He sat up suddenly straight from his slump. He played it back again, listened once more to the juxtaposition he’d never spotted before.
That’s got to be it.
He reeled back some more, backed up through the datahawk’s rambling…. obviously someone who stands to gain from a cessation of hostilities with Mars…you don’t need me to tell you that, right…
Fucking got to be. He stared at the revelation as it unfolded in the LCLS blast of the desk lamp. Bambarén’s image-tight knowledge of Project Lawman’s weaning procedures. Greta Jurgens, boasting, Bambarén’s suave understated confirmation when called on it. The two items collided in his head.
…you’ve made a niche career out of coexisting with the Initiative, and from what Greta said it’s a flourishing relationship.
I don’t believe Greta Jurgens discussed my business associations with you.
No, but she tried to threaten me with them. The implication was that you have bigger friends these days, and you keep them closer.
…someone who stands to gain…
…a sentimental attachment to ties of blood…
Fucking had to be.
The realization of how close to the mystery he’d been digging at the time came in across waves of tiredness and made him giddy with exhilaration.
All the time, all the fucking time we were that close. Just fucking wait till I tell—
Sevgi.
And then, abruptly, it was all worth nothing again, and all he had was rage.
He checked the files, rang Matthew with it.
“Gayoso.” The datahawk seemed to be tasting the name. “Okay, but it may take awhile, especially if people have been hiding things the way you say they have.”
“I’m not in a hurry.”
Slight pause at the other end of the line. “That’s not like you, Carl.”
“No.” He stared at his reflected self in the nighttime glass of the office windows. Grimaced. “I don’t suppose it is.”
More silence. Matthew didn’t like change, at least not among his human colleagues. Carl could feel his discomfort crawling on the line.
“Sorry, Matt. I’m kind of tired.”
“Matthew.”
“Yeah, Matthew. Sorry again. Like I said, tired. I’m waiting for some things to shake out at this end, so I’m in no rush for this stuff. That’s all I meant.”
“Okay.” Matthew’s voice went back to sunny as if he’d thrown a switch. “Listen, you want to know a secret?”
“A secret?”
“Yes. Confidential data. Would you like to know it?”
Carl frowned. He didn’t often use video when he talked to Matthew; the datahawk didn’t seem to like it much, for one thing, and for another the calls were usually purely functional, so it seemed pointless. But now, for the first time, he wished he could see Matthew’s face.
“Confidential data’s usually the reason I ring you,” he said carefully. “So, yeah. Let’s hear it.”
“Well, you’re in trouble with the Brussels office. Gianfranco di Palma is very angry with you.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. He told me not to communicate with you anymore, not until you come back from the Rim.”
A slow-leaking anger trickled in Carl’s belly. “Did he now.”
“Yes, he did.”
“I notice you’re not doing what he told you.”
“Of course not,” Matthew said serenely. “I don’t work for UNGLA, I’m part of the interagency liaison. And you are my friend.”
Carl blinked.
“That’s good to know,” he said finally.
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Listen, Matthew.” The anger was shifting, colored with something altogether less certain. The flush of understanding he’d had earlier seemed to recede, drowning out by new factors. “If di Palma talks to you again—”
“I know, I know. Don’t tell him I’m checking on Gayoso for you.”
“Yeah, that.” Creeping sense of unease now. “But you tell him also that we’re friends, okay. That you’re my friend.”
“He’ll know that already, Carl. It’s obvious just looking at the data that—”
“Yeah, well he may not have looked too closely at the data, you know. You tell him you’re my friend. You tell him I said that, and that I told you to tell him that, too.” Carl stared somberly at the night outside. “Just so he’s clear.”
A little later, he let himself out of the building, looking for a cab to get him back to the hotel. He walked down through the cool of the evening on big successive rectangles of crystalline violet light from the street’s LCLS overheads. It felt like crossing a series of small theater stages, each one lit for a performance he refused to stop and give. His head was fogged with lack of sleep. Weary speculative whirl in there that just wouldn’t quit, still jostling for position with an expansive, freewheeling anger.
Fucking di Palma.
He didn’t realize how much rage must show on his face until he knocked into a street entertainer coming the other way and loaded down with what seemed like random pieces of junk. They cannoned, shoulder-to-shoulder, and his bulk sent her sprawling. The junk clattered and scattered right across the pavement. A single steel wheel from a child’s bike rolled away glinting in the LCLS, hit the curb, and keeled over abruptly in the gutter beyond. The entertainer looked up at him from where she’d fallen, face-painted features sullen.
“Why don’t you…”
And her voice dried up.
He stood looking down at the garish clown-masked face and rigid copper pageboy wig for a silent moment, then realized that his mouth was tight, jaw still set with undischarged anger at di Palma, at Onbekend, at a whole host of shadowy targets he still couldn’t clearly make out.
Yeah, none of whom is this girl. Get a grip, Carl.
He grunted and offered her his hand.
“Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention. My fault.”
He hauled her to her feet. The fear stayed in her eyes, and she snatched her hand away as soon as she was upright. He moved to help her gather up the scattered bits and pieces of her act from the pavement, saw how she flinched, was still afraid of this big, black man on the violet-paneled, deserted street. Gritty irritation flared through him.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he told her curtly.
He got the feeling she was watching him out of sight as he walked away. Something nagged at him about the encounter, but he couldn’t be bothered to chase the thread. A cab cruised by on the cross-street ahead, and he yelled and signaled. The sensors registered him and the cab executed a natty, machine-perfect U-turn across the oncoming traffic, pulling sedately in to collect him. The door hinged out.
He got in, low light and slit windows, leatherette fittings. The rush of memory from his cab ride the night before, the one that Sevgi Ertekin had spotted him getting into and followed, came and did him some tiny, inexplicable harm inside.
The generic female interface rezzed up. “Welcome to Merritt Cabs. What will—”
“Red Sands International,” he said roughly.
“The Red Sands chain operates on both sides of the bay. Which do you require?”
“San Francisco.”
“In transit,” the ’face said smoothly. The features composed, once again he thought of Carmen Ren and her generic Rim States beauty, the smooth—
The clown.
The fucking clown.
“Stop the cab,” he snapped.
They glided to a halt. He wrestled with the door.
“You want to fucking let me out?”
“The engagement fee is outstanding,” said the cab diffidently. “Regardless of trajectory, Merritt Cabs reserves—”
“I’m coming back, I’m fucking coming back. Just hold it here.”
The door clunked free and hinged. He spilled out, sprinted back up the crossstreet for the corner. Before he reached it, he already knew what he’d find. He cornered at speed anyway, ran on, back up the long line of crystalline violet stage panels, back toward the COLIN block.