Black Man / Thirteen

“So you felt moved to intervene.” She groped around for motivations that would have fit Ethan. “This Reginald Barnes, he was a friend of yours?”

“No. He was a piece-of-shit wirehead snitch. He had it coming. But I didn’t know that at the time.”

“Was he genetically modified?”

Marsalis smirked. “Not unless there’s some project somewhere I haven’t heard of for turning out brainless addictive-personality fuckups.”

“You felt solidarity because of his color, then?”

The smirk wiped away, became a frown. “I felt I didn’t want to see him arse-fucked with a power drill. I think that’s probably a color-neutral preference, don’t you?”

Sevgi held on to her temper. This wasn’t going well. She was gritty with the syn comedown—no synaptic modifiers permitted in Jesusland, they’d taken them off her at the airport—and still fuming from the argument she’d lost with Norton in New York.

I’m serious, Sev. The policy board’s all over this thing now. We’ve got Ortiz and Roth coming down to section two, three times a week—

In the flesh? What an honor.

They’re looking for progress reports, Sev. Which means reports of progress, and right now we don’t have any. If we don’t do something that looks like fresh action, Nicholson is going to land on us with both feet. Now, I’ll survive that. Will you?

She knew she wouldn’t.

October. Back in New York, the trees in Central Park were starting to rust and stain yellow. Under her window as she got ready for work each day, the market traders went wrapped against the early-morning chill. The summer had turned, tilted about like a jetliner in the clear blue sky above the city, sunlight sliding cold and glinting off its wings. The warmth wasn’t gone yet, but it was fading fast. South Florida felt like clinging.

“How much has Norton told you?”

“Not much. That you have a problem UNGLA won’t help you with. He didn’t say why, but I’m guessing it’s Munich-related.” A sudden, unexpected grin that dropped about a decade off his seamed features. “You guys really should have signed up to the Accords like everybody else.”

“COLIN approved the draft in principle,” said Sevgi, feeling unreasonably defensive.

“Yeah. All about that principle, wasn’t it. Principally: you don’t tell us what to do, you globalist bureaucrat scum.”

Since he wasn’t far wrong, she didn’t argue the point. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No. I’m freelance. My loyalties are strictly for sale. Like I already said, just tell me what you want me to do.”

She hesitated a moment. The dataslate had an integral resonance scrambler built to COLIN specs, which made it tighter than anything any lawyer had ever carried into an interview room at South Florida State. And Marsalis was pretty clearly desperate for an out. Still, the habit of the past four months was ingrained.

“We have,” she said finally, “a renegade thirteen on our hands. He’s been loose since June. Killing.”

He grunted. No visible surprise. “Where’d he get out of? Cimarron? Tanana?”

“No. He got out of Mars.”

This time she had him. He sat up.

“This is a completely confidential matter, Mr. Marsalis. You need to understand that before we start. The murders are widely distributed, and varied in technique. No official co

“Yeah, I bet you do. How’d he get past the nanorack security?”

“He didn’t. He shorted out the docking run and crashed the vessel into the Pacific. By the time we got there, he was gone.”

Marsalis pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “Now, there’s an idea.”

She let the rest out. Anything to take the smug, competent control off his face. “Before that, he had systematically mutilated the other eleven cryocapped crewmembers in order to feed himself. He amputated their limbs and kept them alive in suspension, then, finally, began to kill them and strip the rest of their bodies for meat.”

A nod. “How long was transit?”

“Thirty-three weeks. You don’t seem surprised by any of this.”

“That’s because I’m not. You’re stuck out there, you’ve got to eat something.”

“Did you ever think that?”

Something like a shadow passed across his eyes. His voice came out just short of even. “Is that how you found me? Cross-reference?”

“Something like that.” She chose not to mention Norton’s sudden enthusiasm for the new tactic. “Our profiling n-dji

Marsalis offered her a thin smile. “I never ate anybody.”

“No. But did you think about it?”

He was silent for a while. She was on the point of asking her question again when he got up from the seat and went to stand by the high window. He stared out at the sky.

“It crossed my mind a few times,” he said quietly. “I knew the recovery ship was coming, but I had the best part of two months to worry about it. You can’t help ru

He stopped. His gaze unhooked from the cloud cover and came back to the room, back to her face.

“Was he out there the whole thirty-three weeks?”

“Most of it. From what we can tell, his cryocap spat him out about two weeks into the trajectory.”

“And Mars Control didn’t fetch him back?”

“Mars Control didn’t know about it.” Sevgi gestured. “The n-dji

“That’s a nice little cluster of coincidence.”

“Isn’t it.”

“But not very convenient from a culinary point of view.”

“No. We’re assuming the cryocap timing was an error. Whoever spiked the n-dji

“Do you know who he is?”

Sevgi nodded. She hit the keypad again and pushed the dataslate around so they could both see the screen and the face it held. Marsalis left the window and propped himself in casual angles on the edge of the table. Light gleamed off the side of his skull.

“Allen Merrin. We recovered trace genetic material from Horkan’s Pride, the vessel he crashed, and ran it through COLIN’s thirteen database. This is what they came up with.”

It was almost imperceptible, the way he grew focused, the way the casual poise tautened into something else. She watched his eyes sweep the text alongside the pale head-and-shoulders photo. She could have recited it to him from memory.

Merrin, Allen (sin 48523dx3814)

Delivered (c/s) April 26, 2064, Taos, New Mexico (Project Lawman). Uteral host, Bilikisu Sankare, source genetic material, Isaac Hubscher, Isabela Gayoso (sins appended). All genetic code variants property of Elleniss Hall, Inc., patents asserted (Elleniss Hall & US Army Partnership 2029).

Initial conditioning & training Taos, New Mexico, specialist skills development Fort Be

Retired 2092 (under 2nd UNGLA Convention Accords, Jacobsen Protocol). Accepted Mars resettlement 2094 (COLIN citizenship record appended).

“Very Christ-like.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“The face.” He tapped the screen with a fingernail. The LCLS glow rippled around the touch. Merrin stared up under the tiny distortions. “Very Faith Satellite Cha