had made Jimmy de Soto claw out his own eye before he died. State of the art back then, cheap off-the-rack military surplus now. The only viral software Kemp’s hard-pressed forces could afford.
Times change, but market forces are forever. History unreels, the real dead stay that way.
The rest of us get to go on.
Hand came back apologetically with machine-coffee canisters. He handed me mine and leaned on the parapet at my side.
“So what do you think?” he asked after a while.
“I think it tastes like shit.”
He chuckled. “What do you think of our team?”
“They’ll do.” I sipped at the coffee and brooded on the city below. “I’m not overhappy about the ninja, but he’s got some useful skills and he seems prepared to get killed in the line of duty, which is always a big advantage in a soldier. How long to prep the clones?”
“Two days. Maybe a little less.”
“It’ll be twice that before these people are up to speed in a new sleeve. Can we do the induction in virtual?”
“I see no reason why not. The M.A.I. can spin out hundred percent accurate renderings for each clone from the raw data in the biolab machines. Running at three fifty times real, we can give the whole team a full month in their new sleeves, on-site in the Dangrek construct, all inside a couple of hours, real time.”
“Good,” I said, and wondered why it didn’t feel that way.
“My own reservations are with Sutjiadi. I am not convinced that a man like that can be expected to take orders well.”
I shrugged. “So give him the command.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not? He’s qualified for it. He’s got the rank, and he’s had the experience. Seems to have loyalty to his men.”
Hand said nothing. I could sense his frown across the half meter of parapet that separated us.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He cleared his throat. “I had just. Assumed. You would want the command yourself.”
I saw the platoon again as the smart shrapnel barrage erupted overhead. Lightning flash, explosions, and then the fragments, skipping and hissing hungrily through the quicksilver flashing curtain of the rain. Crackling of blaster discharge in the background, like something ripping.
Screams.
What was on my face didn’t feel like a smile, but evidently it was.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’ve read my file, Hand.”
“Yes.”
“And you still thought I wanted the command. Are you fucking insane?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The coffee kept me awake.
Hand went to bed or whatever canister he crawled into when Mandrake wasn’t using him, and left me staring at the desert night. I searched the sky for Sol and found it glimmering in the east at the apex of a constellation the locals called the Thumb Home. Hand’s words drifted back through me.
. . . So far from Earth you have to work hard to pick out Sol in the night sky. We were carried here on a wind that blows in a dimension we cannot see or touch. Stored as dreams in the mind of a machine . . .
I shook it off irritably.
It wasn’t like I’d been born there. Earth was no more home to me than Sanction IV, and if my father had ever pointed Sol out to me in between bouts of drunken violence, I had no memory of it. Any significance that particular point of light had for me, I’d gotten off a disk. And from here, you couldn’t even see the star that Harlan’s World orbited.
Maybe that’s the problem.
Or maybe it was just that I’d been there, to the legendary home of the human race, and now, looking up, I could imagine a single astronomical unit out from the glimmering star, a world in spin, a city by the sea dropping away into darkness as night came on, or rolling back up and into the light, a police cruiser parked somewhere and a certain police lieutenant drinking coffee not much better than mine and maybe thinking . . .
That’s enough, Kovacs.
For your information, the light you’re watching arrive left fifty years before she was even born. And that sleeve you’re fantasizing about is in its sixties by now, if she’s even wearing it still. Let it go.
Yeah, yeah.
I knocked back the dregs of the coffee, grimaced as it went down cold. By the look of the eastern horizon, dawn was on its way, and I had a sudden crushing desire not to be here when it arrived. I left the coffee carton standing sentinel on the parapet and picked my way back through the scattered chairs and tables to the nearest elevator terminal.
The elevator dropped me the three floors to my suite and I made it along the gently curving corridor without meeting anyone. I was pulling the retina cup out the door on its saliva-thin cable when the sound of footfalls in the machined quiet sent me back against the opposite wall, right hand reaching for the single interface gun I still carried, from habit, tucked into the back of my waistband.
Spooked.
You’re in the Mandrake Tower, Kovacs. Executive levels. Not even dust gets up here without authorization. Get a fucking grip, will you.
“Kovacs?”
Tanya Wardani’s voice.
I swallowed and pushed myself away from the wall. Wardani rounded the curve of the corridor and stood looking at me with what seemed like an unusual proportion of uncertainty in her stance.
“I’m sorry, did I scare you?”
“No.” Reaching again for the retina cup, which had backreeled into the door when I went for the Kalashnikov.
“Have you been up all night?”
“Yes.” I applied the cup to my eye and the door folded back. “You?”
“More or less. I tried to get some sleep a couple of hours ago, but . . .” She shrugged. “Too keyed up. Are you all done?”
“With the recruiting?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“How are they?”
“Good enough.”
The door made an apologetic chiming sound, drawing attention to the lack of entry effected so far.
“Are you—”
“Do you—” I gestured.
“Thanks.” She moved, awkwardly, and stepped in ahead of me.
The suite lounge was walled in glass that I’d left at semi-opaque when I went out. City lights specked the smoky surface like deep-fry caught glowing in a Millsport trawler’s nets. Wardani halted in the middle of the subtly furnished livi
ng space and turned about.
“I—”
“Have a seat. The mauve ones are all chairs.”
“Thanks, I still can’t quite get used to—”
“State of the art.” I watched as she perched on the edge of one of the modules, and it tried in vain to lift and shape itself around her body. “Want a drink?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Pipe?”
“God, no.”
“So how’s the hardware?”
“It’s good.” She nodded, more to herself than anyone. “Yes. Good enough.”
“Good.”
“You think we’re nearly ready?”
“I—” I pushed away the flash-rip behind my eyes and crossed to one of the other seats, making a performance of settling into it. “We’re waiting for developments up there. You know that.”
“Yes.”
A shared quiet.
“Do you think they’ll do it?”
“Who? The Cartel?” I shook my head. “Not if they can help it. But Kemp might. Look, Tanya. It may not even happen. But whether it does or not, there’s nothing any of us can do about it. It’s too late for that kind of intervention now. Way war works. Abolition of the individual.”
“What’s that? Some kind of Quellist epigram?”
I smiled. “Loosely paraphrased, yes. You want to know what Quell had to say about war? About all violent conflict?”
She made a restless motion. “Not really. Okay, sure. Tell me. Why not. Tell me something I haven’t heard before.”
“She said wars are fought over hormones. Male hormones, largely. It’s not about winning or losing at all, it’s about hormonal discharge. She wrote a poem about it, back before she went underground. Let’s see—”
I closed my eyes and thought back to Harlan’s World. A safe house in the hills above Millsport. Stolen bioware stacked in a corner, pipes and postop celebration wreathing the air. Idly arguing politics with Virginia Vidaura and her crew, the infamous Little Blue Bugs. Quellist quotes and poetry bantered back and forth.
“You in pain?”
I opened my eyes and shot her a reproachful glance. “Tanya, this stuff was mostly written in Stripjap. That’s a Harlan’s World trade tongue—gibberish to you. I’m trying to remember the Amanglic version.”
“Well, it looks painful. Don’t knock yourself out on my account.”
I held up a hand. “Goes like this:
“Male-sleeved;
Stop up your hormones
Or spend them in moans
Of other caliber
(We’ll reassure you—the load is large enough)
Blood-pumped
Pride in your prowess
Will fail you, fuck you
And everything you touch
(You’ll reassure us—the price was small enough)”
I sat back. She sniffed.
“Bit of an odd stance for a revolutionary. Didn’t she lead some kind of bloody uprising? Fight to the death against Protectorate tyranny, or something?”
“Yeah. Several kinds of bloody uprising, in fact. But there’s no evidence she actually died. She disappeared in the last battle for Millsport. They never recovered a stack.”
“I don’t really see how storming the gates of this Millsport gels with that poem.”
I shrugged. “Well, she never really changed her views on the roots of violence, even in the thick of it. Just realized it couldn’t be avoided, I guess. Changed her actions instead, to suit the terrain.”
“That’s not much of a philosophy.”
“No, it isn’t. But Quellism was never very big on dogma. About the only credo Quell ever subscribed to was Face the Facts. She wanted that on her tomb. FACE THE FACTS. That meant dealing with them creatively, not ignoring them or trying to pretend they’re just some historical inconvenience. She always said you can’t control a war. Even when she was starting one.”
“Sounds a little defeatist to me.”
“Not at all. It’s just recognition of the danger. Facing the facts. Don’t start wars if you can possibly avoid it. Because once you do, it’s out of any sane control. No one can do anything except try to survive while it runs its hormonal course. Hold on to the rod and ride it out. Stay alive, and wait for the discharge.”
“Whatever.” She yawned and looked out of the window. “I’m not very good at waiting, Kovacs. You’d think being an archaeologue would have cured me of that, wouldn’t you.” A shaky little laugh. “That, and. The camp—”
I stood up abruptly. “Let me get you that pipe.”
“No.” She hadn’t moved, but her voice was nailed down solid. “I don’t need to forget anything, Kovacs. I need—”
She cleared her throat.
“I need you to do something for me. With me. What you did to me. Before, I mean. What you did has—” She looked down at her hands. “—had an impact I didn’t. Didn’t expect.”
“Ah.” I sat down again. “That.”
“Yes, that.” There was a flicker of anger in her tone now. “I suppose it makes sense. It’s an emotion-bending process.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Yes, it is. Well, there’s one particular emotion I need bending back into place now, and I don’t really see any other way to do that than by fucking you.”
“I’m not sure that—”
“I don’t care,” she said violently. “You changed me. You fixed me.” Her voice quieted. “I suppose I should be grateful, but that isn’t how it feels. I don’t feel grateful, I feel fixed. You’ve created this. Imbalance in me, and I want that part of me back.”
“Look, Tanya, you aren’t really in any condition—”
“Oh, that.” She smiled thinly. “I appreciate I’m not exactly sexually attractive right now, except maybe—”
“Wasn’t what I meant—”
“—to a few freaks who like starved pubescents to fuck. No, we’ll need to fix that. We need to go virtual for this.”
I struggled to shake off a numbing sense of unreality. “You want to do this now?”
“Yes, I do.” Another sliced-off smile. “It’s interfering with my sleep patterns, Kovacs. And right now I need my sleep.”
“Do you have somewhere in mind?”
“Yes.” It was like a children’s game of dare.
“So where is that exactly?”
“Downstairs.” She got up and looked down at me. “You know, you ask a lot of questions for a man who’s about to get laid.”
• • •
Downstairs was a floor about midway up the Tower that the elevator announced as a recreational level. The doors opened onto the unpartitioned space of a fitness center, machines bulking insectlike and menacing in the unlit gloom. Toward the back, I spotted the tilted webs of a dozen or so virtualink racks.
“We doing this out here?” I asked uncomfortably.
“No. Closed chambers at the back. Come on.”
We passed through the forest of stilled machines, lights flickering up above and among them, then flickering out again as we moved on. I watched the process out of a neurasthenic grotto that had been growing up around me like coral since before I came down from the roof. Too much virtuality will do that to you sometimes. There’s this vague feeling of abrasion in the head when you disconnect, a disquieting sense that reality isn’t quite sharp enough anymore, a waxing and waning fuzziness that might be what the edge of madness feels like.
The cure for this definitely is not more virtual time.
There were nine closed chambers, modular blisters swelling out of the end wall under their respective numbers. Seven and eight were cracked open, spilling low orange light around the line of the hatch. Wardani stopped in front of seven, and the door hinged outward. The orange light expanded pleasantly in the gap, tuned into soft hypnomode. No dazzle. She turned to look back at me.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Eight is slaved to this one. Just hit CONSENSUAL on the menu pad.”
And she disappeared into the wa
rm orange glow.
Inside module eight, someone had seen fit to cover the walls and roofing with empathist psychogram art, which in the hypnomode lighting seemed little more than a random set of fishtail swirls and spots. Then again, that’s what most empathist stuff looks like to me in any light. The air was just the right side of warm, and beside the automold couch there was a complicated spiral of metal to hang clothes.
I stripped off and settled on the automold, pulled down the headgear, and swiped the flashing consensual diamond as the displays came online. I just remembered to knock out the physical feedback baffle option before the system kicked in.
The orange light appeared to thicken, taking on a foggy substance through which the psychogram swirls and dots swam like complex equations or maybe some kind of pond life. I had a moment to wonder if the artist had intended either of those comparisons—empathists are a weird lot—and then the orange was fading and shredding away like steam, and I stood in an immense tunnel of black vented metal panels, lit only by lines of flashing red diodes that receded to infinity in both directions.
In front of me, more of the orange fog boiled up out of a vent and shredded into a recognizably female form. I watched fascinated as Tanya Wardani began to emerge from the general outline, made at first entirely of flickering orange smoke, then seemingly veiled in it from head to foot, then clad only in patches, and then, as these tore away, clad in nothing at all.
Glancing down at myself, I saw I was similarly naked.
“Welcome to the loading deck.”
Looking up again, my first thought was that she had already gone to work on herself. Most constructs load on self-images held in the memory, with subroutines to beat anything too delusional—you end up looking pretty much the way you do in reality, less a couple of kilos and maybe plus a centimeter or two. The version of Tanya Wardani I was looking at didn’t have those kinds of discrepancies—it was more a general sheen of health that she didn’t yet have back in the real world, or perhaps just the lack of a similar, more grimy sheen of unhealth. The eyes were less sunken, the cheek- and collarbones less pronounced. Under the slightly pouched breasts, the ribs were there, but fleshed far past what I’d imagined below her draped clothing.
“They’re not big on mirrors in the camp,” she said, maybe reading something in my expression. “Except for interrogation. And after a while you try not to see yourself in windows walking past. I probably still look a lot worse than I think I do. Especially after that instant fix you loaded into me.”