Black Man / Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan

  He smiled, a little sadly she thought.

  “We all were, back then,” he said. “Ghosts, I mean. We had our own British version of Project Lawman, minus the delusional name, of course. We called it Osprey. The French preferred Department Eight. But none of us ever officially existed. What you’ve got to remember, Ms. Ertekin, is that back in the eighties the whole thirteen thing was fresh out of the can. Everyone knew the technology was out there, and everybody was busy denying they’d ever have anything to do with it. UNGLA didn’t even exist back then, not as an agency in its own right. It was still part of the Human Rights Commission. And no one was very keen on letting anybody else get a close look at their new genetic warriors. The whole Middle East was a testing ground for all sorts of cutting-edge nastiness, and all of it was operating on full deniability. You know how that shit works, right?”

  She blinked. “What shit?”

  “Deniability. You work for COLIN, right?”

  “I’ve been with COLIN two and a half years,” she said stiffly. “Before that I was a New York police detective.”

  He grinned again, a little more genuine humor in it this time. “Getting the hang of it, though, aren’t you. This is a completely confidential matter, we want it to stay that way. That’s very COLIN.”

  “It’s not a question of that.” She tried without much success to get the stiffness out of her voice. “We don’t want a panic on our hands.”

  “How many has he killed so far? Here on the ground, I mean.”

  “We think it’s in the region of twenty. Some of those are unconfirmed, but the circumstantial evidence points to a connection. In seventeen cases, we’ve recovered genetic trace material that clinches it.”

  Marsalis grimaced. “Busy little fucker. Is this all in the Rim States?”

  “No. The initial deaths were in the San Francisco Bay Area, but later they spread over the whole of continental North America.”

  “So he’s mobile.”

  “Yes. Mobile and apparently a very competent systems intrusion specialist. He murdered two men at the same location in the Bay Area on the night of June 13th and a man in southeastern Texas less than a week later. There’s no trace anywhere in the flight records for that period, and nothing from Rim Border Control, either. We had an n-djinn run face recognition checks on every cross-border flight and surface exit into the Republic for that week and got nothing.”

  “He could have had his face changed.”

  “In less than a week? With matching documentation? Rim States fenceline is the toughest frontier anywhere in the world. Anyway the same n-djinn we used for the face recog had instructions to flag anyone with bandaging or other traces of recent surgical procedure to the face. All we got was a bunch of rich brats coming home from West Coast cosmetic therapy, and a couple of over-the-hill erotica stars.”

  She saw him hold back all but the corner of a grin. It was irritatingly infectious. She concentrated on the dataslate.

  “The only options we are seriously entertaining are that either he was able to contact professional frontier busters within days of coming ashore, or he left the Rim for some other, intermediate destination before flying back into the Republic. It would be a tight time frame that way, but still doable. Of course once it goes global like that, there’s no way to run a comprehensive face recog. Too many places that refuse to let the n-djinns into their datasystems.”

  “I take it these are both confirmed kills, Bay Area and then Texas?”

  “Yes. Genetic trace material recovered at both locations.”

  His gaze went back to the dataslate display. “What do Fort Benning have to say about it?”

  “That Merrin was never provided with substantial datasystems training. He could run a battlefield deck—anybody in covert ops could. But that’s it. We’re assuming he upskilled on Mars.”

  “Yeah. Or someone’s doing it for him.”

  “There is that.”

  He looked at her. “If he had systems help getting aboard Horkan’s Pride, and he’s still getting it now, then this is bigger than just some thirteen bailing out of Mars because he doesn’t like all the red rocks.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re out of leads.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  She sat back and spread her hands. “Without access to the UNGLA databases, we’re in a hole. We’ve done everything we know how to do, and it isn’t enough. The deaths keep coming, they’re steady but unpredictable. There’s no crescendo effect—”

  “No, there wouldn’t be.”

  “—but he’s not stopping. He’s not making any mistakes big enough to nail him or give us a working angle. Our inquiries on Mars have hit a wall—he obviously covered his tracks there, or, as you say, someone did it for him.”

  “And down here?”

  She nodded. “Down here, as you’ve also so eloquently pointed out, we are not on hugely cooperative terms with UNGLA, or the UN in general.”

  “Well, I guess you can hardly blame them for that.” He widened his eyes at her, grinned. It’s not like you’ve been overly cooperative yourselves for the last decade.”

  “Look, Munich was not—”

  The grin faded to a grimace. “I wasn’t really talking about the Accords. I was thinking more of the reception we get in the prep camps every time we have to operate in them. You know we’re about as welcome down there as evolutionary science in Texas.”

  She felt herself flush a little. “Individual corporate partners in the Colony effort do not necessarily—”

  “Yeah, skip it.” A frown. “Still, UNGLA have a mandate requirement in circumstances like this. You report a loose thirteen, they pretty much have to show up.”

  “We don’t really want them to show up, Mr. Marsalis.”

  “Ah.”

  “We need access to their datastacks, or failing that someone like you to talk to our profiling n-djinns. But that’s all. In the end, this is a COLIN matter, and we’ll clean our own house.”

  Listen to you, Sevgi. Cop to corporate mouthpiece in one easy, well-paid move.

  Marsalis watched her for a couple of moments. He shifted slightly in the chair, seemed to be considering something.

  “Are you running this gig out of New York?”

  “Yes. We’ve got borrowed space at RimSec’s Alcatraz complex, liaison with their detectives. But since this thing went continental, we’re back in the New York offices. Why?”

  A shrug. “No reason. When I get on the suborb, I like to know where I’m going to be when I get off again.”

  “Right.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, if we’re going to make that suborb, we should probably get moving. I imagine my colleague will have finished with the warden by now. There’ll be some paperwork.”

  “Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “Listen. There are a couple of people in here I’d like to say good-bye to before we go. People I owe. Can we do that?”

  “Sure.” Sevgi shrugged carelessly. She was already folding up the dataslate. “No problem. It’s a COLIN perk. We can do pretty much anything we want.”

  The Guatemalan was still in his cell, flat on his back in his bunk and blissed out by the look of him on some of his newly acquired endorphin. A half-smoked New Cuban smoldered between the knuckles of his left hand, and his eyes were lidded almost shut. He looked up, dreamily surprised, when Carl strummed the bars of the half-open door.

  “Hey, Eurotrash. Chew doin’ here?”

  “Leaving,” said Carl crisply. “But I need a favor.”

  The Guatemalan struggled upright on the bunk. He glanced up to the cell’s monitor lens, and the cheap interference slinger taped on the wall next to it. No attempt had been made to hide the scrambler, and it had hung there every time Carl had been inside the cell. He didn’t like to think what it cost the Guatemalan to have it overlooked on a permanent basis.

  “Leavin’?” A stoned smirk. “Don’ see no fuckin trowel in your hand.”

  Carl moved an African-carve
d wooden stool over to the bunk and seated himself. “Not like that. This is official. Out the front gate. Listen, I need to make a phone call.”

  “Phone call?” Even through the endorphins, the Guatemalan was blearily shocked. “You know what tha’s gonna cost you?”

  “I can guess. And I don’t have it. Look, there are seven more twenty-mil caps taped in plastic up in the U-bend of my cell’s shitter. All yours. Think of—”

  “That ain’t gonna cut it, niggah.”

  “I know. Think of it as a down payment.”

  “Yeah?” The stoned look was sliding away from the other man. He put the New Cuban in the corner of his mouth and grinned around it. “How’s that shit work? You walkin’ outta here, how you gonna settle your account? Down payment on what? Come to that”—brow creasing—“you walkin’ outta here, why you need my little phone service?”

  Carl gestured impatiently. “Because I don’t trust the people who are walking me out. Listen, once I’m outside, I’m going to have juice—”

  “Yeah, sounds like it. Juice with folks that you don’t trust.”

  “I can help you on the outside.” Carl leaned in. “This is COLIN business. That mean anything to you?”

  The Guatemalan regarded him owlishly for a moment. Then he shook his head and got off the bunk. Carl shifted aside to let him past.

  “Sound to me, niggah, like you ridin’. You sure those seven caps still in that shitter bend, not inside you? COLIN getting you out? What the fuck for?”

  “They want me to kill someone for them,” Carl said evenly.

  A snort from behind him. Liquid coursing as the Guatemalan poured himself a glass of juice from the chiller flask he kept on a shelf. “Sure. In the whole Confederated Republic, they can’t find one black man do their killin’ for them, they got to come flush some high-tone Eurotrash outta South Florida State. You ridin’, niggah.”

  “Will you stop fucking calling me that.”

  “Oh yeah.” The Guatemalan drank deep. He put the glass down and made a gusty, satisfied sound. “I’s forgettin’. You the only black man in here don’ seem to noticed what color skin he got.”

  Carl stared straight ahead at the cell wall. “You know, where I come from, there are a lot of different ways of being black.”

  “Well, then you one lucky fucking black man.” The Guatemalan moved around to face him. His face was almost kindly, softened with the endorphins and maybe something else. “But see, blood, ’bout now, where you come from ain’t where you at. ’Bout now, you in South Florida State. You in the Confederated Republic, niggah. Roun’ here, they only got the one way of being black, and sooner or later that’s the black you gonna be. Ain’t no diversity of product in the Republic, they just got this one box for us, and sooner or later they gonna squeeze you in that box right along with the rest of us.”

  Carl looked at the wall some more. He took the decision.

  “Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong.”

  “I’m wrong?” The other man chuckled. “Look around you, blood. How the fuck am I wrong?”

  “You’re wrong,” Carl told him, “because they already got me in a whole other box. It’s a box you won’t ever see the inside of, and that’s why I’m getting out, that’s why they need me. They can’t get anyone else like me.”

  The Guatemalan propped himself against the cell wall and gave Carl a quizzical look.

  “Yeah? You got moves, trash, I give you that. And what I hear from Louie, you got some fucked-up wirin’ inside you. But that don’ make you no stone killer. Two hours ago you walk out of here with my boy’s best shiv-work up your sleeve, but what I hear is Dudeck still walking around.”

  “We were interrupted.”

  “Yeah. By the nice people from COLIN.” But there wasn’t much mockery in the other man’s voice now. He sucked thoughtfully on the cigar. “Shame about Dudeck, that birdshit coulda used some time in the infirmary. You want to tell me what that means, they can’t get anyone else like me?”

  Carl met his eyes. “I’m a thirteen.”

  It was like peeling a scab. For the last four months, he’d kept it hedged behind his teeth, the secret that would kill him. Now he watched the Guatemalan’s face and saw the final confirmation for his paranoia, saw the flicker of fear, faint but there, covered for quickly with a nod.

  “O-kay.”

  “Yeah.” He felt an obscure disappointment; somehow he’d hoped this man might be proof against the standard prejudice. Something about the Guatemalan’s patient con math realism. But now abruptly he could feel himself through the other man’s gaze, sliding into caricature. Could even feel himself go with it, let go, take on the old skin of impassive power and threat. “So. About this phone call. What’s it going to take?”

  He found Dudeck in the F wing rec hall, playing speed chess against the machine. Three or four others inmates were gathered around: one tat-stamped and certified AC brother, a couple of late-teen wannabe sycophants, and an older white guy who seemed to be there just for the chess. No one from the chapel confrontation—Dudeck would have shrugged loose of them in the wake of the failed gig. Too many undischarged fight chemicals sloshing around, too much blustering talk while they leached back out of the system. Not what you needed at all after a walk-away.

  No one paid any attention to the black man as he came up the hall. Dudeck was too deep in the game, and with full audiovid monitoring systems webbed up in the nanocarb vault of the hall, the others were loose and unvigilant. Carl got to within ten paces of the gathering before anybody turned around. Then one of the wannabes must have caught black in motion out of the corner of an eye. He pivoted about. Stepped forward, secure in the knowledge of how the monitoring system worked, puffed up with association and proximity to Dudeck.

  “Fuck you want, nigger?”

  Carl stepped in and hit him, full force, with one trailing arm and the back of his hand. The impact smashed the boy’s mouth and knocked him to the floor. He stayed there, bleeding and staring up at Carl in disbelief.

  Carl was still moving.

  He closed with the tat-marked spectator, broke down a fumbled defense, and tipped the man into Dudeck, who was still trying to get up from the console. The two men tangled and went down sprawling. The second sycophant hovered, gaped. He wasn’t going to do anything. The older guy was already backing off, hands spread low in front of him to denote his detachment.

  Dudeck rolled to his feet with practiced speed. A siren cut loose somewhere.

  “Got some unfinished business,” Carl told him.

  “You’re fucking cracked, nigger. That’s monitored, unprovoked aggre—”

  He let the mesh drive him. Dudeck saw him coming, threw together a Thai boxing guard, and kicked out. Carl stamped the kick away, feinted the guard, rode the jab punch response, and then broke Dudeck’s nose with a close-in palm heel. The Aryan went over again, explosively, backward. The second serious AC member was staggering upright. Carl punched him in the throat to keep him out of the fight. He went down, choking. Dudeck had bounced up, hadn’t even wiped the blood from his nose. Old hand. His eyes were blank with fury. He came in like a truck, a flurry of blows, all simple linear shit. Carl beat most of it, winced on a stray punch that scraped his cheekbone, then snagged the other man’s right arm at the wrist. He locked up the arm, twisted it, and slammed down with his own forearm. Dudeck’s elbow broke with a crunch, audible even over the sirens. The Aryan shrieked and went down for the last time. Carl kicked him as hard as he could in the ribs. He felt something give. He kicked again, twice, into the stomach. Dudeck threw up on the second impact, softly, like something rupturing. Carl stepped over the Aryan’s twitching body to avoid the pool of vomit, stamped in the man’s already bloodied face, and then bent over him. He grabbed Dudeck’s head up by one ear.

  “New rules, birdshit,” he hissed. “I’m working for the man now. I can do what the fuck I want with you. I could kill you, and it wouldn’t make any fucking difference now.”


  Dudeck foamed blood and spit. Fragments of a tooth on his smashed lower lip. He was making a low grinding noise somewhere deep in his throat.

  Carl let go and stood up. For a moment, he thought he’d stamp on the crumpled form at his feet again, hard into the base of the spine to do some damage the infirmary wouldn’t easily put right, into the face again to destroy it utterly. Maybe go back for the ribs until they snapped inward and punctured something. At least, he thought, he might spit on the Aryan. But the rage had drained abruptly away. He couldn’t be bothered. The Guatemalan had what he’d asked for. Dudeck was out, infirmary-bound. Let the remainder of the Aryan’s shitty Jesusland life take him the rest of the way down. Marsalis didn’t need to see or inflict any more damage. He already knew, within parameters, how it would play out. They stacked men like Dudeck in cheap coffins five-deep outside the poor fund crematoria across the Republic every Sunday. Most of them never made it out of their twenties.

  At the far end of F wing, the gate clanged back and the intervention squad piled through. Body armor, stunwrap carbines, and yells. Carl sighed, raised his hands to his head, and walked down the siren-screaming nanocarb hall to meet them.

  “Cordwood Systems.”

  “Marsalis. Print me.”

  “Voiceprint confirmed. You are speaking to the duty controller. Please state your preferences.”

  “Jade, lattice, mangosteen, oak.”

  “Opening. What are your requirements?”

  “I’ve just been hired out of custody by the Western Nations Colony Initiative. They want me to run a variant thirteen retrieval outside UNGLA jurisdiction.”

  “That is contrary to—”

  “I know. I’ll be in New York in a couple of days. Tell the perimeter crews to expect me. I’ll be dumping my newfound friends as soon as practically possible.”