'Subtle.'
'Wasn't it. I never can resist sophisticated negotiation. I feel he earnt the re-investment.'
'So you beaconed in on me, hooked him out and beamed him over to Carnage for re-sleeving, right?' I felt in my pockets and found Ortega's cigarettes. In the grim twilight of the basilica, the familiar packet was like a postcard from another place. 'No wonder the Panama Rose didn't have his second fighter decanted when we got there. He'd probably only just finished sleeving Kadmin. That motherfucker walked out of there in a Right Hand of God martyr.'
'About the same time you were coming aboard,' agreed Kawahara. 'In fact, I understand he was posing as a menial and you walked right past him. I'd rather you didn't smoke in here.'
'Kawahara, I'd rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don't suppose you'll oblige me.' I touched my cigarette to the ignition patch and drew it to life, remembering. The man knelt in the ring. I played it back slowly. On the deck of the fightdrome ship, peering down at the design being painted onto the killing floor. The upturned face as we passed. Yes, he'd even smiled. I grimaced at the memory.
'You're being a lot less courteous than befits a man in your situation.' I thought that, underneath the cool, I could detect a ragged edge in her voice. Despite her much vaunted self-control, Reileen Kawahara wasn't much better at coping with disrespect than Bancroft, General Maclntyre or any other creature of power I'd had dealings with. 'Your life is in danger and I am in a position to safeguard it.'
'My life's been in danger before,' I told her. 'Usually as a result of some piece of shit like you making large-scale decisions about how reality ought to be run. You've already let Kadmin get too close for my comfort. In fact, he probably used your fucking virtual locater to do it.'
'I sent him,' Kawahara gritted, 'to collect you. Again he disobeyed me.'
'Didn't he just.' I rubbed reflexively at the bruise on my shoulder. 'So why should I believe you can do any better next time?'
'Because you know I can.' Kawahara came across the centre of the chamber, ducking her head to avoid the leathery grey clone sacs, and intercepting my path around the perimeter. Her face was taut with anger. 'I am one of the seven most powerful human beings in this solar system. I have access to powers that the UN Field Commander General would kill for.'
'This architecture's going to your head, Reileen. You wouldn't even have found me if you hadn't been keeping tabs on Sullivan. How the fuck are you going to find Kadmin?'
'Kovacs, Kovacs.' There was a definite trembling in her laugh, as if she was fighting an urge to put her thumbs through my eye sockets. 'Do you have any idea what happens on the streets of any given city on Earth, if I put out a search on someone? Do you have any idea how easy it would be to snuff you out here and now?'
I drew deliberately on the cigarette and plumed the smoke out at her. 'As your faithful retainer Trepp said, not ten minutes ago, why bring me here just to snuff me out? You want something from me. Now what is it?'
She breathed in through her nose, hard. A measure of calm seeped onto her face and she stepped back a couple of paces, turned away from the confrontation.
'You're right, Kovacs. I want you alive. If you disappear now, Bancroft's going to get the wrong message.'
'Or the right message.' I scuffed absently at engraved lettering on the stone beneath my feet. 'Did you torch him?'
'No.' Kawahara looked almost amused. 'He killed himself.'
'Yeah, right.'
'Whether you believe it or not is immaterial to me, Kovacs. What I want from you is an end to the investigation. A tidy end.'
'And how do you suggest I achieve that?'
'I don't care. Make something up. You're an Envoy, after all. Convince him. Tell him you think the police verdict was correct. Produce a culprit, if you must.' A thin smile. 'I do not include myself in that category.'
'If you didn't kill him, if he torched his own head off, why should you care what happens? What's your interest in this?'
'That isn't under discussion here.'
I nodded slowly. 'And what do I get in return for this tidy ending?'
'Apart from the hundred thousand dollars?' Kawahara tilted her head quizzically. 'Well, I understand you've been made a very generous recreational offer by other parties. And for my part, I will keep Kadmin off your back by whatever means necessary.'
I looked down at the lettering beneath my feet, and thought it through, link by link.
'Francisco Franco,' said Kawahara, mistaking the direction of my gaze for focused interest. 'Petty tyrant a long time back. He built this place.'
'Trepp said it belonged to the Catholics.'
Kawahara shrugged. 'Petty tyrant with delusions of religion. Catholics get on well with tyranny. It's in the culture.'
I glanced around, ostensibly casual, scanning for robot security systems. 'Yeah, looks like it. So let me get this straight. You want me to sell Bancroft a parabolic full of shit, in return for which you'll call off Kadmin, who you set on me in the first place. That's the deal?'
'That, as you put it, is the deal.'
I took one last lungful of smoke, savoured it and exhaled.
'You can go fuck yourself, Kawahara.' I dropped my cigarette on the engraved stonework and ground it out with my heel. 'I'll take my chances with Kadmin, and let Bancroft know you probably had him killed. So. Change your mind about letting me live now?'
My hands hung open at my sides, twitching to be filled with the rough woven bulk of handgun butts. I was going to put three Nemex shells through Kawahara's throat, at stack height, then put the gun in my mouth and blow my own stack apart. Kawahara almost certainly had remote storage anyway, but fuck it, you've got to make a stand somewhere. And a man can only stave off his own death wish for so long.
It could have been worse. It could have been Innenin.
Kawahara shook her head regretfully. She was smiling. 'Always the same Kovacs. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Romantic nihilism. Haven't you learnt anything since New Beijing?'
'There are some arenas so corrupt that the only dean acts possible are nihilistic.'
'Oh, that's Quell, isn't it? Mine was Shakespeare, but then I don't expect colonial culture goes back that far, does it?' She was still smiling, poised like a total body theatre gymnast about to launch into her aria. For a moment I suffered the almost hallucinatory conviction that she was going to break into a little dance, choreographed to a junk rhythm beat from speakers hidden in the dome above us.
'Takeshi, where did you get this belief that everything can be resolved with such brute simplicity? Surely not from the Envoys? Was it the Newpest gangs? The thrashings your father gave you as a child? Did you really think I would allow you to force my hand? Did you really think I would have come to the table this empty-handed? Think about it. You know me. Did you really believe it would be this easy?'
The neurachem seethed within me. I bit it back, hung from the moment like a parachutist braced in the jump hatch.
'All right,' I said evenly. 'Impress me.'
'Gladly.' Kawahara reached into the breast pocket of her liquid black blouse. She produced a tiny holofile and flicked it into active with a thumbnail. As the images evolved in the air above the unit, she passed it to me. 'A lot of the detail is legalistic, but you will of course recognise the salient points.'
I took the little sphere of light as if it were a poisonous flower. The name hit me at once, leaping out of the print —
— Sarah Sachilowska —
— and then the contract terminology, like a building coming down on me in slow motion.
— released into private storage —
— provision for virtual custody —
— unlimited period —
— subject to review at UN discretion —
— under vested authority of the Bay City justice facility —
The knowledge coursed sickly through me. I should have killed Sullivan when I had the chance.
'Ten d
ays.' Kawahara was watching my reactions closely. 'That's how long you have to convince Bancroft the investigation is over, and to walk away. After that, Sachilowska goes into virtual at one of my clinics. There's a whole new generation of virtual interrogation software out there, and I will personally see to it that she pioneers the lot.'
The holofile hit the marble floor with a brittle crack. I lurched at Kawahara, lips peeling back from my teeth. There was a low growling coming up through my throat that had nothing to do with any combat training I had ever undergone and my hands crooked into talons. I knew what her blood was going to taste like.
The cold barrel of a gun touched down on my neck before I got halfway.
'I'd advise against that,' said Trepp in my ear.
Kawahara came and stood closer to me. 'Bancroft isn't the only one that can buy troublesome criminals off colonial stacks. The Kanagawa justice facility were overjoyed when I came to them two days later with a bid for Sachilowska. The way they see it, if you're freighted offworld, the chances of you ever having enough money to buy a needlecast back again are pretty slim. And of course they get paid for the privilege of waving you goodbye. It must seem too good to be true. ] imagine they're hoping it's the start of a trend.' She fingered the lapel of my jacket thoughtfully. 'And in fact the way the virtuals market is at the moment, it might be a trend worth starting.'
The muscle under my eye jumped violently.
'I'll kill you,' I whispered. 'I'll rip your fucking heart out and eat it. I'll bring this place down around you — '
Kawahara leaned in until our faces were almost touching. Her breath smelt faintly of mint and oregano. 'No, you won't,' she said. 'You'll do exactly as I say, and you'll do it within ten days. Because if you don't, your friend Sachilowska will be starting her own private tour of hell without redemption.'
She stepped back and lifted her hands. 'Kovacs, you should be thanking whatever deities they've got on Harlan's World that I'm not some kind of sadist. I mean, I've given you an either/or. We could just as easily be negotiating exactly how much agony I put Sachilowska through. I mean, I could start now. That would give you an incentive to wrap things up speedily, wouldn't it? Ten days in most virtuals adds up to about three or four years. You were in the Wei Clinic; do you think she could stand three years of that? I think she'd probably go insane, don't you?'
The effort it cost me to contain my hate was like a rupture down behind my eyeballs and into my chest. I forced the words out.
'Terms. How do I know you'll release her?'
'Because I give you my word.' Kawahara let her arms fall to her sides. 'I believe you've had some experience of its validity in the past.'
I nodded slowly.
'Subsequent to Bancroft's acceptance that the case is closed, and your own disappearance from view, I will freight Sachilowska back to Harlan's World to complete her sentence.' Kawahara bent to pick up the holofile I'd dropped and held it up. She tipped it deftly a couple of times to flick through the pages. 'I think you can see here that there is a reversal clause written into the contract. I will of course forfeit a large proportion of the original fee paid, but under the circumstances I'm prepared to do that.' She smiled faintly. 'But please bear in mind that a reversal can work in both directions. What I return, I can always buy again. So if you were considering skulking in the undergrowth for a while and then running back to Bancroft, please abandon the idea now. This is a hand that you cannot win.'
The gun barrel lifted away from my neck and Trepp stepped back. The neurachem held me upright like a paraplegic's mobility suit. I stared numbly at Kawahara.
'Why the fuck did you do all this?' I whispered. 'Why involve me at all, if you didn't want Bancroft to find his answers?'
'Because you are an Envoy, Kovacs.' Kawahara spoke slowly, as if talking to a child. 'Because if anybody can convince Laurens Bancroft that he died by his own hand, it is you. And because I knew you well enough to predict your moves. I arranged to have you brought to me almost as soon as you arrived, but the hotel intervened. And then when chance brought you to the Wei Clinic I endeavoured to bring you here once again.'
'I bluffed my way out of the Wei Clinic.'
'Oh, yes. Your biopirate story. You really think you sold them that second-rate experia rubbish? Be reasonable, Kovacs. You might have backed them up a couple of steps while they thought about it, but the reason, the only reason you got out of the Wei Clinic intact was because I'told them to send you that way.' She shrugged. 'But then you insisted upon escaping. It has been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a behaviourist who has designed her rat's maze poorly.'
'All right.' I noted vaguely that I was trembling. 'I'll do it.'
'Yes. Of course you will.'
I searched for something else to say, but it felt as if I had been clinically drained of the potential for resistance. The cold of the basilica seemed to be creeping into my bones. I mastered the trembling with an effort and turned to go. Trepp moved silently forward to join me. We had gone about a dozen steps when Kawahara called out behind me.
'Oh, Kovacs . . . '
I turned as if in a dream. She was smiling.
'If you do manage to wrap it up cleanly, and very quickly, I might consider some kind of cash incentive. A bonus, so to speak. Negotiable. Trepp will give you a contact number.'
I turned away again, numb to a degree I hadn't felt since the smoking ruins of Innenin. Vaguely, I felt Trepp clap me on the shoulder.
'Come on,' she said companionably. 'Let's get out of here.'
I followed her out under the soul-bruising architecture, beneath the sneering smiles of the hooded guardians, and I knew that from among her grey-wombed clones, Kawahara was watching me all the way with a similar smile. It seemed to take forever to leave the hall and when the huge steel portals cracked open to reveal the outside world, the light that spilled inward was an infusion of life that I grabbed at like a drowning man. All at once, the basilica was a vertical, a cold depth of ocean out of which I was reaching for the sun on the rippled surface. As we left the shadows, my body sucked up the warmth on offer as if it were a solid sustenance. Very gradually, the shivering began to leave me.
But as I walked away, beneath the brooding power of the cross, I could still feel the presence of the place like a cold hand on the nape of my neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
That night was a blur. Later, when I tried to get it back, even Envoy recall would only give me fragments.
Trepp wanted a night on the town. The best nightlife in Europe, she maintained, was only minutes away, and she had all the right addresses.
I wanted my thought processes stopped dead in their tracks.
We started in a hotel room on a street I could not pronounce. Some tetrameth analogue fired through the whites of our eyes by needlespray. I sat passively in a chair by the window and let Trepp shoot me up, trying to not think about Sarah and the room in Millsport. Trying not to think at all. Two-tone holographies outside the window cast Trepp's concentrated features in shades of red and bronze, a demon in the act of sealing the pact. I felt the insidious tilt at the corners of perception as the tetrameth went barrelling along my synapses, and when it was my turn to do Trepp I almost got lost in the geometries of her face. This was very good stuff . . .
There were murals of the Christian hell, flames leaping like clawed fingers over a procession of screaming, naked sinners. At one end of the room, where the figures on the walls seemed to blend with the denizens of the bar in smoke and noise, a girl danced on a rotating platform. A cupped petal of black glass scythed around with the platform and each time it passed between audience and dancer, the girl was gone and a skeleton danced grinning in her place.
'This place is called All Flesh Will Perish,' yelled Trepp above the noise as we forced our way in through the crowd. She pointed to the girl and then to the black glass rings on her fingers. 'Where I got the idea for these. Great effect, isn't it?'
I
got drinks, quickly.
The human race has dreamed of heaven and hell for millennia. Pleasure or pain unending, undiminished and uncurtailed by the strictures of life or death. Thanks to virtual formatting, these fantasies can now exist. All that is needed is an industrial-capacity power generator. We have indeed made hell — and heaven — on earth.
'Sounds a bit epic, Angin Chandra's outward-bound valediction to the people sort of thing,' shouted Trepp. 'But I take your point.'
Evidently the words that had been running through my mind were also running out of my mouth. If it was a quote, I didn't know where it was from. Certainly not a Quellism; she would have slapped anyone making that kind of speech.
'Thing is,' Trepp was still yelling, 'you've got ten days.'
Reality tilts, flows sideways in gobs of flame-coloured light. Music. Motion and laughter. The rim of a glass under' my teeth. A warm thigh pressed against my own which I think is Trepp's, but when I turn another woman with long straight black hair and crimson lips is grinning at me. Her look of open invitation reminds me vaguely of something I've seen recently —
Street scene:
Tiered balconies on either side, tongues of light and sound splashed out onto pavements from the myriad tiny bars, the street itself knotted with people. I walked beside the woman I had killed last week and tried to hold up my end of a conversation about cats.
There was something I had forgotten. Something clouded.
Something impor —
'You can't nicking believe something like that,' Trepp burst out. Or in, into my skull at the moment I had almost crystallised what I —
Was she doing it deliberately? I couldn't even remember what it was I'd believed so strongly about cats a moment ago.
Dancing, somewhere.
More meth, eye-shot on a street corner, leaning against a wall. Someone walked past, called something out to us. I blinked and tried to look.
'Fuck, hold still will you!'
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