A cluster of pulsating lights dropped vertically from above and the tannoy barked down the night like the voice of a robot god. A searchlight exploded in the street and flooded us with white fire. From where I lay, I screwed up my eyes and could just make out the police transport, a regulation crowd-control five metres off the street, lights flashing. The soft storm of its turbines swept flapping wings of paper and plastic up against the walls of nearby buildings and pinned them there like dying moths.
“STAND WHERE YOU ARE!” the tannoy thundered again. “LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPON!”
The Mongol brought his particle blaster round in a searing arc and the transport bucked as its pilot tried to avoid the beam. Sparks showered off one turbine where the weapon found its mark and the transport sideslipped badly. Machine-rifle fire answered from a mounting somewhere below the vessel’s nose, but by that time the Mongol was across the street, had torched down a door and was gone through the smoking gap.
Screams from somewhere within.
I picked myself slowly up off the ground and watched as the transport settled to within a metre of the ground. An extinguisher canister fumed into life on the smouldering engine canopy and dripped white foam onto the street. Just behind the pilot’s window, a hatch whined up and Kristin Ortega stood framed in the opening.
CHAPTER TEN
The transport was a stripped-down version of the one that had given me the ride out to Suntouch House, and it was noisy in the cabin. Ortega had to shout to make herself heard above the engines.
“We’ll put in a sniffer squad, but if he’s connected he can get stuff that’ll change his body’s chemical signature before dawn. After that, we’re down to witness sightings. Stone Age stuff. And in this part of town…”
The transport banked and she gestured down at the warren of streets below. “Look at it. Licktown, they call it. Used to be called Potrero way back. They say it was a nice area.”
“So what happened?”
Ortega shrugged in her steel lattice seat. “Economic crisis. You know how it is. One day you own a house, your sleeve policy’s paid up, the next you’re on the street looking at a single lifespan.”
“That’s tough.”
“Yeah, isn’t it,” said the detective dismissively. “Kovacs, what the fuck were you doing at Jerry’s?”
“Getting an itch scratched,” I growled. “Any laws against it?”
She looked at me. “You weren’t getting greased in Jerry’s. You were barely in there ten minutes.”
I lifted my own shoulders and made an apologetic face. “You ever been downloaded into a male body straight out of the tank, you’ll know what it’s like. Hormones. Things get rushed. Places like Jerry’s, performance isn’t an issue.”
Ortega’s lips curved in something approximating a smile. She leaned forward across the space between us.
“Bullshit, Kovacs. Bull. Shit. I accessed what they’ve got on you at Millsport. Psychological profile. They call it the Kemmerich gradient, and yours is so steep you’d need pitons and rope to get up it. Everything you do, performance is going to be an issue.”
“Well.” I fed myself a cigarette and ignited it as I spoke. “You know there’s a lot you can do for some women in ten minutes.”
Ortega rolled her eyes and waved the comment away as if it was a fly buzzing around her face.
“Right. And you’re telling me with the credit you have from Bancroft, Jerry’s is the best you can afford?”
“It’s not about cost,” I said, and wondered if that was the truth of what brought people like Bancroft down to Licktown.
Ortega leaned her head against the window and looked out at the rain. She didn’t look at me. “You’re chasing leads, Kovacs. You went down to Jerry’s to follow up something Bancroft did there. Given time I can find out what that was, but it’d be easier if you just told me.”
“Why? You told me the Bancroft case was closed. What’s your interest?”
That brought her eyes back round to mine, and there was a light in them. “My interest is keeping the peace. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but every time we meet it’s to the sound of heavy-calibre gunfire.”
I spread my hands. “I’m unarmed. All I’m doing is asking questions. And speaking of questions … How come you were sitting on my shoulder when the fun started?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
I let that one go. Ortega was tailing me, that much was certain. And that in turn meant there had to be more to the Bancroft case than she was admitting.
“What’s going to happen to my car?” I asked.
“We’ll have it picked up. Notify the hire company. Someone can come and get it from the impound. Unless you want it.”
I shook my head.
“Tell me something, Kovacs. Why’d you hire a ground car? On what Bancroft’s paying you, you could have had one of these.” She slapped the bulkhead by her side.
“I like to go places on the ground,” I said. “You get a better sense of distance that way. And on Harlan’s World, we don’t go up in the air much.”
“Really?”
“Really. Listen, the guy who nearly torched you out of the sky back there—”
“Excuse me?” She cranked up one eyebrow in what by now I was beginning to think of as her trademark expression. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we saved your sleeve back there. You were the one looking down the wrong end of the hardware.”
I gestured. “Whatever. He was waiting for me.”
“Waiting for you?” Whatever she really thought, Ortega’s face was disbelieving. “According to those Stiff dealers we loaded into the wagon, he was buying product. An old customer, they say.”
I shook my head. “He was waiting for me. I went to talk to him, he took off.”
“Maybe he didn’t like your face. One of the dealers, I think it was the one whose skull you cracked, said you were looking jacked up to kill someone.” She shrugged again. “They say you started it, and it certainly looks that way.”
“In that case, why aren’t you charging me?”
“Oh, with what?” She exhaled an imaginary plume of smoke. “Organic damage (surgery reparable) to a pair of Stiff peddlers? Endangering police property? Breach of the peace in Licktown. Give me a break, Kovacs. This sort of thing goes down every night outside Jerry’s. I’m too tired for the paperwork.”
The transport tipped and through the window I could see the dim form of the Hendrix’s tower. I’d accepted Ortega’s offer of a ride home in much the same spirit as I had the police lift out to Suntouch House—to see where it would take me. Envoy wisdom. Go with the flow, and see what it shows you. I’d no reason to suppose Ortega was lying to me about our destination, but still part of me was surprised to see that tower. Envoys aren’t big on trust.
After an initial wrangle with the Hendrix about landing permission, the pilot set us down on a grimy-looking drop pad atop the tower. I could feel the wind tugging at the transport’s lightweight body as we landed, and as the hatch unfolded upwards, the cold came battering aboard. I got up to go. Ortega stayed where she was, watching me go with a lopsided look that I still couldn’t work out. The charge I’d felt last night was back. I could feel the need to say something pressing on me like an impending sneeze.
“Hey, how’d the bust go down on Kadmin?”
She shifted in the seat and stuck out one long leg to rest her boot on the chair I had just vacated. A thin smile.
“Grinding through the machine,” she said. “We’ll get there.”
“Good.” I climbed out into the wind and rain, raising my voice. “Thanks for the lift.”
She nodded gravely, then tipped her head back to say something to the pilot behind her. The whine of the turbines built and I ducked hurriedly out from under the hatch as it began to close. As I stepped back, the transport unglued itself and lifted away, lights flashing. I caught a final glimpse of Ortega’s face through the rain-streaked cabin window, then the wind seemed to carry the little craft away like an autumn leaf, wheeling away and down towards the streets below. In seconds it was indistinguishable from the thousands of other flyers speckling the night sky. I turned and walked against the wind to the drop pad’s access staircase. My suit was sodden from the rain. What had possessed Bancroft to outfit me for summer with the scrambled weather systems that Bay City had so far exhibited was beyond me. On Harlan’s World, when it’s winter, it stays that way long enough for you to make decisions about your wardrobe.