I raised an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t have been that easy.”
He smiled, apparently amused. “No, I now believe it might not have been. You’re a man of honor, Mr. Cates. You live with rules. I respect that. I envy it, because I long ago realized how impractical such thoughts are. I wish I could live by your rules. But I am an old man, now, and I have seen more than you. Rules are only as good as the people who obey them. If no one else is playing by your rules, no matter how good they are, what are they worth?”
I shook my head. “Just because we live in shit doesn’t mean we have to act like it.” I concentrated on scrubbing, a knot of anxiety forming in my stomach. “You’re leading up to something, old man. Just get on with it.”
There were a few seconds of silence.
“The Harper woman,” he said slowly. “What do you plan to do with her?”
I shrugged, digging glass out of a deep cut on my elbow, the brown water in the stained and cracked sink turning purple. “I’m not planning to marry her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
There was a long delay before he spoke. “She can’t walk out of here.”
I kept scrubbing. “Fuck you.”
“Cates, you know I’m right. She knows far too much-she’s seen the Monk, she knows Gatz is a psionic. She can’t live.”
I saw no reason to tell him the SSF already knew about both. “Fuck that. I didn’t bring her here. You made that happen. Once this is over, it won’t matter anymore. We can hang on to her for that long.”
“It won’t matter anymore?” He laughed. “Come now, Mr. Cates. That’s bullshit and you know it.”
I shut the spigot off and turned to him, dripping pink water. “There’s a lot you don’t know. About me, about this job. About our patron.”
He nodded. “Educate me, Mr. Cates. I will not have her out there, with my face, with my involvement in this. This is not some Tin Man, who, if it did send a scan of my face to Mother Church for OFR, would discover that my name is Terrance Nynes and that I’ve been dead for six years. This is not some piece of shit like yourself, this is someone with money, with a face on the Vids. With the power to cause me trouble. Understand? You people do not exist anyway. No one outside of this room and your debt-circle gives a shit whether you live or die. No one will avenge you. Her, she has people. She has money. She has social standing-the SSF would actually investigate. She cannot walk out of here alive.”
We stared at each other for a moment. I heard the sound of water dripping, the distant murmur of everyone discussing their lot in life in the Assembly Room. His lined face was expressionless, his eyes flat. I stood half-naked in front of him with my hands balled into fists.
“No, Dъnmharъ,” I said slowly, biting off each word. “We may be a lot of things, but we need to have rules. She hasn’t done either of us wrong.” I reached for my shirt and began drying off, leaving almost as much dirt on me as I’d just washed off. “This fucking world, this System-it’s brought us all low. But you can plant your feet, Mr. Orel. At the last rung of the ladder you can refuse to take that last step.”
We stared at each other for another moment, and then he smiled, a smooth ripple across his face. He laughed and slid off the crate, clapping me on a damp shoulder. “Ah, Mr. Cates-you forget. I remember the world before Unification better than you. I remember it well.” He started back toward the Assembly Room. “And it was not what you imagine it to have been.”
“All right,” I said. “Shut the fuck up and listen.”
I looked around at everyone. I hardly knew them, as people. As criminals, they were talented. Ty Kieth sat with his back against one of his black boxes, absorbing its radiation and looking peaceful, his round head starting to grow a light fuzz of stubble. Milton and Tanner sat back to back, supporting each other, grizzled and sinewy, the least feminine women I’d ever met. Canny Orel sat near Ty Kieth, arms crossed, looking comfortable and inscrutable. Kev Gatz sat on the floor, facing the Monk, his glasses in place and looking asleep-as usual. Brother West was in stasis.
Marilyn Harper stared at me unblinkingly, pale and disheveled. It looked like the thick black tape we’d used on her mouth was going to be a bitch to get off. Milton and Tanner had bitched loudly that she should be sequestered, so she couldn’t hear anything that might be used against us. But I knew that if I hid her away somewhere we’d find her dead soon enough, with Orel walking around whistling, hands in pockets, looking innocent, and I knew that it didn’t matter what she might do after we did this. We would either all be dead, or we’d be rich and our records expunged by the King Worm. I was betting on the former, but it all equaled not worrying about Marilyn Harper.
“We’re a go for tomorrow. Mr. Gatz and I have developed a plan for penetrating the Electric Church compound at Westminster Abbey. Once inside you all have support roles. I will locate the target and terminate him. The rest of you will handle security response and keep our escape route clear. Pay attention here. Being able to execute this plan will be the difference between collecting the money I promised you and getting killed.”
I waited, but no one said anything. Trying not to think about the real possibility that I didn’t know what I was doing, I could hear the Droids humming this way and that, on whatever errands Kieth had programmed them for.
I nodded and clicked a small remote control, and a three-dimensional building plan appeared in the air next to me, a crumbling facade wall shooting up from the ground, one tower and one broken stump, no other walls. Everything was underground, sinking deep below.
“Westminster Abbey,” I said. “Whatever the fuck it was, it’s now the headquarters of the Electric Church. All local conversions take place here, and administration of the Church worldwide is centered here. Dennis Squalor, founder and high priest of the Church, resides here. Security is very tight. Long story short, only Monks and converts get through the front entrance. All the converts who go through that gate are already dead.”
I let them chew on that for a second and then clicked the remote, and a small room inside the Abbey lit up.
“The front entrance is officially the only way into the Abbey. But it isn’t the only way in. These building plans are black market info. No one is supposed to have them.” I pointed to the red square. “This is the Press Room, where the EC holds its press conferences. Squalor himself appears there once in a while to smile and answer a few softball questions inbetween quoting the fucking Mulqer Codex. The Monks get in to the press room, friends, so there must be a way into the complex proper from the Press Room. And intense scrutiny reveals that there is.”
The whole place was quiet. They were all professionals, and they were soaking up the details. They all knew they’d need them later. I cleared my throat.
“It won’t be quite that easy. If we just force our way in through the Press Room, they send in the cops-and not the Crushers, either, but the officers and the Stormers-and pin us down, and it’s just a fight. We’re not going to fight our way through the whole fucking complex; it goes down pretty deep underground. At least a dozen levels below ground, covering much more square footage than the aboveground component.
“So,” I finished, “we’re going to employ a two-pronged attack. Kieth and I have established that only a Monk can get through the front entrance. You’ve all seen what Mr. Gatz can do when he puts his mind to it. All Monks are controlled by the EC through a behavioral modification chip-the chip that captures his independent thought and keeps the crazies at bay-and we’ve found we can’t replicate and replace the chip in time, and we may need some flexibility, so Mr. Gatz is going to Push Brother West, acting as a substitute for that chip. Brother West will be coherent and independent for a short while after that-longer than most because he will be a volunteer. Brother West will bring me in through the front entrance, quietly, as a convert.