Ever spent time in a Jesusland justice facility?" He put on a gentle smile, but his eyes were hard with memory. It' s not the sort of place you quibble over detail if they come to let you out."

Right." She cleared her throat. Well, the fine print says that you' re retained by COLIN in an advisory capacity, not for actual enforcement. So, ah, you don' t need a gun."

I will if our Jesusland friends decide to storm the fences."

That' s not going to happen here."

Your confidence is inspiring. Can we fly out of here?"

It doesn' t look like it. Tom' s working the diplomatic angle, but it' l be awhile before we know if we can take the risk. In this part of the world, the Air Nationals tend to shoot first and sift wreckage afterward."

Yeah, I' ve heard that." He turned away from the powered fences and the gate, looking out across the shimmering surface of the Atlantic. Speaking of which, any idea why the skycops in the Rim didn' t shove a heatseeker up Horkan' s arse when it crossed the line? I hear those boys are pretty jumpy, too, and it must have profiled pretty much like a threat."

Local COLIN liaison talked them out of it, apparently."

Yeah?" Marsalis raised an eyebrow.

Yes. Relations with the Rim are pretty good these days. It' s not like down here. We negotiated a direct AI interface last year, high-level trust protocols, minimal buffering. The Sagan n-djinn mapped the trajectory and shunted it straight to the Rim Air Authority. No blocks, no datachecks above basic. It cleared the buffers in a couple of nanoseconds." Sevgi spread her hands. Everyone' s happy."

Especial y Merrin."

She said nothing. The sporadic chanting at the gate reached them between gusts of wind coming off the ocean. After a couple of seconds, Marsalis started away from her in the direction of the water. He didn' t speak or look back. It took her his first three steps to understand he' d been waiting for her to continue the conversation, and now that she hadn' t he was leaving.

Where are you going?" It came out a lot less casually than she would have liked.

He stopped and turned back to her. Why?" he asked gravely. Am I in some kind of protective custody?"

Fuck it. No, it' s just." She gestured awkwardly. In case I need to find you later, in a hurry."

He weighed it, the way he had the comment about her work for WP.

I' m going for another walk on the beach," he said. Want to come?"

Ah... no." She hesitated. He was waiting. I need to go over the Montes crime scene while we' ve got the time. See if there' s anything that jumps out."

Is that likely?"

No, but you never know. I' ve been looking at Merrin' s handiwork for the last four months, Angeline PD haven' t. There might be something."

No direct data interface there, then?"

No. Technically, they' re not part of RimSec. It' s the Freeport legislation, Angeline PD have autonomy, they work pretty much like any city police department over in the Republic."

And you' re not sharing what you' ve got on this with any of those guys?"

No. I told you, we don' t want a panic on our hands." She threw out a weary signpost arm toward the chanting. Listen to that. How do you think people like that are going to react to the news that there' s a cannibal thirteen loose in North America, murdering selected citizens at his leisure. Remember Sundersen?"

Eric Sundersen?" A shrug. Sure. I spent a couple of months looking for him last year, just like everybody else."

Then you' ll remember what it was like. Seven weeks, and we nearly had martial law declared in five states of the Republic. Media screaming off the screen about clone monsters. Armed mobs trying to break into the tract at Cimarron and slaughter everyone there. Emergency measures all along the Rim frontier. If Sundersen hadn' t broken cover when he did, it would have been Zhang fever all over again.

And all he did was escape. He hadn' t kil ed anybody. With this one, the mobs would go fucking crazy."

Yeah, mobs. You humans have that trick down, don' t you."

Sevgi ignored the jibe.

We just don' t want another bloodbath," she said doggedly. We make local police aware that we have an interest, and we give them what help we can. But we can' t afford anyone to know the whole picture."

He nodded. His walk on the beach seemed forgotten. So what picture are they getting?"

The cover story in the Republic is Marstech. A heist gang and a distribution network, squabbling over product." The words tasted stale on her tongue, as concocted and unconvincing as some corporate mission statement. She forced down a grimace and pressed on. With scumbags like Eddie Tanaka that'

s been easy to sel . Elsewhere, when the victim' s respectable, we' re playing the collateral damage angle. Innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, or cases of mistaken identity."

Sounds a little creaky. What are you doing about the genetic trace?"

Taking it off their hands. The COLIN n-djinns have access to police datastacks right across North America; they fish out anything that fits the profile. That' s usual y long before Forensics get around to running a gene scan on the crime scene traces, so in most cases we get there before anybody knows there' s been a thirteen at the scene."

Most cases?"

Yeah, been a couple of medical examiners we' ve had to lean on, get them to shut up." She looked away. It isn' t hard to do that with COLIN authority."

No, I don' t imagine it is."

She could feel herself flush a little. Look, I have to get over to the upload building. You want to hit the beach, that' s fine."

No, it' s okay. I' l walk with you."

She gave him a sharp look. He looked innocently back.

May as wel look at this Montes myself," he said. Start earning my keep."

So they crossed the apron from the observation tower together, heading for the main complex. There was some heat in the day now, and Sevgi' s own slightly stale scent pricked in her nostrils. She began to wish she' d had a shower before she tumbled out of the hospitality suite and into action.

So, you were saying," Marsalis prompted. The Republic don' t know this is linked to Horkan' s Pride."

No. The media coverage said there were no survivors. We let them have the cannibalism angle, and told them anybody still alive would have been kil ed on impact. We let them have pictures."

Ah."

Yeah." Sevgi curled her lip. Cannibal Ghost Ship Horror- click for further images. Worked like a dream, they ran with it, splashed it across every site on the net. They completely forgot to do any investigative journalism."

Handy."

She shrugged. Standard. American media' s been taking sensation over fact for better than a hundred years now, and Secession just loaded the trend. Anyway, it is a miracle Merrin survived the crash. I mean, he had to find some way to trick the systems into accepting him back into his cryocap, which is glitched to fuck so the cryogen protocol doesn' t work anymore. So he' s got to beat that, he' s got to persuade the cryocap to fill with gel anyway, to drown a live, unsedated body- "

Not like he didn' t have the spare time to work it all out."

I know. But that' s just the start. He' s then got to lie there and let the system drown him, unsedated. He'

s got to breathe the gel, unsedated, awake, without his lungs revolting, for a good twenty minutes while Horkan' s Pride programs its final approach, hits reentry, course-corrects, and comes down in the ocean."

A freight loader bulked dinosaur-like on their right, blocking out the angle of the early-morning sun. Sevgi shivered a little as they stepped into the long shadow it cast. She looked across at Marsalis, almost accusingly.

You want to think what that must have been like- locked in an upright coffin with that shit filling your nose and your mouth and your throat, pouring in and filling up your lungs, pressing in on your eyeballs, and all around you the whole ship feels like it' s shaking itself apart, maybe is shaking itself apart for al you know. Can you imagine what that would have felt like?"

I' m trying not to," he said mildly. Do we know how he got ashore?"

She nodded. First victim in the Bay Area, Ulysses Ward. You saw him on the map last night. Tailored microfauna magnate, he had culture farms all over the Marin County shoreline and a bunch of those tethered plankton trays about a hundred klicks off the coast. We don' t have the satel ite footage to be sure, but it looks like he was out there doing maintenance when Horkan' s Pride came down. Got curious, got too close, got himself kil ed."

Or he went out there specifically to pick Merrin up."

Yeah, we thought of that, too. RimSec did an n-djinn search, couldn' t find any links between Ward and Merrin. We went back forty years. Unless they knew each other in a previous life, this is exactly what it looks like- a bad-luck coincidence."

How' d he kil him?"

Cressi sharkpunch. You ever see anyone kil ed with one of those things?" Sevgi gestured graphically.

Designed to stop a great white shark through ten meters of water, it' s practically a handheld disintegrator. Blew Ward' s belly out al over the surrounding furniture. Him plus another employee name of Emil Nocera, al in the same shot."

Thanks for the ride."

Right. CSI say there were another couple of employees around at the time, but they ran."

Hard to blame them."

Yeah, plus they were il egals. Apparently a lot of the casual labor up that way is. They see something, they' re not going to hang around and make witness statements. RimSec are looking, but they don' t hold out much hope."

Do they know what this is about?"

RimSec do, but that' s as far as it' s gone. There' s no public knowledge, we can' t afford it, and neither can they. Things are bad enough between Jesusland and the Rim without word getting out that this guy' s treating their precious border security like a knee-high picket fence."

But the Rim cops know he' s kil ing in the Republic as well?"

They' ve been apprised, yes."

Nice of them to keep quiet about it for you."

Well, like I said, there' s no love lost across the fencelines. And it looks bad if the high-powered high-tech Rim States couldn' t stop some psychotic kil er crossing over and going on the rampage in the Republic. You can see how that' d play diplomatically."

What price technology without God on your side?"

Right. Plus, if word got out that said psychotic kil er is a, uh... "

A genetic monster?" he asked gently. A twist?"

I didn' t say that."

No. I guess you didn' t."

The Republic are already handing their people a line of shit about how the Rim is just a craven appeasement system for the Chinese. And with the stories coming out of China, the black lab escapees- " She shrugged again. Wel , you can see how that one' d play as wel , right?"

Pretty much. Nothing like a good monster scare."

They cleared the shadow of the freight loader. Sevgi turned her head to beat the sudden glare of the sun and thought she caught a smile slipping across the black man' s lips. His gaze had rolled out to somewhere well beyond the gathering of buildings around the nanorack.

Something funny?"

His attention reeled back in, but he didn' t look at her. Not real y."

She stopped.

After a couple of paces, so did he, and turned to face her. Something the matter?"

If you' ve got something to contribute," she said evenly, then I would like to hear it. This isn' t going to work unless you talk to me."

He looked at her for a long couple of moments. It' s real y not very important," he said easily. I guess you' d call it a resonance."

She stood where she was. Resonance with what."

He sighed. A resonance with monsters. Do you know what a pistaco is?"

She dredged memory, pulled up something from a long-ago briefing on altiplano training camp crimes.

Yeah, it' s some sort of demon, right? Something the Indians believe in. Some sort of vampire?"

Close. Pistaco' s a white man with a long knife who comes at night and chops up Indians to get at their body fat. Most likely, it' s a cultural memory from the conquistadores and the Inquisition, because they certainly weren' t averse to a bit of dismemberment in the name of Gold and Jesus Christ. But these days, up on the altiplano they' ve got a new angle on the story."

Which is what?"

Marsalis grinned. She was appalled at how much it reminded her of Ethan, at how it reached inside and touched her in the place he used to.

These days," he said, the Andeans don' t believe the pistaco is the white man as such anymore. That'

s gone. Stil the same monster, stil looks the same, but now the story they tel is, the pistaco' s something evil that the white man' s brought back."

He nodded toward the dark towering webbed architecture of the nanorack.

Brought back from Mars."

CHAPTER 15.