‘Donovan,’ Mrs Lawson said, ‘I do wish you had engaged your brain before you opened your mouth.’
Donovan glared at her. ‘Why? I told you I would challenge Kohn.’
‘The attempt to incite a citizen’s arrest was, shall we say, excessive,’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre interposed. ‘However, we do at least now know for certain that Taine is with him. Even if we have temporarily frightened them off.’
‘That’s not the problem!’ Melody Lawson snapped. ‘If you’d given me a chance…there was another person with them.’ She reached for a patch of scene and stuck it where they could all see it: a young man walking backwards, open-mouthed, behind Janis Taine. ‘That isn’t one of Kohn’s gang. It’s Jordan Brown, who was involved in the Black Plan penetration incident this afternoon.’ She ran her hands distractedly through her shining hair and halo, leaving little flecks of gold figment on her fingers. ‘That suggests very sinister possibilities.’
Donovan felt some calm returning, a recognition that perhaps he’d lost it for a couple of seconds.
‘I…apologize for my haste,’ he said. ‘All the same, there seems no reason why Kohn shouldn’t show up to claim the ransom. I’ll have the hospital staked out by morning. In the meantime, why don’t you check your exile’s records?’
‘I certain shall,’ Mrs Lawson said grimly. ‘He was disaffected for some time. Goodness knows who he was in contact with.’
‘This man Kohn,’ said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. ‘Do you know anything about him?’
Donovan frowned. ‘He’s the leader of a small gang of security mercenaries…other than a nasty streak of pro-technology fanaticism, they’re nothing special. As it happens, the hired fighter who was on my team last night is a former member.’
‘What?’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre looked appalled. ‘I find that suspicious.’
Donovan could see the paranoia building as Lawson and Bleibtreu-Fèvre exchanged glances. He tried to head it off before he started down that path himself.
‘She broke with them and their outlook a long time ago. No, the only significance this has is that it creates a strong personal antagonism between her and Kohn. As I said, this could work in our favour.’
‘Could you raise some local forces to watch their house?’ Dr Van asked, suddenly leaning into the discussion. ‘Possibly intervene directly?’
‘Not a chance,’ Donovan said. ‘The whole area is covered by a network of defence agencies, crawling with ANR cadres and sympathizers, patrolled by space-movement militia. Most of the houses are built to withstand at least indirect blast damage. Kohn’s is probably capable of holding off a tank.’
‘…I see,’ said Van, reacting after seconds of satellite delay. ‘A liberated zone.’ For the first time, he smiled at them all.
‘Quite,’ said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. ‘I wonder if Kohn has any, as we say, form.’
‘Why not check your agency’s records?’ Mrs Lawson suggested.
Bleibtreu-Fèvre’s fetch seemed to diminish slightly. ‘I would have to give a full accounting of the circumstances,’ he said. ‘That might…raise unnecessary alarm.’
Might be embarrassing, Donovan thought, unsympathetically. As a field operative, Bleibtreu-Fèvre must have a great deal of autonomy, but the bureaucratic mechanisms of Stasis would still kick in at sensitive points. Personal records was probably one of them, surrounded by smoke and mirrors: safeguards – reassurances that a secret police force which went around stamping on dangerous scientists wasn’t any kind of threat to normal folks’ privacy and civil liberties, no sir.
‘I can help you there,’ he said. ‘Just let me know your passwords and procedures and I’ll do an end-run around them.’
‘Impossible!’
Donovan looked straight back at the Man In Black’s glowing, glowering eyes. Cheap trick, Hallowe’en lantern…
‘Not with your help, it isn’t,’ he said.
Bleibtreu-Fèvre considered it, his face frozen in a downloading trance. Donovan had counted past sixty when the fetch’s lips moved again.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What is there to lose?’
Using the codes and pathways supplied by Bleibtreu-Fèvre, Donovan got into the US/UN system so easily that he marked time for a few seconds before launching the database call. He regretted it as the retrieval time clocked on and on – seconds, one minute, one and a half, two…Was the damn thing written in COBOL?
Two minutes fifty.
Three. Three ten.
I mean what sort of crap programmers do these guys have?
And then it all started coming in, a whole structure of links and inferences building up around them like the result of some cartoon character making a cast with a fishing-line and snagging it, hauling in seaweed, a chain, a wreck, a whole rustbucket fleet pelting down on the quay…
The four of them stood looking at the mass of recovered data.
‘Oh,’ Donovan said at last. ‘That Kohn.’
‘What was that all about?’ Jordan asked. He and Janis were hard put to keep up with Kohn. The best place to walk was immediately behind him.
‘Donovan was trying it on,’ Kohn said over his shoulder. ‘I interdicted one of his sabotage teams last night. There’s something else. Personal. Too complicated to go into right now…Plenty of time to sort it out in the morning. Whatever, he found out where I was and tried to rouse against me any opportunist bounty-hunters who might be around. Not very successful.’
He turned away, ‘Renegade…’ His laughter floated back.
‘Slow down, willya?’ Janis gasped.
‘Oh. All right.’
Suddenly they were a threesome, moving through the shifting crowds in a normal way. Jordan felt a heightened alertness, the effect of the drink creeping back after a sobering shock had banished it. A woman in a militia uniform stared back at him defiantly as he noticed the division of her face, half mature and half twisted baby-features, growing in. She had one chubby doll-like arm to match, sticking out of a hole torn carelessly in the top of her sleeve.
‘Why doesn’t everybody use that to stay young and beautiful?’ Jordan said after she’d passed.
‘Regen? Some do,’ Kohn said. ‘It’s expensive. Most mercenaries have it as part of their insurance package, but the no-claims kickback is crippling. Probably just as well. You don’t want people getting reckless just because no non-fatal wound is permanent.’
‘Better reckless than wrecked,’ Janis said.
When Jordan had gone into the bar he’d hoped to get not just more information but also a rest from Norlonto’s restless streetlife. He’d got more of one and less of the other than he’d hoped. Now he was partly supported by his arm around Janis and by Moh’s arm, also around Janis, locking his in place. It seemed appropriate. He felt knocked sideways by both of them.
Like a hatchling imprinted by the first large moving object it sees, he reflected. So be it. He had never seen a woman as beautiful, as fascinating and free, as Janis. And Moh, he was something else: everything Jordan wasn’t – thin, tough, clued-up – but he made Jordan feel at ease and accepted. What it would be like to be so open, so at home in the world!
‘You know something?’ Jordan said. ‘I’ve always believed in you people.’
The others laughed.
‘You must have a lot of faith!’ Janis said.
‘Reason, not faith,’ Jordan retorted. ‘I never had any proof that people like you existed, but I knew you had to. That rational people existed – somewhere else. They damn’ well don’t exist down there. So I never actually met any. I just read about them in books – read their books. Also I suppose I saw their works. Sort of like the argument from design.’ He looked up, waved his free fist at the sky. ‘Every aeroplane is a proof that there must be a rational mind somewhere!’