“You can’t beat it? The conditioning?”

I shrugged. “Most of the time, I don’t want to. That’s the nature of good conditioning. And this is a very superior product. I work better when I go with it. Fighting it is hard work, and it slows me down. Where did you get those cigarettes?”

“These?” She looked down at the packet absently. “Oh, Jan, I think. Yeah, he gave them to me.”

“That was nice of him.”

If she noticed the sarcasm in my voice, she didn’t react. “You want one?”

“Why not? By the look of it, I’m not going to be needing this sleeve much longer.”

“You really think we’re going to get as far as Latimer City.” She watched me shake out a cigarette and draw it to life. “You trust Hand to keep his side of this bargain?”

“There’s really very little point in him double crossing us.” I exhaled and stared at the smoke as it drifted away across the bar. A massive sense of departure from something was coursing unlooked-for through my mind, a sense of unnamed loss. I groped after the words to sew everything back together again. “The money’s already gone, Mandrake can’t get it back. So if it cuts us out, all Hand saves himself is the cost of the hypercast and three off-the-rack sleeves. In return for which he gets to worry forever about automated reprisals.”

Wardani’s gaze dropped to the resonance scrambler on the bar. “Are you sure this thing is clean?”

“Nope. I got it from an indie dealer, but she came Mandrake-recommended, so it could be tagged for all I know. It doesn’t really matter. I’m the only person who knows how the reprisals are set up, and I’m not about to tell you about it.”

“Thanks.” There was no appreciable irony in her tone. An internment camp teaches you things about the value of not knowing.

“Don’t mention it.”

“And what about silencing us after the event?”

I spread my hands. “What for? Mandrake isn’t interested in silence. This’ll be the biggest coup a single corporate entity have ever pulled off. It’ll want it known. Those time-locked data launches we set are going to be the oldest news on the block when they finally decay. Once Mandrake has got your starship hidden away somewhere safe, it’ll be dropping the fact through every major corporate dataport on Sanction IV. Hand’s going to use this to swing instant membership of the Cartel, and probably a seat on the Protectorate Commercial Council into the bargain. Mandrake’ll be a major player overnight. Our significance in that particular scheme of things will be nil.”

“Got it all worked out, huh?”

I shrugged again. “This isn’t anything we haven’t already discussed.”

“No.” She made a small, oddly helpless gesture. “I just didn’t think you’d be so, fucking, congenial with that piece of corporate shit.”

I sighed.

“Look. My opinion of Matthias Hand is irrelevant. He’ll do the job we want him to do. That’s what counts. We’ve been paid, we’re on board and Hand has marginally more personality than the average corporate exec, which as far as I’m concerned is a blessing. I like him well enough to get on with. If he tries to cross us, I’ll have no problem putting a bolt through his stack. Now, is that suitably detached for you?”

Wardani tapped the carapace of the scrambler. “You’d better hope this isn’t tagged. If Hand’s listening to you…”

“Well,” I reached across her and picked up Schneider’s untouched drink. “If he is, he’s probably having similar thoughts about me. So cheers, Hand, if you can hear me. Here’s to mistrust and mutual deterrence.”

I knocked back the rum and upended the glass on the scrambler. Wardani rolled her eyes.

“Great. The politics of despair. Just what I need.”

“What you need,” I said, yawning, “is some fresh air. Want to walk back to the tower? If we leave now, we should make it before curfew.”

“I thought, in that uniform, the curfew wasn’t an issue.”

I looked down at the black jacket and fingered the cloth. “Yeah, well. Probably isn’t, but we’re supposed to be profiling low right now. And besides, if you get an automated patrol, machines can be bloody-minded about these things. Better not to risk it. So what do you think, want to walk?”

“Going to hold my hand?” It was meant to be a joke, but it came out wrong. We both stood up and were abruptly, awkwardly inside each other’s personal space.

The moment stumbled between us like an uninvited drunk.

I turned to crush out my cigarette.

“Sure,” I said, trying for lightness. “It’s dark out there.”

I pocketed the scrambler, and stole back my cigarettes in the same movement, but my words had not dispersed the tension. Instead, they hung there like the afterimage of laser fire.

It’s dark out there.

Outside, we both walked with hands crammed securely into pockets.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The top three floors of the Mandrake Tower were executive residential, access barred from below and topped off with a multilevel roof complex of gardens and cafés. A variable permeate power screen strung from parapet pylons kept the sun fine-tuned for luminous warmth throughout the day, and in three of the cafés, you could get breakfast at any hour. We got it at midday and were still working our way through the last of the spread when an immaculately-attired Hand came looking for us. If he’d been listening in to last night’s character assassination, it didn’t seem to have upset him much.

“Good morning Mistress Wardani. Gentlemen. I trust your night out on the town proved worth the security risk.”

“Had its moments.” I reached out and speared another dim sum parcel with my fork, not looking at either of my companions. Wardani had in any case retreated behind her sunlenses the moment she sat down, and Schneider was brooding intently on the dregs in his coffee cup. The conversation had not been sparkling so far. “Sit down, help yourself.”

“Thank you.” Hand hooked out a chair and seated himself. On closer inspection, he looked a little tired around the eyes. “I’ve already had lunch. Mistress Wardani, the primary components from your hardware list are here. I’m having them brought up to your suite.”

The archaeologue nodded and turned her head upward to the sun. When it became apparent that this was going to be the full extent of her response, Hand turned his attention to me and cranked up an eyebrow. I shook my head slightly.

Don’t ask.

“Well. We’re about ready to recruit, lieutenant, if you—”

“Fine.” I washed down the dim sum with a short swallow of tea and got up. The atmosphere around the table was getting to me. “Let’s go.”

No one said anything. Schneider didn’t even look up, but Wardani’s blacked-out sunlenses tracked my retreat across the terrace like the blank faces of a sentry gun sensor.

We rode down from the roof in a chatty elevator which named each floor for us as we passed it and outlined a few of Mandrake’s current projects on the way. Neither of us spoke, and a scant thirty seconds later the doors recessed back on the low ceiling and raw fused-glass walls of the basement level. Iluminum strips cast a bluish light in the fusing and on the far side of the open space a blob of hard sunlight signalled an exit. Parked carelessly opposite the elevator doors, a nondescript straw-coloured cruiser was waiting.

“Thaisawasdi Field,” said Hand, leaning into the driver’s compartment. “The Soul Market.”

The engine note dialled up from idle to a steady thrum. We climbed in and settled back into the automould cushioning as the cruiser lifted and spun like a spider on a thread. Through the unpolarised glass of the cabin divider and past the shaven head of the driver, I watched the blob of sunlight expand as we rushed softly towards the exit. Then the light exploded around us in a hammering of gleam on metal, and we spiralled up into the merciless blue desert sky above Landfall. After the muted atmospheric shielding on the roof level, there was a slightly savage satisfaction to the change.