But she was." Sevgi gestured. A person. Just a human being."

I didn' t say it made any sense, Ertekin. I said it was religion."

I thought," she said severely, thirteens were supposed to be incapable of religious faith."

Ethan certainly had been. She remembered his incurious, stifled-yawn incomprehension whenever she tried to talk about it, as if she were some Jesusland fence-hopper stood on his doorstep trying to sell him something plastic and pointless.

Marsalis stared into the blue glow of the dashboard displays. Yeah, they say we' re not wired for it.

Something in the frontal cortex, same reason we don' t take direction wel . But like I said, it got pretty bad out there. You' re stuck in the empty dark, looking for intent where there' s only incidence. Feeling powerless, knowing you' ll live or die dependent on factors you can' t control. Talking to sleeping faces or the stars because it beats talking to yourself. I don' t know about the cortical wiring argument, all I can tell you is that for a couple of weeks aboard Felipe Souza it felt like I had religion."

So what changed?"

He shrugged again. I looked out the window."

More silence. Another autohauler droned by, buffeting them with the wind of its passage. The jeep rocked in its wake, adrift on the night.

Souza had vision ports let into the lower cargo deck," Marsalis said slowly. I went there sometimes, got the n-djinn to crank back the shields. You have to kill the interior lights before you can see anything, and even then... "

He looked at her, opened his hands.

There' s nothing out there," he said simply. No meaning, no mindful eye. Nothing watching you. Just empty space and, if you travel far enough, a bunch of matter in motion that' ll kill you if it can. Once you get your head around that, you' re fine. You stop expecting anything better or worse."

So that' s your general philosophy, is it?"

No, it' s what Elena Aguirre told me."

For a moment, she blanked. It was like those moments when someone talked to her in Turkish out of the blue and she was stil working in English, a failure to process the words she' d heard.

I' m sorry?"

What I said. Elena Aguirre told me to stop believing all that shit and face up to what you can see out the window."

Are you laughing at me?" she asked him tautly.

No, I' m not laughing at you. I' m telling you what happened to me. I stood at that window with the lights off, looking out, and I heard Elena Aguirre come up behind me. She' d followed me down to the cargo deck and she stood there behind me in the dark. Breathing. Talking into my ear."

That' s impossible!"

Yeah, I know that." Now he did smile, but not at her. He was looking into the light from the dashboard again, eyes blind, washed empty with the electric blue glow. She' d have left tank gel all over the deck, wouldn' t she. Not to mention, she would have rung every alarm on the ship climbing out of the tank in the first place. I mean, I don' t know how long I stood frozen to the window after she' d gone, you tend to lose track of time out there, and I was pretty scared, but- "

Stop it." She heard the jagged edge on her tone. Felt the urge to shudder creep up her neck like a cold, cupped hand. Just stop it. Be serious."

He frowned into the blue light. You know, Ertekin, for someone who believes in a supreme architect of the universe and a spiritual afterlife, you' re taking this remarkably hard."

Look." Thrown down like a chal enge. How could you know it was her? This Elena Aguirre. You' d never even heard her voice."

What' s that got to do with it?"

There was a quiet simplicity in the question that tilted her, suddenly, weightlessly, like sex the first time she got to do it properly and came, like her first dead-body crime scene by the tracks off Barnett Avenue.

Like watching Nalan' s breathing stop for the final time in the hospital bed. She shook her head helplessly.

I- "

See, you asked if it got bad," he said softly. So I' m telling you how bad it got. I went down deep, Sevgi.

Deep enough for some very strange shit to happen, genetic wiring to the contrary or not."

But you can' t believe- "

That Elena Aguirre was the incarnation of a presence watching over me? Of course not."

Then- "

She was a metaphor." He breathed out, as if letting something go. But she got out of hand, like metaphors sometimes can. You go that deep, you can lose your grip on these things, let them get free. I guess I' m lucky whatever was waiting for me down there spat me out again. Maybe my genetic wiring gave it indigestion after all."

What are you talking about?" Flat anger. She couldn' t keep it out of her voice. Indigestion?

Metaphors? I don' t understand anything you' re tel ing me."

He glanced across at her, maybe surprised by her tone.

That' s okay. I' m probably not explaining it all that well. Sutherland would have done better, but he' s had years to nail it al down. Let' s just say that out there in transit I talked myself into something at a subconscious level, and it took an invented subconscious helper to talk me back out. Does that make more sense?"

Not real y. Who' s Sutherland?"

He' s a thirteen, guy I met on Mars, what the Japanese would call a sensei, I guess. He teaches tanindo around the Upland camps. He used to say humans live their whole lives by metaphor, and the problem for the thirteens is that we fit too fucking neatly into the metaphorical box for all those bad things out beyond the campfire in the dark, the box labeled monster."

She couldn' t argue with that. Memory backed it to the hilt, faces turned to her full of mute accusation when they knew what Ethan had been. Friends, colleagues, even Murat. Once they knew, they didn' t see the Ethan they' d known anymore, just an Ethan-shaped piece of darkness, like the perp sketch that served in virtual for the man who' d murdered Toni Montes.

Monsters, scapegoats." The words dropped off his tongue like cards he was dealing. His voice was suddenly jeering. Angels and demons, heaven and hell, God, morality, law and language. Sutherland' s right, it' s al metaphor. Scaffolding to handle the areas where base reality won' t cut it for you guys, where it' s too cold for humans to live without something made up. We codify our hopes and fears and wants, and then build whole societies on the code. And then forget it ever was code and treat it like fact.

Act like the universe gives a shit about it. Go to war over it, string men and women up by the neck for it.

Firebomb trains and skyscrapers in the name of it."

If you' re talking about Dubai again- "

Dubai, Kabul, Tashkent, and the whole of fucking Jesusland for that matter. It doesn' t matter where you look, it' s the same fucking game, it' s humans. It' s- "

He stopped abruptly, still staring into the blue-lit displays, but this time with a narrowed focus.

What is it?"

I don' t know. We' re slowing down."

She twisted in her seat to look through the rear windows. No sign of an autohauler they might be blocking. And no jarring red flashes anywhere on the display to signify a hardware problem. Still the jeep bled speed.

We' ve been hacked," Marsalis said grimly.

Sevgi peered out of the side windows. No road lighting anywhere, but a miserly crescent moon showed her a bleached, sloping landscape of rock and scrub, mountain wall to the right, and across on the far side of the highway what looked like a steep drop into a ravine. The road curved around the flank of the mountain, and they were down to a single lane each way. The median had shrunk to a meter-wide luminous guidance marker painted on the evercrete for the autohaulers. No lights or sign of human habitation anywhere. No traffic.

You' re sure?"

How sure do you need me to be?" He took the wheel and tried to engage the manual option. The system locked him out with a smug triple chime and pulsing orange nodes in among the blue. The jeep trundled sluggishly on down the gradient. He threw up his hands and kicked the pedals under his feet.

See? Motherfucker."

It wasn' t clear if he was talking to the machine or to whoever was reeling them in. Sevgi reached for her pistol, freed it from the shoulder holster, and cleared the safety. Marsalis heard the click, fixed on the gun in her hands for a moment. Then he leaned across the dashboard and hit the emergency shutdown stud.

The display lit red across, and the brakes bit. They stil had solid coasting velocity. The jeep' s tires yelped at the abuse and locked. They slewed, but not far. Jerked to a tooth-snapping halt.

Silence- and the blink, click of the hazard lights on automatic. Cherry-red glow pooled at each corner of the jeep, vanished. Pooled, vanished. Pooled, vanished.

Right."

He fumbled the mechanism of his seat so it sank and allowed him access to the back of the jeep. Dived over and hung from the seat back by his hips, groping around. His voice tightened up with the pressure on his stomach muscles. Seen this before in the Zagros. Mostly from the other side of the scam. We used to flag down the Iranian troop carriers like this for ambush. Hook them well before they could see you." A blanket rose and fell in his hand, tossed away. Once you' ve cracked the pilot protocols, you can do pretty much what you like with them." Rattle of something plastic spil ing. He reached harder. Crash them into each other, drive them off the edge of a cliff, if there is one. Or over a carefully placed mine fuck."

What are you doing?"

Looking for a weapon. I figure you' re not going to share that Beretta with me, right? Contractual obligations and all that." He bounced back into the seat, teeth tight in frustration, glared around him, and then threw open the door. He ran around to the back of the jeep. Road dust from the emergency stop caught on a soft breeze and blew forward over and around them in a cloud. It floated away, ghostly quiet and intermittently lit up red by the hazard lights. Sevgi looked back and saw Marsalis working to loosen something from the rear hatch. The jeep rocked on its suspension with every tug. The flashing lights lit him amid the dust, turning his face demonic with tension and focused effort. She thought she heard him grunt. Something clanked loose.

He came back to the door, hefting a collapsible shovel.

Al right, listen," he said, suddenly calm. If we' re lucky, these are local thugs, used to flagging down easy-mark trucks and the odd tour bus. If they are, I' m guessing we' ve got a couple more minutes before they realize what we' ve done. Maybe another three or four minutes after that for them to mount up and come find us. Not long, however you look at it. So, textbook response, we need to get out of the vehicle and find some cover, fast."

Sevgi nodded mutely, suddenly aware of how dry her mouth was. She snapped the slide on the Beretta, textbook style, tilting it to the horizontal so she could read the load display on the side. Thirty-three, and one in the pipe. The Marstech guns took state-of-the-art expansion slugs, pencil-slim, accurate at long range, and explosive on impact. She cleared her throat and lifted the Beretta.

You think we' ll be able to chase them off?"

He stared at her. The hazards painted him red, dark, red, dark, red, dark. He looked down at the folded shovel in his hands. Snapped the blade out into the functional position. Then he looked up at her again, hands tightening the locking mechanism in place, and his voice was almost gentle.

Sevgi, we' re going to have to kil these guys."

CHAPTER 31.

T here were seven of them.

From his limited vantage point, Carl made them for Peruvian regulars and relaxed a little. Familia hit men would have been worse. He let the mesh come on, felt it seep into his muscles like rage. His vision sharpened on the lead soldiers. They were walking three-abreast on the opposite lane, ten paces ahead of a slow-crawling open army jeep that carried the other four and a mounted machine gun. The vehicle moved with the main lights doused- that much, at least, they were doing right- and the vanguard party held their assault rifles ready for use. A gawky tension in the way they moved screamed conscript nerves.

These guys could have been the same easy-grin, soccer-talking uniforms he' d blagged a ride from months back on his way to kil Gray. With luck, they' d be as young and unprepared.

They came to a halt twenty meters from the red hazard flash pooling and fading at each corner of the stranded COLIN jeep. Muttered Spanish, too far off to catch. The curve on the road was gentle- they' d have been able to see the lights for the last hundred meters at least, but they' d chosen now to stop and discuss tactics. Carl smiled to himself and gripped the shaft of the shovel. The eroded metal edge of the blade touched his face, cold and notched with use against his cheek.

The jeep backed up a little. The vanguard soldiers crossed the luminous median, looking both ways like well-trained children. Carl thought he could hear the distant drone of an autohauler somewhere in the night, impossible to tell how far off or which direction it was headed. Otherwise there was nothing but thin moonlight on porous rock and jagged mountain backdrop. Stars shingled across the sky, almost as clear as on Mars. It was quiet enough to hear the scuff of booted feet across the evercrete now that they were close, the follow-up grumble of the jeep' s antique engine.

Fucking seven of them. Christ, I hope you' re up for this, Ertekin.

He' d asked her if she knew how to kill someone with the matte-gray Beretta, if she' d ever shot anyone dead. Half hoping she' d crumble and give him the weapon. The look he got in return was enough. But she hadn' t answered his question and he stil didn' t know.

The vanguard arrived at the COLIN vehicle. They crept up crabwise and peered inside the cabin. Tugged at the door handles and barked surprise when the doors pulled open on smooth hydraulic servos. Poked their weapons nervously inside. Now he could hear them talking. Forced bravado rinsing through the soft coastal Spanish accents like grit through a silk screen. Young-boy talk.

You check the back, Ernesto?"

Already done it, man. They' re fucking gone. Run off. Told the sarge we should have pul ed them over old style. Flashing lights, roadblock, it never fails."

That' s all you fucking know." A third voice, from around the other side of the jeep. It sounded a little older. This isn' t some Bolivian strike leader, this is a fucking thirteen. He would have driven right through us, fucked us in pieces."

That gringa cunt, that' s what I' ll fuck in pieces when we catch up with them."

Laughter.

She' s not a gringa, Ernesto. Didn' t you see the photo? I got a sister-in-law in Barranca got lighter skin than that."

Hey, she' s from Nueva York. That' s good enough fucking for me."

You know something, you guys disgust me. What if your mothers could hear you now?"

Ah, come on, Ramon. Don' t be an altar boy your whole fucking life. You seen the photos of this bitch or not? Tits on her like Cami Chachapoyas. Don' t tel me you don' t want a piece of that."

Ramon said nothing. The slightly older one filled in for him.

Tell you what, you do fuck her, either of you, you' d better spray on first. Those gringas got a dose of everything going. I got a cousin in Nueva York says those bitches are out fucking everything that moves."

Man, you got fucking family al over, don' t you. How come- "

An NCO bel ow from the jeep: Report, Corporal!"

Nothing here, sir," the older voice cal ed back. They' re gone. Have to quarter the area."

In the jeep, something indistinct was said about fucking infrareds. Probably, Carl guessed, that they didn'

t have any.

Ground search. Oh for fuck' s sake. I' m tel ing you, when we catch up with this twist and his bitch- "

And time.

He let the rage drive him, rolled, braced himself off the edge of the molded roof storage pan, and came down a meter clear, on the side opposite the other jeep. The heat-resistant elastic tarpaulin that had hidden him stretched taut as he rolled, let him free, and then snapped back with a flat slapping sound.