What was what about?"

He mimicked her snort. That."

Oh. Yeah. Just kind of amusing to hear a Turk talking about someone else' s barbarism."

Well, he was talking about Jesusland."

Yeah, whatever." She sat up suddenly. See, Marsalis, my father left this country for a reason. His father and his uncle both died back on that fucking square in Taksim because the illustrious Turkish military suddenly decided freedom of speech was getting a little out of hand. You know, you fucking Europeans, you think you' re so fucking above it all with your secular societies and your soft power and your softly softly security forces that no one likes to talk about. But in the end- "

In the end," he said, a little harshly because Battal was a friend, and he didn' t have many, Turkey' s still in one piece. They had a psychotic religious element here, too, you know, and a problem with rabid patriotic dogma. But they solved it. The ones who stayed, the ones who didn' t cave in to fundamentalist idiocy or just make a run for some comfortable haven elsewhere- in the end they made the difference, and they held it together."

Yeah, with some judicious funding from interested European parties, is what I heard."

None of which invalidates the fact that Jesusland is a fucking barbaric society, which you' re not from anyway, so what' s your point?"

She glared back at him. He sighed.

Look. My head hurts, too, all right. Why don' t you talk to Battal when he gets here? He' s the one filled me in on local history, guy used to teach in a prison before he got this gig, he knows his stuff. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Turkey and the old US, how they were more similar than you' d think. Talk to him."

You think he' ll come here?"

If Nevant comes, he' ll have to have an escort. And I don' t see Battal passing up the chance to see his teahouse friends in Istanbul at someone else' s expense. Yeah, he' ll come."

Ertekin sniffed. If Nevant comes."

Don' t worry about Nevant. Just the fact I' m asking for his help is going to be enough to get him here.

He' s going to love that."

Maybe he' s going to love turning you down."

Maybe. But he' ll come here to do it. He' l want to see my face. And besides- " Carl spread his hands, gave her a crooked grin. - there' s a good chance this' l be his only opportunity to get off the internment tract for the next decade."

She nodded slowly, like someone assimilating a new concept. Gaze still on her coffee. He had the sudden, uneasy feeling that what she' d just grasped wasn' t much to do with what he' d just been saying.

Of course," she said, there' s really no need for either of them to come here at al . We could just as easily have gone out to them, couldn' t we?" And her gaze flipped up, locked onto his face. Out to the tract?"

It was only a beat, but she had him.

Yeah, we could have," he answered, smoothly enough. But we' re both hungover, and I like the view from this place. So- why bother going there, if we can get him to come to us?"

She got up from the table and looked down at him.

Right."

For a moment, he thought she was going to push the point, but she just smiled, nodded again, and left him sitting there in the kitchen, memories of the tract and those he' d dragged back to it swirling through his mind in hungover free association.

He was still sitting there when Nevant called.

CHAPTER 26.

" K new I' d come, eh?"

Yeah."

Nevant drew on his cigarette, let the smoke gush back out of his mouth, and sucked it in hard through his nose. Fuck you did."

Carl shrugged. Al right."

Want to know why I did come?"

Sure."

The Frenchman grinned and leaned across the table, mock confidential. I came to kil your ass, Mars man."

Out beyond the glass-panel frontage of the restaurant, sunset bruised and bloodied the sky over the Sea of Marmara. Torn cloud, clotted with red. Carl met Nevant' s gaze and held it.

That' s original."

Well." Nevant sat back again, stared down at the tabletop. Sometimes the old gene-deep reasons are the best, you know."

Is that why you tried to persuade Manco Bambaren to give you house room? Gene-deep reasons?"

If you like. It was a question of survival."

Yeah, survival as a cudlip."

Nevant looked up. Carl saw the twitch of a suppressed fight instruction flowing down the nerves of one arm. Like most thirteens, the Frenchman was physically powerful, broad in chest and shoulders, long limbs carrying corded muscle, head craggy and large. But somehow, in Nevant, the bulk seemed to have whittled down to a pale, lycanthropic coil of potential. He' d lost weight since Carl saw him last, and his nose and cheekbones made sharp angles out of his flesh. The narrowed gray-green eyes were muddy dark with anger, and the smile when it came was a slow-peeling, silent snarl. He' d been fast, back in Arequipa three years ago- it had taken the mesh for Carl to beat him. If he came across the table now, it would be like a whip, like snake-strike.

Don' t like your jacket much. What is that, fucking incarceration chic?"

Carl shrugged. Souvenir."

That' s no excuse. What' d it cost you?"

About four months."

Brief pause. The Frenchman raised an eyebrow. Well, well. What happened, your license expire?"

No, that' s still good."

Still doing the same shit, huh?" Nevant plumed a lungful of smoke across the table. Stil hunting your brothers down for the man?"

Oh, please."

You know, it wouldn' t just be for me, Mars man."

Sorry?"

Killing you. It wouldn' t just be for me. You have a large fan club back there in the tract. Can hardly blame them, right? And if I kil ed you, and they knew about it." Nevant yawned and stretched, loosening the combat tension from his frame. Well, I' d probably never have to buy my own cigarettes again."

I' d have thought they' d want to kil me themselves."

The Frenchman gestured. The limits of revenge. They can' t all kil you, and stuck where they are right now none of them can. You learn a kind of wisdom in the tract- settle for what you can get, it' s better than nothing."

Am I supposed to feel bad about that?"

The wolfish grin came back. Your feelings are your own, Mars man. Wallow in them as you see fit."

They had their chance, Stefan. You al did. You could have gone to Mars."

Yeah, it' s not all red rocks and air locks, apparently. Saw the ads on my way in." Nevant touched the raka glass on the table in front of him with one fingernail. He hadn' t yet picked it up, or touched the tray of meze laid out between the two men. Sounds great. Hard to see why you came back."

I won the lottery."

Oh, that' s right, I forgot. It' s so much fun on Mars that the grunts buy a ticket every month to see if they can' t get the fuck out of there and home again."

Carl shrugged. I didn' t say it was paradise. It was an option."

Look, man. You came back, and the reason you came back is that life on Mars is a pile of shit." Nevant blew more smoke at him. Some of us just didn' t need to make the trip to work that one out."

You were busy making plans to spend the rest of your life up on the altiplano when I caught up with you.

That' s just Mars with higher gravity."

Nevant smiled thinly. So you say."

Why should I lie?"

Outside, streetlights were glimmering to life along the seawall walkway. Sevgi Ertekin sat with Battal Yavuz on tall stools at a salep stall a dozen meters down the promenade. They sipped their drinks in cupped hands and were apparently getting along okay. Nevant tipped his head in their direction.

Who is she, then?"

" No, I' m not his partner." Sevgi struggled to keep the edge out of her voice. This is strictly a temporary thing."

Okay, sorry. My mistake. Just the two of you seem, you know... "

Seem what?"

Yavuz shrugged. Connected, I guess. That' s unusual with Marsalis. Even for a thirteen, he' s pretty locked up. And it' s not like it' s easy getting close to these guys in the first place."

Tell me about it."

Yeah. I don' t want to sound like those Human Purity fuckwits, but I' ve been working the tract for nearly a decade now, and I' ve got to say variant thirteen are the closest thing to an alien race you' re ever going to see."

I' ve heard the same thing said about women."

By men, yeah." Yavuz slurped at his salep and came up grinning. He cut a cheery figure in the evening gloom and the yellowish lights from the stall. His jacket collar framed a tanned, well-fed face, and there was a small but unapologetic paunch under his sweater. Life at UNGLA Eurozone seemed to be treating him well. His hair was academic untidy, his eyes merry with reflected light. Natural y. The way you people are wired, compared with the way we are."

You people?"

I' m joking, of course. But the same way male and female genetic wiring is substantial y different" - Yavuz jerked a casual thumb back toward the lit interior of the restaurant, and the two men who sat facing each other in the window- that' s the way those two are substantially different from you and me both."

Bit closer to you people, though," said Sevgi sourly. Right?"

Yavuz chuckled. Fair point. In testosterone chemistry, in readiness for violent acts and suspension of basic empathy, yes, I suppose so. They are more male than female, of course. But then, no one ever tried to build a female thirteen."

That we know of."

That we know of," he echoed, and sighed. From what I understand, readiness for violent acts and suspension of empathy were exactly the traits the researchers hoped to amplify. Small surprise they opted for the male model, then."

For just a moment, his gaze drifted out past her shoulder to the sea.

At times," he said quietly, it shames me to be male."

Sevgi shifted uncomfortably on her stool. She turned her salep mug in both hands. They were speaking Turkish, hers a little creaky with lack of use, and for some reason, some association maybe with childhood misbehavior and scolding, the Turkish phrasing of that sentiment- it shames me- lent an obscure force to Yavuz' s words. She felt her cheeks warm against the cold air in sympathy.

I mean," he continued, still not looking at her. We index how civilized a nation is by the level of female participation it enjoys. We fear those societies where women are still not empowered, and with good cause. Investigating violent crime, we assume, correctly, that the perpetrator will most likely be male. We use male social dominance as a predictor of trouble, and of suffering, because when all is said and done males are the problem."

Sevgi' s eyes flickered away to the restaurant window. Stefan Nevant was leaned across the table, gesturing, talking intently. Marsalis looked back at him, impassive, arms draped on the back of his chair, head tilted slightly to one side. The same intensity seemed to crackle off both men for all the differences in their demeanor. The same raw sense of force. It was hard to imagine either of them ever talking about a sense of shame. For anything.

Deep in the pit of her stomach, despite herself, something warmed and slid. She felt her cheeks flush again, harder. She cleared her throat.

I think there' s another way to look at it," she said quickly. Back in New York, I' ve got a friend, Meltem, who' s an imam. She says it' s a question of stages in social evolution. You' re Muslim, right?"

Yavuz put tongue in cheek, grinned. Nominally."

Well, Meltem says- she' s Turkish, too, Turkish American, I mean, and she' s a believer, of course, but- "

Yeah," Yavuz drawled. Comes with the job, I imagine."

She laughed. Right. But she' s a feminist Sufi. She studied with Nazli Valipour in Ahvaz before the crackdown. You' ve heard of the Rabia school?"

The man in front of her nodded. Read about them. That' s the Ibn Idris thing, right? Questions al authorities subsequent to the Prophet."

Well, Valipour cites Idris, yeah, but real y she' s tracing a line right back to Rabia al-Basri herself, and she' s arguing that Rabia' s interpretation of religious duty purely as religious love is uh, is you know, the prototypical feminist understanding of Islam."

And then she dried up, suddenly self-conscious. Back in New York, she wasn' t used to talking about this stuff. She was rarely at the mosque these days, never found the time for it. Her conversations with Meltem had stopped soon after Ethan died. She was too angry, with a God she wasn' t at all sure she believed in anymore, and in his echoing absence with anybody who made the mistake of taking his side.

But Battal Yavuz just smiled and sipped at his salep.