Carnival

Which was why the elaborate system of double blinds and duplicity. Isolation. Containment. Any good conspiracy needs fire doors. Lesa had required a chance to assess Katherinessen before she–and more important Elena–revealed herself. But when she’d tried to make the final co

Robert had palmed the chip and handed it directly to her.

Lesa’s comb stopped in her hair. Robert had also been left alone with Vincent for at least half an hour before Lesa attempted to seal the contact.

She untangled the comb carefully, reversed its field with a touch on the controls, and redacted the brighteners. When her hair was clean, she folded the comb into its slot in the wall and stood. She stepped over Walter to reach the house com on the wall by the door. “House, please contact Agnes.”

A moment later, Agnes answered, and Lesa told her that under no circumstances was Robert to leave the Blue Rooms. Agnes wanted details, and Lesa was forced to admit she had none to offer, “–but trust me on this.”

She was already pulling on her boots as she said it. When House ended the co

The car was waiting at the end of the alley. There were some perks to being a government employee.

There were days when Kusanagi‑Jones wished he were better at lying to himself, and then there were the days when he was pretty sure he had it down to a science. While Vincent made idle conversation, he split his wardrobe under the covers of the bed they had made love in, left the remainder to assemble a warm, breathing, nanometer‑thick shell, and set what he retained to camouflage mode. When he stood up, as promised, he was invisible.

Well, not trulyinvisible. But his wardrobe handled minor issues like refracting light around him through the same process by which it could provide a 360‑degree prospect in a combat situation, a lensing effect. It contained his body heat, presenting an ambient‑temperature surface to any thermal imaging devices, and it filtered carbon and other emissions.

The drawback was that it would get hot and stuffy in there rather quickly. He would have to move fast.

Kusanagi‑Jones stood against the wall beside the door as Vincent opened it and called Cathay inside on the excuse of wanting a late snack. She came, yawning, and Kusanagi‑Jones slipped past her before the door could iris shut.

The second security agent outside wasn’t Shafaqat. They must be trading off. In any case, she was standing against the wall, admirably placed to see anyone coming in either direction down the short curved hall, but with only a peripheral view of the door at her back. Kusanagi‑Jones slipped past in complete silence, the only clue to his passage the dimpling of the carpetplant underfoot. She didn’t notice.

The lift was a challenge, but it was out of sight around the curve of the hall. He spoke softly and the door glided open. He stepped inside. He wanted to breathe deeply, to savor feeling alive in his skin and the lingering tenderness of sex. But he kept his breaths short and slow, giving his wardrobe as much help as he could. He couldn’t afford to dwell on pleasant memories when he was here to fail the man who created them.

Vincent waited until Cathay returned with a tray, toast and tea for two. He thanked her, then cleared Angelo’s solar collector from the edge of the open window. He sat on the ledge to eat the toast and drink the tea. Then he climbed back into bed beside the homunculus and repeated Angelo’s trick of mitosis. When he stood, he collected the unviewed chip from its hiding place and slotted it into his reader. The chip contained a map. He studied it while leaning out the window, examining the teeming city below.

Then he put one foot up and rose into the frame.

Anyone in the room would have registered nothing. No movement, no shifting of the light except a faint sparkle of mismatched edges if they had happened to look at the window just as he stepped up into it.

It was a long way down. Vincent let go of the window frame, lifted his arms, and stepped out.

Unlike a parachute, there was no shock as his wardrobe unfurled, growing filaments and tendrils festooned with catch pockets. The air resistance slowed him before he could build up falling velocity. He ballooned down like a spider, steering for a smooth dimple at the base of the tower, and landed squarely where he’d aimed. But faster than he should have; he rolled with it, but his knee twinged, and his wardrobe couldn’t quite absorb the shock enough to protect his sun‑seared shoulder. He whimpered when he hit, but the street noise was enough to cover that. In camouflage mode, his wardrobe would damp most of the noise anyway.

Once the wardrobe contracted, he slithered down the curved roofline to drop to street level, earning another twinge from his knee. He checked the map; the meeting place was one square over, in the open. No proof against listening devices, but if his suspicions were right, a member of security directorate would be making sure no records remained.

He slipped through the crowds into darkness, following the map through quieter streets. There were only a few reeling revelers here, and he avoided them easily. Somewhere in the distance, he heard fireworks or gunfire.

He fully expected that the shadow awaiting him in the darkness under an arched walkway would be Lesa Pretoria. He hadn’t been sure until that evening, but the complex of her kinetics over di

He was drawing a breath to greet Miss Pretoria when an entirely different voice interrupted him, and a woman older and stouter than Lesa stepped into the light. “Miss Katherinessen,” she said. “I’m pleased you could get away.”

“Elder Kyoto,” he choked. “This is a surprise.”

Once Kusanagi‑Jones reached street level and slipped into the night, he moved faster. The unrippled pavement was sun‑warm under his feet, and he had little trouble winding through the scattered revelers by Gorgon‑light. The gallery lay across the square. Penthesilea’s government center was compact, and it wasn’t the center of the party. Kusanagi‑Jones only had to cope with the overflow.

He heard music from elsewhere in the city, cheers and laughter that suggested a parade or theatrical event. He triggered the full‑circle display, the fisheye appearing in the lower corner of his sight where peripheral vision would pick it up. Years of training meant he’d react to it as fast as to a flicker in the corner of his eye, and as accurately.

He passed between drunks and singers, hesitated at the report of gunfire and an echoing siren. Four shots, but they were distant and spaced like a duel, and though heads turned, nobody reacted more strongly. He crept around to the back of the gallery, to the broad doors where more trucks of repatriated art were being unloaded and the protectively wrapped bundles carted in, to be hung in accordance with the afternoon’s plan.

He skulked inside.

The lifts were ru

The instructions Miss Ouagadougou had provided were quite precise. He crossed the first gallery and ascended the stair under the watchful eyes of the frieze. When he reached the far corner, he paused. This adventure would have been considerably less nerve‑wracking if there were some mechanical means of opening the passage, something that could be hacked or bypassed.