Richard Morgan - Broken Angels

“Not intentionally,” I lied. “Sleep well?”

She shook her head. “I can still hear Sutjiadi.”

“Yeah.”

When the silence had stretched too much, I nodded at the arch. “You going in here?”

“Are you fucking—? No. I only stopped to…” and she gestured helplessly at the paint-daubed Martian alloy.

I peered at the glyphs. “Instructions for a faster-than-light drive, right?”

She almost smiled.

“No.” She reached out to run her fingers along the form of one of the glyphs. “It’s a schooling screed. Sort of cross between a poem and a set of safety instructions for fledglings. Parts of it are equations, probably for lift and drag. It’s sort of a grafiti as well. It says.” She stopped, shook her head again. “There’s no way to say what it says. But it, ah, it promises. Well, enlightenment, a sense of eternity, from dreaming the use of your wings before you can actually fly. And take a good shit before you go up in a populated area.”

“You’re winding me up. It doesn’t say that.”

“It does. All tied to the same equation sequence too.” She turned away. “They were good at integrating things. Not much compartmentalisation in the Martian psyche, from what we can tell.”

The demonstration of knowledge seemed to have exhausted her. Her head drooped.

“I was going to the dighead,” she said. “That café Roespinoedji showed us last time. I don’t think my stomach will hold anything down, but—”

“Sure. I’ll walk with you.”

She looked at the mob suit, now rather obvious under the clothes the Dig 27 entrepreneur had lent me.

“Maybe I should get one of those.”

“Barely worth it for the time we’ve got left.”

We plodded up the slope.

“You sure this is going to come off?” she asked.

“What? Selling the biggest archaeological coup of the past five hundred years to Roespinoedji for the price of a virtuality box and a black market launch slot? What do you think?”

“I think he’s a fucking merchant, and you can’t trust him any further than Hand.”

“Tanya,” I said gently. “It wasn’t Hand that sold us out to the Wedge. Roespinoedji’s getting the deal of the millennium, and he knows it. He’s solid on this one, believe me.”

“Well. You’re the Envoy.”

The café was pretty much as I remembered it, a forlorn-looking herd of moulded chairs and tables gathered in the shade cast by the massive stanchions and struts of the dighead frame. A holomenu fluoresced weakly overhead, and a muted Lapinee playlist seeped into the air from speakers hung on the structure. Martian artefacts stood about the place in no particular pattern that I could discern. We were the only customers.

A terminally bored waiter sloped out of hiding somewhere and stood at our table, looking resentful. I glanced up at the menu then back at Wardani. She shook her head.

“Just water,” she said. “And cigarettes, if you’ve got them.”

“Site Sevens or Will to Victory?”

She grimaced. “Site Sevens.”

The waiter looked at me, obviously hoping I wasn’t going to spoil his day and order some food.

“Got coffee?”

He nodded.

“Bring me some. Black, with whisky in it.”

He trudged away. I raised an eyebrow at Wardani behind his back.

“Leave him alone. Can’t be much fun working here.”

“Could be worse. He could be a conscript. Besides,” I gestured around me at the artefacts. “Look at the décor. What more could you want?”

A wan smile.

“Takeshi.” She hunched forward over the table. “When you get the virtual gear installed. I, uh, I’m not going with you.”

I nodded. Been expecting this .

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologising to me for?”

“You, uh. You’ve done a lot for me in the last couple of months. You got me out of the camp—”

“We pulled you out of the camp because we needed you. Remember.”

“I was angry when I said that. Not with you, but—”

“Yeah, with me. Me, Schneider, the whole fucking world in a uniform.” I shrugged. “I don’t blame you. And you were right. We got you out because we needed you. You don’t owe me anything.”

She studied her hands where they lay in her lap.

“You helped put me back together again, Takeshi. I didn’t want to admit it to myself at the time, but that Envoy recovery shit works. I’m getting better. Slowly, but it’s off that base.”

“That’s good.” I hesitated, then made myself say it. “Fact remains, I did it because I needed you. Part of the rescue package; there was no point in getting you out of the camp if we left half your soul behind.”

Her mouth twitched. “Soul?”

“Sorry, figure of speech. Too much time hanging around Hand. Look, I’ve got no problem with you bailing out. I’m kind of curious to know why, is all.”

The waiter toiled back into view at that point, and we quietened. He laid out the drinks and the cigarettes. Tanya Wardani slit the pack and offered me one across the table. I shook my head.

“I’m quitting. Those things’ll kill you.”

She laughed almost silently and fed herself one from the pack. Smoke curled up as she touched the ignition patch. The waiter left. I sipped at my whisky coffee and was pleasantly surprised. Wardani plumed smoke up into the dighead frame space.

“Why am I staying?”

“Why are you staying?”

She looked at the table top. “I can’t leave now, Takeshi. Sooner or later, what we found out there is going to get into the public domain. They’ll open the gate again. Or take an IP cruiser out there. Or both.”

“Yeah, sooner or later. But right now there’s a war in the way.”

“I can wait.”

“Why not wait on Latimer? It’s a lot safer there.”

“I can’t. You said yourself, transit time in the ‘ Chandra has got to be eleven years, minimum. That’s full acceleration, without any course correction Ameli might have to do. Who knows what’s going to have happened back here in the next eleven years?”

“The war might have ended, for one thing.”

“The war might be over next year, Takeshi. Then Roespinoedji’s going to move on his investment, and when that happens, I want to be here.”

“Ten minutes ago you couldn’t trust him any more than Hand. Now you want to work for him?”

“We, uh,” she looked at her hands again. “We talked about it this morning. He’s willing to hide me until things have calmed down. Get me a new sleeve.” She smiled a little sheepishly. “Guild Masters are thin on the ground since the war kicked in. I guess I’m part of his investment.”

“Guess so.” Even while the words were coming out of my mouth, I couldn’t work out why I was trying so hard to talk her out of this. “You know that won’t help much if the Wedge come looking for you, don’t you?”

“Is that likely?”

“It could ha—” I sighed. “No, not really. Carrera’s probably backed up somewhere in a sneak station, but it’ll be a while before they realise that he’s dead. While longer before they sort the authorisation to sleeve the back-up copy. And even if he does get out to Dangrek, there’s nobody left to tell him what happened there.”

She shivered and looked away.

“It had to be done, Tanya. We had to cover our traces. You of all people should know that.”

“What?” Her eyes flicked back in my direction.

“I said. You of all people should know that.” I kept her gaze. “It’s what you did last time around. Isn’t it.”

She looked away again, convulsively. Smoke curled up off her cigarette and was snatched away by the breeze. I leaned into the silence between us.

“It doesn’t much matter now. You don’t have the skills to sink us between here and Latimer, and once we’re there you’ll never see me again. Would. Never have seen me again. And now you’re not coming with us. But like I said, I’m curious.”