Forty-One
FORTY-ONE
Two weeks ago
“What are you going to do about Isthmus Isako?” River Thea paced an agitated line back and forth in front of Uchi’s desk. “She’s demanding a meeting on behalf of the Agency. She knows you’re supposedly dead. She even went to the vastblasted crematorium to look for your remains. What does she want?”
The crematorium. His remains . Lord knew Martim had abused his body plenty while he still had it.
Never did take good enough care of it, didn’t rest it enough, pumped it full of chemicals, hadn’t even felt all that much emotion when he’d seen it empty.
But, still… it had been his , and now it was gone . Nothing but a pile of ashes.
A shudder of horror went through his nonexistent stomach.
Strange, how that could still happen. He knew it must be imaginary, these physical sensations he shouldn’t be able to experience anymore.
Even though all that was left of his flesh was some gray matter, the mind was a powerful thing.
Like the phenomenon of amputees claiming to still feel pain in their phantom limbs, there were times when he swore he felt his pulse racing under stress, or when his hands felt clammy despite no longer having sweat glands.
He preferred the illusion of feeling to the times when he couldn’t feel anything.
Thea stopped in front of him. “Are you listening?”
Martim pulled himself back into the moment. It was getting much easier to do so, now that the worst stretch of PR3D had passed. He no longer seemed to be losing his sanity, or at least, not quite as often.
“Maybe I should’ve notified the Agency,” he admitted.
“I didn’t think anyone would bother to look into it so quickly.
” In truth, he’d been in denial. He didn’t want to make his death official.
He didn’t want to deal with questions and paperwork from the Agency, posthumously ruin his own reputation in the industry, see his apartment and office cleaned out and the last vestiges of his identity as Dragonfly Martim erased.
“Who’s Quickblade working for?” Thea wondered aloud. “Isn’t she supposed to be a ronin?”
Everyone had seen Forest Greves’s protest resignation.
Martim had wanted to send his old mentor a message that day, but how could he?
He was dead. What could he even say, if he was alive?
Any expression of sympathy would’ve felt like a lie coming from him, after what he’d done to help Greves along to his fate.
“Maybe she’s not working for anyone,” Martim suggested quietly. “Maybe she’s just trying to get in touch with me.”
“She’s definitely under contract,” Thea exclaimed, pulling out her screen and tapping on it aggressively.
“I found out that she’s staying at the Summer Suites, on an unlimited but untraceable scripline.
Which means she’s working for a client with deep pockets.
It has to be the reunionists. I’d put scrip on it being Savannah Minto. ”
A surprisingly heavy disappointment pulled Martim down into Uchi’s wingback chair.
It was too unlikely that someone would come searching for him because they actually cared about what had happened to him.
Why would they? It wasn’t as if he’d spent any time cultivating real friendships.
As for Minto trying to ruin Uchi even though SoCon GasPro had supported SatOps in the war against Astrocom, well, that was only to be expected.
Divisional alliances were about self-interest, not personal loyalty.
Now that the war was over, the big-Es would coalesce in their opposition to Uchi’s nomination.
It was also possible Minto suspected who was behind the recent data security breach in her division that had resulted in her secretary being fired.
“To make things worse, I searched for recent security footage within three square blocks of the hotel where she’s staying and found this .
” Thea turned the screen around and held it out to Martim.
A street-camera shot showed two figures coming out of the Cove seafood restaurant at nighttime.
Even though the image was grainy due to distance and low light, Martim recognized Isako’s long black hair, red peacoat, and the shape of the triggersheath on her left thigh.
The man accompanying her was also unmistakably familiar.
“She’s working with Rain Kob ?”
Of all the ironies. After Strikebreaker flaked on the final part of the assignment for SoCon GasPro, he’d gone radio silent.
Martim’s attempts to reach him to convince him to finish the job had gone completely ignored.
As far as anyone knew, he’d made good on his promise to go into self-imposed retirement.
Martim had tried to hire others to go after the sole remaining Field 93 survivor, but no one else would take the job, not after Waterboy became a public figure celebrated and protected by United Freelancers and their rumored stash of guns and explosives.
Fortunately, Waterboy’s existence didn’t end up having as much of an impact on the Company investigation as he’d feared because the man appeared to be completely unhinged.
Why had Kob emerged now? Maybe he’d run out of money. Or maybe Isako had convinced him to team up again.
Thea insisted, “The big-Es will do anything to keep Sandbar Uchi off the Board, including hiring ronin with a connection to Dragonfly Martim. Getting close to Director Uchi’s atier would be the first step to getting close to the director.
” She snapped the screen closed and ran a hand through her hair distractedly.
“What do the two of them suspect? Is it possible someone at the synthtech clinic talked?”
Martim had never seen the bodyguard so nervous.
Not at any point during her years in charge of Director Uchi’s security had she seemed flustered or frightened.
Even after being blown nearly in half, she’d come back and stoically done her job.
Not that she ever had a choice, but still , she’d continued to exude professional calm.
Now, though… she seemed to be contracting their former client’s paranoia.
She was convinced that everyone else in the Company was an enemy and any misstep would spell disaster.
Martim couldn’t blame her. Even in his short time in second stage thus far, he understood that jarbrains saw themselves as an elite and exclusive class.
Thea’s existence was an affront to their sensibilities, and the only reason she was still alive was because of Sandbar Uchi’s protection.
She was terrified that her synthbody would be appropriated, her brain yanked out and studied as a test case for 8G synthtech.
Having nearly died once already, she seemed all the more desperate to stay alive, and protecting Martim meant protecting herself.
Martim swiveled slowly around in Uchi’s chair to face the long painting of the Vastness. Memento mori. How long could the two of them hide in plain sight? The Agency was demanding a response.
What would Sandbar Uchi do?
The director would ignore Isako’s call. Why would he bother to meet with a representative of the Agency to explain himself when he was in the midst of far more important and pressing concerns, namely preparing to ascend to the Board of Directors and influence the most consequential AGM in recent Company history?
The Partners don’t give a shit why I got rid of my last atier; they just want to sell me a new one , he’d say.
Let the fuckers wait. The contractors they try to make me hire are always a disappointment anyway.
But Martim wasn’t Sandbar Uchi. He spent every minute of every day acting the part, but it was starting to feel like an unsustainable performance.
If he was going to keep living like this, he had to make some allowance for his own decisions.
Was there a way for him to merge the identities, to not lose his own free will completely?
It shouldn’t be hard, Martim. Didn’t I always say that you remind me of my younger self?
Now he was hearing his client’s voice in his head. Wonderful. Just what he needed.
He tapped an icon in the peripheral view of Uchi’s data visor to speak to his undersecretary. “Tell Isthmus Isako that I’ll meet with her,” he said. “Find fifteen minutes in my schedule next Monday.”
When he clicked off the line, Thea said, with manifest disapproval, “This is a security risk. You’re letting two longknivesmen with unknown motives into your office. I wouldn’t put it past the reunionists to try to have you killed.”
“They’re coming into my jurisdiction under Agency authority. It’ll be perfectly safe,” Martim assured her. “I don’t think they know anything yet, so the best way to dispel suspicion is by meeting with them personally and giving them convincing answers to their questions.”
Thea crossed her arms skeptically. “Both of them know the real you. If you slip up…”
“I won’t. Trust me, I can do this,” Martim insisted. “Isako’s an old-school, Code-abiding longkniveswoman who’s been on an Exclusive for the past twelve years. Her client never made it to second stage, so she doesn’t have any experience with jarbrains. She’d never guess the truth.”
“If she’s as good an atier as they say she is, she’ll investigate any angle, no matter how unlikely.”
“My mentor’s famous for her longknife skills, not her investigative talents,” Martim argued.
“She just lost a war and is near the end of her career. She’ll do her best to finish out this last contract, but she’s not equipped to single-handedly stop the terraformist freight train that’s speeding me onto the Board. ”
Also, he couldn’t deny it: He wanted to see Isako again. For no reason other than that he felt he owed it to her, even if she had no idea he was still alive.
Thea’s face wasn’t designed to hold her frown. “I hope you’re right.”