“Get used to anything in time, I suppose. Besides, Kadmin was fucking crazy.”
“Oh, and we’re not?”
I shrugged. “We didn’t have a choice. Apart from walking away, I mean. Would that have been better?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who’s going up against Kawahara. I’m just the whore around here. Incidentally, I don’t reckon Ortega’s exactly overjoyed about that part of the deal. I mean, she was confused before, but now—”
“She’s confused! How do you think I feel?”
“I know how you feel, idiot. I am you.”
“Are you?” I sipped at my drink and gestured with the glass. “How long do you think it takes before we stop being exactly the same person?”
He shrugged. “You are what you remember. Right now we only have about seven or eight hours of separate perceptions. Can’t have made much of a dent yet, can it?”
“On forty-odd years of memory? I suppose not. And it’s the early stuff that builds personality.”
“Yeah, they say. And while we’re on the subject, tell me something. How do you feel, I mean how do we feel about the Patchwork Man being dead?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Do we need to talk about this?”
“We need to talk about something. We’re stuck here with each other until tomorrow evening—”
“You can go out, if you want. Come to that,” I jerked a thumb upward towards the roof, “I can get out of here the way I came in.”
“You really don’t want to talk about it that badly, huh?”
“Wasn’t that tough.”
That, at least, was true. The original draft of the plan had called for the ninja copy of me to stay at Ortega’s apartment until the Ryker copy had disappeared with Miriam Bancroft. Then it occurred to me that we’d need a working relationship with the Hendrix to bring off the assault on Head in the Clouds, and that there was no way for the ninja copy of myself to prove its identity to the hotel, short of submission to a storage scan. It seemed a better idea for the Ryker copy to introduce the ninja before departing with Miriam Bancroft. Since the Ryker copy was undoubtedly still under surveillance, at the very least, by Trepp, walking in through the front door of the Hendrix together looked like a very bad idea. I borrowed a grav harness and a stealth suit from Bautista, and just before it started to get light I skimmed in between the patchy high-level traffic and down onto a sheltered flange on the forty-second floor. The Hendrix had by this time been advised of my arrival by the Ryker copy and let me in through a ventilation duct.
With the Khumalo neurachem, it had been almost as easy as walking in through the front door.
“Look,” the Ryker copy said. “I’m you. I know everything you know. What’s the harm in talking about this stuff?”
“If you know everything I know, what’s the point of talking about it?”
“Sometimes, it helps to externalise things. Even if you talk to someone else about it, you’re usually talking to yourself. The other guy’s just providing a sounding board. You talk it out.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I buried all that shit about Dad a long time ago, it’s a long time dead.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
“No.” He flicked a finger at me the way I had pointed at Bancroft when he didn’t want to face my facts on the balcony of Suntouch House. “You’re lying to yourself. Remember that pimp we met in Lazlo’s pipe house the year we joined Shonagon’s Eleven. The one we nearly killed before they pulled us off him.”
“That was just chemicals. We were off our head on tetrameth, showing off because of the Eleven stuff. Fuck, we were only sixteen.”
“Bullshit. We did it because he looked like Dad.”
“Maybe.”
“Fact. And we spent the next decade and a half killing authority figures for the same reason.”
“Oh, give me a fucking break! We spent that decade and a half killing anyone who got in the way. It was the military, that’s what we did for a living. And, anyway, since when is a pimp an authority figure?”
“OK, maybe it was pimps we spent fifteen years killing. Users. Maybe that’s what we were paying back.”
“He never pimped Mum out.”
“Are you sure? Why were we so hot to hit the Elizabeth Elliott angle like a fucking tactical nuke? Why the accent on whorehouses in this investigation?”
“Because,” I said, sinking a finger of whisky, “that is what this investigation has been about from the beginning. We went after the Elliott angle because it felt right. Envoy intuition. The way Bancroft treated his wife—”
“Oh, Miriam Bancroft. Now there’s another whole disc we could spin.”
“Shut up. Elliott was a pretty fucking good sounding shot. We wouldn’t have got to Head in the Clouds without that trip to Jerry’s biocabins.”
“Ahhh.” He made a disgusted gesture and tipped his own glass back. “You believe what you want. I say the Patchwork Man’s been a metaphor for Dad because we couldn’t bear to look too closely at the truth and that’s why we freaked the first time we saw a composite construct in virtual. Remember that, do you? That rec house on Adoracion. We had rage dreams for a week after that little show. Waking up with shreds of pillow on your hands. They sent us to the psychs for that.”
I gestured irritably. “Yeah, I remember. I remember being shit scared of the Patchwork Man, not Dad. I remember feeling the same when we met Kadmin in virtual too.”
“And now he’s dead? How do we feel now?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
He pointed at me again. “That’s a cover.”
“It is not a cover. The motherfucker got in my way, he threatened me and now he’s dead. Transmission ends.”
“Remember anyone else threatening you, do you? When you were small, maybe?”
“I am not going to talk about this any more.” I reached for the bottle and filled my glass again. “Pick another subject. What about Ortega? What are our feelings on that score?”
“Are you planning to drink that whole bottle?”
“You want some?”
“No.”
I spread my hands. “So what’s it to you?”
“Are you trying to get drunk?”
“Of course I am. If I’ve got to talk to myself, I don’t see why I should do it sober. So tell me about Ortega.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Why not?” I asked reasonably. “Got to talk about something, remember. What’s wrong with Ortega?”
“What’s wrong is that we don’t feel the same about her. You aren’t wearing Ryker’s sleeve any more.”
“That doesn’t—”
“Yes, it does. What’s between us and Ortega is completely physical. There hasn’t been time for anything else. That’s why you’re so happy to talk about her now. In that sleeve, all you’ve got is some vague nostalgia about that yacht and a bundle of snapshot memories to back it up. There’s nothing chemical happening to you any more.”
I reached for something to say, and abruptly found nothing. The suddenly discovered difference sat between us like a third, unwanted occupant of the room.
The Ryker copy dug into his pockets and came up with Ortega’s cigarettes. The packet was crushed almost flat. He extracted a cigarette, looked ruefully at it and fitted it into his mouth. I tried not to look disapproving.
“Last one,” he said, touching the ignition patch to it.
“The hotel probably has more.”
“Yeah.” He plumed out smoke, and I found myself almost envying him the addiction. “You know, there is one thing we should be discussing right now.”
“What’s that?”
But I knew already. We both knew.