Black Man / Thirteen

CHAPTER 6

The humidity loop on string seventeen went down sometime on Friday night, they figured, and once again the backup protectives failed to come online. Saturday came in foggy, so at first no one noticed when the dish covers stayed dialed up to full transparency. But when the California summer sun finally burned through the fog that afternoon and hit the glass, the incubating cultures got it full force. Sirens cut loose back at the wharf. Scott and Ren roared out there at panic speed in the Zodiac, but by the time they got into their wet suits and into the water, they’d lost pretty much everything on the string. They paddled about a bit making sure, disco

“What happens when you buy your software out of fucking Texas,” gri

“It’s not the software,” Scott said, mainly because he knew it wasn’t, but also because he was getting tired of Nocera’s constant cracks. “It’s the seals.”

“It fucking is the software. Ward got cheap and cheerful from a bunch of Jesusland hicks probably think altered carbon’s what you buy for indoor barbecues. Those guys are ru

“There’s nothing wrong with the software,” Scott snapped. “We had this same shit back in May and that was before the fucking upgrade.” Before you hired on, he didn’t add. And then his own language caught up with him and he colored with the shame. He’d never sworn like that before he started working out here.

“Yeah. Same shit, same shit software.” Nocera wasn’t going to shut up, he was on a roll. He gestured around the con room. “Ward buys his upgrades the same place he got the original system. Cow Tech, Kansas. Shat fresh out of a longhorn’s ass.”

“You said Texas a minute ago.”

“Texas, Kansas?” Nocera made a dismissive gesture. “In the end, what’s the fucking difference? It’s all—”

“Leave him alone, Emil. We all got to be born somewhere.”

Carmen Ren stood in the doorway of the control room, unlit spliff tucked into the corner of her mouth and hands in her coverall pockets. She’d stomped off as soon as she’d peeled off her wet suit, without a backward word. Scott knew by now not to go after her when she hit that mood. Not till she’d smoked it down a little, leastways.

Nocera sighed weightily. “Look, Carm, it’s not like that. I don’t get on Osborne here just ’cause he’s a fence-hopper. Lot of people would around here, but not me. I figure a man’s got to make a living, even if he has to tu

Ren gave Scott a weary smile.

“Ignore him,” she said. “With Ward out of sight, there’s no telling how much custom-nasty shit Emil here’s put up his nose today.”

Nocera wagged a cautionary finger at her. “You pick your chemicals, Carm. I’ll pick mine.”

“This?” Ren removed the spliff from her mouth and held it aloft for general scrutiny. “This is a cheap drug, Emil. I won’t be the one coming around begging for a sub the week before payday.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

She put the spliff back in her mouth, crushed the end to life between a callused thumb and forefinger, and drew hard. The ember flared up with a clearly audible splintering crack. She sighed out a cloud of smoke, looked at Nocera through it for a moment.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ve had better offers this week.”

“What, like from altar boy here?”

Scott felt himself flush again, hot on hot. Carmen Ren was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen in the flesh, and since they’d been on field maintenance together he’d been seeing a lot of that flesh. She stripped off in the tackle room with an utter lack of self-consciousness that he knew Pastor William would have called prideful and unwomanly. Scott politely turned his back whenever she got naked that way, but he still caught glimpses as she zipped herself into the wet suit or peeled unexpectedly to the waist in the Zodiac when it was hot. Her skin was like pale honey, and the curves of her body were subtle yet unmistakable even in the shapeless Ward BioSupply coveralls they all wore around the wharf. But more than all that, Carmen Ren had long, straight hair that spilled like black water onto her shoulders whenever she unpi

The last few weeks, Scott had found himself thinking about Ren a lot when he went home at night, and in a way that he knew was sinful. He’d done his best to resist the urges, but it was no good. She floated into his dreams unbidden, in postures and scenarios that made him flush when he recalled them during the waking day. More than once recently he’d woken tight and hard from the dreams, his hands already on himself and the taste of Ren’s name in his mouth. Worse still, he had the feeling that when Ren looked at him, she could see right through him to that sweaty core of desire, and despised him for it.

Now she was smoking, looking down on Nocera as if he were something that had just leaked out of the mulch vats.

“You really are being a disagreeable little prick today, aren’t you.” She turned to Scott. “You want to go get a coffee up on the wharf?”

“Uh, with you, together, you mean?” Scott bounced to his feet as she nodded. “Sure. Yeah. Great.”

“Uhm, uh, with, uhm, you?” Nocera sneered, made dying-insect-leg motions with his arms. Cranked up a joke-Jesusland accent from network comedy stock. “Duh, darlin’, how kin ah refuse such a laidy. Uhm, praise, uhm, th’ everlovin’ Lord.”

Scott felt his fists clench. He’d been in enough scuffles back home to know he wasn’t much of a fighter, and to know from looking at Nocera that he was. He’d seen the scars when the older man was getting into and out of a wet suit, read it also in his stance and the blank challenge of the unkind eyes. It was like looking at a later edition of Jack Mackenzie’s older brother, the one who’d enlisted on his sixteenth birthday and come home a year later, sunburned and full of scalp tales from places none of them had ever heard of.

Still, he’d taken about as much of Nocera’s Rim superiority as he—

Ren glided into the gap almost before Scott realized he was turning to face the other man.

“I said a coffee, Scott. Not a broken nose.” She nodded at the door. “Come on. Leave this dickhead to play with himself.”

“Be a lot more fun than playing with you, Ren.” Nocera leaned past Ren’s hip, still in his chair, still gri

Scott surged forward, fists raised. The new flush slammed through him, itching at the roots of his hair and burning across his cheeks. He saw the grin slide off Nocera’s face, replaced with a sudden, speculative interest. The other man’s boots swung unhurriedly off the console to the floor. Scott knew then he was going to get a kicking, but fuck it—