The two soldiers followed the three of them inside. The room was long and narrow, and had a table, surrounded by several chairs, standing immediately to the right and dominating the nearer half of the room. Further in, two men – one white, one Asian – sat on a couch facing a TriView screen in the far left-hand corner. Beer and wine bottles, in varying stages of emptiness, were piled on a small coffee table to one side of the couch. The room reeked of loup-garou and other substances.
Saul glanced over at the TriView, and saw images of a man in a leather mask torturing a half-naked woman who was chained to a concrete post. She screamed and begged for mercy as her assailant grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head backwards, bringing a live power drill close to her throat. Even from across the room, Saul could see that her movements were a little too stiff to be real. He guessed she was a Japanese torture doll, one of the high-end models marketed to jaded business executives wherever they weren’t banned.
A third man stood immediately to the right of the couch, watching the TriView with a look of weary indifference, his hands pushed into the pockets of a very expensive-looking suit: Shih Hsiu-Chuan himself.
Saul felt a thrill of anticipation. Hsiu-Chuan glanced slowly in his direction, then back at the screen.
Meanwhile, Saul’s pulse rate began to build, riding on a tide of loup-garou as he followed Jacob and Hsingyun further into the room. The insouciant way in which Hsiu-Chuan held himself, together with that distant, mildly bored expression, suggested that their own presence here was a burden he only barely tolerated.
‘Hey!’ said the white man, leaping up from the couch and stepping around behind it to face them. He wore a long woollen jacket over a stained shirt and overalls, a cloth cap pulled down over his ears. ‘I see we have company.’
Hsingyun moved towards him and they exchanged a few words in Mandarin. ‘This is Ben Tanner,’ Hsingyun explained, looking back towards Saul and Jacob. ‘He runs this station.’
Tanner’s oriental TriView buddy now stood up and eyed Saul critically. ‘Nobody told me he was a
hei-gui-zi
,’ he remarked in guttural English, also stepping away from the couch.
Even though Saul spoke next to no Mandarin, he knew just enough to recognize the insult.
‘Is that a problem?’ he asked mildly.
‘No problem,’ said Tanner, waving an irritated hand at his companion. Judging by his accent he hailed from the East Coast Republic, maybe New York. He glanced at Saul’s briefcase, still gripped tightly in one hand. ‘And that’s the goods?’
Saul nodded and stepped closer, shaking Tanner’s hand. Hsiu-Chuan gave every impression of ignoring them all, his attention apparently still fixed on the TriView, but Saul wasn’t fooled.
Tanner snapped his fingers at the man who’d been sitting with him on the couch. ‘Kwan here would like to apologize for his racial slur,’ said Tanner, a broad grin on his face. ‘If it makes you feel any better, he calls his dick worse names, when he can find it. Isn’t that right, Kwan?’
Kwan just laughed, and nodded them towards the conference table, before addressing Saul in rapid-fire Mandarin and gesturing at his briefcase.
‘I already opened it,’ said Saul.
‘That was to check for weapons or surveillance devices,’ Tanner replied. ‘This time is for business.’
Saul glanced towards Jacob, who favoured him with an encouraging nod. Feeling the rush of confidence from the loup-garou beginning to slip, he became acutely aware that the two street soldiers who had escorted them were now standing between him and the only exit.
Saul nodded tightly and placed the briefcase on one end of the conference table, clicked it open and turned it around so all the others could see what was inside. He lifted out a couple of bundles of cash, as well as the box containing the arbitration unit. Kwan pushed him to one side, none too gently, and began expertly riffling the notes between his fingers, peering at them closely.
Hsiu-Chuan finally stepped away from the TriView and picked up the box containing the arbitration unit. Nothing else, Saul knew, would have been sufficient to make him risk showing up here.
‘This is a clone, correct?’ Hsiu-Chuan asked, finally acknowledging Saul’s existence. His English was only lightly accented.
‘Of one of the most successful predictive AIs currently operating in the Coalition share markets, yes,’ Saul agreed. ‘It was . . . difficult to obtain.’
‘And you understand,’ Hsiu-Chuan continued, his manner still offhand, ‘what will happen to you personally if it’s a fake or if it fails to live up to expectations?’
‘I do,’ Saul replied levelly.
Hsiu-Chuan nodded, pocketing the unit, then snapped his fingers at Kwan. Kwan responded by tossing a single bundle of cash underhand to one of the two street soldiers. Without another word to Saul or anyone else, Hsiu-Chuan drted the room, followed by the same street soldier.
‘Where have they gone?’ Saul demanded, turning to glare at Tanner.
‘Just making sure everything’s legitimate,’ Tanner replied with an easy shrug. ‘They’ll run some tests, won’t take more than a minute or two. Have a drink while we wait.’
Tanner stepped back over to the couch and fetched a half-bottle of whisky and four glasses. He placed the glasses on the conference table and poured a hefty measure into each. He then put the bottle down and withdrew a pykrete gun from inside his voluminous coat, placing it next to the bottle.
‘What the fuck is that for?’ asked Saul, staring at the gun.
‘That?’ Tanner pretended to be surprised by the question. ‘
That
is in case your sample of money or your arbitration unit aren’t up to scratch.’ Tanner picked up his whisky, full to the brim, and drank it in one swallow, before slamming down the empty glass. ‘I hope that’s not a problem for you,’ he added, with a thin smile.
‘Not at all,’ Saul muttered, picking up his own glass to try and hide his agitation. He noticed that neither Jacob nor Hsingyun had made any move yet towards their own drinks.
There was just enough loup-garou still left circulating through Saul’s bloodstream to ratchet up his fight-or-flight responses, but he felt his nerves settle a bit as the whisky slithered down his throat. It had a pleasant, slightly honeyed texture.
‘Sometimes,’ said Tanner, refilling his own glass before raising it, as if in salute, ‘I wonder how it ever got to the point where good honest criminals were forced to print their own money.’
‘At least it’s real money,’ muttered Hsingyun, finally picking up his glass and taking a sip. ‘And not just numbers encoded on some fucking computer’s memory.’
‘Ah,’ Tanner nodded, ‘that’s why I came here, to Kepler.’
‘For black-market cash?’ asked Saul.
‘That and freedom, too. Back there,’ he said, waving one hand towards the opposite wall, as if the entire planet Earth were lurking just on the other side of it, ‘there’s none. Back there it’s all invisible credit. But that,’ he gestured with his glass at Saul’s briefcase, ‘that’s real, tangible. You can hold it in your hands. Walk around the street stalls back in the city, you’ll see that stuff getting used. People here trust it more than they ever did UP-linked credit.’
Saul nodded. The cash in the briefcase had been printed on black-market presses that had been impounded long ago by the ASI. They had been obliged to print their own or they’d never have been able to pay the network of informants they maintained throughout a dozen worlds. Tanner was right, of course: back on nd Luna, where the only legal currency had a purely virtual existence, you couldn’t do anything without leaving a trail of information behind you. The underground economy had no choice but to develop its own secret banking and credit system, replete with its very own currency.
Tanner paused, as if about to say something, then withdrew a slim device, placing it against his ear and nodding after a few moments. A telephone, Saul realized with a shock; the kind normally relegated to museums. Tanner really was serious, it seemed, about leaving the old world behind.
‘Verdict’s in,’ said Tanner, returning the device to his pocket. ‘Your arbitration unit is good, and your money is real.’
Saul nodded, fingering the lid of his briefcase as if to close it again. ‘Then we can get started on working out schedules and delivery dates. That means—’
‘Not quite.’ Tanner nudged the gun closer to Saul. ‘Pick it up,’ he said.
Saul stood absolutely stock-still. He could see Hsingyun and Jacob to his left, around the other side of the table, while the remaining street soldier had moved to stand by the wall directly behind Tanner. Kwan stood to Saul’s right, and nobody was paying any attention to the TriView.
‘Why the hell should I?’ asked Saul.
Tanner glanced over his shoulder at the street soldier, and said something to him in rapid Mandarin. The man stepped up behind Jacob, grabbing him by both arms just above the elbow, while Kwan crossed the room in a couple of steps, and pulled one arm right back before punching Jacob hard in the stomach.
Jacob crumpled, wheezing. The street soldier and Kwan took a shoulder each and quickly manoeuvred him into one of the chairs by the table. Saul watched, rooted to the spot, as Kwan pulled plastic restraints from a pocket before expertly securing Jacob’s hands and feet to the chair.
‘Ben,’ Jacob’s voice was cracking, ‘I don’t know why you’re—’
‘Shut up,’ snarled Tanner.
Jacob tried to say something else, but Kwan punched him in the jaw before he could get it out. Jacob’s head snapped back, and he fell silent, although Saul could see he was still just about conscious. A thin trickle of blood emerged from one corner of his mouth.
The seconds seemed to trickle by at an infinitely slow pace. Hsingyun appeared unperturbed by the sudden violence. His eyes met Saul’s, who realized in that moment that they had been compromised since long before he had even arrived on Kepler.
A second weapon had appeared in Tanner’s hand, a Koch flechette pistol. He levelled it at Saul’s chest, and waggled its barrel towards the table.
‘Now pick up the gun, Mr Lassen,’ he said, using Saul’s false identity.
Saul took a deep breath and slowly laid one hand across the pykrete gun’s bulbous coolant chamber, without picking it up. He realized, with a sinking feeling, that the wooden panels on the far wall were rippling gently. That meant the psycho-actives were starting to kick in, and were clearly much more powerful than Jacob had claimed. Everything felt slightly unreal, as if at one remove.
‘Why,’ he asked Tanner, ‘are you doing this?’
‘You
say
your name is Lassen,’ Tanner replied, then nodded towards Jacob, ‘but I have it on good authority that Mr Cowles here is in fact employed by the ASI. And if he’s ASI, that means you probably are, too. In fact, everything we know about you comes through Cowles, or whatever his fucking name is. That means, if you want to prove yourself, by which I mean, show me you’re legitimate and serious about doing business with the Tian Di Hui, and not just some undercover cocksucker, then you’re going to have to walk the extra mile. Kill Cowles and I’ll believe you really are who you say you are.’
‘If that’s what you think, why not just kill me instead?’ asked Saul, struggling to keep his tone even. ‘Why hand me a gun?’
‘The Tian Di Hui have rules when it comes to dealing with new clients,’ explained Tanner, the barrel of his Koch dipping until it pointed at Saul’s crotch. Saul did his best to ignore the unpleasant tingling suddenly radiating through his loins. ‘We like to know if they’re genuinely committed to a working relationship with us. Now – let’s suppose my information
isn’t
correct, and you really are who you say you are. Even if that’s the case, the Tian Di Hui will only deal with one person at a time. That means either we deal with Cowles here,’ Tanner nodded over his shoulder towards Jacob, ‘or we deal with you.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘But not both.’
‘So you want me to kill him?’ said Saul. The gun felt solid and heavy beneath his fingers as it rested on the polished wood.
‘If you don’t,’ said Tanner, ‘we very definitely will kill
you
.’
Saul stared down at the weapon with the fascination of a rabbit confronted by a hungry lion. ‘Is it loaded?’
Tanner shrugged. ‘One way to find out.’
Saul glanced back at Hsingyun, and wondered just how long he had known. It wasn’t too hard to picture Jacob, stoned out of his mind while crammed into a bar much like the one they’d left barely more than half an hour before, letting slip some clue that he was something other than what he seemed. Maybe the answer really was that simple.
Moving slowly, Saul picked up the pykrete gun, feeling the balanced weight of it in his hands. He then considered his options. Terror and fury waged a war inside his head and heart, while sparks of light like fireflies swam at the edges of his vision, leaving phosphorescent blue trails.
Or maybe, he thought, the whole thing was really a kind of carefully staged test. The gun in his hand might, in fact, not be loaded at all. Maybe neither Tanner nor Hsingyun nor anyone else had any idea that he and Jacob were anything other than who they claimed to be. But the surest way to reveal they
were
ASI would be to refuse to play along.
The knife-edge sharpness from the loup-garou reasserted itself, through the fug of alcohol and hallucinogens. He felt suddenly, supremely confident that everything was going to be just fine; Tanner would never have given him a loaded gun if he really believed he was a cop. Wasn’t that how it always played out in the TriView dramas? The gun was never loaded.
Never
.