Black Man / Thirteen

The black man grimaced. “Not my boss. I’m freelance, remember.”

“Fact remains, he’s our best hope of not having to spend another night down here. There’s a lot of COLIN subcontracting in this state. Lot of sensitive business-community leaders who won’t want waves made. That’s the angle Ortiz will play while Roth goes down the wires to Washington.” Norton spread his hands, turned back mostly to Sevgi. “My guess is we’ll wait till nightfall. Just a case of sitting tight.”

Marsalis got up off the couch and winced. He worked one shoulder around in circles.

“Something the matter?” Sevgi asked.

He looked at her for a moment as if gauging the level of genuine concern in her voice. “Yeah. Four months of substandard betamyeline chloride.”

“Ah,” said Norton.

Marsalis flexed his right arm experimentally, a climber’s stretch, palm to nape of neck, elbow up beside his head. He grimaced again. “Don’t suppose you’d have any around?”

Norton shook his head. “It’s unlikely. Human traffic through Perez is down to a minimum these days. Not much call for mesh-related product. Can you hold on until we get to New York?”

“I can hold on pretty much forever. I’d just rather not, if it’s all the same to you. It’s, uh, uncomfortable.”

“We’ll get you some painkillers,” Sevgi promised. “You should have said something last night.”

“It slipped my mind.”

“Look, I’ll check with supplies anyway,” said Norton. “You never know. There might be some mothballed stock.”

“Thank you.” Marsalis glanced between the two COLIN officers, then nodded toward the door of the v-chamber. “I’m going to go for a walk. Be on the beach if you need me.”

Norton waited until he was gone.

“Excuse me? If we need him? Is it just me or is he the one who needs something from us right now?”

Sevgi held down an unexpected smile. “He’s a thirteen, Tom. What are you going to do?”

“Well, not look very hard for his betamyeline is what comes immediately to mind.”

“He did say thank you.”

“Yeah.” Norton nodded reluctantly. “He did.”

He hesitated, and Sevgi could almost hear what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. She found herself, suddenly, inexplicably saying it for him. “Ethan, right?”

“Look, I know you don’t like to—”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter, Tom. I. You know, maybe I’m way too sensitive around certain topics. Maybe it’s time. Right? You were going to ask about Ethan? If he was like this?”

Small pause. “Was he?”

She sighed, testing the seals on her self-control. Breath a little shuddery, but otherwise fuck it, Sev, it’s four years gone, you need to…

To what? Need what?

You need…something, Sev. Some fucking thing, you need.

Sigh again. Gesture at the door Marsalis just walked out of.

“Ethan was a different man, Tom. Ethan wasn’t his gene code, he wasn’t just a jazzed-up area thirteen and a custom-wired limbic system. He—”

Another helpless gesture.

“Do I see similarities? Yeah. Did Ethan have the same hey-cut-my-fucking-throat-see-if-I-care attitude? Yeah. Did Ethan make any normal male in the room itch up the way Marsalis is making you itch up? Yeah. Does that—”

“Sev, I’m not—”

“You are, Tom.” She spread her hands, offered up the smile she’d repressed earlier. “You are. It’s how they built them, it’s what they’re for. And your reaction—that’s how they built you. It’s just that it took evolution a hundred thousand generations to put you together, and it took human science less than a century to build them. Faster systems management, that’s all.”

“What’s that, a quote from the Project Lawman brochure?”

Sevgi shook her head, kept the smile. “No. Just something Ethan used to say. Look, you asked me if Ethan and this guy are alike? How would I know? Ethan used to get up half an hour before me every morning and grind fresh coffee for us both. Would this guy do that? Who knows?”

“One way to find out,” said Norton, deadpan.

Sevgi lost her smile. Leveled a warning finger. “Don’t even go there.”

“Sorry.” There wasn’t much sincerity in the way he said it. A grin hovered in one corner of his mouth. “Got to get down to Fifth Avenue, sort out that sense of humor.”

“You got that right.”

He grew abruptly serious. “Look, I’m just curious, is all. Both these guys do share some pretty substantial engineered genetic traits.”

“Yeah, so what? Your parents engineered some similar genetic material into you and your brother way back at the start of Project Norton. Does that make the two of you similar?”

Norton grimaced. “Hardly.”

“So why assume that because Ethan and Marsalis have some basic genetic traits in common, there’d be any similarity in what kind of men they are? You can’t equate them just because they’re both variant thirteen, any more than you can equate them because, I don’t know, because they’re both black.”

“Oh come on, Sev. Be serious. We’re talking about substantial genetic tendency, not skin color.”

“I am serious.”

“No, you’re not. You’re flailing, and you know it. It’s not a good analogy.”

“Maybe not for you, Tom. But take a walk out that gate and see what kind of thinking you knock up against. It’s the same knee-jerk prejudice, just out of fucking date like everything else in Jesusland.”

Norton gave her a pained look. His tone tugged toward reproach. “Now you’re just letting your Union bigotry run away with you.”

“Think so?” She didn’t want to be this angry, but it was swelling and she couldn’t find a way to shut it down. Her voice was tight with the rising pulse of it. “You know, Ethan tracked down his sourcemat mother once. Turns out she’s this drop-dead-smart academic up in Seattle now, but she’s from here originally.”

“From Florida?”

“No, not from Florida.” Sevgi waved a hand irritably. “Louisiana, Mississippi, someplace like that. Jesusland, however you want to look at it. She grew up in the southern US, before Secession.”

Norton shrugged. “From what I hear, that’s pretty standard. They got most of the sourcemat mothers from the poverty belt back then. Cheap raw materials, fresh eggs for quick cash, right?”

“Yeah, well, she was luckier. She let some West Coast clinic harvest her in exchange for enough cash to set up and study in Seattle. Point is, I went across there with Ethan to see her.” Sevgi knew she was staring off into space, but she couldn’t make herself stop that, either. It was the last trip they’d made together. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shit she told us she went through, purely based on the color of her fucking skin. And that’s a single generation back.”

“You’re talking about Jesusland, Sev.”

“Oh, so who’s pulling Union rank now?”

“Fine.” For the first time, anger sharpened Norton’s voice. “Look, Sev, you don’t want to talk about this stuff, that’s fine with me. But make up your mind. I’m just trying to get a lock on our newfound friend.”

Sevgi held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. She sighed. “No, you’re not, Tom. That’s not it.”

“No? Now you’re a telepath?”

She smiled wearily. “I don’t need to be. I’m used to this. From before, from when I was with Ethan. This isn’t about Marsalis. It’s about me.”

“Hey, a telepath and modest, too.” But she saw how he faltered as he said it. She shrugged.

“Suit yourself, Tom. Maybe you haven’t spotted it yet, maybe you just don’t want to see it. But what you’re really trying to get a lock on is Marsalis and me. How I’m going to react to him, how I am reacting to him.”

Norton stared at her for a long moment. Long enough that she thought he would turn away. Then he gave her a shrug of his own.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “So how are you reacting to him, Sev?”