"My own reservations are with Sutjiadi. I am not convinced that a man like that can be expected to take orders well."
I shrugged. "So give him the command."
"Are you serious?"
"Why not? He"s qualified for it. He"s got the rank, and he"s had the experience. Seems to have loyalty to his men."
Hand said nothing. I could sense his frown across the half metre of parapet that separated us.
"What?"
"Nothing." He cleared his throat. "I had just. a.s.sumed. You would want the command yourself."
I saw the platoon again as the smart shrapnel barrage erupted overhead. Lightning flash, explosions, and then the fragments, skipping and hissing hungrily through the quicksilver flashing curtain of the rain. Crackling of blaster discharge in the background, like something ripping.
Screams.
What was on my face didn"t feel like a smile, but evidently it was.
"What"s so funny?"
"You"ve read my file, Hand."
"Yes."
"And you still thought I wanted the command. Are you f.u.c.king insane?"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
The coffee kept me awake.
Hand went to bed or whatever canister he crawled into when Mandrake wasn"t using him, and left me staring at the desert night. I searched the sky for Sol and found it glimmering in the east at the apex of a constellation the locals called the Thumb Home. Hand"s words drifted back through me.
...So far from earth you have to work hard to pick out Sol in the night sky. We were carried here on a wind that blows in a dimension we cannot see or touch. Stored as dreams in the mind of a machine...
I shook it off, irritably.
It wasn"t like I"d been born there. Earth was no more home to me than Sanction IV, and if my father had ever pointed Sol out to me in between bouts of drunken violence, I had no memory of it. Any significance that particular point of light had for me, I"d got off a disc. And from here, you couldn"t even see the star that Harlan"s World orbited.
Maybe that"s the problem.
Or maybe it was just that I"d been there, to the legendary home of the human race, and now, looking up, I could imagine, a single astronomical unit out from the glimmering star, a world in spin, a city by the sea dropping away into darkness as night came on, or rolling back up and into the light, a police cruiser parked somewhere and a certain police lieutenant drinking coffee not much better than mine and maybe thinking...
That"s enough, Kovacs.
For your information, the light you"re watching arrive left fifty years before she was even born. And that sleeve you"re fantasising about is in its sixties by now, if she"s even wearing it still. Let it go.
Yeah, yeah.
I knocked back the dregs of the coffee, grimaced as it went down cold. By the look of the eastern horizon, dawn was on its way, and I had a sudden crushing desire not to be here when it arrived. I left the coffee carton standing sentinel on the parapet, and picked my way back through the scattered chairs and tables to the nearest elevator terminal.
The elevator dropped me the three floors to my suite and I made it along the gently curving corridor without meeting anyone. I was pulling the retina cup out of the door on its saliva-thin cable when the sound of footfalls in the machined quiet sent me back against the opposite wall, right hand reaching for the single interface gun I still carried from habit tucked into the back of my waistband.
Spooked.
You"re in the Mandrake Tower, Kovacs. Executive levels. Not even dust gets up here without authorisation. Get a f.u.c.king grip, will you.
"Kovacs?"
Tanya Wardani"s voice.
I swallowed and pushed myself away from the wall. Wardani rounded the curve of the corridor and stood looking at me with what seemed like an unusual proportion of uncertainty in her stance.
"I"m sorry, did I scare you?"
"No." Reaching again for the retina cup, which had backreeled into the door when I went for the Kalashnikov.
"Have you been up all night?"
"Yes." I applied the cup to my eye and the door folded back. "You?"
"More or less. I tried to get some sleep a couple of hours ago, but..." she shrugged. "Too keyed up. Are you all done?"
"With the recruiting?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
"How are they?"
"Good enough."
The door made an apologetic chiming sound, drawing attention to the lack of entry effected so far.
"Are you-"
"Do you-" I gestured.
"Thanks." She moved, awkwardly, and stepped in ahead of me.
The suite lounge was walled in gla.s.s that I"d left at semi-opaque when I went out. City lights specked the smoky surface like deep-fry caught glowing in a Millsport trawler"s nets. Wardani halted in the middle of the subtly furnished living s.p.a.ce and turned about.
"I-"
"Have a seat. The mauve ones are all chairs."
"Thanks, I still can"t quite get used to-"
"State of the art." I watched as she perched on the edge of one of the modules, and it tried in vain to lift and shape itself around her body. "Want a drink?"
"No. Thanks."
"Pipe?"
"G.o.d, no."
"So how"s the hardware?"
"It"s good." She nodded, more to herself than anyone. "Yes. Good enough."
"Good."
"You think we"re nearly ready?"
"I-" I pushed away the flash-rip behind my eyes and crossed to one of the other seats, making a performance of settling into it. "We"re waiting for developments up there. You know that."
"Yes."
A shared quiet.
"Do you think they"ll do it?"
"Who? The Cartel?" I shook my head. "Not if they can help it. But Kemp might. Look, Tanya. It may not even happen. But whether it does or not, there"s nothing any of us can do about it. It"s too late for that kind of intervention now. Way war works. Abolition of the individual."
"What"s that? Some kind of Quellist epigram?"
I smiled. "Loosely paraphrased, yes. You want to know what Quell had to say about war? About all violent conflict?"
She made a restless motion. "Not really. OK, sure. Tell me. Why not. Tell me something I haven"t heard before."
"She said wars are fought over hormones. Male hormones, largely. It"s not about winning or losing at all, it"s about hormonal discharge. She wrote a poem about it, back before she went underground. Let"s see-"
I closed my eyes and thought back to Harlan"s World. A safe house in the hills above Millsport. Stolen bioware stacked in a corner, pipes and post-op celebration wreathing the air. Idly arguing politics with Virginia Vidaura and her crew, the infamous Little Blue Bugs. Quellist quotes and poetry bantered back and forth.
"You in pain?"
I opened my eyes and shot her a reproachful glance. "Tanya, this stuff was mostly written in Stripj.a.p. That"s a Harlan"s World trade tongue-gibberish to you. I"m trying to remember the Amanglic version."
"Well, it looks painful. Don"t knock yourself out on my account." I held up a hand. "Goes like this: Male-sleeved; Stop up your hormones Or spend them in moans Of other calibre (We"ll rea.s.sure you-the load is large enough) Blood-pumped Pride in your prowess Will fail you, f.u.c.k you And everything you touch (You"ll rea.s.sure us-the price was small enough)"
I sat back. She sniffed.
"Bit of an odd stance for a revolutionary. Didn"t she lead some kind of b.l.o.o.d.y uprising? Fight to the death against Protectorate tyranny, or something?"
"Yeah. Several kinds of b.l.o.o.d.y uprising, in fact. But there"s no evidence she actually died. She disappeared in the last battle for Millsport. They never recovered a stack."
"I don"t really see how storming the gates of this Millsport gels with that poem."
I shrugged. "Well, she never really changed her views on the roots of violence, even in the thick of it. Just realised it couldn"t be avoided, I guess. Changed her actions instead, to suit the terrain."
"That"s not much of a philosophy."
"No, it isn"t. But Quellism was never very big on dogma. About the only credo Quell ever subscribed to was Face the Facts Face the Facts. She wanted that on her tomb. Face the Facts Face the Facts. That meant dealing with them creatively, not ignoring them or trying to pretend they"re just some historical inconvenience. She always said you can"t control a war. Even when she was starting one."
"Sounds a little defeatist to me."
"Not at all. It"s just recognition of the danger. Facing the facts. Don"t start wars if you can possibly avoid it. Because once you do, it"s out of any sane control. No one can do anything except try to survive while it runs its hormonal course. Hold on to the rod and ride it out. Stay alive, and wait for the discharge."
"Whatever." She yawned and looked out of the window. "I"m not very good at waiting, Kovacs. You"d think being an archaeologue would have cured me of that, wouldn"t you." A shaky little laugh. "That, and. The camp-"
I stood up abruptly. "Let me get you that pipe."
"No." She hadn"t moved, but her voice was nailed down solid. "I don"t need to forget anything, Kovacs. I need-"
She cleared her throat.
"I need you to do something for me. With me. What you did to me. Before, I mean. What you did has." She looked down at her hands. "Had an impact I didn"t. Didn"t expect."
"Ah." I sat down again. "That."
"Yes, that." There was a flicker of anger in her tone now. "I suppose it makes sense. It"s an emotion-bending process."
"Yes, it is."
"Yes, it is. Well, there"s one particular emotion I need bending back into place now, and I don"t really see any other way to do that than by f.u.c.king you."
"I"m not sure that-"
"I don"t care," she said violently. "You changed me. You fixed fixed me." Her voice quietened. "I suppose I should be grateful, but that isn"t how it feels. I don"t feel grateful, I feel me." Her voice quietened. "I suppose I should be grateful, but that isn"t how it feels. I don"t feel grateful, I feel fixed fixed. You"ve created this. Imbalance in me, and I want that part of me back."
"Look, Tanya, you aren"t really in any condition-"
"Oh, that." She smiled thinly. "I appreciate I"m not exactly s.e.xually attractive right now, except maybe-"
"Wasn"t what I meant-"
"To a few freaks who like starved p.u.b.escents to f.u.c.k. No, we"ll need to fix fix that. We need to go virtual for this." that. We need to go virtual for this."
I struggled to shake off a numbing sense of unreality. "You want to do this now now?"
"Yes, I do." Another sliced-off smile. "It"s interfering with my sleep patterns, Kovacs. And right now I need my sleep."