The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  ‘Yeah, well like I said. Relax. No one knows.’ Norton felt an unaccustomed tightness in his throat as he looked at his brother. ‘I appreciate all this, Jeff. Maybe it doesn’t come across that way sometimes, but I do.’

  ‘I know.’ Jeff grinned at him. ‘Been looking out for you since you were knee-high anyway. That’s what big brothers are for, right? Whole stack of genetic predisposition right there.’

  Norton shook his head. ‘You’ve been working this field too long, Jeff. Why not just say you care?’

  ‘I thought I just did. Base reasons for caring about your siblings are genetic. I didn’t have to join Human Cost to know that.’

  An image of Megan bloomed brightly in his mind. Long tanned limbs and freckled smile, sun and hair in her eyes. The recollection forced its way aboard, seemed to dim his vision. It felt as if the v-format and his brother had suddenly been tuned down into a muted distance. His voice sounded vague in his own ears.

  ‘Yeah, so what about sibling rivalry? Where does that come in?’

  His brother shrugged. ‘Genetic too. At base, all this stuff is. Xtrasomes aside, everything we are is built on some bedrock genetic tendency or other.’

  ‘And that’s how you justify Nuying.’

  Jeff’s expression tightened. ‘I think we’ve had this conversation, and I didn’t enjoy it much last time. I don’t justify what I did with Nu. But I do understand where it comes from. Those are two very different things.’

  Norton let the memory of Megan fade. ‘Yeah, okay. Forget it. Sorry I started on you again. I’m feeling pretty stressed myself right now. Got my own genetic tendencies to handle, you know?’

  ‘We all do,’ his brother said quietly. ‘Thirteen, or bonobo, or just base fucking human. Sooner or later, we all have to face what’s inside.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Morning came in laced with the sounds of traffic along Moda caddesi and children shouting. Bright, angled sunlight along the side wall of the room he’d chosen to sleep in and the reluctant conclusion that out here at the back of the apartment there was a school playground directly under the window. He levered himself out of the bed, shambled about looking for the bathroom, stumbled in on a lightly snoring Ertekin in the process; she slept sprawled on her back with her mouth half open, long-limbed and gloriously inelegant in the faded NYPD T-shirt and tangle of sheets, one crooked arm thrown back over her head. He drank in the sight, then slid quietly out again, found the bathroom and took a long much-needed piss. A faint hangover nagged rustily at his temples, not nearly as bad as he’d been expecting. He stuck his head under a tap.

  He left Ertekin to sleep, padded to the kitchen and found a semi-smart grocery manager recessed in next to the heating system panel. He ordered fresh bread and cimits both, not knowing Ertekin’s preferences, milk and a few other bits and pieces. Found an unopened packet of coffee - Earth-grown, untwisted - in a cupboard and a Mediterranean-style espresso pot on the worktop. He fired up the hob, set up the pot and by the time it started burbling to itself, the breakfast delivery was buzzing for entry down at the main door. He let them in, found a screen phone and carried it through to the kitchen table. He unwrapped the cimits - gnarly rings of baked and twisted dough, dusted with sesame seeds, still warm - broke one up into segments, poured himself a coffee, and went looking for Stéphane Névant.

  It took a while.

  The duty officer at the Internment Tract HQ in Ankara wasn’t anyone he knew, and he couldn’t pull UNGLA rank, because his operating codes were six months out of date. Naming friends didn’t help much. He had to settle for a referral to one of the site offices, where, apparently, Battal Yavuz was putting in some overtime. When he tried the site, Battal was out in a prowler and not answering his radio. The best the woman on site could do was take a message. What should-

  ‘Just tell him he’s a reprobate motherfucker, and a big bad thirteen’s going to fly right out there and steal his woman if he doesn’t call me back.’

  The face on screen coloured slightly. ‘I don’t think-’

  ‘No, really. That’s the message. Thanks.’

  Noises from the corridor. He cut the call and broke another cimit. Found an unexpected grin in the corner of his mouth, frowned it away. Ertekin used the bathroom, went back to the bedroom by the sound of it, and for a moment he thought she was going to go back to sleep. Then he heard footfalls in the corridor again, approaching. He leaned back in his chair to watch her come into the kitchen. Wondering if she’d still be in the T-shirt. His hangover, he noticed vaguely, was receding.

  She was dressed. Hair thickly untidy, face a freshly scrubbed scowl.

  ‘Morning. Sleep well?’

  She grunted. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Working.’ He gestured at the phone. ‘Waiting for a call back on Névant. Why, what did you think? I’d skip out on you as soon as you passed out? Perfidious, self-regarding thirteen motherfucker that I am.’

  ‘I didn’t pass out.’

  ‘Well, you dropped your glass while you were resting your eyes then. I figured you’d finished drinking anyway, so I went to bed. How’s your head?’

  The look she gave him was answer enough.

  ‘Coffee still in the pot, but it must be nearly cold. I can-’

  The phone chimed. He raised an eyebrow and prodded it to life. Ertekin busied herself with the coffee, and he dropped his gaze to the screen. A picture fizzled into focus, grainy with patch-through. Wide angle on an arid backdrop through the dust-plastered windscreen and side window of an all-terrain prowl truck. Battal Yavuz in the driver’s seat, chubby features narrowed in peering disbelief.

  ‘Carl? No fucking way that’s you.’

  ‘The one and only.’

  ‘They had you in a Jesusland jail, man. Di Palma told us. Special powers invoked, indefinite retention without trial. How the fuck you get out of that?’

  ‘I got out of Mars, Battal. What did you think, Jesusland was going to hold me?’

  ‘Man, you never know. They’ve got a history of that indefinite retention shit. Fucking barbarians.’

  Across the table from him, Sevgi Ertekin snorted. Carl flashed her a quizzical look. She shrugged and sipped her coffee.

  ‘So what are you doing in Istanbul, anyway? You coming out to visit?’

  ‘Don’t think I’ve got time for that, Battal. But listen, I was hoping you could do me a favour.’

  When he’d hung up, Ertekin was still slumped opposite, staring a hole in the bottom of her coffee cup. He eyed her curiously.

  ‘So what was that about?’

  ‘What was what about?’

  He mimicked her snort. ‘That.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Just kind of amusing to hear a Turk talking about someone else’s barbarism.’

  ‘Well, he was talking about Jesusland.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ She sat up suddenly. ‘See, Marsalis, my father left this country for a reason. His father and his uncle both died back on that fucking square in Taksim because the illustrious Turkish military suddenly decided freedom of speech was getting a little out of hand. You know, you fucking Europeans, you think you’re so fucking above it all with your secular societies and your soft power, and your softly softly security forces that no one likes to talk about. But in the end-’

  ‘In the end,’ he said, a little harshly because Battal was a friend, and he didn’t have many, ‘Turkey’s still in one piece. They had a psychotic religious element here too, you know, and a problem with rabid patriotic dogma. But they solved it. The ones who stayed, the ones who didn’t cave in to fundamentalist idiocy or just make a run for some comfortable haven elsewhere - in the end they made the difference, and they held it together.’

  ‘Yeah, with some judicious funding from interested European parties, is what I heard.’

  ‘None of which invalidates the fact that Jesusland is a fucking barbaric society, which you’re not from anyway, so what’s your point?’

  She glared back at him. He sighe
d.

  ‘Look. My head hurts too, all right? Why don’t you talk to Battal when he gets here? He’s the one filled me in on local history; guy used to teach in a prison before he got this gig, he knows his stuff. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Turkey and the old US, how they were more similar than you’d think. Talk to him.’

  ‘You think he’ll come here?’

  ‘If Névant comes, he’ll have to have an escort. And I don’t see Battal passing up the chance to see his tea-house friends in Istanbul at someone else’s expense. Yeah, he’ll come.’

  Ertekin sniffed. ‘If Névant comes.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Névant. Just the fact I’m asking for his help is going to be enough to get him here. He’s going to love that.’

  ‘Maybe he’s going to love turning you down.’

  ‘Maybe. But he’ll come here to do it. He’ll want to see my face. And besides,’ Carl spread his hands, gave her a crooked grin, ‘there’s a good chance this’ll be his only opportunity to get off the internment tract for the next decade.’

  She nodded slowly, like someone assimilating a new concept. Gaze still on her coffee. He had the sudden, uneasy feeling that what she’d just grasped wasn’t much to do with what he’d just been saying.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘there’s really no need for either of them to come here at all. We could just as easily have gone out to them, couldn’t we?’ And her gaze flipped up, locked onto his face. ‘Out to the tract?’

  It was only a beat, but she had him.

  ‘Yeah, we could have,’ he answered, smoothly enough. ‘But we’re both hungover, and I like the view from this place. So - why bother going there, if we can get him to come to us?’

  She got up from the table and looked down at him.

  ‘Right.’

  For a moment, he thought she was going to push the point, but she just smiled, nodded again and left him sitting there in the kitchen, memories of the tract and those he’d dragged back to it swirling through his mind in hungover free association.

  He was still sitting there when Névant called.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Knew I’d come, eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Névant drew on his cigarette, let the smoke gush back out of his mouth and sucked it in hard through his nose. ‘Fuck you did.’

  Carl shrugged. ‘All right.’

  ‘Want to know why I did come?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The Frenchman grinned and leaned across the table, mock confidential. ‘I came to kill your ass, Mars man.’

  Out beyond the glass panel frontage of the restaurant, sunset bruised and bloodied the sky over the sea of Marmara. Torn cloud, clotted with red. Carl met Névant’s gaze and held it.

  ‘That’s original.’

  ‘Well.’ Névant sat back again, stared down at the table top. ‘Sometimes, the old gene-deep reasons are the best, you know.’

  ‘Is that why you tried to persuade Manco Bambaren to give you house room? Gene-deep reasons?’

  ‘If you like. It was a question of survival.’

  ‘Yeah, survival as a cudlip.’

  Névant looked up. Carl saw the twitch of a suppressed fight instruction flowing down the nerves of one arm. Like most thirteens, the Frenchman was physically powerful, broad in chest and shoulders, long limbs carrying corded muscle, head craggy and large. But somehow, in Névant, the bulk seemed to have whittled down to a pale, lycanthropic coil of potential. He’d lost weight since Carl saw him last, and his nose and cheekbones made sharp angles out of his flesh. The narrowed grey-green eyes were muddy dark with anger, and the smile when it came was a slow-peeling, silent snarl. He’d been fast, back in Arequipa three years ago - it had taken the mesh for Carl to beat him. If he came across the table now, it would be like a whip, like snake-strike.

  ‘Don’t like your jacket much. What is that, fucking incarceration chic?’

  Carl shrugged. ‘Souvenir.’

  ‘That’s no excuse. What’d it cost you?’

  ‘About four months.’

  Brief pause. The Frenchman raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, well. What happened, your licence expire?’

  ‘No, that’s still good.’

  ‘Still doing the same shit, huh?’ Névant plumed a lungful of smoke across the table. ‘Still hunting your brothers down for the man?’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘You know, it wouldn’t just be for me, Mars man.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Killing you. It wouldn’t just be for me. You have a large fan club back there in the tract. Can hardly blame them, right? And if I killed you, and they knew about it.’ Névant yawned and stretched, loosening the combat tension from his frame. ‘Well, I’d probably never have to buy my own cigarettes again.’

  ‘I’d have thought they’d want to kill me themselves.’

  The Frenchman gestured. ‘The limits of revenge. They can’t all kill you, and stuck where they are right now, none of them can. You learn a kind of wisdom in the tract - settle for what you can get, it’s better than nothing.’

  ‘Am I supposed to feel bad about that?’

  The wolfish grin came back. ‘Your feelings are your own, Mars man. Wallow in them as you see fit.’

  ‘They had their chance, Stéphane. You all did. You could have gone to Mars.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not all red rocks and airlocks, apparently. Saw the ads on my way in.’ Névant touched the raki glass on the table in front of him with one fingernail. He hadn’t yet picked it up, or touched the tray of mezes laid out between the two men. ‘Sounds great. Hard to see why you came back.’

  ‘I won the lottery.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, I forgot. It’s so much fun on Mars that the grunts buy a ticket every month to see if they can’t get the fuck out of there and home again.’

  Carl shrugged. ‘I didn’t say it was paradise. It was an option.’

  ‘Look, man. You came back, and the reason you came back is that life on Mars is a pile of shit.’ Névant blew more smoke at him. ‘Some of us just didn’t need to make the trip to work that one out.’

  ‘You were busy making plans to spend the rest of your life up on the altiplano when I caught up with you. That’s just Mars with higher gravity.’

  Névant smiled thinly. ‘So you say.’

  ‘Why should I lie?’

  Outside, street lights were glimmering to life along the sea wall walkway. Sevgi Ertekin sat with Battal Yavuz on tall stools at a sahlep stall a dozen metres down the promenade. They sipped their drinks in cupped hands and were apparently getting on okay. Névant tipped his head in their direction.

  ‘Who is she, then?’

  ‘No, I’m not his partner,’ Sevgi struggled to keep the edge out of her voice. ‘This is strictly a temporary thing.’

  ‘Okay, sorry. My mistake. Just the two of you seem, you know . . .’

  ‘Seem what?’

  Yavuz shrugged. ‘Connected, I guess. That’s unusual with Marsalis. Even for a thirteen, he’s pretty locked up. And it’s not like it’s easy getting close to these guys in the first place.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t want to sound like those Human Purity fuckwits, but I’ve been working the tract for nearly a decade now, and I’ve got to say variant thirteen are the closest thing to an alien race you’re ever going to see.’

  ‘I’ve heard the same thing said about women.’

  ‘By men, yeah.’ Yavuz slurped at his sahlep and came up grinning. He cut a cheery figure in the evening gloom and the yellowish lights from the stall. His jacket collar framed a tanned, well-fed face and there was a small but unapologetic paunch under his sweater. Life at UNGLA Eurozone seemed to be treating him well. His hair was academic untidy and his eyes were merry with reflected light. ‘Naturally. The way you people are wired, compared to the way we are.’

  ‘You people?’

  ‘I’m joking, of course. But the same way male and female genetic wiring is subs
tantially different.’ Yavuz jerked a casual thumb back towards the lit interior of the restaurant, and the two men who sat facing each other in the window. ‘That’s the way those two are substantially different from you and me both.’

  ‘Bit closer to you people though,’ said Sevgi sourly. ‘Right?’

  Yavuz chuckled. ‘Fair point. In testosterone chemistry, in readiness for violent acts and suspension of basic empathy, yes, I suppose so. They are more male than female, of course. But then, no one ever tried to build a female thirteen.’

  ‘That we know of.’

  ‘That we know of,’ he echoed, and sighed. ‘From what I understand, readiness for violent acts and suspension of empathy were exactly the traits the researchers hoped to amplify. Small surprise they opted for the male model, then.’

  For just a moment, his gaze drifted out past her shoulder to the sea.

  ‘At times,’ he said quietly. ‘It shames me to be male.’

  Sevgi shifted uncomfortably on her stool. She turned her sahlep mug in both hands. They were speaking Turkish, hers a little creaky with lack of use, and for some reason, some association maybe with childhood misbehaviour and scolding, the Turkish phrasing of that sentiment - it shames me - lent an obscure force to Yavuz’s words. She felt her cheeks warm against the cold air in sympathy.

  ‘I mean,’ he continued, still not looking at her, ‘we index how civilised a nation is by the level of female participation it enjoys. We fear those societies where women are still not empowered, and with good cause. Investigating violent crime, we assume, correctly, that the perpetrator will most likely be male. We use male social dominance as a predictor of trouble, and of suffering, because when all is said and done males are the problem.’