Black Man / Thirteen

Bambarén looked back and forth between the two thirteens.

“He’s dead because you killed him, Marsalis,” Onbekend said casually. “That’s what I heard.”

“He’s dead because his twin brother, Onbekend here, had him brought back from Mars as a sacrificial gene set. Sold him to the people he’s been working for. Would have used him to explain away—”

“But you did kill him, didn’t you?”

The tayta stared at Onbekend. “What is this? What’s he talking about?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing, Onbee.” There was a gathering tightness in Bambarén’s voice now. The same thing Carl had seen on his face when Onbekend used the word cudlip. “What is he talking about?”

“I’m talking about Isabela’s other modified son.” Carl kept the pistol raised in Onbekend’s direction. “The egg your mother sold to the gringos sub-divided a few days in, Manco, and Project Lawman ended up with two identical thirteens for the price of one. That’s very handy when it comes to crime scene genetic trace. While your brother here went about slaughtering inconvenient colleagues from his past, he also arranged for his twin to take the fall for it.”

“Don’t listen to him, Manco. This is—”

“Is he lying?” The look on the tayta’s face marked it as rhetorical. His voice sank almost to a whisper. “You did this? You used your own blood to cover yourself?”

“Manco, there really wasn’t much option. I told you the situation Ortiz put me in, I told you the danger it—”

“You did not tell me this!”

And now Bambarén was trembling, still staring at the thirteen whose genes he shared. His face twitched with suppressed rage.

“A brother?” he asked hoarsely. “A twin? You sold your twin brother? After you came to me and I gave you—”

“It’s not important, Manco. I never knew him, we never even met—”

“He was your blood!” Bambarén started to get up. Carl wagged the Glock at him and he sank back, sat like something coiled. “He was your mother’s blood! I told you when you came to me, blood is everything. The corporations have stolen our souls, they shatter the bonds that make us strong, turn us into uniform strangers living out our lives alone in polymered boxes. Family is all we have.”

“Not if you’re a thirteen,” Carl told him somberly.

There was a long pause.

“Manco, listen to me,” Onbekend said. “I did this to protect—”

“Did you ever even tell our mother?” Bambarén’s face had gone cold and hard as the stones out at Sacsayhuamán, and his voice had grown quiet as the wind. “Did you ever tell Isabela that she had another son somewhere?”

Onbekend’s temper snapped across. “For fuck’s sake, Manco, there would have been no point!”

“No?”

“No. He was on Mars!”

The quiet swept in after the words like a tide, like a breath snuffing candle flames out. They sat in silence in the dim light.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to know how your other brother was persuaded to come home from Mars, would you, Manco?”

Onbekend tensed. His voice grated. “Marsalis, I’m warning you.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Carl told him. “I’ll put you down before your arse comes off the chair.”

He shifted slightly toward Bambarén. Kept the Glock leveled on the thirteen. The tayta stared back at him.

“See, Manco, your unexpected brother here did a deal with Mars. I’m guessing you didn’t know about that?”

“It was not a deal,” Onbekend growled. “It was a strategy, a deception.”

“Okay, he organized a deception, in your name. Your other brother was supposed to be coming back as an assassin for the Martian chapters. Some story about clearing out the Lima familias by way of reparation, laying the whole afrenta Marciana to rest so you could all do business with Mars again. That about right, Onbekend?”

“You did this?” Manco Bambarén whispered. “Even this?”

“Come on, Manco, we’ve talked about it often enough.” Onbekend gestured impatiently. “It wasn’t for real anyway, but—”

“You used my name?”

“By association, yeah. Marsalis, you fuck, listen to me—”

Bambarén lunged across the table at Onbekend. The thirteen jumped, blindsided, fended him off. Carl raised the Glock.

“Gentlemen,” he said warningly.

Bambarén appeared not to hear. He braced his arms on the table, still staring down into the face of the man he’d made into his brother. Rage brought up his accent, bruised the English he used.

“You used my fucking name?”

“Sit down, Manco,” Carl told him. “I won’t tell you again.”

But the familia chief did not sit. Instead he turned himself deliberately to face Carl and the Glock. He drew a deep breath.

“I wish to leave now,” he said stiffly. “I have no further interest in this matter. I withdraw my protection from Greta Jurgens.”

“Oh, Manco, you can’t fucking—”

“Don’t tell me what I can do, twist.” Manco pushed himself off the table with his hands. He looked at Carl. “Well? Is our business concluded, black man?”

“Sure.” Carl hadn’t expected it to work nearly this well, but he wasn’t about to miss the sudden bonus. “Walk to the door, hands on your head. Let yourself out and shut it behind you. And I’d better hear those helicopters leaving inside ten minutes.”

Bambarén stood up and laced his hands together over his head. He and Onbekend looked at each other for a long moment.

“Don’t do this,” Onbekend said tightly. “I’m your brother, Manco. Fourteen years, I’m your fucking brother.”

“No.” Bambarén’s voice was as cold now as the chill coming off the alcove rock. “You are not my brother, you are a mistake. My mistake, my mother’s mistake, and the mistake of gringos without souls. You are a twisted fucking thing, a thing that crept into my family and used me, a thing that cut the living fat from my bones to feed itself. I should have listened to the others when you came.”

“You used me, too, you fuck!”

“Yes. I used you for what you are.” Bambarén spat on the table in front of the thirteen. “Twist! Pistaco! You are nothing to me.”

Onbekend stared down at the spittle. Then, abruptly, he swayed to his feet.

“That’s it, Onbekend.” Carl rapped on the tabletop, gestured with the Glock. “Sit the fuck down.”

There was a grim smile stamped onto Onbekend’s mouth. “I don’t think so.”

Carl came to his feet like whiplash. The chair went over behind him, the Glock leveled on Onbekend’s face.

“I said—”

And then Bambarén was on him like an opsdog.

Later, he never knew why the tayta jumped. Maybe the rage, rage at Onbekend but sloshing generally to include all thirteens, maybe all variants, maybe just anybody within reach. Maybe rage at the unaccustomed powerlessness of sitting at the table under another man’s gun. Or maybe—he hated the thought—not rage at all, maybe the two of them, Bambarén and Onbekend, the two unlikely brothers, maybe in the end they just played Carl, improvised, used the angle, and it worked.

Bambarén slapped a hand into the Glock, swept it wide, and came around the edge of the table yelling. The gun went off, once, nowhere useful. Carl twisted, took the other man’s momentum, and dumped it over his hip. Most of him was still trying to work out where Onbekend had gone. Bambarén clung on with street-fighter savagery, fingers digging for eyes, knee to groin. Carl dropped the gun. They both went down, thrashing to get the upper position.

Tanindo and the mesh won out. Bambarén had an antique street-honed savagery to call on, but it was blurred with age and years of rank. Carl broke his holds, took the punches through the padding of the weblar jacket, teeth gritted tight as pain flared across his cracked ribs and through the codeine veil. He vented a snarl, smothered a knee jab to his groin, and then smashed an elbow into the tayta’s face. The other man reeled off him. Carl stabbed stiffened fingers in under the chin. Bambarén gagged and—