“Damage to Ryker’s sleeve, you mean?”
She looked at me.
“No,” she said quietly. “No, I don’t mean that.”
Then she was pressed up against me, there in that grim metal corridor, arms wrapped hard around me and face buried in my chest, all without apparent transition. I did some swallowing of my own and held her tightly while the last of what time we had trickled away like grains of sand through my fingers. And at that moment I would have given almost anything not to have had a plan for her to hear, not to have had any way to dissolve what was growing between us, and not to have hated Reileen Kawahara quite so much.
I would have given almost anything.
Two a.m.
I called Irene Elliott at the JacSol apartment, and got her out of bed. I told her we had a problem we’d pay heavily to unkink. She nodded sleepily. Bautista went to get her in an unmarked cruiser.
By the time she arrived, the Panama Rose was lit as if for a deck party. Vertical searchlights along her sides made it look as if she was being lowered from the night sky on ropes of luminescence. Illuminum cable incident barriers crisscrossed the superstructure and the dock moorings. The roof of the cargo cell where the humiliation bout had gone down was cranked back to allow the ambulances direct access and the blast of crime scene lighting from within rose into the night like the glow from a foundry. Police cruisers held the sky and parked across the dock flashing red and blue.
I met her at the gangway.
“I want my body back,” she shouted over the whine and roar of airborne engines. The searchlights frosted her sleeve’s black hair almost back to blonde.
“I can’t swing that for you right now,” I yelled back. “But it’s in the pipeline. First, you’ve got to do this. Earn some credit. Now let’s get you out of sight before fucking Sandy Kim spots you.”
Local law were keeping the press copters at bay. Ortega, still sick and shaking, wrapped herself in a police greatcoat and kept the local law out with the same glitter-eyed intensity that kept her upright and conscious. Organic Damage division, shouting, pulling rank, bullying and bluffing, held the fort while Elliott went to work faking in the monitor footage they needed. They were indeed, as Trepp had recognised, the biggest gang on the block.
“I’m checking out of the apartment tomorrow,” Elliott told me as she worked. “You won’t be able to reach me there.”
She was silent for a couple of moments, whistling through her teeth at odd moments as she keyed in the images she had constructed. Then she cast a glance at me over her shoulder.
“You say I’m earning juice from these guys, doing this. They’re going to owe me?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Then I’ll contact them. Get me the officer in charge, I’ll talk to whoever that is. And don’t try to call me at Ember, I won’t be there either.”
I said nothing, just looked at her. She turned back to her work.
“I need some time alone,” she muttered.
Just the words sounded like a luxury to me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I watched him pour a drink from the bottle of fifteen-year-old malt, take it to the phone and seat himself carefully. The broken ribs had been welded back together in one of the ambulances, but the whole of that side was still one huge ache, with occasional, flinty stabs of agony. He sipped at the whisky, gathered himself visibly and punched out the call.
“Bancroft residence. With whom do you wish to speak?” It was the severely-suited woman who had answered last time I called Suntouch House. The same suit, the same hair, even the same make-up. Maybe she was a phone construct.
“Miriam Bancroft,” he said.
Once again, it was the sensation of being a passive observer, the same sensation of disconnection that I had felt that night in front of the mirror while Ryker’s sleeve put on its weapons. The frags. Only this time it was much worse.
“One moment, please.”
The woman disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the image of a windblown match flame in synch with piano music that sounded like autumn leaves being blown along a cracked and worn pavement. A minute passed, then Miriam Bancroft appeared, immaculately attired in a formal-looking jacket and blouse. She raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow.
“Mr Kovacs. This is a surprise.”
“Yeah, well.” He gestured uncomfortably. Even across the comlink, Miriam Bancroft radiated a sensuality that unbalanced him. “Is this a secure line?”
“Reasonably so, yes. What do you want?”
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking. There are some things I’d like to discuss with you. I, uh, I may owe you an apology.”
“Indeed?” This time it was both eyebrows. “When exactly did you have in mind?”
He shrugged. “I’m not doing anything right now.”
“Yes. I, however, am doing something right now, Mr Kovacs. I am en route to a meeting in Chicago and will not be back on the coast until tomorrow evening.” The faintest hint of a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Will you wait?”
“Sure.”
She leaned towards the screen, eyes narrowing. “What happened to your face?”
He raised a hand to one of the emerging facial bruises. In the low light of the room, he had not expected it to be so noticeable. Nor had he expected Miriam Bancroft to be so attentive.
“Long story. Tell you when I see you.”
“Well, that I can hardly resist,” she said ironically. “I shall send a limousine to collect you from the Hendrix tomorrow afternoon. Shall we say about four o’clock? Good. Until then.”
The screen cleared. He sat, staring at it for a moment, then switched off the phone and swivelled the chair round to face the window shelf.
“She makes me nervous,” he said.
“Yeah, me too. Well, obviously.”
“Very funny.”
“I try.”
I got up to fetch the whisky bottle. As I crossed the room, I caught my reflection in the mirror beside the bed.
Where Ryker’s sleeve had the air of a man who had battered his way head first through life’s trials, the man in the mirror looked as if he would be able to slip neatly aside at every crisis and watch fate fall clumsily on its fat face. The body was cat-like in its movements, a smooth and effortless economy of motion that would have looked good on Anchana Salomao. The thick, almost blue-black hair fell in a soft cascade to the deceptively slim shoulders, and the elegantly tilted eyes had a gentle, unconcerned expression that suggested the universe was a good place to live in.
I had only been in the tech ninja sleeve a few hours — seven, and forty-two minutes according to the time display chipped into my upper left field of vision — but there were none of the usual download side effects. I collected the whisky bottle with one of the slim brown artist’s hands and the simple play of muscle and bone was a joy that glowed through me. The Khumalo neurachem system thrummed continually at the limit of perception, as if it were singing faintly the myriad possible things the body could do at any given moment. Never, even during my time with the Envoy Corps, had I worn anything like it.
I remembered Carnage’s words and mentally shook my head. If the UN thought they’d be able to impose a ten-year colonial embargo on this, they were living in another world.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but this feels fucking weird.”
“Tell me about it.” I filled my own tumbler and proffered the bottle. He shook his head. I went back to the window shelf and sat back against the glass.
“How the fuck did Kadmin stand it? Ortega says he used to work with himself all the time.”