They' re looking for progress reports, Sev. Which means reports of progress, and right now we don' t have any. If we don' t do something that looks like fresh action, Nicholson is going to land on us with both feet. Now, I' l survive that. Wil you?

She knew she wouldn' t.

October. Back in New York, the trees in Central Park were starting to rust and stain yellow. Under her window as she got ready for work each day, the market traders went wrapped against the early-morning chill. The summer had turned, tilted about like a jetliner in the clear blue sky above the city, sunlight sliding cold and glinting off its wings. The warmth wasn' t gone yet, but it was fading fast. South Florida felt like clinging.

How much has Norton told you?"

Not much. That you have a problem UNGLA won' t help you with. He didn' t say why, but I' m guessing it' s Munich-related." A sudden, unexpected grin that dropped about a decade off his seamed features.

You guys really should have signed up to the Accords like everybody else."

COLIN approved the draft in principle," said Sevgi, feeling unreasonably defensive.

Yeah. All about that principle, wasn' t it. Principal y: you don' t tel us what to do, you globalist bureaucrat scum."

Since he wasn' t far wrong, she didn' t argue the point. Is that going to be a problem?"

No. I' m freelance. My loyalties are strictly for sale. Like I already said, just tel me what you want me to do."

She hesitated a moment. The dataslate had an integral resonance scrambler built to COLIN specs, which made it tighter than anything any lawyer had ever carried into an interview room at South Florida State.

And Marsalis was pretty clearly desperate for an out. Still, the habit of the past four months was ingrained.

We have," she said finally, a renegade thirteen on our hands. He' s been loose since June. Killing."

He grunted. No visible surprise. Where' d he get out of? Cimarron? Tanana?"

No. He got out of Mars."

This time she had him. He sat up.

This is a completely confidential matter, Mr. Marsalis. You need to understand that before we start. The murders are widely distributed, and varied in technique. No official connection has been made among them, and we want it to stay that way."

Yeah, I bet you do. How' d he get past the nanorack security?"

He didn' t. He shorted out the docking run and crashed the vessel into the Pacific. By the time we got there, he was gone."

Marsalis pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. Now, there' s an idea."

She let the rest out. Anything to take the smug, competent control off his face. Before that, he had systematically mutilated the other eleven cryocapped crewmembers in order to feed himself. He amputated their limbs and kept them alive in suspension, then, finally, began to kill them and strip the rest of their bodies for meat."

A nod. How long was transit?"

Thirty-three weeks. You don' t seem surprised by any of this."

That' s because I' m not. You' re stuck out there, you' ve got to eat something."

Did you ever think that?"

Something like a shadow passed across his eyes. His voice came out just short of even. Is that how you found me? Cross-reference?"

Something like that." She chose not to mention Norton' s sudden enthusiasm for the new tactic. Our profiling n-djinn cited you as the only other thirteen known to have experienced similar circumstances."

Marsalis offered her a thin smile. I never ate anybody."

No. But did you think about it?"

He was silent for a while. She was on the point of asking her question again when he got up from the seat and went to stand by the high window. He stared out at the sky.

It crossed my mind a few times," he said quietly. I knew the recovery ship was coming, but I had the best part of two months to worry about it. You can' t help running the scenarios in your mind. What if they don' t make it, what if something crazy happens? What if- "

He stopped. His gaze unhooked from the cloud cover and came back to the room, back to her face.

Was he out there the whole thirty-three weeks?"

Most of it. From what we can tel , his cryocap spat him out about two weeks into the trajectory."

And Mars Control didn' t fetch him back?"

Mars Control didn' t know about it." Sevgi gestured. The n-djinn went down, looks like it was tricked out. The ship fell back on automated systems. Silent running. He woke up right after."

That' s a nice little cluster of coincidence."

Isn' t it."

But not very convenient from a culinary point of view."

No. We' re assuming the cryocap timing was an error. Whoever spiked the n-djinn probably planned to have the system bring him up a couple of weeks out from Earth. Something in the intrusion program flipped when it should have flopped, and you wake up two weeks out from Mars instead. Our friend arrives starved and pissed off and probably not very sane."

Do you know who he is?"

Sevgi nodded. She hit the keypad again and pushed the dataslate around so they could both see the screen and the face it held. Marsalis left the window and propped himself in casual angles on the edge of the table. Light gleamed off the side of his skull.

Allen Merrin. We recovered trace genetic material from Horkan' s Pride, the vessel he crashed, and ran it through COLIN' s thirteen database. This is what they came up with."

It was almost imperceptible, the way he grew focused, the way the casual poise tautened into something else. She watched his eyes sweep the text alongside the pale head-and-shoulders photo. She could have recited it to him from memory.

Merrin, Allen (sin 48523dx3814) Delivered (c/s) April 26, 2064, Taos, New Mexico (Project Lawman). Uteral host, Bilikisu Sankare, source genetic material, Isaac Hubscher, Isabela Gayoso (sins appended). All genetic code variants property of Elleniss Hall, Inc., patents asserted (Elleniss Hall & US Army Partnership 2029).

Initial conditioning & training Taos, New Mexico, specialist skills development Fort Benning, Georgia (covert ops, counterinsurgency). Deployed: Indonesia 2083, Arabian peninsula 2084 5, Tajikistan 2085 7 & 2089, Argentina, Bolivia 2088, Rim Authority (urban pacification program) 2090 1.

Retired 2092 (under 2nd UNGLA Convention Accords, Jacobsen Protocol). Accepted Mars resettlement 2094 (COLIN citizenship record appended).

Very Christ-like."

She blinked. I' m sorry?"

The face." He tapped the screen with a fingernail. The LCLS glow rippled around the touch. Merrin stared up under the tiny distortions. Very Faith Satellite Channel. Looks like that Man Taking Names anime they did for the Cash memorial."

The smile slipped out before she could stop it. His mouth quirked response. He moved the chair a little, sat down again.

Saw that, did you? We get the reruns in here al the time. Faith-based rehab, you know."

Quit grinning at him like a fucking news ' face, Sev. Get a grip.

You don' t recognize him, then?"

A curious, tilted look. Why would I?"

You were in Iran."

Wasn' t everybody." When she just waited, he sighed. Yeah, we heard about the Lawmen. Saw them at a distance a few times in Iran, down around Ahvaz. But from what you' ve got there, it doesn' t look like this Merrin ever got up that far north."

He could have." Sevgi nodded toward the screen. I' l be honest with you, this is a pretty loose summary. Once you get into the mission records, it' s a whole lot less defined. Covert deployments, so-called lost documentation, rumor and hearsay, subject is understood to have, that sort of shit. Executive denial and cover-ups around practical y every corner. Plus, you' ve got a whole fucking hero mythology going on around this guy. I' ve seen data that puts Merrin in combat zones hundreds of kilometers apart on the same day, eyewitness accounts that say he took wounds we can' t find any medical records to confirm, some of them wounds he couldn' t possibly have survived if the stories are true. Even that South American deployment has too much overlap to be wholly accurate. He was in Tajikistan, no he wasn' t, he was still in Bolivia; he was solo-deployed, no, he was leading a Lawman platoon in Kuwait City." Her disgust bubbled over. I' m telling you, the guy' s a fucking ghost."

He smiled, a little sadly she thought.

We all were, back then," he said. Ghosts, I mean. We had our own British version of Project Lawman, minus the delusional name, of course. We called it Osprey. The French preferred Department Eight. But none of us ever officially existed. What you' ve got to remember, Ms. Ertekin, is that back in the eighties the whole thirteen thing was fresh out of the can. Everyone knew the technology was out there, and everybody was busy denying they' d ever have anything to do with it. UNGLA didn' t even exist back then, not as an agency in its own right. It was still part of the Human Rights Commission. And no one was very keen on letting anybody else get a close look at their new genetic warriors. The whole Middle East was a testing ground for all sorts of cutting-edge nastiness, and all of it was operating on full deniability. You know how that shit works, right?"

She blinked. What shit?"

Deniability. You work for COLIN, right?"

I' ve been with COLIN two and a half years," she said stiffly. Before that I was a New York police detective."

He grinned again, a little more genuine humor in it this time. Getting the hang of it, though, aren' t you.

This is a completely confidential matter, we want it to stay that way. That' s very COLIN."

It' s not a question of that." She tried without much success to get the stiffness out of her voice. We don' t want a panic on our hands."

How many has he kil ed so far? Here on the ground, I mean."

We think it' s in the region of twenty. Some of those are unconfirmed, but the circumstantial evidence points to a connection. In seventeen cases, we' ve recovered genetic trace material that clinches it."

Marsalis grimaced. Busy little fucker. Is this all in the Rim States?"

No. The initial deaths were in the San Francisco Bay Area, but later they spread over the whole of continental North America."

So he' s mobile."

Yes. Mobile and apparently a very competent systems intrusion specialist. He murdered two men at the same location in the Bay Area on the night of June 13th and a man in southeastern Texas less than a week later. There' s no trace anywhere in the flight records for that period, and nothing from Rim Border Control, either. We had an n-djinn run face recognition checks on every cross-border flight and surface exit into the Republic for that week and got nothing."

He could have had his face changed."

In less than a week? With matching documentation? Rim States fenceline is the toughest frontier anywhere in the world. Anyway the same n-djinn we used for the face recog had instructions to flag anyone with bandaging or other traces of recent surgical procedure to the face. All we got was a bunch of rich brats coming home from West Coast cosmetic therapy, and a couple of over-the-hil erotica stars."

She saw him hold back all but the corner of a grin. It was irritatingly infectious. She concentrated on the dataslate.

The only options we are seriously entertaining are that either he was able to contact professional frontier busters within days of coming ashore, or he left the Rim for some other, intermediate destination before flying back into the Republic. It would be a tight time frame that way, but still doable. Of course once it goes global like that, there' s no way to run a comprehensive face recog. Too many places that refuse to let the n-djinns into their datasystems."

I take it these are both confirmed kil s, Bay Area and then Texas?"

Yes. Genetic trace material recovered at both locations."

His gaze went back to the dataslate display. What do Fort Benning have to say about it?"

That Merrin was never provided with substantial datasystems training. He could run a battlefield deck- anybody in covert ops could. But that' s it. We' re assuming he upskil ed on Mars."

Yeah. Or someone' s doing it for him."

There is that."

He looked at her. If he had systems help getting aboard Horkan' s Pride, and he' s stil getting it now, then this is bigger than just some thirteen bailing out of Mars because he doesn' t like al the red rocks."

Yes."

And you' re out of leads."

It wasn' t a question.

She sat back and spread her hands. Without access to the UNGLA databases, we' re in a hole. We' ve done everything we know how to do, and it isn' t enough. The deaths keep coming, they' re steady but unpredictable. There' s no crescendo effect- "

No, there wouldn' t be."

- but he' s not stopping. He' s not making any mistakes big enough to nail him or give us a working angle. Our inquiries on Mars have hit a wall- he obviously covered his tracks there, or, as you say, someone did it for him."

And down here?"

She nodded. Down here, as you' ve also so eloquently pointed out, we are not on hugely cooperative terms with UNGLA, or the UN in general."

Well, I guess you can hardly blame them for that." He widened his eyes at her, grinned. It' s not like you'

ve been overly cooperative yourselves for the last decade."

Look, Munich was not- "

The grin faded to a grimace. I wasn' t really talking about the Accords. I was thinking more of the reception we get in the prep camps every time we have to operate in them. You know we' re about as welcome down there as evolutionary science in Texas."

She felt herself flush a little. Individual corporate partners in the Colony effort do not necessarily- "

Yeah, skip it." A frown. Still, UNGLA have a mandate requirement in circumstances like this. You report a loose thirteen, they pretty much have to show up."

We don' t really want them to show up, Mr. Marsalis."

Ah."

We need access to their datastacks, or failing that someone like you to talk to our profiling n-djinns. But that' s all. In the end, this is a COLIN matter, and we' l clean our own house."