Spin State - Chris Moriarty [181]
“Of course you can. A little exercise will improve your outlook on life.”
She snorted. “You sound like Korchow.”
“Heaven forfend!”
But he was right, of course. The climb did make her feel better. By the time she threaded her legs through the catwalk railing and sat down next to him, she felt like a kid in a tree house.
“How long do you think it would take for them to find us if we just stayed here?” she asked.
“I’m willing to try it if you are,” Cohen said. He pulled out a cellophane-wrapped flat of imported cigarettes. “Want one?”
“I thought Leo didn’t smoke.”
“He doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t sit next to you while you smoke it.”
“What do you want me to do, blow in your face?”
“Don’t tease.”
She blew a smoke ring in his direction. “Thanks for not telling Korchow about . . .”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t think you’d want me to.”
“He thinks we’re holding out on him.”
Cohen drew in a little breath and glanced at her. “He told you that?”
“After you left.”
He started to speak. Then he stopped and Li could see his face shut down as he pushed back some thought he wasn’t willing to share with her.
“You expected the intraface to just work?” she asked, wondering what he’d been about to say. “What did you actually think would happen?”
“I thought it would be like associating with another AI. You set the exchange protocols, open your files, and they can more or less handle their own adjustment process.” He shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t really thought it through.”
She glanced over and saw only Ramirez’s handsome profile, the glossy forelock falling over his brow. “Not thinking things through ahead of time isn’t like you,” she said.
“Oh, but it is. You’d be amazed at how stupid I can be when it really matters.” He leaned forward against the railing, rested his head on his folded arms, and looked at her. “When you’re running at eight billion operations per picosecond, it’s astonishing how fast a bad judgment call can snowball. Let alone the real idiocies.”
She smoked in silence for a while, letting the ash fall off the tip of her cigarette and spiral down toward the distant floor like coal-colored snowflakes.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“In what sense?”
“Come on, Cohen. I don’t have the energy for your games right now.”
“It’s not a game with you. It never has been.”
She turned to find him still staring at her, Ramirez’s eyes intent and motionless. Why had she never noticed how extraordinarily white the whites of his eyes were, how sharp and fine the line between light and dark was where the white met the iris?
The dome fell silent, except for the whoosh of filtered air pushing through the antiquated life-support system and the faint crackle of the ash burning down on Li’s cigarette.
She swung her feet out over the void, and one foot struck Ramirez’s. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Cohen said.
She moved her legs a little away from his.
“I was thinking about Alba,” he said after a moment. “You passed out before we got you inside. Well, before I got you inside. I was so terrified we’d be too late, I snatched Arkady and did everything myself. Poor kid. He was very gracious about it. Still, it looked tight there for a while. Really tight. I thought we’d all had it.”
He lit a cigarette, put it to his lips—and then made a frustrated face and put it out on the railing.
“That sort of moment puts you in a regretful mood,” he said. “Makes you wonder if you’ve wasted time.”
“You can’t let yourself think that way,” Li told him. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”