Spin State - Chris Moriarty [83]
Kintz stared at her. He was trembling with anger, and she could see the sweat standing out on his upper lip.
“Talk to the witch,” he said finally. “She was the one Sharifi trusted. Hell, maybe she killed Sharifi herself.” He laughed, trying to regain his composure. “You always hurt the one you love, isn’t that how the song goes?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Li said. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“You sure as fuck will be.”
Li found the witch in Haas’s office, working.
Haas was slumped behind the big desk, staring into streamspace. He surfaced long enough to wave Li into a chair, then faded out again.
Li sat and watched. She noted the wire’s route from the derms at Haas’s temples, through the deceptively simple dryware casing of the transducer, to the witch’s cranial socket. The witch was his interface, Li realized, the ungainly external wires the only way he could access the spinstream. The transducer intercepted the construct’s output, keyed it to his neural patterns, packeted and transferred it. Li thought of the loop shunt and shuddered.
“All right,” Haas said to the empty air in front of him.
The witch stood up, teased the jack out from behind her ear, then pulled her hair over the socket, hiding it.
“Can I offer you something?” Haas asked Li. “Coffee?” He looked at his watch. “Beer?”
“Coffee’s fine,” Li said.
“Coffee for two,” Haas said.
The witch nodded and moved toward the door.
Li cleared her throat. “Better make it for three. It’s Bella I need to talk to.”
Haas looked at Li sharply but said nothing. Bella left and came back with a covered tray from which she produced three bone china cups, cream, sugar, and a full pot of ersatz coffee. She bent over the table, poured Li’s cup, offered cream and sugar, then poured, creamed, and sugared Haas’s cup.
As Li took her cup she saw the cat-scratch red rash of a staph infection below the witch’s left ear around the borders of the I/O socket. Something about the sight—the red rash against the pale spun-silk skin—made Li acutely aware that there was a woman, warm and alive, inside the loose dress. She cleared her throat and looked away—but not before she saw a mocking little smile slide across the other woman’s face.
“Well, Major,” Haas said. “What do you need to know?”
Li took out her cigarettes and lifted an eyebrow in Haas’s direction. “Do you mind?”
“Suit yourself.”
“Want one?”
“Never touch ’em.”
“Good for you.” She lit her cigarette and sucked down a first delicious postcoffee lungful. “You’ll live longer. I just need to ask Bella about the fire. Routine. I’m talking to everyone who was down there when it happened.”
“I see.”
“It won’t take a minute.” Li waited, hoping Haas wasn’t going to make her ask him to leave.
“No problem,” he said after a very brief pause. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” Li thought he threw a pointed look at the witch before he left—or was she just being paranoid?
The door whispered closed behind him, and she and Bella looked at each other without speaking. Li had the curious feeling of a weight lifting off Bella’s shoulders. As if Haas’s very presence silenced her. She thought of the tense little scene she’d caught on her skinbugs that first night and wondered what hold Haas had over her.
Bella took a breath. “I’m not . . . I want you to know—” she said, then stopped as if she’d run into a wall.
“You’re not what?” Li asked.
But Bella just shook her head.
Li sat back and finished her cigarette in silence. She was fishing in muddy water; let Bella make the first move. She knew a hell of a lot more about what had happened in the mine that day than Li did. Li was starting to think every man, woman, and child on-station knew more than she did.
“Citizen—” Bella said.
“That’s not a title here,” Li said. “People here are born citizens.”
“Not constructs.”
“Not constructs,” Li admitted.
“And not Sharifi.”
“No,” Li said. “Not Sharifi.” Cohen was right as usual: some pigs were more equal than others.
She looked at Bella’s face, half in shadow, and caught herself searching