Sevgi smeared a smile. “I don’t think it’s like that out here. This isn’t Jesusland.”
“You got idiocy everywhere, Sev. The Republic isn’t running the only franchise. Look at Nicholson—New York born and bred. Where does he get it from?”
“I don’t know. Faith Satellite Channel?”
“Hall-e-lu-jah! Praise the Lord, Jesus gonna come and cut my taxes.”
They both smirked a little more, but the laughter wouldn’t come. The bodies from the virtual still hung around them in the gloom. Presently, a busboy came and asked if they were done. Sevgi nodded; Norton asked to see the desserts. The busboy gathered the plates and headed off. It dawned slowly on Sevgi that he was peculiarly gaunt for his age, and that his speech had been oddly patterned, as if it hurt him to talk. His features looked northern Chinese, but his skin was very dark. The realization hit her liquidly in the stomach. She stared after the retreating figure.
“Think that’s one of your brother’s success stories then?” she asked.
“Hmm.” Norton followed her gaze. “Oh. Doubt it. Statistically, I mean. Jeff told me they get a couple of thousand new black lab escapees a year, minimum. And he’s mostly in management anyway, trying to keep the whole thing together. They got nearly a hundred counselors working, on and off, and they’re still swamped.”
“Human Cost’s a charity, right?”
“Yeah. The Rim gives them a budget, but it’s not what you’d call generous.” A sudden animation flooded her partner’s voice. “And then, you know, it’s tough work. Kind of thing that wears you down. Some of the stories he’s told me about what comes out of those black labs, I don’t think I could do it. I don’t really understand how Jeff can. It’s weird. When we were younger, it always looked like I was going to be the one with the justice vocation. He was the power-and-influence man, not me. And then”—Norton gestured with his wineglass—“somehow he’s out here doing charity work and I end up with the big job at COLIN.”
“People change.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s Megan.”
He looked up sharply. “What is?”
“Maybe that was what changed him. When he met Megan.”
Norton grunted. A waiter came by with the dessert cart, but nothing appealed. They settled for gene-enhanced coffees, for which the place was apparently famous, and the bill. Sevgi found herself staring at the antique Mars motion ad again.
“You know,” she said slowly, because they’d both been skating around it all evening, “the real issue isn’t who this guy is. The real issue is who helped him get home.”
“Ah. That.”
“Trick out the fucking ship’s djinn? If he was capped and the capsule thawed him, that should have triggered some kind of alarm all by itself. Before he even woke up, let alone had time to start hacking the systems. And if he wasn’t capped, if he did stow away, then the n-djinn wouldn’t have allowed the launch in the first place.”
“You think Coyle and Rovayo spotted that? I tried to steer past it.”
“Yeah. That’s happened before on the Mars run, we just don’t like to publicize the fact. Sometimes they just die. Nice shot.”
Norton grinned. “True as far as it goes, Sev.”
“Yeah. Maybe a dozen times in sixty-odd years of traffic. And for my money, you’re talking hardware-based failures every time.”
“You don’t think they’ll bite?”
“What, the secret flaws of the n-djinn AI?” Sevgi pulled a face. “I don’t know, it’s got appeal. Machine no match for a human and all that shit. And everyone likes to be let in on a secret. Sell people a conspiracy, their whole fucking brain will freeze up if you’re lucky. Baby-eating secret sects, a centuries-old plot to enslave mankind. Black helicopters, flying eggs. Shit like that plays to packed houses. Critical faculties out the lock.”
“And meantime—”
“Meantime”—Sevgi leaned across the table, all humor erased from her face—“we both know that someone else on Mars with some serious machine intrusion skills had a hand in this. Our mystery cannibal was capped along with the others, which means heavy-duty identity fraud, and then he was wired to wake up early, which—”
Norton shook his head. “Thing I don’t get. Why wake him up so early he’s got to eat everybody else to survive? Why not just trigger the cap a couple of weeks out from Earth.”
Sevgi rolled another shrug. “My guess? It was a glitch. Whoever took down the n-djinn wasn’t so hot with cryocap specifics. Guy wakes up two weeks out from the wrong planet, journey’s start, not journey’s end. Maybe that shorts out the cryocap so he can’t get back in and refreeze, maybe it doesn’t but he stays out anyway because he can’t afford to arrive still capped and go through quarantine. But however you look at it, glitch or no glitch, he had some heavy-duty help. We’re not talking about a jailbreak here, Tom. This guy was sent. And that means whoever sent him had a specific purpose in mind.”
Norton grimaced. “Well, there’s a limited number of reasons you’d hire a variant thirteen.”
“Yeah.”
They were both quiet for a while. Finally, Sevgi looked up at her partner and offered a thin smile.
“We’d better find this guy fast, Tom.”
CHAPTER 8
He caught the last ferry across the bay to Tiburon, hooked an autocab at the other end, and rode out to Mill Valley with the windows cranked down. Warm, green-scented air poured in, brought him a sharp memory of walking under redwood canopies with Megan in Muir Woods. He put it away again with great care, handling the image at the edges like an antique photo he might smudge or a fragment of broken mirror. He watched the soft glow from passing street lamps and the lights in wood-frame homes built back from the roads, shrouded in foliage. It was as distant from Horkan’s Pride and her cargo of carnage as he was currently from home. You looked at the well-kept, scenic-sculpted roadways, all that quiet and residential greenery, and you didn’t want to believe that the man who’d crashed into the ocean that morning with only the corpses he’d mutilated for company could be out there under the same night sky.
Sevgi Ertekin’s words drifted back through his mind. The wan intensity on her face as she spoke.
We’d better find this guy fast, Tom.
The cab found the address and coasted gently to a halt under the nearest street lamp. Idling there, it made scarcely more noise than the breeze through the trees, but still he saw downstairs lights spring up in the house, and the front door opened. Jeff stood there framed by the light, waved hesitantly. Must have been waiting at the window. No sign of Megan at his side.
Norton walked up the steep curve of the driveway, suddenly feeling the hours and the distance from New York. Cicadas whirred in the bushes and trees planted on either side, water splashed in the stone bowl fountain at the top. The house stood across the slope in rambling, porch-fronted spaciousness. His brother came down the steps to greet him, clapped him awkwardly on the shoulder.
“You remembered where to find us okay?”
“Took a taxi.”
“Uh, yeah. Right.”
They went in together.
“Megan not about?” he asked casually.
“No, she’s over at Hilary’s with the kids.”
“Hilary?”
“Oh, right. Haven’t seen you since, uh. Hilary, she’s our new legal adviser at the foundation. Got twins the same age as Jack. They’re having a sleepover.” Jeff Norton gestured toward the living room. “Come and sit down. Get you a drink?”
The room was much the same as Norton remembered it—battered cloth-covered armchairs facing a fire-effect screen set in a raw brick facing, Northwest Native art and family photos crowding the walls. Polished wood floors and Middle Eastern rugs. Jeff served them vintage Indonesian arrack from a bar cabinet made of reclaimed driftwood. Low-level glow from the screen flames and the Japanese-style wall sconces lit his profile as he worked. Norton watched him.