“Or pouring water down other people’s throats,” I agreed amiably. “I guess you took after your mother, right?”
For a second it was as if Kawahara’s face was a mask cut from tin behind which a furnace was raging. I saw the fury ignite in her eyes, and if I had not had the Reaper inside to keep me cold, I would have been afraid.
“Kill me,” she said, tight lipped. “And make the most of it, because you are going to suffer, Kovacs. You think those sad-case revolutionaries on New Beijing suffered when they died? I’m going to invent new limits for you and your fish-smelling bitch.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Reileen. You see, your update needlecast went through about ten minutes ago. And on the way, I had it dipped. Didn’t lift anything, we just spliced the Rawling virus onto the ’cast. It’s in the core by now, Reileen. Your remote storage has been spiked.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”
“Not today. You liked the work Irene Elliott did at Jack It Up? Well, you should see her in a virtual forum. I bet she had time to take a half-dozen mindbites while she was inside that needlecast. Souvenirs. Collector’s items, in fact, because if I know anything about stack engineers, they’ll weld down the lid on your remote stack faster than politicians leaving a war zone.” I nodded over at the winding data display. “I should think you’ll get the alarm in another couple of hours. It took longer at Innenin, but that was a long time ago. The technology’s moved on since then.”
Then she believed, and it was as if the fury I’d seen in her eyes had banked down to a concentrated white heat.
“Irene Elliott,” she said intently. “When I find her—”
“I think we’ve had enough empty threats for one day,” I interrupted without force. “Listen to me. Currently the stack you’re wearing is the only life you have, and the mood I’m in now it wouldn’t take much to make me cut it out of your spine and stamp on it. Before or after I shoot you, so shut up.”
Kawahara sat still, glaring at me out of slitted eyes. Her top lip drew fractionally back off her teeth for a moment, before control asserted itself.
“What do you want?”
“Better. What I want, right now, is a full confession of how you set Bancroft up. Resolution 653, Mary Lou Hinchley, the whole thing. You can throw in how you framed Ryker, as well.”
“Are you wired for this?”
I tapped my left eyelid where the recording system had gone in, and smiled.
“You really think I’m going to do this?” Kawahara’s rage glinted at me from behind her eyes. She was waiting, coiled, for an opening. I had seen her like this before, but then I hadn’t been on the receiving end of that look. I was in as much danger under those eyes as I had ever been under fire in the streets of Sharya. “You really think you’re going to get this from me?”
“Look on the bright side, Reileen. You can probably buy and influence your way out of the erasure penalty, and for the rest you might get only a couple of hundred years in the store.” My voice hardened. “Whereas, if you don’t talk, you’ll die right here and now.”
“Confession under duress is inadmissible under U.N. law.”
“Don’t make me laugh. This isn’t going to the U.N. You think I’ve never been in a court before? You think I’d trust lawyers to deal with this? Everything you say here tonight is going express needlecast to WorldWeb One as soon as I’m back on the ground. That, and footage of whoever it was I wasted in the doggie room upstairs.” Kawahara’s eyes widened and I nodded. “Yeah, I should have said earlier. You’re a client down. Not really dead, but he’ll need resleeving. Now, with all that, I reckon about three minutes after Sandy Kim goes live, the U.N. tacs are going to be blowing down your door with a fistful of warrants. They’ll have no choice. Bancroft alone will force their hand. You think the same people who authorized Sharya and Innenin are going to stick at a little constitutional rule-bending to protect their power base? Now, start talking.”
Kawahara raised her eyebrows, as if this was nothing more than a slightly distasteful joke she’d just been told. “Where would you like me to start, Takeshi-san?”
“Mary Lou Hinchley. She fell from here, right?”
“Of course.”
“You had her slated for the snuff deck? Some sick fuck wanted to pull on the tiger sleeve and play kitty?”
“Well, well.” Kawahara tipped her head on one side as she made connections. “Who have you been talking to? Someone from the Wei Clinic, is it? Let me think. Miller was here for that little object lesson, but you torched him, so . . . Oh. You haven’t been head-hunting again, Takeshi? You didn’t take Felipe Miller home in a hat box, did you?”
I said nothing, just looked at her over the barrel of the shard gun, hearing again the weakened screaming through the door I’d listened at. Kawahara shrugged.
“It wasn’t the tiger, as it happens. But something of that sort, yes.”
“And she found out?”
“Somehow, yes.” Kawahara seemed to be relaxing, which under normal circumstances would have made me nervous. Under the betathanatine, it just made me more watchful. “A word in the wrong place, maybe something a technician said. You know, we usually put our snuff clients through a virtual version before we let them loose on the real thing. It helps to know how they’re going to react, and in some cases we even persuade them not to go through with it.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
Kawahara sighed. “How do I get through to you, Takeshi? We provide a service here. If it can be made legal, then so much the better.”
“That’s bullshit, Reileen. You sell them the virtual, and in a couple of months they come sniffing after the real thing. There’s a casual link, and you know it. Selling them something illegal gives you leverage, probably over some very influential people. Get many U.N. governors up here, do you? Protectorate generals, that kind of scum?”
“Head in the Clouds caters to an elite.”
“Like that white-haired fuck I greased upstairs? He was someone important, was he?”
“Carlton McCabe?” From somewhere, Kawahara produced an alarming smile. “You could say that, I suppose, yes. A person of influence.”
“Would you care to tell me which particular person of influence you’d promised they could rip the innards out of Mary Lou Hinchley?”
Kawahara tautened slightly. “No, I would not.”
“Suppose not. You’ll want that for a bargaining line later, won’t you. Okay, skip it. So what happened? Hinchley was brought up here, accidentally found out what she was being fattened up for, and tried to escape? Stole a grav harness, perhaps?”
“I doubt that. The equipment is kept under tight security. Perhaps she thought she could cling to the outside of one of the shuttles. She was not a very bright girl, apparently. The details are still unclear, but she must have fallen somehow.”
“Or jumped.”
Kawahara shook her head. “I don’t think she had the stomach for that. Mary Lou Hinchley was not a samurai spirit. Like most of common humanity, she would have clung to life until the last undignified moment. Hoping for some miracle. Begging for mercy.”
“How inelegant. Was she missed immediately?”
“Of course she was missed! She had a client waiting for her. We scoured the ship.”
“Embarrassing.”
“Yes.”
“But not as embarrassing as having her wash up on the shore a couple of days later, huh? The luck fairies were out of town that week.”
“It was unlucky,” Kawahara conceded, as if we were discussing a bad hand of poker. “But not entirely unexpected. We were not anticipating a real problem.”
“You knew she was Catholic?”
“Of course. It was part of the requirements.”
“So when Ryker dug up that iffy conversion, you must have shat yourself. Hinchley’s testimony would have dragged you right into the open along with fuck knows how many of your influential friends. Head in the Clouds, one of t
he Houses indicted for snuff and you with it. What was the word you used on New Beijing that time? Intolerable risk. Something had to be done; Ryker had to be shut down. Stop me if I’m losing the thread here.”
“No, you’re quite correct.”
“So you framed him?”
Kawahara shrugged again. “An attempt was made to buy him off. He proved . . . unreceptive.”
“Unfortunate. So what did you do then?”
“You don’t know?”
“I want to hear you say it. I want details. I’m doing too much of the talking here. Try to keep your end of the conversation up, or I might think you’re being uncooperative.”
Kawahara raised her eyes theatrically to the ceiling. “I framed Elias Ryker. I set him up with a false tip about a clinic in Seattle. We built a phone construct of Ryker and used it to pay Ignacio Garcia to fake the Reasons of Conscience decals on two of Ryker’s kills. We knew the Seattle PD wouldn’t buy it and that Garcia’s faking wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. There, is that better?”
“Where’d you get Garcia from?”
“Research on Ryker, back when we were trying to buy him off.” Kawahara shifted impatiently on the lounger. “The connection came up.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
“How perceptive of you.”
“So everything was nicely nailed down. Until Resolution 653 came along, and stirred it all up again. And Hinchley was still a live case.”
Kawahara inclined her head. “Just so.”
“Why didn’t you just stall it? Buy some decision makers on the U.N. Council?”
“Who? This isn’t New Beijing. You met Phiri and Ertekin. Do they look as if they’re for sale?”
I nodded. “So it was you in Marco’s sleeve. Did Miriam Bancroft know?”
“Miriam?” Kawahara looked perplexed. “Of course not. No one knew, that was the point. Marco plays Miriam on a regular basis. It was a perfect cover.”
“Not perfect. You play shit tennis, apparently.”
“I didn’t have time for a competence disk.”
“Why Marco. Why not just go as yourself?”
Kawahara waved a hand. “I’d been hammering at Bancroft since the resolution was tabled. Ertekin, too, whenever she let me near her. I was making myself conspicuous. Marco putting in a word on my behalf makes me look more detached.”
“You took that call from Rutherford,” I said, mostly to myself. “The one to Suntouch House after we dropped in on him. I figured it was Miriam, but you were there as a guest, playing Marco on the sidelines of the great Catholic debate.”
“Yes.” A faint smile. “You seem to have greatly overestimated Miriam Bancroft’s role in all this. Oh, by the way, who is that you’ve got wearing Ryker’s sleeve at the moment? Just to satisfy my curiosity. He’s very convincing, whoever he is.”
I said nothing, but a smile leaked from one corner of my mouth. Kawahara caught it.
“Really? Double-sleeving. You really must have Lieutenant Ortega wrapped around your little finger. Or wrapped around something, anyway. Congratulations. Manipulation worthy of a Meth.” She barked a short laugh. “That was meant as a compliment, Takeshi-san.”
I ignored the jab. “You talked to Bancroft in Osaka? Thursday the sixteenth of August. You knew he was going?”
“Yes. He has regular business there. It was made to look like a chance encounter. I invited him to Head in the Clouds on his return. It’s a pattern for him. Buying sex after business deals. You probably found that out.”
“Yeah. So when you got him up here, what did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth.”
“The truth?” I stared at her. “You told him about Hinchley and expected him to back you?”
“Why not?” There was a chilling simplicity in the look she gave me back. “We have a friendship that goes back centuries. Common business strategies that have sometimes taken longer than a normal human lifetime to bring to fruition. I hardly expected him to side with the little people.”
“So he disappointed you. He wouldn’t keep the Meth faith.”
Kawahara sighed again, and this time there was a genuine weariness in it that gusted out of somewhere centuries deep in dust.
“Laurens maintains a cheap romantic streak that I continually underestimate. He is not unlike you in many ways. But unlike you, he has no excuse for it. The man is over three centuries old. I assumed—wanted to assume, perhaps—that his values would reflect that. That the rest was just posturing, speech-making for the herd.” Kawahara made a negligent what-can-you-do gesture with one slim arm. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid.”
“What did he do? Take some kind of moral stand?”
Kawahara’s mouth twisted without humor. “You mock me? You, with the blood of dozens from the Wei Clinic fresh on your hands. A butcher for the Protectorate, an extinguisher of human life on every world where it has managed to find a foothold. You are, if I may say so, Takeshi, a little inconsistent.”
Secure in the cool wrap of the betathanatine, I could feel nothing beyond a mild irritation at Kawahara’s obtuseness. A need to clarify.
“The Wei Clinic was personal.”
“The Wei Clinic was business, Takeshi. They had no personal interest in you at all. Most of the people you wiped were merely doing their jobs.”
“Then they should have chosen another job.”
“And the people of Sharya. What choice should they have made? Not to be born on that particular world, at that particular time? Not to allow themselves to be conscripted, perhaps?”
“I was young and stupid,” I said simply. “I was used. I killed for people like you because I knew no better. Then I learned better. What happened at Innenin taught me better. Now I don’t kill for anyone but myself, and every time that I take a life, I know the value of it.”
“The value of it. The value of a human life.” Kawahara shook her head like a teacher with an exasperating student. “You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven’t you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you’ve seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?” She made a tiny spitting sound. “You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format? Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It’s the axiomatic truth of our times.”
“Bancroft didn’t think so.”
“Bancroft?” Kawahara made a disgusted noise deep in her throat. “Bancroft is a cripple, limping along on his archaic notions. It’s a mystery to me how he’s survived this long.”
“So you programmed him to suicide? Gave him a little chemical push?”
“Programmed him to. . . ?” Kawahara’s eyes widened and a delighted chuckle that was just the right blend of husk and chime issued from her sculpted lips. “Kovacs, you can’t be that stupid. I told you he killed himself. It was his idea, not mine. There was a time when you trusted my word, even if you couldn’t stomach my company. Think about it. Why would I want him dead?”
“To erase what you told him about Hinchley. When he was resleeved, his last update would be minus that little indiscretion.”
Kawahara nodded sagely. “Yes, I can see how that would fit for you. A defensive move. You have, after all, existed on the defensive since you left the Envoys. And a creature that lives on the defensive sooner or later comes to think on the defensive. You are forgetting one thing, Takeshi.”
She paused dramatically, and even through the betathanatine, a vague ripple of mistrust tugged at me. Kawahara was overplaying it.
“And what’s that?”
“That I, Takeshi Kovacs, am not you. I do not play on the defensive.”
“Not even at tennis?”
She offered me a calibrated little smile. “Very
witty. I did not need to erase Laurens Bancroft’s memory of our conversation, because by then he had slaughtered his own Catholic whore and had as much to lose as I from Resolution 653.”
I blinked. I’d had a variety of theories circling around the central conviction that Kawahara was responsible for Bancroft’s death, but none quite this garish. But as Kawahara’s words sunk in, so did a number of pieces from that jagged mirror that I’d thought was already complete enough to see the truth in. I looked into a newly revealed corner and wished I had not seen the things that moved there.
Opposite me, Kawahara grinned at my silence. She knew she’d dented me, and it pleased her. Vanity, vanity. Kawahara’s only but enduring flaw. Like all Meths, she had grown very impressed with herself. The admission, the final piece to my jigsaw, had slipped out easily. She wanted me to have it, she wanted me to see how far ahead of me she was, how far behind her I was limping along.
That crack about the tennis must have touched a nerve.
“Another subtle echo of his wife’s face,” she said, “carefully selected and then amped up with a little cosmetic surgery. He choked the life out of her. As he was coming for the second time, I think. Married life, eh, Kovacs? What it must do to you males.”
“You got it on tape?” My voice sounded stupid in my own ears.
Kawahara’s smile came back. “Come on, Kovacs. Ask me something that needs an answer.”
“Bancroft was . . . chemically assisted?”
“Oh, but of course. You were right about that. Quite a nasty drug, but then I expect you know—”
It was the betathanatine. The heart-dragging slow chill of the drug, because without it I would have been moving with the breath of air as the door opened on my flank. The thought crossed my mind as rapidly as it was able, and even as it did I knew by its very presence that I was going to be too slow. This was no time for thinking. Thought in combat was a luxury about as appropriate as a hot bath and massage. It fogged the whiplash clarity of the Khumalo’s neurachem response system, and I spun, just a couple of centuries too late, shard gun lifting.