From that moment I’ve known that I’m capable of murder. He had one hand on the parapet, one at his side still holding the cigarette. He was again gazing into the distance. A grab for the collar and the belt, one good heave, and he would be over. It would have been easy, and I could have done it.
He turned to me. ‘That was when she told you, right?’ There was something of admiration and cunning in his eyes. ‘I know, because that’s when all the right-wing shit started arriving, from the Contras and Renamo and East European emigrés and the KMT and the NTS. Mixing it in with the old commies and the libertarians was a neat trick, but I got the message all right. You know some heavy guys, and they know where I live.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Jon, you had me scared.’
I took a step towards him and punched straight for his mouth. It was a good punch – my childhood boxing-lessons hadn’t been wasted – and he reacted with a hopelessly slow, country-boy, haymaking swing.
But his connected, and mine didn’t. I was slammed against the railing. The top edge hit my lower ribcage and suddenly I was leaning away over it, looking straight down. Straight up, for an unreal moment, as my semi-circular canals turned over and the universe followed them round.
And then I was sick. A Mexican meal, a dozen pints, two whiskies, a portion of curried chips and the tar from a score of Silk Cut and one Mexican cigarillo poured through my mouth and nostrils in a cascade that spattered walkways and ladders and disturbed roosting birds before it fell, with literally sickening slowness, visible all the way, to the water.
‘Are you all right?’
I pushed myself away from the railing.
‘I’m all right,’ I said. I blew a fragment of taco and a gobbet of spicy slime from my left nostril onto my fingers, then balled my fist for another go at him.
His eyes widened, but he was looking past me. Brakes squealed. A van pulled up beside us, on the footpath, not on the road.
The door opened and a man in a boiler-suit leaned out.
‘Come on, lads,’ he said. ‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you two. You look like you could do with a lift.’
THE CONQUEST OF VIOLENCE
9
Circuit Judgement
It’s early afternoon and the watches are beeping fifteen. Dee follows Ax across a high, narrow bridge. The walkway is barely a metre wide, the parapets little more than a metre high. Beneath it is a hundred-metre drop to the roofs of a lower level. Above it, taller towers rise. The bridge slopes gently up, curves smoothly around to the right. Dee walks it fearlessly; this is familiar territory to her, the high locale of the high life of those who, in Ship City, pass for rich. Fortunately, however, she has never met Anderson Parris, the man whose residence they’re approaching.
Dee has very little doubt that before the next hour is over, she’ll have killed a human being. She hasn’t done this before, and the prospect arouses in her a certain curiosity. The skills are there, of course, in Spy and Soldier. But she remembers rumours, as from a previous life (from her life before she awoke) that make her wonder if she can access those particular skills. If Sys has changed the permissions…There’s no way of telling, because that itself is a part of Sys to which she has no access. She recalls people talking, talking as if she wasn’t there, of the potential dangers of AIs wandering around in human guise, and she knows that humans set great store by the permissions.
She has no doubt at all that Ax will be able to do it. Ax is a human being, and human beings don’t need any permissions. Dee shivers, but not with fear or excitement. The wind is chill at this height, and her new clothes, even inside a green velvet cloak, do little to keep her warm.
The door is a bright, slightly convex steel panel, set back in the synthetic rock of the building. Dee admires her distorted reflection, practising transforms on it, while Ax exchanges a few words with a speaker grille. The door slides smoothly sideways, and Ax and Dee walk in. The entrance hallway has inward-sloping walls, and the rightward curve of its floor continues that of the bridge, further into the building. The hall is illuminated by a high skylight, and by tall windows in the outer wall. Electric lights hang at varying levels from the ten-metre-high roof, and likewise suspended bowls overflow with leaves and stalks, flowers and scents.
The door shuts behind them. Dee glances back for a moment, checking that it can be opened manually from the inside. It looks like it can, but Spy’s subtler senses are on the job, tracking the pulse-patterns in the wires behind the walls, just in case. Ax’s feet pad, Dee’s heels click around the curve of the corridor. The wooden doors leading off the corridor are closed. After Dee and Ax have walked to a point where the outer door is no longer visible, the corridor widens out to a stairwell. A few steps up the spiral staircase, a man stands waiting. He’s wearing a black kimono embroidered with deep-sky images. His fair hair is swept back from his high forehead. His face is narrow, lips thin, eyelashes sandy, expression serene. To Dee, his smooth and healthy features look old – older far than her, or Ax; almost as old as Reid. And yet they suggest some deeper immaturity, as well as a cruelty which Dee immediately sees as distinct from the cold ruthlessness which was the worst that Reid’s most unguarded moments – even now, in replayed recollection – ever betrayed. This man is not like Reid, nor any of his friends or casual acquaintances. No burly businessman who ever ogled her at a meeting, or pawed her at a party, ever made her feel the way she does now, as his gaze inspects her.
Anderson Parris descends the stairs and smiles at Ax.
‘Well, hello,’ he says, catching Ax’s hands. ‘I’m delighted to see you, and your most interesting and beautiful friend.’
Dee opens a frogged clasp at her throat and removes her cloak. She swings the cloak across her left arm, concealing the bag in her left hand, and languidly extends her right.
‘I’m charmed to meet you, Anderson Parris.’
After a nonplussed moment the man realises she expects him to kiss her hand, and he does. His fingers are cold, his lips damp. As his head lifts from kissing her hand his gaze travels from her high-heeled boots, past her black leather leggings under her black lace skirt, up the ladder of silver clasps and tiny bows on her black satin boned corset-top; to her neck, where a steel-studded leather collar matches the buckled straps on her forearms; to her darkly shadowed eyes. When their eyes meet she looks straight back, with the slight smile of a shared secret.
Sex is in charge here, and Sex has no difficulty in detecting that she has him on a leash. He waves her politely ahead of him, and they go up the stairs. She walks up slowly, letting him have a good view of her tight-laced back. His murmured conversation with Ax carries oddly in the stairwell.
They ascend into a circular room built around the stairwell. Its ceiling is a glass dome above the two-metre-high walls. Dee sees the sun, and the darting manta-shapes of passing aircraft. Nothing else overlooks the room, which seems to combine the functions of a studio, a gallery and a bedroom. There’s a drawing-console and a camera-array. Around the walls are chairs, low tables, and long couches which might be used as beds, though the artfully casual deployment of covers and cushions makes their function ambiguous. The walls are hung with ornate weapons – swords of beaten steel, lasers of brass and ruby – and with pictures, of children who look vulnerable and women who look invulnerable.