“Of course not.”
“Yeah? Not even this ex-cop you’ve got under the skin so badly?”
“I made you a promise, Jeff. I keep my promises.”
“Yeah, okay.” His brother pressed thumb and forefinger into tight closed eyes for a moment. “Sorry. I shouldn’t get so harsh with you, just I’m stressed out of my fucking box right now. This job’s a political tightrope act at the best of times, and now isn’t the best of times. Someone gets to hear that the director of the Human Cost Foundation is giving informal advice to a COLIN officer on matters relating to the genetically enhanced, I’m going to be looking for another job. We’ll get the whole Rim-China-Mars superconspiracy bullshit blowing up in our faces all over again, probably lose the bulk of our funding overnight. Bad enough that we’re taking in black lab refugees and giving them Rim citizenship. Arranging for dangerous genetic variants to be released from jail, that’d be the final straw.”
“Yeah, well, like I said. Relax. No one knows.” Norton felt an unaccustomed tightness in his throat as he looked at his brother. “I appreciate all this, Jeff. Maybe it doesn’t come across that way sometimes, but I do.”
“I know.” Jeff grinned at him. “Been looking out for you since you were knee-high anyway. That’s what big brothers are for, right? Whole stack of genetic predisposition right there.”
Norton shook his head. “You’ve been working this field too long, Jeff. Why not just say you care.”
“I thought I just did. Base reasons for caring about your siblings are genetic. I didn’t have to join Human Cost to know that.”
An image of Megan bloomed brightly in his mind. Long tanned limbs and freckled smile, sun and hair in her eyes. The recollection forced its way aboard, seemed to dim his vision. It felt as if the v-format and his brother had suddenly been tuned down into a muted distance. His voice sounded vague in his own ears.
“Yeah, so what about sibling rivalry? Where does that come in?”
His brother shrugged. “Genetic, too. At base, all this stuff is. Xtrasomes aside, everything we are is built on some bedrock genetic tendency or other.”
“And that’s how you justify Nuying.”
Jeff’s expression tightened. “I think we’ve had this conversation, and I didn’t enjoy it much last time. I don’t justify what I did with Nu. But I do understand where it comes from. Those are two very different things.”
Norton let the memory of Megan fade. “Yeah, okay. Forget it. Sorry I started on you again. I’m feeling pretty stressed myself right now. Got my own genetic tendencies to handle, you know?”
“We all do,” his brother said quietly. “Thirteen, or bonobo, or just base fucking human. Sooner or later, we all have to face what’s inside.”
CHAPTER 25
Morning came in laced with the sounds of traffic along Moda Caddesi and children shouting. Bright, angled sunlight along the sidewall of the room he’d chosen to sleep in and the reluctant conclusion that out here at the back of the apartment there was a school playground directly under the window. He pried himself out of bed, shambled about looking for the bathroom, stumbled in on a lightly snoring Ertekin in the process; she slept sprawled on her back with her mouth half open, long-limbed and gloriously inelegant in the faded NYPD T-shirt and tangle of sheets, one crooked arm thrown back over her head. He drank in the sight, then slid quietly out again, found the bathroom, and took a long, much-needed piss. A faint hangover nagged rustily at his temples, not nearly as bad as he’d been expecting. He stuck his head under a tap.
He left Ertekin to sleep, padded to the kitchen, and found a semi-smart grocery manager recessed in next to the heating system panel. He ordered fresh bread and simits both, not knowing Ertekin’s preferences, milk, and a few other bits and pieces. Found an unopened packet of coffee—Earth-grown, untwisted—in a cupboard and a Mediterranean-style espresso pot on the counter. He fired up the stove and set up the pot; by the time it started burbling to itself, the breakfast delivery was buzzing for entry down at the main door. He let them in, found a screen phone, and carried it through to the kitchen table. He unwrapped the simits—gnarled rings of baked and twisted dough, dusted with sesame seeds, still warm—broke one up into segments, poured himself a coffee, and went looking for Stefan Nevant.
It took awhile.
The duty officer at the internment tract HQ in Ankara wasn’t anyone he knew, and he couldn’t pull UNGLA rank because his operating codes were six months out of date. Naming friends didn’t help much. He had to settle for a referral to one of the site offices, where, apparently, Battal Yavuz was putting in some overtime. When he tried the site, Battal was out in a prowler and not answering his radio. The best the woman on site could do was take a message.
“Just tell him he’s a reprobate motherfucker, and a big bad thirteen’s going to fly right out there and steal his woman if he doesn’t call me back.”
The face on screen colored slightly. “I don’t think—”
“No, really. That’s the message. Thanks.”
Noises from the corridor. He cut the call and broke another simit. Found an unexpected grin in the corner of his mouth, frowned it away. Ertekin used the bathroom, went back to the bedroom by the sound of it, and for a moment he thought she was going to go back to sleep. Then he heard footfalls in the corridor again, approaching. He leaned back in his chair to watch her come into the kitchen. Wondering if she’d still be in the T-shirt. His hangover, he noticed vaguely, was receding.
She was dressed. Hair thickly untidy, face a freshly scrubbed scowl.
“Morning. Sleep well?”
She grunted. “What are you doing?”
“Working.” He gestured at the phone. “Waiting for a callback on Nevant. Why, what did you think? I’d skip out on you as soon as you passed out? Perfidious, self-regarding thirteen motherfucker that I am.”
“I didn’t pass out.”
“Well, you dropped your glass while you were resting your eyes then. I figured you’d finished drinking anyway, so I went to bed. How’s your head?”
The look she gave him was answer enough.
“Coffee still in the pot, but it must be nearly cold. I can—”
The phone chimed. He raised an eyebrow and prodded it to life. Ertekin busied herself with the coffee, and he dropped his gaze to the screen. A picture fizzled into focus, grainy with patch-through. Wide angle on an arid backdrop through the dust-plastered windshield and side window of an all-terrain prowl truck. Battal Yavuz in the driver’s seat, chubby features narrowed in peering disbelief.
“Carl? No fucking way that’s you.”
“The one and only.”
“They had you in a Jesusland jail, man. Di Palma told us. Special powers invoked, indefinite retention without trial. How the fuck you get out of that?”
“I got out of Mars, Battal. What did you think, Jesusland was going to hold me?”
“Man, you never know. They’ve got a history of that indefinite retention shit. Fucking barbarians.”
Across the table from him, Sevgi Ertekin snorted. Carl flashed her a quizzical look. She shrugged and sipped her coffee.
“So what are you doing in Istanbul, anyway? You coming out to visit?”
“Don’t think I’ve got time for that, Battal. But listen, I was hoping you could do me a favor.”
When he’d hung up, Ertekin was still slumped opposite, staring a hole in the bottom of her coffee cup. He eyed her curiously.
“So what was that about?”
“What was what about?”
He mimicked her snort. “That.”
“Oh. Yeah. Just kind of amusing to hear a Turk talking about someone else’s barbarism.”