“Sev, I’m not—”
“You are, Tom.” She spread her hands, offered up the smile she’d repressed earlier. “You are. It’s how they built them, it’s what they’re for. And your reaction—that’s how they built you. It’s just that it took evolution a hundred thousand generations to put you together, and it took human science less than a century to build them. Faster systems management, that’s all.”
“What’s that, a quote from the Project Lawman brochure?”
Sevgi shook her head, kept the smile. “No. Just something Ethan used to say. Look, you asked me if Ethan and this guy are alike? How would I know? Ethan used to get up half an hour before me every morning and grind fresh coffee for us both. Would this guy do that? Who knows?”
“One way to find out,” said Norton, deadpan.
Sevgi lost her smile. Leveled a warning finger. “Don’t even go there.”
“Sorry.” There wasn’t much sincerity in the way he said it. A grin hovered in one corner of his mouth. “Got to get down to Fifth Avenue, sort out that sense of humor.”
“You got that right.”
He grew abruptly serious. “Look, I’m just curious, is all. Both these guys do share some pretty substantial engineered genetic traits.”
“Yeah, so what? Your parents engineered some similar genetic material into you and your brother way back at the start of Project Norton. Does that make the two of you similar?”
Norton grimaced. “Hardly.”
“So why assume that because Ethan and Marsalis have some basic genetic traits in common, there’d be any similarity in what kind of men they are? You can’t equate them just because they’re both variant thirteen, any more than you can equate them because, I don’t know, because they’re both black.”
“Oh come on, Sev. Be serious. We’re talking about substantial genetic tendency, not skin color.”
“I am serious.”
“No, you’re not. You’re flailing, and you know it. It’s not a good analogy.”
“Maybe not for you, Tom. But take a walk out that gate and see what kind of thinking you knock up against. It’s the same knee-jerk prejudice, just out of fucking date like everything else in Jesusland.”
Norton gave her a pained look. His tone tugged toward reproach. “Now you’re just letting your Union bigotry run away with you.”
“Think so?” She didn’t want to be this angry, but it was swelling and she couldn’t find a way to shut it down. Her voice was tight with the rising pulse of it. “You know, Ethan tracked down his sourcemat mother once. Turns out she’s this drop-dead-smart academic up in Seattle now, but she’s from here originally.”
“From Florida?”
“No, not from Florida.” Sevgi waved a hand irritably. “Louisiana, Mississippi, someplace like that. Jesusland, however you want to look at it. She grew up in the southern US, before Secession.”
Norton shrugged. “From what I hear, that’s pretty standard. They got most of the sourcemat mothers from the poverty belt back then. Cheap raw materials, fresh eggs for quick cash, right?”
“Yeah, well, she was luckier. She let some West Coast clinic harvest her in exchange for enough cash to set up and study in Seattle. Point is, I went across there with Ethan to see her.” Sevgi knew she was staring off into space, but she couldn’t make herself stop that, either. It was the last trip they’d made together. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shit she told us she went through, purely based on the color of her fucking skin. And that’s a single generation back.”
“You’re talking about Jesusland, Sev.”
“Oh, so who’s pulling Union rank now?”
“Fine.” For the first time, anger sharpened Norton’s voice. “Look, Sev, you don’t want to talk about this stuff, that’s fine with me. But make up your mind. I’m just trying to get a lock on our newfound friend.”
Sevgi held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. She sighed. “No, you’re not, Tom. That’s not it.”
“No? Now you’re a telepath?”
She smiled wearily. “I don’t need to be. I’m used to this. From before, from when I was with Ethan. This isn’t about Marsalis. It’s about me.”
“Hey, a telepath and modest, too.” But she saw how he faltered as he said it. She shrugged.
“Suit yourself, Tom. Maybe you haven’t spotted it yet, maybe you just don’t want to see it. But what you’re really trying to get a lock on is Marsalis and me. How I’m going to react to him, how I am reacting to him.”
Norton stared at her for a long moment. Long enough that she thought he would turn away. Then he gave her a shrug of his own.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “So how are you reacting to him, Sev?”
Norton was on the money about going home, if nothing else. It took the rest of the day to get clearance, and when it finally came, the crowds were still at the gate. Someone had set up big portable LCLS panels along the road, jacked into car batteries or run off their own integral power packs. From the tower, it looked like a bizarre outdoor art gallery, little knots of figures gathered in front of each panel, or walking between. The chanting had died down with the onset of night and the eventual arrival of three cherry-topped state police teardrops. They were parked now in among the other vehicles, but if the officers they’d brought were doing any crowd control, they were keeping a low profile while they did it. And the media had apparently all gone home.
“Seen it before,” said the tower guard, a slim Hispanic just on for the graveyard shift. “Staties usually chase them off, so there’s no adverse coverage if the shit hits the fan. Shit does hit the fan, everyone runs the same sanitized broadcast the next morning. Tallahassee got deals with most of the networks, privileged access to legislature and like that. No one breaks ranks.”
“Yeah,” rumbled Marsalis. “Responsible Reporting. I’m going to miss that.”
The night wind coming off the sea was cool and faintly sewn with salt. Sevgi felt it stir strands of hair on her cheek, felt cop instinct twitch awake inside her at the same moment. She kept herself from turning to look at him, kept her tone casual. “Going to miss it? Where you going then?”
He did turn. She offered him a sideways glance, clashed gazes.
“New York, right?” he said easily. “North Atlantic Union territory, proud home of the free American press?”
She looked again, locked stares this time. “Are you trying to piss me off, Marsalis?”
“Hey, I’m just quoting the tourist guide here. Union’s the only place they got Lindley versus NSA still in force, right? Still got their statue of Lindley up in Battery Park, defender of truth chiseled on the base? Most places I’ve been in the Republic, they’ve pulled those statues down.”
She let it go, let the cop twitch slide out of view for the time being, tagged for later attention. For the rest, she didn’t know if she’d misread the irony in his voice or not. She was irritable enough to have done so; maybe he was irritable enough to have meant it. She couldn’t be bothered to call it either way. After a full day of waiting, none of them was in the best of moods.
She shifted to the other side of the tower, swapped her view. Out at the far side of the complex, partially occluded by the towering bulk of the rack, the landing strip lights burned luminous green. They were far enough off for the distance to make them wink, as if they were embers the sea wind kept blowing on. COLIN were sending a dedicated transport, flatline flight so they’d be waiting awhile longer, but it was on its way and home was only a matter of hours away. She could almost feel the rough cotton sheets on her bed against her skin.
Marsalis, she’d worry about later.
After a couple of minutes, he left the tower top without comment and clattered back down the caged stairs to the ground. She watched him walk away in the flare of ground lighting, off toward the shore again. Casual lope, almost an amble but for the barely perceptible poise in the way he moved. He didn’t look back. The darkness down to the beach swallowed him up. She frowned.