Richard Morgan - Broken Angels

Djoko Roespinoedji emerged from the archway opposite, minus his jacket and accompanied by two women who looked as if they’d stepped straight out of the software for a virtual brothel. Their muslin-wrapped forms exhibited the same airbrushed lack of blemishes and gravity-defying curves, and their faces held the same absence of expression. Sandwiched between these two confections, the eight-year-old Roespinoedji looked ludicrous.

“Ivanna and Kas,” he said, gesturing in turn to each woman. “My constant companions. Every boy needs a mother, wouldn’t you say? Or two. Now,” he snapped his fingers, surprisingly loudly, and the two women drifted across to the buffet. He seated himself in an adjacent sofa. “To business. What exactly can I do for you and your friends, Jan?”

“You’re not eating?” I asked him.

“Oh.” He smiled and gestured at his two companions. “Well, they are, and I’m really very fond of both of them.”

Schneider looked embarrassed.

“No?” Roespinoedji sighed and reached across to take a pastry from my plate at random. He bit into it. “There, then. Can we get down to business now? Jan? Please?”

“We want to sell you the shuttle, Djoko.” Schneider took a huge bite out of a chicken drumstick and talked through it. “Knockdown price.”

“Indeed?”

“Yeah—call it military surplus. Wu Morrison ISN-70, very little wear and no previous owner of record.”

Roespinoedji smiled. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Check it if you like.” Schneider swallowed his mouthful. “The datacore’s wiped cleaner than your tax records, six hundred thousand klick range. Universal config, hard space, suborbital, submarine. Handles like a whorehouse harpy.”

“Yes, I seem to remember the seventies were impressive. Or was it you that told me that, Jan?” The boy stroked his beardless chin in a gesture that clearly belonged to a previous sleeve. “Never mind. This knockdown bargain comes armed, I assume.”

Schneider nodded, chewing. “Micromissile turret, nose-mounted. Plus evasion systems. Full autodefensive software, very nice package.”

I coughed on a pastry.

The two women drifted over to the sofa where Roespinoedji sat and arranged themselves in decorative symmetry on either side of him. Neither of them had said a word or made a sound that I could detect since they walked in. The woman on Roespinoedji’s left began to feed him from her plate. He leaned back against her and eyed me speculatively while he chewed what she gave him.

“Alright,” he said finally. “Six million.”

“UN?” asked Schneider, and Roespinoedji laughed out loud.

“Saft. Six million saft.”

The Standard Archaeological Find Token, created back when the Sanction government was still little more than a global claims administrator, and now an unpopular global currency whose performance against the Latimer franc it had replaced was reminiscent of a swamp panther trying to climb a fricfree-treated dock ramp. There were currently about two hundred and thirty saft to the Protectorate (UN) dollar.

Schneider was aghast, his haggler’s soul outraged. “You cannot be serious, Djoko. Even six million UN’s only about half what it’s worth. It’s a Wu Morrison, man.”

“Does it have cryocaps?”

“Uhhh… No.”

“So what the fuck use is it to me, Jan?” Roespinoedji asked without heat. He glanced sideways at the woman on his right, and she passed him a wineglass without a word. “Look, at this precise moment the only use anyone outside the military has for a space rig is as a means of lifting out of here, beating the blockade and getting back to Latimer. That six-hundred-thousand-kilometre range can be modified by someone who knows what they’re doing, and the Wu Morrisons have goodish guidance systems, I know, but at the speed you’ll get out of an ISN-70, especially backyard customised, it’s still the best part of three decades back to Latimer. You need cryocapsules for that.” He held up a hand to forestall Schneider’s protest. “And I don’t know anyone, anyone , who can get cryocaps. Not for cunt nor credit. The Landfall Cartel know what they’re about, Jan, and they’ve got it all welded shut. No one gets out of here alive—not until the war’s over. That’s the deal.”

“You can always sell to the Kempists,” I said. “They’re pretty desperate for the hardware, they’ll pay.”

Roespinoedji nodded. “Yes, Mr. Kovacs, they will pay, and they’ll pay in saft. Because it’s all they’ve got. Your friends in the Wedge have seen to that.”

“Not my friends. I’m just wearing this.”

“Rather well, though.”

I shrugged.

“What about ten,” said Schneider hopefully. “Kemp’s paying five times that for reconditioned suborbitals.”

Roespinoedji sighed. “Yes, and in the meantime I have to hide it somewhere, and pay off anyone who sees it. It’s not a dune scooter, you know. Then I have to make contact with the Kempists, which as you may be aware carries a mandatory erasure penalty these days. I have to arrange a covert meeting, oh and with armed back-up in case these toy revolutionaries decide to requisition my merchandise instead of paying up. Which they often do if you don’t come heavy. Look at the logistics, Jan. I’m doing you a favour, just taking it off your hands. Who else were you going to go to?”

“Eight—”

“Six is fine,” I cut in swiftly. “And we appreciate the favour. But how about you sweeten our end with a ride into Landfall and a little free information? Just to show we’re all friends.”

The boy’s gaze sharpened and he glanced towards Tanya Wardani.

“Free information, eh?” He raised his eyebrows, twice in quick succession, clownishly. “Of course there’s really no such thing, you know. But just to show we’re all friends. What do you want to know?”

“Landfall.” I said. “Outside of the Cartel, who are the razorfish? I’m talking about second-rank corporates, maybe even third rank. Who’s tomorrow’s shiny new dream at the moment?”

Roespinoedji sipped meditatively at his wine. “Hmm. Razorfish. I don’t believe we have any of those on Sanction IV. Or Latimer, come to that.”

“I’m from Harlan’s World.”

“Oh, really. Not a Quellist, I assume.” He gestured at the Wedge uniform. “Given your current political alignment, I mean.”

“You don’t want to oversimplify Quellism. Kemp keeps quoting her, but like most people he’s selective.”

“Well, I really wouldn’t know.” Roespinoedji put up one hand to block the next piece of food his concubine was readying for him. “But your razorfish. I’d say you’ve got a half dozen at most. Late arrivals, most of them Latimer-based. The interstellars blocked out most of the local competition until about twenty years ago. And now of course they’ve got the Cartel and the government in their pocket. There’s not much more than scraps for everybody else. Most of the third rank are getting ready to go home; they can’t really afford the war.” He stroked at his imagined beard. “Second rank, well… Sathakarn Yu Associates maybe, PKN, the Mandrake Corporation. They’re all pretty carnivorous. Might be a couple more I can dig out for you. Are you planning to approach these people with something?”

I nodded. “Indirectly.”

“Yes, well, some free advice to go with your free information, then. Feed it to them on a long stick.” Roespinoedji raised his glass towards me and then drained it. He smiled affably. “Because if you don’t, they’ll take your hand off at the shoulder.”

Like a lot of cities that owe their existence to a spaceport, Landfall had no real centre. Instead it sprawled haphazardly across a broad semi-desert plain in the southern hemisphere where the original colony barges had touched down a century ago. Each corporation holding stock in the venture had simply built its own landing field somewhere on the plain and surrounded it with a ring of ancillary structures. In time those rings had spread outwards, met each other and eventually merged into a warren of acentric conurbation with only the vaguest of overall planning to link it all together. Secondary investors moved in, renting or buying space from the primaries and carving themselves niches in both the market and the rapidly burgeoning metropolis. Meanwhile, other cities arose elsewhere on the globe, but the Export Quarantine clause in the Charter ensured that all the wealth generated by Sanction IVs archaeological industries had at some point to pass through Landfall. Gorged on an unrestricted diet of artefact export, land allocation and dig licensing, the former spaceport had swelled to monstrous proportions. It now covered two-thirds of the plain and, with twelve million inhabitants, was home to almost thirty per cent of what was left of Sanction IVs total population.