Black Man (21 page)

Norton was waiting for them when they surfaced.

Sevgi blinked back to local awareness and saw him watching her through the glass panel on the couch cover. It felt a little like staring up at someone from underwater. She thumbed the release catch at her side, propped herself up on her elbows as the hood hinged up.

“Any progress?” Her voice sounded dull in her own ears—hearing thickened with the residual hum of the soundproofing.

Norton nodded. “Yes. Of the slow variety.”

“Do we get to go home?”

“Maybe tonight. Nicholson pulled in Roth and there’s a full-scale diplomatic war in the making.” He crimped a grin. “Roth is demanding a fully armed motorcade escort to Miami International, and fighter cover until we’re out of Republican airspace. Really wants to rub their faces in it.”

“That’s our Andrea.” Sevgi hauled herself off the couch and upright, groggy from the time in virtual and lack of k37. Despite herself, she felt a flicker of warmth for Andrea Walker Roth and the arrayed might of COLIN’s diplomatic muscle. She didn’t really like the woman, not any more than the rest of the policy board; she knew Roth was, like all of them, first and foremost a power broker. But—But sometimes, Sev, it’s good to have the big battalions standing behind you.

“Yeah, well, my guess is the real pressure’s coming from Ortiz.” Norton gestured at the other couch, where Carl Marsalis was just sitting up. “Secretary general nomination in the wind and all. He’s going to be full of UN-friendly gestures for the next eight months. Luck and a following wind, he could be your boss next year, Marsalis.”

The black man grimaced. “Not my boss. I’m freelance, remember.”

“Fact remains, he’s our best hope of not having to spend another night down here. There’s a lot of COLIN subcontracting in this state. Lot of sensitive business-community leaders who won’t want waves made. That’s the angle Ortiz will play while Roth goes down the wires to Washington.” Norton spread his hands, turned back mostly to Sevgi. “My guess is we’ll wait till nightfall. Just a case of sitting tight.”

Marsalis got up off the couch and winced. He worked one shoulder around in circles.

“Something the matter?” Sevgi asked.

He looked at her for a moment as if gauging the level of genuine concern in her voice. “Yeah. Four months of substandard betamyeline chloride.”

“Ah,” said Norton.

Marsalis flexed his right arm experimentally, a climber’s stretch, palm to nape of neck, elbow up beside his head. He grimaced again. “Don’t suppose you’d have any around?”

Norton shook his head. “It’s unlikely. Human traffic through Perez is down to a minimum these days. Not much call for mesh-related product. Can you hold on until we get to New York?”

“I can hold on pretty much forever. I’d just rather not, if it’s all the same to you. It’s, uh, uncomfortable.”

“We’ll get you some painkillers,” Sevgi promised. “You should have said something last night.”

“It slipped my mind.”

“Look, I’ll check with supplies anyway,” said Norton. “You never know. There might be some mothballed stock.”

“Thank you.” Marsalis glanced between the two COLIN officers, then nodded toward the door of the v-chamber. “I’m going to go for a walk. Be on the beach if you need me.”

Norton waited until he was gone.

“Excuse me? If
we
need
him
? Is it just me or is he the one who needs something from
us
right now?”

Sevgi held down an unexpected smile. “He’s a thirteen, Tom. What are you going to do?”

“Well, not look very hard for his betamyeline is what comes immediately to mind.”

“He did say thank you.”

“Yeah.” Norton nodded reluctantly. “He did.”

He hesitated, and Sevgi could almost hear what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. She found herself, suddenly, inexplicably saying it for him. “Ethan, right?”

“Look, I know you don’t like to—”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter, Tom. I. You know, maybe I’m way too sensitive around certain topics. Maybe it’s time. Right? You were going to ask about Ethan? If he was like this?”

Small pause. “Was he?”

She sighed, testing the seals on her self-control. Breath a little shuddery, but otherwise
fuck it, Sev, it’s four years gone, you need to…

To what? Need what?

You need… something, Sev. Some fucking thing, you need.

Sigh again. Gesture at the door Marsalis just walked out of.

“Ethan was a different man, Tom. Ethan wasn’t his gene code, he wasn’t just a jazzed-up area thirteen and a custom-wired limbic system. He—”

Another helpless gesture.

“Do I see similarities? Yeah. Did Ethan have the same
hey-cut-my-fucking-throat-see-if-I-care
attitude? Yeah. Did Ethan make any normal male in the room itch up the way Marsalis is making you itch up?

Yeah. Does that—”

“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.

Later. Worry about it later, Sev.

She let her mind coast in neutral, watched the lights.

And presently, the COLIN jet whispered down from the cloud base toward them, studded sparsely with landing lights of its own. It kissed the ground, silent with distance, and taxied in like a jeweled shadow.

She yawned and went to fetch her stuff.

In flight, she dozed off and dreamed about the Lindley statue. Murat stood with her in winter sunlight-as he had when she was about eleven, but in the dream she was an adult—and pointed at the chiseled legend in the base. from the discomfort of truth there is only one refuge and that is ignorance. i do not need to be comfortable, and i will not take refuge. i demand to KNOW.

See,
he was saying.
It only takes one woman like this
.

But when she looked up at the statue of Lindley, it had transformed into the black-sketched perpetrator from the Montes CSI construct, and it leapt off the base at her, fist raised.

She fell back and grappled, one from the manual, cross-block and grab. The figure’s arm was slick in her grasp and now ended, she saw, not in a fist but a Greek theater mask cut out of metal. As she wrestled with the sketch, she understood with the flash logic of dreams that her opponent intended to press the mask onto her face and that once it was done, there would be no way to get it off.

Across the park, a mother pushed a baby in a stroller. Two kids sat in the grass and dueled their glinting micro-fighter models high overhead, fingers frantic on the controls in their laps, heads tilting wildly beneath the blank-faced headsets. Her own fight went slower, sluggish, like drowning in mud. The construct murderer was stronger than she was, but seemed disinclined to tactics. Every move she made bought her time, but she could do no damage, could not break the clinch.

The mask began to block out the sun on her face.

I have done everything I can,
said Murat wearily, and she wanted to cry but couldn’t. Her breath came hard now, hurting her throat. Her father was walking away from her, across the park toward the railings and the water. She had to twist her neck to keep him in sight. She would have called after him, but her throat hurt too much, and anyway she knew it wouldn’t do any good. The fight started to drain out of her, tiny increments heralding the eventual evaporation of her strength. Even the sun was turning cold. She struggled mechanically, bitterly, and overhead, the mask—The plane banked and woke her.

Someone had lowered the cabin lights while she slept, and the plane’s interior was sunk in gloom. She leaned across the seat to the window and peered out. Towers of crystalline light slid beyond the glass, red-studded with navigation flash. Then the long dark absence of the East River, banded with bridges like jeweled rings on a slim and slightly crooked finger. She sighed and sank back in her seat.

Home
. For what it was worth.

The plane straightened out. Marsalis came through from the forward section, presumably on his way to the toilet. He nodded down at her.

“Sleep well?”

She shrugged and lied.