“Yeah,” said Fixx, looking at the screen. “It’s me and I need your help.”

LISA sighed, the kind of sigh that said, What’s new?

“I need to land.”

“Then get clearance.” LISA sounded puzzled.

“Like I wouldn’t if I could...”

LISA tutted. When she spoke again LISA sounded more maternal than romantic. “I don’t want to know where you’ve come from, do I?”

“No,” said Fixx firmly. “You don’t. What you want to do is get me down quietly, discreetly.”

“Really?” LISA’s voice was amused. “I can think of three good reasons why that’s a bad idea.”

Fixx could think of a hundred but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

“One, I don’t know where you’ve been. Two, you’re a shit. And three, if you can remember that court settlement, you shouldn’t even be talking to me. In fact, I should stop this conversation now. Unless there’s a good reason why not...?”

So Fixx told LISA all about LizAlec, well, everything except the bits involving him. But she was smart enough to put those in for herself. And then just to sweeten the hook Fixx pumped through StarGlazz. Not honey-wrapped but as raw machine code. And then he fed through his famous fractal equation, the one he’d stumbled over as a fifteen-year-old deckjock, wired to fuck, hacking hell out of a Segasim mixer in a cellar club called Infinite Spiral at the back of Temple Bar. He’d gone from street kid to syndication on seven continents, three orbitals and most of Luna inside a year. No wonder he hadn’t been able to hack the lifestyle.

“Well,” Fixx said, when he figured LISA had worked out that if she fed the music through the equation then StarGlazz might run for several years. “Are you going to help me?”

LISA thought about it, ran through several thousand alternatives, reduced that to slightly less than a thousand and took the most unlikely. Fixx didn’t even notice she’d been gone. “Twenty-four hours,” LISA said firmly. “Then you leave, okay?”

Fixx grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “Twenty-four hours. I promise.”

LISA didn’t tell him she already knew where LizAlec had gone.

Chapter Seventeen

If it bleeds/We can kill it

“Fixx Valmont?”

“You got it...”

A nervous courier gave Fixx the 1st Virtual platinum card on his way out of VIP Customs. There had been a time he’d owned not just platinum cards but his own orbiting bank, but then, go back fifteen years and his arrival at somewhere like Planetside Arrivals would have ground the place to a halt. CySat, C3N, all freelance Ishies not nailed down or wired into a feed recharging batteries would have been crawling up the walls to get a grab of him, quite literally. Hell, there’d been five versions of the Fixx Valmont doll, bending arms, working legs, each one chipped up to say “You got it,” and a lot else beside.

Fixx took his 1stV card, sliding it effortlessly into the inside pocket of his swirling black cloak. It would be drawn against the US Navy’s own Luna account. Somehow Fixx doubted if they even realized they still had one.

He’d been waved through Immigration, excused sonic cleaning because of the electronics in his arm, and had his cloak, cotton shirt and black leather trousers taken by an embarrassed young woman in uniform, who returned with them a few minutes later, already irradiated and freeze-pressed.

“I’ve also been told to give you this.” Head down, the courier handed Fixx a small neoprene-sheathed blade, her eyes looking everywhere except at his metal arm. Or it might have been the explosion of yellow bruises that embarrassed the courier. But then, short of sitting around in a decompression chamber waiting for hyperbaric oxygenation to force extra oxygen into his bloodstream, Fixx was stuck with the bruising for as long as it took his body to repair the damaged tissue.

“Thanks.” The musician’s easy Dublin drawl was soft, miles from the rough Parisian street snarl he’d taken to using. Fuck knew what LISA had dumped into his records, but whatever it was, Fixx was enjoying the attention. It was like his early days of being on board with Sony, before being famous became hard work.

Fixx could almost believe he was up here to launch some new Sim. StarGlazz, maybe. Perhaps trying to screw over Bernie, his manager, in court hadn’t been such a good idea after all...

“Is everything okay?” the courier asked.

“Sure is.” Fixx ran his thumb along the ice-tempered molybdenum/vanadium blade, gently as he could, and blood beaded his skin, strung out in a line like little red pearls. “In fact, it couldn’t be better.” He nodded, tiny dreadlocks bobbing against the shaved sides of his head, tipped into slo/mo by the one-sixth gravity. So far, that was the only thing he was having trouble with, the slight time lapse between physical action and reaction. Didn’t look like Ghost was enjoying it much either.

The courier looked doubtfully at the kitten. “Regulations don’t...” But whatever she was about to say, she didn’t bother. It wasn’t her problem. Nodding quickly, the woman backed away.

Shit, thought Fixx, maybe LISA hadn’t told them he was filthy rich and famous after all, maybe it was just contagious. He was still watching the scuttling courier when someone else materialized at his side. Understated grey suit, lead-weighted leather shoes, white cotton shirt and red tie, a very slight bulge under one arm.

“Rez Aziz,” the man announced, sticking out his hand.

Fixx shook, feeling the firm shake of a professional. Clear brown eyes were watching him, gauging something. From the close-cropped hair and heavy moustache to the trim gut that spoke of workouts in an artificial gravity gym, everything about the man said police.

If he found Fixx’s cloak and leather trousers unusual, he didn’t let it show. Instead he flipped a pastel from a plastic dispenser and sucked heavily. A scent of violets filled the air between them.

“We weren’t expecting to see you again...”

“Surprise trip,” said Fixx.

The man looked at him, eyes narrowing as he examined the hasty repair job on Fixx’s face. He looked like the kind of man who could tell you, to the last blow, just how long it would take to inflict damage of that level.

“All the same...” His words were was emotionless, unaccented. It was the kind of voice Fixx found impossible to pin down. Middle Eastern sometime back, when the designation still meant something. And the twist of Arabic script on his gold ring suggested he kept his family’s faith. But the cologne and bland Seiko watch were as anonymous as his voice.

Five minutes after leaving him, Fixx knew he would find it impossible to remember the face, another five minutes and he’d probably have forgotten the clothes. And somehow Fixx got the feeling the man wanted it that way.

“Your luggage?” Mr Aziz looked round vaguely.

“I travel light,” said Fixx, nodding towards Ghost who was rubbing his neck against Fixx’s ankle.

“Twenty-four hours,” the man said firmly.

Fixx looked blank.

“It is twenty-four hours, isn’t it? Before you blast off for your new ring colony...”

So that was how LISA had swung it. Obscenely rich and just passing through. “Yeah,” said Fixx, “if you say so.” Hefting Ghost under one arm, Fixx turned for the door marked Exit. It opened before he was ten paces away, offering him a cheerful welcome in a language he didn’t understand. Japanese from the sound of it, which said something about who usually used the VIP lounge.

“They didn’t have time to change the program,” Rez Aziz said after him. He didn’t sound apologetic, just matter-of-fact, as if reclusive, arrogant, by-law breaking CySat stars came through all the time, expecting to be humoured. But then, hell, maybe they did.

Outside the door was a walkway, perched high above the floor of Arrivals. And looking down, Fixx could see a swirling blue mosaic and below that wall-to-wall tourists, refugees and journalists. People were beginning to look up — first one or two, then dozens — attracted by the glint of light on his arm and the cloak that billowed behind him when it remembered.