It was another quarter of an hour before I heard the door. At full amp, the neurachem caught the rustle of clothing as the attendants moved to allow whoever was leaving to exit. I heard voices, Ortega’s flat with pretended official disinterest, then Kawahara’s, as modulated as the mandroid in Larkin & Green. With the betathanatine to protect me from the hatred, my reaction to that voice was a muted horizon event, like the flare and crash of gunfire at a great distance.
“…that I cannot be of more assistance, lieutenant. If what you say about the Wei Clinic is true, his mental balance has certainly deteriorated since he worked for me. I feel a certain responsibility. I mean, I would never have recommended him to Laurens Bancroft, had I suspected this would happen.”
“As I said, this is supposition.” Ortega’s tone sharpened slightly. “And I’d appreciate it if these details didn’t go any further. Until we know where Kovacs has gone, and why—”
“Quite. I quite understand the sensitivity of the matter. You are aboard Head in the Clouds, lieutenant. We have a reputation for confidentiality.”
“Yeah.” Ortega allowed a stain of distaste into her voice. “I’ve heard that.”
“Well, then, you can rest assured that this will not be spoken of. Now if you’ll excuse me, lieutenant. Detective sergeant. I have some administrative matters to attend to. Tia and Max will see you back to the flight deck.”
The door closed and soft footfalls advanced in my direction. I tensed abruptly. Ortega and her escort were coming in my direction. This was something no one had bargained for. On the blueprints the main landing pads were forward of Kawahara’s cabin, and I’d come up on the aft side with that in mind. There seemed no reason to march Ortega and Bautista towards the stern.
There was no panic. Instead, a cool analogue of the adrenalin reaction rinsed through my mind, offering a chilly array of hard facts. Ortega and Bautista were in no danger. They must have arrived the same way they were leaving or something would have been said. As for me, if they passed the corridor I was in, their escort would only have to glance sideways to see me. The area was well lit and there were no hiding places within reach. On the other hand, with my body down below room temperature, my pulse slowed to a crawl and my breathing at the same low, most of the subliminal factors that will trigger a normal human being’s proximity sense were gone. Always assuming the escorts were wearing normal sleeves.
And if they turned into this corridor to use the stairs I had come down by …
I shrank back against the wall, dialled the shard gun down to minimum dispersal and stopped breathing.
Ortega. Bautista. The two attendants brought up the rear. They were so close I could have reached out and touched Ortega’s hair.
No one looked round.
I gave them a full minute before I breathed again. Then I checked the corridor in both directions, went rapidly round the corner and knocked on the door with the butt of the shard gun. Without waiting for a reply, I walked in.
Chapter Forty-One
The chamber was exactly as Miller had described it. Twenty metres wide and walled in non-reflective glass that sloped inward from roof to floor. On a clear day you could probably lie on that slope and peer down thousands of metres to the sea below. The décor was stark and owed a lot to Kawahara’s early millennium roots. The walls were smoke grey, the floor fused glass and the lighting came from jagged pieces of origami performed in illuminum sheeting and spiked on iron tripods in the corners of the room. One side of the room was dominated by a massive slab of black steel that must serve as a desk, the other held a group of shale-coloured loungers grouped around an imitation oil drum brazier. Beyond the loungers, an arched doorway led out to what Miller had surmised were sleeping quarters.
Above the desk, a slow weaving holodisplay of data had been abandoned to its own devices. Reileen Kawahara stood with her back to the door, staring out at the night sky.
“Forget something?” she asked distantly.
“No, not a thing.”
I saw how her back stiffened as she heard me, but when she turned it was with unhurried smoothness and even the sight of the shard gun didn’t crack the icy calm on her face. Her voice was almost as disinterested as it had been before she turned.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“Think about it.” I gestured at the loungers. “Sit down over there, take the weight off your feet while you’re thinking.”
“Kadmin?”
“Now you’re insulting me. Sit down!”
I saw the realisation explode behind her eyes.
“Kovacs?” An unpleasant smile bent at her lips. “Kovacs, you stupid, stupid bastard. Do you have any idea what you’ve just thrown away?”
“I said sit down.”
“She has gone, Kovacs. Back to Harlan’s World. I kept my word. What do you think you’re doing here?”
“I’m not going to tell you again,” I said mildly. “Either you sit down now, or I’ll break one of your kneecaps.”
The thin smile stayed on Kawahara’s mouth as she lowered herself a centimetre at a time onto the nearest lounger. “Very well, Kovacs. We’ll play to your script tonight. And then I’ll have that fishwife Sachilowska dragged all the way back here and you with her. What are you going to do? Kill me?”
“If necessary.”
“For what? Is this some kind of moral stand?” The emphasis Kawahara laid on the last two words made it sound like the name of a product. “Aren’t you forgetting something? If you kill me here, it’ll take about eighteen hours for the remote storage system in Europe to notice and then re-sleeve me from my last update ’cast. And it won’t take the new me very long to work out what happened up here.”
I seated myself on the edge of the lounger. “Oh, I don’t know. Look how long it’s taken Bancroft, and he still doesn’t have the truth, does he?”
“Is this about Bancroft?”
“No Reileen. This is about you and me. You should have left Sarah alone. You should have left me alone while you could.”
“Ohhh,” she cooed, mock maternal. “Did you get manipulated. I’m sorry.” She dropped the tone just as abruptly. “You’re an Envoy, Kovacs. You live by manipulation. We all do. We all live in the great manipulation matrix and it’s just one big struggle to stay on top.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t ask to be dealt in.”
“Kovacs, Kovacs.” Kawahara’s expression was suddenly almost tender. “None of us ask to be dealt in. You think I asked to be born in Fission City, with a web-fingered dwarf for a father and a psychotic whore for a mother. You think I asked for that? We’re not dealt in, we’re thrown in, and after that it’s just about keeping your head above water.”
“Or pouring water down other people’s throats,” I agreed amiably. “I guess you took after your mother, right?”
For a second it was as if Kawahara’s face was a mask cut from tin behind which a furnace was raging. I saw the fury ignite in her eyes and if I had not had the Reaper inside to keep me cold, I would have been afraid.
“Kill me,” she said, tight-lipped. “And make the most of it, because you are going to suffer, Kovacs. You think those sad-case revolutionaries on New Beijing suffered when they died? I’m going to invent new limits for you and your fish-smelling bitch.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Reileen. You see, your update needlecast went through about ten minutes ago. And on the way I had it Dipped. Didn’t lift anything, we just spliced the Rawling virus onto the ’cast. It’s in the core by now, Reileen. Your remote storage has been spiked.”