“I might have heard something like that.”
“And did you know that you’re the last person who saw her alive? Other than Voyt. Oh, but someone killed him too.”
“So what?”
“So if I were you, I’d be busy thinking about how many ways I could bend over for the investigating officer and keep myself out of trouble.”
“Jeez, lighten up! I fucking work for you, in case you forgot. Why don’t you go round up the usual suspects?”
“Unfortunately the usual suspects weren’t down in the mine. You were. And I want to know what Haas had you doing down there.”
Kintz stared. Then he kicked his chair back on two legs and laughed a laugh that set Li’s teeth on edge.
“You don’t know shit,” he said. “They hung you out to dry. You’re in fucking free fall, and you’re just too blind to see it.”
Li flicked out her left arm as fast as her internals would go. It hurt like hell, but the special effects were worth it. To anyone watching it would have looked like Kintz’s coffee had simply fallen off the table and into his lap. Before Kintz realized what had happened, Li was on her feet and coming around the table right behind the coffee.
“Gosh!” she said, patting at the front of his pants with a napkin. “You spilled on yourself. Hope it wasn’t too hot.”
Kintz stood up and backed away from the table a step or two but let Li keep swatting at him with the napkin. He looked like he was still trying to catch up with his coffee. He was also now standing with his back against the wall and Li’s body between him and the rest of the tables. Li smiled, grabbed him where it counted, and lifted.
“Have I mentioned that you’re really pissing me off?” she asked.
Kintz’s face contorted, but his eyes didn’t drop away from hers. Worse, as pain drained the blood from his neck and face, Li saw the dense network of ceramsteel filament woven through flesh and muscle.
She almost dropped him in surprise.
Well, that explained where he’d taken Sharifi’s classes. The only thing that didn’t add up was why the Corps had put this waste of skin through Alba. Or how an ex-Peacekeeper had washed up as Haas’s errand boy. Either Kintz was working for internal affairs—impossible—or he’d screwed up so badly the Corps couldn’t risk the publicity of a dishonorable discharge.
Yet another reason to keep a close eye on him. As if she needed one.
“You’re no better than me,” Kintz said, pain and hatred battling in his voice. “I was on Gilead. I know just what kind of fucking hero you are. I know you.”
Li let go and backed away as if he’d stung her.
“Yeah,” Kintz said. “I was there. And when the memory wipe didn’t take they washed me out. For doing the same thing you did. For doing less than you did. What do you think of that, Major? Only you weren’t a major then, were you? That was your reward for doing their dirty work.” He laughed. “Or don’t you like to talk about it?”
Li shrugged. It took every bit of willpower she had, but she did it.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t give a shit what you think you remember or what lies you need to tell yourself to get by. We can either keep standing here insulting each other, or you can tell me something that’ll make me leave. Which is it gonna be, Kintz? And while we’re on the topic of Gilead, why don’t you think about what happened to the people who got in my way there before you decide to make an enemy.”
Kintz stared at her. He was trembling with anger, and she could see the sweat standing out on his upper lip.
“Talk to the witch,” he said finally. “She was the one Sharifi trusted. Hell, maybe she killed Sharifi herself.” He laughed, trying to regain his composure. “You always hurt the one you love, isn’t that how the song goes?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Li said. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“You sure as fuck will be.”
Li found the witch in Haas’s office, working.
Haas was slumped behind the big desk, staring into streamspace. He surfaced long enough to wave Li into a chair, then faded out again.
Li sat and watched. She noted the wire’s route from the derms at Haas’s temples, through the deceptively simple dryware casing of the transducer, to the witch’s cranial socket. The witch was his interface, Li realized, the ungainly external wires the only way he could access the spinstream. The transducer intercepted the construct’s output, keyed it to his neural patterns, packeted and transferred it. Li thought of the loop shunt and shuddered.
“All right,” Haas said to the empty air in front of him.
The witch stood up, teased the jack out from behind her ear, then pulled her hair over the socket, hiding it.
“Can I offer you something?” Haas asked Li. “Coffee?” He looked at his watch. “Beer?”
“Coffee’s fine,” Li said.
“Coffee for two,” Haas said.
The witch nodded and moved toward the door.
Li cleared her throat. “Better make it for three. It’s Bella I need to talk to.”
Haas looked at Li sharply but said nothing. Bella left and came back with a covered tray from which she produced three bone china cups, cream, sugar, and a full pot of ersatz coffee. She bent over the table, poured Li’s cup, offered cream and sugar, then poured, creamed, and sugared Haas’s cup.
As Li took her cup she saw the cat-scratch red rash of a staph infection below the witch’s left ear around the borders of the I/O socket. Something about the sight—the red rash against the pale spun-silk skin—made Li acutely aware that there was a woman, warm and alive, inside the loose dress. She cleared her throat and looked away—but not before she saw a mocking little smile slide across the other woman’s face.
“Well, Major,” Haas said. “What do you need to know?”
Li took out her cigarettes and lifted an eyebrow in Haas’s direction. “Do you mind?”
“Suit yourself.”
“Want one?”
“Never touch ’em.”
“Good for you.” She lit her cigarette and sucked down a first delicious postcoffee lungful. “You’ll live longer. I just need to ask Bella about the fire. Routine. I’m talking to everyone who was down there when it happened.”
“I see.”
“It won’t take a minute.” Li waited, hoping Haas wasn’t going to make her ask him to leave.
“No problem,” he said after a very brief pause. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” Li thought he threw a pointed look at the witch before he left—or was she just being paranoid?
The door whispered closed behind him, and she and Bella looked at each other without speaking. Li had the curious feeling of a weight lifting off Bella’s shoulders. As if Haas’s very presence silenced her. She thought of the tense little scene she’d caught on her skinbugs that first night and wondered what hold Haas had over her.
Bella took a breath. “I’m not… I want you to know—” she said, then stopped as if she’d run into a wall.
“You’re not what?” Li asked.
But Bella just shook her head.
Li sat back and finished her cigarette in silence. She was fishing in muddy water; let Bella make the first move. She knew a hell of a lot more about what had happened in the mine that day than Li did. Li was starting to think every man, woman, and child on-station knew more than she did.
“Citizen—” Bella said.
“That’s not a title here,” Li said. “People here are born citizens.”
“Not constructs.”
“Not constructs,” Li admitted.
“And not Sharifi.”
“No,” Li said. “Not Sharifi.” Cohen was right as usuaclass="underline" some pigs were more equal than others.