I met Brasil’s eye. He didn’t look any happier than I felt.
“You go first,” I told him.
“No, it’s okay. You—”
A shrill, pealing howl from up the path. I shoved him in the small of the back and, as he disappeared through the thundering veil of water, I dived after him. I felt the water pour down onto my arms and shoulders, felt myself tip and—
—Jerked upright on the battered couch.
It was an emergency transition. For a couple of seconds, I still felt wet from the waterfall, could have sworn my clothes were drenched and my hair plastered down around my face. I drew one soggy breath, and then real-world perception caught up. I was dry. I was safe. I was tearing off hypnophones and ’trodes, rolling off the couch, staring around me, heartbeat ripping belatedly upward as my physical body responded to signals from a consciousness that had only just slipped back into the adrenal driving seat.
Across the transfer chamber, Brasil was already on his feet, talking hastily to a grim-faced Sierra Tres who’d somehow reacquired both her own blaster and my Rapsodia. The room was full of a dusty-throated whoop from emergency sirens that hadn’t seen use in decades. Lights flickered uncertainly. I met the female receptionist halfway across the chamber, where she’d just abandoned an instrument panel gone colorfully insane. Even on the poorly muscled face of the Fabrikon sleeve, shocked anger glared out at me.
“Did you bring it in?” she shouted. “Did you contaminate us?”
“No, of course not. Check your fucking instruments. Those things are still in there.”
“What the fuck was that?” asked Brasil.
“At a guess, I’d say a sleeper virus.” Absently, I took the Rapsodia from Tres and checked the load. “You saw the shape of it—part of those things used to be a monk, digitized human disguise wrapped around the offensive systems while they were dormant. Just waiting for the right trigger. The cover personality might not even have been aware what it was carrying until it blew.”
“Yeah, but
why
?”
“Natsume.” I shrugged. “They’d probably been tagging him since—”
The attendant was gaping at us as if we’d started gibbering in machine code. Her colleague appeared behind her at the door to the transfer chamber and pushed his way past. There was a small beige datachip in his left hand, and the cheap silicoflesh was stretched taut on his fingers where he gripped it. He brandished the chip at us and leaned in close to beat the noise of the sirens.
“You must leave now,” he said forcefully, “I am requested by Norikae-san to give you this, but you must get out immediately. You are no longer either welcome or safe here.”
“Yeah, no shit.” I took the offered chip. “If I were you, I’d come with us. Weld shut every dataport you’ve got into the monastery before you leave and then call a good viral cleanup crew. From what I saw back there, your doorkeepers are outclassed.”
The sirens whooped about us like methed-up partygoers. He shook his head, as if to clear it of noise. “No. If this is a test, we will meet it on Uploaded terms. We will not abandon our brothers.”
“Or sisters. Well, suit yourself, that’s very noble. But personally I think anyone you send in there at the moment is going to come out with their subconscious flayed to the bone. You badly need some real-world support.”
He stared at me.
“You do not understand,” he yelled. “This is our domain, not the flesh. This is the destiny of the human race, to Upload. We are at our strongest there, we will triumph there.”
I gave up. I shouted back at him.
“Fine. Great. You let me know how that turns out. Jack, Sierra. Let’s leave these idiots to kill themselves and get the fuck out of here.”
We abandoned the two of them in the transfer room. The last I saw of either was the male attendant laying himself on one of the couches, staring straight up while the woman attached the ’trodes. His face was shiny with sweat, but it was rapt, too, locked in a paroxysm of will and emotion.
• • •
Out on Whaleback and Ninth, soft afternoon light was painting the blank-eyed walls of the monastery warm and orange, and the sounds of traffic hooting in the Reach drifted up with the smell of the sea. A light westerly breeze stirred dust and dried-out spindrizzle spores in the gutters. Up ahead, a couple of children ran across the street, making shooting noises and chasing a miniature robot toy made to resemble a karakuri. There was no one else about, and nothing in the scene to suggest the battle now raging back in the machine heart of the Renouncers’ construct. You could have been forgiven for thinking the whole thing was a dream.
But down at the lower limits of my neurachem hearing as we walked away, I could just make out the cry of ancient sirens, like a warning, feeble and faint, of the stirring forces and the chaos to come.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Harlan’s Day.
More correctly, Harlan’s Eve—technically, the festivities wouldn’t commence until midnight rolled around, and that was a solid four hours away. But even this early in the evening, with the last of the day’s light still high in the western sky, the proceedings had kicked off long since. Over in New Kanagawa and Danchi the downtown areas would already be a lurid parade of holodisplay and masked dance, and the bars would all be serving at state-subsidized birthday prices. Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash, and at this the First Families were accomplished masters. Even those who hated them most would have had to admit that you couldn’t fault Harlan and his kind when it came to throwing a street party.
Down by the water in Tadaimako, the mood was more genteel but festive still. Work had ceased in the commercial harbor around lunchtime, and now small groups of dockworkers sat on the high sides of real-keel freighters, sharing pipes and bottles and looking expectantly at the sky. In the marina, small parties were in progress on most of the yachts, one or two larger ones spilling out from vessels onto the jetties. A confused mishmash of music splashed out everywhere, and as the evening light thickened you could see where decks and masts had been sprayed with illuminum powder in green and pink. Excess powder glimmered scummily in the water between hulls.
A couple of yachts across from the trimaran we were stealing, a mini-mally clad blond woman waved giddily at me. I lifted the Erkezes cigar, also stolen, in cautious salute, hoping she wouldn’t take it as an invitation to jump ship and come over. Isa had music she swore was fashionable thumping up from belowdecks, but it was a cover. The only thing going on to that beat was an intrusion run into the guts of the trimaran
Boubin Islander
’s onboard security systems. Uninvited guests trying to crash this particular party were going to meet Sierra Tres or Jack Soul Brasil and the business end of a Kalashnikov shard gun at the base of the companionway.
I knocked some ash off the cigar and wandered about in the yacht’s stern seating area, trying to look as if I belonged there. Vague tension eeled through my guts, more insistent than I’d usually expect before a gig. It didn’t take much imagination to work out why. An ache that I knew was psychosomatic twinged down the length of my left arm.
I very badly didn’t want to climb Rila Crags.
Fucking typical. The whole city’s partying, and I get to spend the night clinging to a two-hundred-meter sheer cliff face.
“Hello there.”
I glanced up and saw the minimally clad blond woman standing at the gangplank and smiling brilliantly. She wobbled a little on exaggerated stiletto heels.
“Hello,” I said cautiously.
“Don’t know your face,” she said with inebriated directness. “I’d remember a hull this gorgeous. You don’t usually moor here, do you?”
“No, that’s right.” I slapped the rail. “First time she’s been to Millsport. Only got in a couple of days ago.”
For the
Boubin Islander
and her real owners at least, it was the truth. They were a pair of moneyed couples from the Ohrid Isles, rich by way of some state sell-off in local navigational systems, visiting Millsport for the first time in decades. An ideal choice, plucked out of the harbormaster datastack by Isa along with everything else we needed to get aboard the thirty-meter trimaran. Both couples were unconscious in a Tadaimako hotel right now, and a couple of Brasil’s younger revolutionary enthusiasts would make sure they stayed that way for the next two days. Amid the confusion of the Harlan’s Day celebrations, it was unlikely anyone was going to miss them.
“Mind if I come aboard and take a look?”
“Uh, well, that’d be fine except, thing is, we’re about to cast off. Couple more minutes, and we’re taking her out into the Reach for the fireworks.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic. You know, I’d really love to do that.” She flexed her body at me. “I go absolutely crazy for fireworks. They make me all, I don’t know—”
“Hey, baby.” An arm slipped around my waist and violent crimson hair tickled me under the jaw. Isa snuggling against me, stripped down to cutaway swimwear and some eye-opening embedded body jewelry. She glared balefully at the blond woman. “Who’s your new friend?”
“Oh, we haven’t, ah . . .” I opened an inviting hand.
The blond woman’s mouth tightened. Maybe it was a competitive thing; maybe it was Isa’s glittery, red-veined stare. Or maybe just healthy disgust at seeing a fifteen-year-old girl hanging off a man over twice her age. Resleeving can and does lead to some weird body options, but anyone with the money to run a boat like
Boubin Islander
doesn’t have to go through them if they don’t want to. If I was fucking someone who looked fifteen, either she
was
fifteen or I wanted her to look like she was, which in the end comes to pretty much the same thing.
“I think I’d better get back,” she said, and turned unsteadily about. Listing slightly every few steps, she made as dignified a retreat as was possible on heels that stupid.
“Yeah,” Isa called after her. “Enjoy the party. See you around, maybe.”
“Isa?” I muttered.
She grinned up at me. “Yeah, what?”
“Let go of me, and go put some fucking clothes back on.”
• • •
We cast off twenty minutes later and cruised out of the harbor on a general guidance beam. Watching the fireworks from the Reach wasn’t a stunningly original idea, and we weren’t even close to the only yacht in Tadaimako harbor heading that way. For the time being, Isa kept watch from the belowdecks cockpit and let the marine traffic interface tug us along. There’d be time to break loose later, when the show started.
In the forward master cabin, Brasil and I broke out the gear. Stealth scuba suits, Anderson-rigged, courtesy of Sierra Tres and her
haiduci
friends, weaponry from the hundred personal arsenals on Vchira Beach. Isa’s customized software for the raid patched into the suits’ general-purpose processors, overlaid with a scrambler-rigged comsystem she’d stolen fresh from the factory that afternoon. Like the
Boubin Islander
’s comatose owners, it wouldn’t be missed for a couple of days.
We stood and looked at the assembled hardware, the gleaming black of the powered-down suits, the variously scuffed and dented weapons. There was barely enough space on the mirrorwood floor for it all.
“Just like old times, huh?”
Brasil shrugged. “No such thing as an old wave, Tak. Every time, it’s different. Looking back’s the biggest mistake you can make.”
Sarah.
“Spare me the cheap fucking beach philosophy, Jack.”
I left him in the cabin and went aft to see how Isa and Sierra Tres were getting on at the con. I felt Brasil’s gaze follow me out, and the taint of my own flaring irritation stayed with me along the corridor and up the three steps into the storm cockpit.
“Hey, baby,” said Isa, when she saw me.
“Stop that.”
“Suit yourself.” She grinned unrepentantly and glanced across to where Sierra Tres was propped against the cockpit side panel. “You didn’t seem to mind so much earlier on.”
“Earlier on there was a—” I gave up. Gestured. “Suits are ready. Any word from the others?”
Sierra Tres shook her head slowly. Isa nodded at the comset datacoil.
“They’re all online, look. Green glow, all the way across the board. For now, that’s all we need or want. Anything more, it just means things have fucked up. Believe me, right now, no news is good news.”
I twisted about awkwardly in the confined space.
“Is it safe to go up on deck?”
“Yeah, sure. This is a sweet ship, it runs weather-exclusion screens from generators in the rigging, I’ve got them up on partial opaque for incoming. Anyone out there nosy enough to be looking, like your little blond friend, say, your face is just going to be a blob in the scope.”
“Good.”
I ducked out of the cockpit, moved to the stern and heaved myself into the seating area, then up onto the deck proper. This far north, the Reach was running light and the trimaran was almost steady on the swell. I picked my way forward to the fair-weather cockpit, seated myself in one of the pilot chairs, and dug out a fresh Erkezes cigar. There was a whole humicrate of them below, I figured the owners could spare more than a few. Revolutionary politics—we all have to make sacrifices. Around me, the yacht creaked a little. The sky had darkened, but Daikoku stood low over the spine of Tadaimako and painted the sea with a bluish glow. The running lights of other vessels sat about, neatly separated from each other by the traffic software. Basslines thumped faintly across the water from the glimmering shore lights of New Kanagawa and Danchi. The party was in full swing.
Southward, Rila speared up out of the sea, distant enough to appear slim and weaponish—a dark, crooked blade, unlit but for the cluster of lights from the citadel at the top.
I looked at it and smoked in silence for a while.
He’s up there.
Or somewhere downtown, looking for you.
No, he’s there. Be realistic about this.
All right, he’s there. And so is she. So for that matter is this Aiura, and a couple of hundred handpicked Harlan family retainers. Worry about stuff like that when you get to the top.
A launch barge slid past in the moonlight, on its way out to a firing position farther up the Reach. At the rear, the deck was piled high with tumbled packages, webbing, and helium cylinders. The sawn-off forward superstructure thronged with figures at rails, waving and firing flares into the night. A sharp hooting lifted from the vessel as it passed, the Harlan birthday hymn picked out in harsh collision alert blasts.
Happy birthday, motherfucker.
“Kovacs?”
It was Sierra Tres. She’d reached the cockpit without me noticing, which said either a lot for her stealth skills or as much for my lack of focus. I hoped it was the former.
“You okay?”
I considered that for a moment. “Do I not look okay?”
She made a characteristically laconic gesture and seated herself in the other pilot chair. For quite a long time, she just looked at me.
“So what’s going on with the kid?” she asked finally. “You looking to recapture your long-lost youth?”
“No.” I jerked a thumb southward. “My long-lost fucking youth is out there somewhere, trying to kill me. There’s nothing going on with Isa. I’m not a fucking pedophile.”
Another long, quiet spell. The launch barge slipped away into the evening. Talking to Tres was always like this. Under normal circumstances, I’d have found it irritating, but now, caught in the calm before midnight, it was curiously restful.
“How long do you think they had that viral stuff tagged to Natsume?”
I shrugged. “Hard to tell. You mean, was it long-term shadowing or a trap set specifically for us?”
“If you like.”
I knocked ash off the cigar and stared at the ember beneath. “Natsume’s a legend. Granted a dimly remembered one, but
I
remember him. So will the copy of me the Harlans have hired. He probably also knows by now that I talked to people back in Tekitomura, and that I know they’re holding Sylvie at Rila. He knows what I’d do, given that information. A little Envoy intuition would do the rest. If he’s in tune, then yeah, maybe he had them clip some viral watchdogs to Natsume, waiting for me to show up. With the backing he’s got now, it wouldn’t be hard to write a couple of shell personalities, have them wired in with faked credentials from one of the other Renouncer monasteries.”
I drew on the cigar, felt the bite of the smoke, and let it up again.
“Then again, maybe the Harlan family had Natsume tagged from way back anyway. They’re not a forgiving lot, and him climbing Rila like that made them look stupid, even if it wasn’t much more than a Quellboy poster stunt.”
Sierra was silent, staring ahead through the cockpit windshield.
“Comes to the same thing in the end,” she said at last.
“Yes, it does. They know we’re coming.” Oddly enough, saying it made me smile. “They don’t know exactly when or exactly how, but they know.”
We watched the boats around us. I smoked the Erkezes down to a stub. Sierra Tres sat silent and motionless.
“I guess Sanction Four was hard,” she said later.
“You guess right.”
For once I beat her at her own taciturn game. I flicked the spent cigar away and fished out another two. I offered her one and she shook her head.
“Ado blames you,” she told me. “So do some of the others. But I don’t think Brasil does. He appears to like you. Always has, I think.”
“Well, I’m a likable guy.”
A smile bent her mouth. “So it seems.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked away over the forward decks of the trimaran. The smile was gone now, retracted into habitual cat-like calm.
“I saw you, Kovacs.”
“Saw me where?”
“Saw you with Vidaura.”
That sat between us for a while. I drew life into my cigar and puffed enough smoke to hide behind.
“See anything you liked?”
“I wasn’t in the room. But I saw you both going there. It didn’t look as if you were planning a working lunch.”
“No.” Memory of Virginia’s virtual body crushed against mine sent a sharp twinge through the pit of my stomach. “No, we weren’t.”
More quiet. Faint basslines from the clustered lights of southern Kanagawa. Marikanon crept up and joined Daikoku in the northeastern sky. As we drifted idly southward, I could hear the almost subsonic grinding of the maelstrom in full flow.
“Does Brasil know?” I asked.
Now it was her turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Have you told him?”
“No.”
“Has she?”
And more quiet. I remembered Virginia’s throaty laughter, and the sharp, unmatching shards of the three sentences she used to dismiss my concerns and open the floodgates.
This isn’t something that’s going to bother Jack. This isn’t even real, Tak. And anyway, he isn’t going to know.