“You, Jerry,” I said evenly, “need to listen to people occasionally. I’ve told you, my name is not Ryker.”

“Whoever the fuck you are, I’m connected.” There was so much venom on the face before me it was a wonder Jerry didn’t choke on it. “I’m jacked into the fucking machine, you get me? This. All this. You’re going to fucking pay. You’re going to wish—”

“I’d never met you,” I finished for him. I stowed the empty Philips gun back in its Fibregrip holster. “Jerry, I already wish I’d never met you. Your sophisticated friends were sophisticated enough for that. But I notice they didn’t tell you I was back on the street. Not so tight with Ray these days, is that it?”

I was watching his face, and the name didn’t register. Either he was very cool under fire, or he genuinely wasn’t fishing in the senior fleet. I tried again.

“Trepp’s dead,” I said casually. His eyes moved, just a fraction. “Trepp, and a few others. Want to know why you’re still alive?”

His mouth tightened, but he said nothing. I leaned over the table and pushed the barrel of the Nemex up against his left eye.

“I asked you a question.”

“Fuck you.”

I nodded and settled back onto my seat. “Hard man, huh? So I’ll tell you. I need some answers, Jerry. You can start by telling me what happened to Elizabeth Elliott. That should be easy, I figure you carved her up yourself. Then I want to know who Elias Ryker is, who Trepp works for, and where the clinic is that you sent me to.”

“Fuck you.”

“You don’t think I’m serious? Or are you just hoping the cops are going to show up and save your stack?” I fished the commandeered blaster out of my pocket left-handed and drew a careful bead on the dead security guard on the runway. The range was short and the beam torched his head off in a single explosion. The stench of charred flesh rolled across the room to us. Keeping one eye on Jerry, I played the beam around a little until I was sure I’d destroyed everything from the shoulders up, then snapped the weapon off and lowered it. Jerry stared at me over the table.

“You piece of shit, he only worked security for me!”

“That’s just become a proscribed profession, as far as I’m concerned. Deek and the rest are going the same way. And so are you, unless you tell me what I want to know.” I lifted the beam weapon. ”One chance.”

“All right.” The crack was audible in his voice. “All right, all right. Elliott tried to put a lock on a customer, she got some big name Meth come slumming down here, reckoned she’d got enough shit to twist him. Stupid cunt tried to make me a partnership deal, she figured I could lean on this Meth guy. No fucking clue what she was dealing with.”

“No.” I looked stonily at him across the table. “I guess not.”

He caught the look. “Hey, man, I know what you’re thinking, but it ain’t like that. I tried to warn her off, so she went direct. Direct to a fucking Meth. You think I wanted this place ripped down and me buried under it. I had to deal with her, man. Had to.”

“You iced her?”

He shook his head. “I made a call,” he said in a subdued voice. “That’s how it works around here.”

“Who’s Ryker?”

“Ryker’s a—,” he swallowed. “—a cop. Used to work Sleeve Theft, then they upped him to the Organic Damage Division. He was fucking that Sia cunt, the one came out here the night you crocked Oktai.”

“Ortega?”

“Yeah, Ortega. Everybody knew it, they say that’s how he got the transfer. That’s why we figured you were—he was—back on the street. When Deck saw you talking to Ortega we figured she’d accessed someone, done a deal.”

“Back on the street? Back from where?”

“Ryker was dirty, man.” Now the flow had started, it was coming in full flood. “He RD’d a couple of sleevedealers, up in Seattle—”

“RD?”

“Yeah, RD’d.” Jerry looked momentarily nonplussed, as if I’d just queried the colour of the sky.

“I’m not from here,” I said patiently.

“RD. Real Death. He pulped them, man. Couple of other guys went down stack intact so Ryker paid off some Dipper to register the lot of them Catholic. Either the input didn’t take, or someone at OrgDam found out. He got the double barrel. Two hundred years, no remission. Word is, Ortega headed up the squad that took him down.”

Well, well. I waved the Nemex encouragingly.

“That’s it, man. All I got. It’s off the wire. Street talk. Look, Ryker never shook this place down, even back when he worked ST. I run a clean house. I never even met the guy.”

“And Oktai?”

Jerry nodded vigorously. “That’s it, Oktai. Oktai used to run spare part deals out of Oakland. You, I mean, Ryker used to shake him down all the time. Beat him half to death couple of years back.”

“So Oktai comes running to you—”

“That’s it. He’s like, crazy, saying Ryker must be working some scam down here. So we run the cabin tapes, get you talking to—”

Jerry dried up as he saw where we were heading. I gestured again with the gun.

“That’s fucking it.” There was an edge of desperation in his voice.

“All right.” I sat back a little and patted my pockets for cigarettes, remembered I had none. “You smoke?”

“Smoke? Do I look like a fucking idiot?”

I sighed. “Never mind. What about Trepp? She looked a little upmarket for your cred. Who’d you borrow her from?”

“Trepp’s an indie. Contract hire for whoever. She does me favours sometimes.”

“Not any more. You ever see her real sleeve?”

“No. Wire says she keeps it on ice in New York most of the time.”

“That far from here?”

“ ‘Bout an hour, suborbital.”

By my reckoning that put her in the same league as Kadmin. Global muscle, maybe Interplanetary too. The Senior Fleet.

‘So who’s the wire say she’s working for now?”

“I don’t know.”

I studied the barrel of the blaster as if it were a Martian relic. “Yeah, you do.” I looked up and offered him a bleak smile. “Trepp’s gone. Unstacked, the works. You don’t need to worry about selling her out. You need to worry about me.”

He stared defiantly at me for a couple of moments, then looked down.

“I heard she was doing stuff for the Houses.”

“Good. Now, tell me about the clinic. Your sophisticated friends.”

The Envoy training should have been keeping my voice even, but maybe I was getting rusty because Jerry heard something there. He moistened his lips.

“Listen, those are dangerous people. You got away, you’d better just leave it at that. You got no idea what they—”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea, actually.” I pointed the blaster into his face. “The clinic.”

“Christ, they’re just people I know. You know, business associates. They can use the spare parts, sometimes, and I—” He changed tack abruptly as he saw my face. “They do stuff for me sometimes. It’s just business.”

I thought of Louise, alias Anenome, and the journey we’d taken together. I felt a muscle beneath my eye twitch, and it was all I could do not to pull the trigger there and then. I dug up my voice, instead, and used it. It sounded more like a machine than the door robot had.

“We’re going for a ride, Jerry. Just you and me, to visit your business associates. And don’t fuck with me. I’ve already figured out it’s over the other side of the Bay. And I’ve got a good memory for places. You steer me wrong, and I’ll RD you on the spot. Got it?”

From his face I judged that he did.

But just to make sure, on the way out of the club I stopped beside each corpse and burnt its head off down to the shoulders. The burning left an acrid stench that followed us out of the gloom and into the early morning street like a ghost of rage.

There’s a village up on the north arm of the Millsport archipelago where, if a fisherman survives drowning, he is required to swim out to a low reef about half a kilometre from shore, spit into the ocean beyond and return. Sarah’s from there, and once, holed up in a cheap swamp hotel, hiding from heat both physical and figurative, she tried to explain the rationale. It always sounded like macho bullshit to me.