Black Man / Thirteen

“I would think so, yes.”

“And they’re not going to shoot us out of the sky when we hit Republic airspace, are they?”

Norton said nothing. Sevgi remembered her profiler cups halfway through seaming her shirt shut. She split the seam back open, peered around on the floor.

“Come on, Tom. You can’t seriously think—”

“Okay, no, they probably won’t shoot us down. But they might force the pilot back to a landing at Miami International and take us off the plane there. We’re not popular in these parts, Sev.”

“Not fucking popular anywhere,” she muttered. She caught the translucent gleam of a p-cup at the foot of the bed. She fished it up between two fingers and pressed it up under the weight of her right breast. “All right, Tom. What do you want to do?”

“Let me talk to Nicholson.” He rode out her snort. “Sev, he may be an asshole, but he’s still responsible for operations. It doesn’t look any better for him than for us if we end up slammed in some Miami jail.”

Sevgi prowled the darkened room looking for the other p-cup. “Nicholson won’t get in a fight at state legislature level, Tom, and you know it. He’s too much of a political animal to upset people with that much clout. If Tallahassee gets in line behind this thing, we’re going to be left twisting in the wind down here.”

Another hesitation. Outside, the sounds of the crowd surged like distant surf. Sevgi found the cup under the bed, dug it out, and fitted it awkwardly, left-handed, under her left breast. She sat on the edge of the bed and started seaming her shirt shut again.

“Tell me I’m wrong, Tom.”

“I think you are wrong, Sev. Nicholson is going to see this as interference with his COLIN Security authority, and at a minimum it’s going to make him look bad. Even if he doesn’t take on Tallahassee directly himself, he’ll kick it upstairs with an urgent-action label attached.”

“And meanwhile, what? We sit tight here?”

“There are more unpleasant places to be stranded, Sev.” He sighed. “Look. Worst-case scenario, you get to spend the day on the beach with your new pal.”

Sevgi took the phone away from her ear and stared at it. The little screen was an i

“It was a joke, Sev.”

“Yeah? Well, next time you’re down on Fifth Avenue, get yourself a new fucking sense of humor.”

She killed the call.

From the landward observation tower, it didn’t look like much. Several hundred variously dressed men and women milling about in front of the facility gate while off to the left a suited, white-haired figure declaimed from behind a portable plastic ampbox podium. A couple of amateurish, hastily scrawled holo-placards tilted about in the air above the crowd. Teardrops and a few old-style IC vehicles were parked back along the access road, and people leaned against their flanks in ones and twos. Early-morning sunlight winked and glinted off glass and alloy surfaces. A couple of helicopters danced in the sky overhead, media platforms by the look of their livery.

It didn’t look like much, but they were a good two hundred meters back from the gate here; the noise was faint, and detail hard to see. Sevgi had worked crowd control a few time as a patrol officer, and she’d learned not to make snap judgments about situations involving massed humanity. She knew how quickly it could turn.

“…may have the form of a man, but do not be deceived by his form.” The words rinsed up from the podium sound system, still relatively unhysterical. Whoever the preacher was, he was building up slowly. “Man is made in the image and love of God. This. Creature. Was made by arrogant si

She tuned it out. Squinted up at one of the helicopters as it banked.

“No sign of the state police?” she asked the tower guard.

He shook his head. “They’ll show up if those clowns start charging the gate, not before. And only then because they know we’re authorized to use lethal force if there’s a line breach.”

His face was impassive, but the sour edge in his voice was unmistakable. The name on his chest tag read kim, but Sevgi guessed Korean American was close enough to Chinese for a common bitterness to find roots. Back before Secession, the Zhang fever mobs hadn’t been all that selective in their lynchings.

“I doubt it’ll come to that.” She faked a breezy confidence. “We’ll be out of your hair before lunchtime. They’ll all go home after that.”

“Good to know.”

She left him staring out across the COLIN defenses at the crowd and made her way back down the caged staircase to the ground. There was an ominous quiet around the facility, in contrast with the noise outside. They’d suspended nanorack operations while the crisis lasted, and the storage hangars were all closed up. Tracked freight loaders ten meters broad squatted immobile on the evercrete aprons and access paths, like massive, scalped tanks, abandoned at the end of some colossal urban conflict. Their mortarboard lifting platforms were all empty.

At the other end of the complex, the ’rack thrust up into the cloud cover like a god-size fire escape. It made everything on the ground feel like toys. They’d built Perez early on, back when Mars was still a barely scratched desert and Bradbury a collection of pressurized ’fabs. Now it looked used and grim, all mottled grays and blacks and overstated support structure. Compared with the cheery, brightly colored minimalism at Sagan or Kaku, Perez was a relic. Even for Sevgi, who didn’t like the ’racks whatever fucking color they came in, it was a melancholy sight.

“Ever been up?”

She looked around and saw that Marsalis had gotten within two meters of her back without giving himself away. Now he stood watching her with a blank speculation that reminded her of Ethan so much, it sent shivers up from the base of her spine.

“Not this one, no.” She nodded vaguely northward. “They trained me in New York. Kaku ’rack, mostly. I’ve been up Sagan and Hawking as well, and what they’ve built of Levin.”

“You don’t sound overenthusiastic.”

“No.”

It made him smile. “But the money’s good. Right?”

“The money’s good,” she agreed.

He looked away, toward the gate. The smile faded out.

“Is all that noise out there for me?”

“Yes, it is.” She felt oddly embarrassed, as if the Republicans on the other side of the wire were acquaintances whose bad behavior she had to cover for. “Blame your old friend Parris. Apparently he took exception to your departure after all. He’s fed the whole thing to the local media.”

“Smart of you to bring us here last night, then.”

She shrugged. “I worked witness protection for a while. You learn never to take anything for granted.”

“I see.” He seemed to consider for a moment. “Are you people going to give me a gun?”

“That’s not part of the deal. Didn’t you read the fine print?”

“No.”

It brought her up short. “You didn’t?”

“Ever spent time in a Jesusland justice facility?” He put on a gentle smile, but his eyes were hard with memory. “It’s not the sort of place you quibble over detail if they come to let you out.”

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Well, the fine print says that you’re retained by COLIN in an advisory capacity, not for actual enforcement. So, ah, you don’t need a gun.”

“I will if our Jesusland friends decide to storm the fences.”

“That’s not going to happen here.”

“Your confidence is inspiring. Can we fly out of here?”

“It doesn’t look like it. Tom’s working the diplomatic angle, but it’ll be awhile before we know if we can take the risk. In this part of the world, the Air Nationals tend to shoot first and sift wreckage afterward.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” He turned away from the powered fences and the gate, looking out across the shimmering surface of the Atlantic. “Speaking of which, any idea why the skycops in the Rim didn’t shove a heatseeker up Horkan’s arse when it crossed the line? I hear those boys are pretty jumpy, too, and it must have profiled pretty much like a threat.”