Black Man / Thirteen

Quiet. The city breathed. Reflected light trembled across the water.

“I’m like you,” she said.

“You’re a variant?”

She squinted at the blade of her outstretched hand. “That’s right. Harbin black lab product. Nothing but the best.”

“You some kind of bonobo then?”

“No, I am not some kind of fucking bonobo.” There were a couple of grams of genuine anger in the way her voice lifted. “I had sex with Merrin and Scotty for my operational benefit, not because I couldn’t keep my hands off them.”

“Well, you know what?” He kept his voice at a drawl, not really sure why he was pushing, just some vague intuitive impulse to feed the anger and keep Ren off balance. “The real bonobo females, the pygmy chimps in Africa? That’s what they do a lot of the time, too. Fuck to calm the males down, keep them in line. I guess you could call that operational benefit, from a social point of view.”

She got off the wall and faced him.

“I’m a fucking thirteen, Marsalis. A thirteen, just like you. Got that?”

“Bullshit. They never built a female thirteen.”

“Right. Tell yourself that, if it makes you feel better.”

She stood a meter off, and he saw her force the anger back down, iron it out of her stance, and put it away. Shiver of unlooked-for fellow feeling as he watched it happen. She leaned on the wall again, and her voice came out cool and conversational.

“Has it ever occurred to you, Marsalis, to wonder why Project Lawman failed so spectacularly? Has it occurred to you that just maybe cramming gene-enhanced male violent tendency into a gene-enhanced male chassis is overloading the donkey a little?”

Carl shook his head. “No, that hasn’t occurred to me. I was there when Lawman blew apart. What went wrong was that thirteens don’t like to do what they’re told, and as soon as the normal constraints come off, they stop doing it. You can’t make good soldiers out of thirteens. It’s that simple.”

“Yeah, like I said. Overloading the donkey.”

“Or just misunderstanding the concept of soldier.” He brooded on the outline of the Marin Headlands against the sky, watched the neat, corpuscular flow of red dotted lights fu

He thought she maybe shivered a little. “Not anymore.”

“Care to explain that?”

“Hey, you asked who I was. No one said anything about a full fucking résumé.”

He found he was smiling in the gloom. “Just sketch it out for me. Bare bones, enough to convince. One thing I don’t intend to be is a cat’s paw for the Chinese security services.”

“You’re starting to piss me off, Marsalis. I told you I don’t do that shit anymore.”

“Yeah, but I’m a naturally untrusting motherfucker. You want me to murder your boss for you? Indulge my curiosity.”

He heard her breath hiss out between her teeth.

“Late ’96, I worked undercover to crack a Triad sex-slave operation in Hong Kong. When we finally hit them, it got bloody. Department Two aren’t overly concerned about i

“Yeah, I heard that about them.”

“Yeah, well I took the opportunity of all that blood and screaming to step out quietly. Disappeared in the crossfire, crossed the line. Used the contacts I’d made to hook a passage to Kuala Lumpur, and then points south.” An odd weariness crept into her voice. “I was an enforcer in Jakarta for a while, played in the turf wars they had going against the yakuza, built myself an Indonesia-wide rep. Headed south again. Sydney and then Auckland. Corporate clients. Eventually the Rim States, because that’s where the real money is. And here we are. That sort out your curiosity for you?”

He nodded, surprised once again by the twinge of kinship he felt. “Yeah, that’ll do for the CV. But I do have one more question, general point of information you could clear up for me.”

Weary sigh. “And that is?”

“Why bother with me? You’re lethal as shit, well co

She was silent for a while.

“It’s a simple question, Ren.”

“I think I’ve told you enough. In the end, you’re an UNGLA bounty hunter. You take me down, it puts food on your table.”

“I already know what you are,” he said roughly. “You see me reaching for a Haag gun?”

Voice not quite even on those last two words. Her head tilted, as if she maybe caught the tremor. She examined the blade of her hand again.

“You’ve made a career of betraying your own kind. No reason why you’d stop now, is there?”

“Ren, let me tell you something. I’m not even sure I still have my license.” Memories of di Palma flitted through his head, the prissy bureaucratic superiority of the Agency. “And even if I do, first thing I plan on doing when I get back is turn it in.”

“Change of heart, huh?” It wasn’t quite a sneer.

“Something like that. Now answer the question. Why me?”

More quiet. He noticed the chill in the air for the first time. His eyes kept sliding back to the Marin hills, the disappearing stream of traffic headed north. As if there were something there waiting for him. Ren seemed to be making calculations in her head.

“Two reasons,” she said, finally. “First, he’s likely to be expecting me. You, he’s got no reason to watch for.”

“If I were standing where you are, that kind of risk wouldn’t be enough for me to hand things over to a proxy.”

“I know. But you’re a male thirteen. I’m a little smarter than that. For me it’s enough to know that it’ll get done. I don’t have to be there and smell the blood.”

“Maybe I’m smarter than you think. Maybe I just won’t do it.”

He saw her smile. “Well, we’ll see.”

“You said two reasons.”

“That’s right.” Now she was the one looking out across the water. Her voice tinged with something that might have been embarrassment, might have been pride. “It seems I’m pregnant.”

The silence seemed to rush them, like dark fog coming in off the bay. The noises of the city, already faint, receded to the edge of perception. Carl placed his hands flat on the stonework of the wall, peered down at them in the gloom.

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Is it Merrin’s? Or machete boy’s?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t much care. And neither will your Agency friends. It’s enough that the mother’s a certified thirteen, without worrying about the father as well. They’ll send everything they’ve got after me. I need to be leaving, Marsalis. Bowing out and heading somewhere safe.”

“Right.” He folded his arms against the chill, turned to face her. “On the other hand, you do have one major advantage over the Agency.”

“Which is.”

“They don’t even know you exist.”

And somewhere in his head, Sevgi Ertekin’s voice.

Baba, he’s a good man. He’s clean.

Carmen Ren regarded him narrowly. “That’s right. Right now, they don’t know I exist.”

Carl looked away across the bay again. Something was aching in his throat. Sevgi, Nevant, all the others. His whole life seemed to pulse with grief.

“They aren’t going to hear it from me,” he said.