Personal.

The police were landing on the roof as I let myself out of the front door and walked unhurriedly down the street. Under my arm, Miller’s severed head was beginning to seep blood through the lining of Jerry’s jacket.

PART 3: ALLIANCE

(APPLICATION UPGRADE)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was quiet and sunny in the gardens at Suntouch House, and the air smelled of mown grass. From the tennis courts came the faint popping of a game in progress and once I heard Miriam Bancroft’s voice raised in excitement. Flash of tanned legs beneath a flaring white skirt and a puff of shell-pink dust where the driven ball buried itself in the back of her opponent’s court. There was a polite ripple of applause from the seated figures watching. I made my way down towards the courts, flanked by heavily armed security men with blank faces.

The players were taking a game break when I arrived, feet planted wide in front of their seats, heads down. As my feet crunched on the gravel surround, Miriam Bancroft looked up through tangled blonde hair and met my eye. She said nothing, but her hands worked at the handle of her racket and a smile split her lips. Her opponent, who also glanced up, was a slim young man with something about him that suggested he might genuinely be as young as his body. He looked vaguely familiar.

Bancroft was seated at the middle of a row of deck chairs, Oumou Prescott on his right and a man and woman I’d never met on his left. He didn’t get up when I reached him; in fact he barely looked at me. One hand gestured to the seat next to Prescott.

“Sit down, Kovacs. It’s the last game.”

I twitched a smile, resisting the temptation to kick his teeth down his throat, and folded myself into the deck chair. Oumou Prescott leaned across to me and murmured behind her hand.

“Mr. Bancroft has had some unwanted attention from the police today. You are being less subtle than we had hoped.”

“Just warming up,” I muttered back.

By some prior agreed time limit, Miriam Bancroft and her opponent shrugged off their towels and took up position. I settled back and watched the play, eyes mostly on the woman’s taut body as it surged and swung within the white cotton, remembering how it looked unclothed, how it had writhed against me. Once, just before a service, she caught me looking at her and her mouth bent in fractional amusement. She was still waiting for an answer from me, and now she thought she had it. When the match finished, in a flurry of hard-fought but visibly inevitable points, she came off court glowing.

She was talking to the man and woman I didn’t know when I approached to offer my congratulations. She saw me coming and turned to include me in the little group.

“Mr. Kovacs.” Her eyes widened the slightest bit. “Did you enjoy watching?”

“Very much,” I said truthfully. “You’re quite merciless.”

She tipped her head on one side and began to towel her sweat-soaked hair with one hand. “Only when required,” she said. “You won’t know Nalan or Joseph, of course. Nalan, Joseph, this is Takeshi Kovacs, the Envoy Laurens hired to look into his murder. Mr. Kovacs is from offworld. Mr. Kovacs, this is Nalan Ertekin, Chief Justice of the UN Supreme Court, and Joseph Phiri from the Commission of Human Rights.”

“Delighted.” I made a brief formal bow to both of them. “You’re here to discuss Resolution 653, I imagine.”

The two officials exchanged a glance, then Phiri nodded. “You’re very well informed,” he said gravely. “I’ve heard a lot about the Envoy Corps, but still I’m impressed. How long have you been on Earth, exactly?”

“About a week.” I exaggerated, hoping to play down the usual paranoia elected officials exhibit around Envoys.

“A week, yes. Impressive indeed.” Phiri was a heavy-set black man, apparently in his fifties, with hair that was greying a little and careful brown eyes. Like Dennis Nyman, he affected external eye-wear, but where Nyman’s steely lenses had been designed to enhance the planes of his face, this man wore the glasses to deflect attention. They were heavy-framed and gave him the appearance of a forgetful cleric, but behind the lenses, the eyes missed nothing.

“And are you making progress with your investigation?” This was Ertekin, a handsome Arab woman a couple of decades younger than Phiri, and therefore likely to be on at least her second sleeve. I smiled at her.

“Progress is difficult to define, your honour. As Quell would have it, They come to me with progress reports, but all I see is change, and bodies burnt.”

“Ah, you are from Harlan’s World, then,” Ertekin said politely. “And do you consider yourself a Quellist, Mr. Kovacs?”

I let the smile become a grin. “Sporadically. I’d say she had a point.”

“Mr. Kovacs has been quite busy, in fact,” said Miriam Bancroft hurriedly. “I imagine he and Laurens have a lot to discuss. Perhaps it might be better if we left them to these matters.”

“Yes, of course.” Ertekin inclined her head. “Perhaps we’ll talk again later.”

The three of them drifted over to commiserate with Miriam’s opponent, who was ruefully stowing his racket and towels in a bag; but for all Miriam’s diplomatic steerage, Nalan Ertekin did not seem unduly concerned to make her escape. I felt a momentary glimmer of admiration for her. Telling a UN executive, in effect an officer of the Protectorate, that you’re a Quellist is a bit like confessing to ritual slaughter at a vegetarian dinner; it’s not really the done thing.

I turned to find Oumou Prescott at my shoulder.

“Shall we?” she said grimly, and pointed up towards the house. Bancroft was already striding ahead. We went after him at what I thought was an excessive pace.

“One question,” I managed, between breathing. “Who’s the kid? The one Mrs. Bancroft crucified.”

Prescott flicked me an impatient glance.

“Big secret, huh?”

“No, Mr. Kovacs, it is not a secret, large or otherwise. I merely think you might do better occupying your mind with other matters than the Bancrofts’ house guests. If you must know, the other player was Marco Kawahara.”

“Was it, indeed.” Accidentally, I’d slipped into Phiri’s speech patterns. Chalk up a double strike for personality. “So that’s where I’ve seen his face before. Takes after his mother, doesn’t he?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” said Prescott dismissively. “I have never met Ms. Kawahara.”

“Lucky you.”

Bancroft was waiting for us in an exotic conservatory pinned to the seaward wing of the house. The glass walls were a riot of alien colours and forms, among which I picked out a young mirrorwood tree and numerous stands of martyrweed. Bancroft was standing next to one of the latter, spraying it carefully with a white metallic dust. I don’t know much about martyrweed beyond its obvious uses as a security device, so I had no idea what the powder was.

Bancroft turned as we came in. “Please keep your voices reasonably low.” His own voice was curiously flat in the sound absorbent environment. “Martyrweed is highly sensitive at this stage of development. Mr. Kovacs, I assume you are familiar with it.”

“Yeah.” I glanced at the vaguely hand-shaped cups of the leaves, with the central crimson stains that had given the plant its name. “You sure these are mature?”

“Fully. On Adoracion, you’ll have seen them larger, but I had Nakamura tailor these for indoor use. This is as secure as a Nilvibe cabin and,” he gestured to a trio of steel frame chairs beside the martyrweed, “a great deal more comfortable.”

“You wanted to see me,” I said impatiently. “What about?”

For just a moment that black iron stare bent on me with the full force of Bancroft’s three and a half centuries, and it was like locking gazes with a demon. For that second, the Meth soul was looking out and I saw reflected in those eyes all the myriad ordinary single lives that they had watched die, like the pale flickerings of moths at a flame. It was an experience I’d only had once before, and that was when I’d taken issue with Reileen Kawahara. I could feel the heat on my wings.