wall.
Bear hadn't made it to the bar.
'Come on then, you little bastards!' he could hear Bear roar happily. 'Come on!'
'Bear…' groaned Richards.
'He'll be fine,' said Tarquin. 'He's much bigger than any of them, and seems impervious to harm. Look, he's enjoying himself.'
'Drunken bears, enjoying themselves. That sound like a bad thing to you? It sounds like a bad thing to me,' said Richards. 'Besides, it's not him I'm worried about.'
'We need to get out of here,' agreed Rolston, his sex-skunk face dismayed.
Bedlam broke out. Six weasels jumped on Bear and attempted to wrestle him to the floor. They forced him onto one knee, but Bear growled and hurled himself upward. Weasels flew all over the room. The voles stopped singing as a weasel skidded along their table, scattering beer. They looked furiously about them, then assaulted a group of foxes who were minding their own business in a corner.
The pub erupted into violence as animal animosities reasserted themselves.
'Yeah,' said Richards, standing up as a squirrel thumped onto the bench next to him. 'I have to be up early anyway. I'm being conscripted.' He grabbed his pint in any case, and took Tarquin's also.
'Quite so,' said Tarquin.
A weasel reared up before him.
'Lookee here,' it said. 'If it ain't that bleeding bear's mate. Well, I can't have him, but I can certainly have you.' Too late Richards saw the knife in its hand. It flickered out, striking for his chest.
There was a scream of pain and a scraping of metal. Richards felt a great weight. He looked down to see the knife drawing sparks from Tarquin's suddenly stony hide, the weasel's hand bent at an unnatural angle. It dropped the knife with a whimper.
'Clever you,' said Richards.
The weasel squeaked and scurried off into the crowd, clutching at its wrist.
Tarquin turned back from stone, and Richards felt light again. 'That is handy,' said Richards.
'Glad to be of service,' said Tarquin. 'Though to be completely honest with you, I was not sure I could still do it.'
'I didn't need to hear that,' said Richards.
There was a commotion at the front. 'The watch! That's sure to draw k52's attention,' said Rolston.
'What, even here?'
'Yes! We have to go, now! Listen, I am going to have to leave this body soon,' said Rolston. 'Do as you are told and I will come to you again. There's someone you must meet. Until I can get to you, don't draw attention to yourself. I don't know how you've evaded k52, but keep it that way! He has agents everywhere.' The skunk's face twisted, and Rolston gripped at his stomach. 'I can't hold on for much longer. Get me out of here, get me somewhere safe, I'm vulnerable while I'm transiting.'
The watch were in the pub, laying about them with wooden clubs, blocking the way out of the building's front. Richards grabbed the skunk by the elbow, hustled the other AI to the back door, and stepped over two wrestling voles out into the night.
CHAPTER 11
Otto walked the narrow corridor, compartments off to his left, headed toward the executive restaurant car at the centre of the train. A Cossack stood guard at every break between the carriages, and he was forced to undergo security scans at each. His faked details held, one of two mercenaries in the employ of Corporate Energispol, escorting two scientists to new field stations in Sinosiberia, all part of 'The New Spirit of Cooperation', the Chinese called it. The Russians railed ceaselessly against the loss of the east, but it didn't stop them doing business there.
Whatever Valdaire had done was triple gold standard; his ID checked out and he passed without incident, although it took him ten minutes to walk the five cars to the refreshments car. As he went the train swayed, AI- guided bogies negotiating a track and bed centuries old. Soon it would be replaced with a super-wide-gauge line. Adverts for the new trains plastered the walls of the carriages, liners of the steppes; others were a litany of technical specifications as worthy as psalms. These trains would be large, well armed and luxurious, another way of shutting out the wreck of the world. The bulk of the line's new embankment was black outside the train windows, a wall to carry a fortress.
The executive refreshments car was a doubledecker, the lower floor a restaurant. Otto ignored this and headed for the spiral staircase leading to the glass-roofed upper lounge. The stairs were clear, glowing plastic, lighting up motile silhouettes of naked women gyrating on the surface; tasteless East Euro robber-baron glitz. The bar area was the same, dimly lit, a long padded bar with a human tender down the right-hand side, blue-lit plastic straying into the ultraviolet range illuminating an array of bottles, more pornographic images flickering in holo and relief around and along it, writhing across the ceiling. Brassy music played, horns and new guitar with soft and sleazy cymbals. The wall at the far end of the room was occupied by a fishtank, denizens luminous under the light. The room's decor gave Otto a headache with his wider spectral capacities engaged, so he turned his vision down to the human norm. It wasn't any prettier the way unenhanced eyes saw it.
The barroom was divided into several horseshoe-shaped booths lined with seats of buttoned brown leather, a table at the centre of each. Most were occupied, patrons silent behind acoustic privacy shields. Otto took scant attention of these details as he walked in. Head full of the scent of Honour, nervous system juddering under the rip and write of mentaug spooldown, he was intent on the bar, needing to wash it away. He ordered a whisky from the bartender, some vile Chinese malt, downed it in one and gestured for the bottle.
When he turned around to look for a corner to drown his sorrows in, his twin hearts stalled.
From a booth, Kaplinski was staring right at him.
Otto hadn't seen him. He hadn't even been looking for threats, too deep in his own misery. He could have silenced the mentaug, put himself into combat readiness. He was in the field, he should have had its umbrella capabilities offline, but he hadn't. He knew why.
If he carried on like this, he was going to get himself killed.
Kaplinski sat with a drink of something pale lit up by the glow of nearby UV illuminations, his teeth and the whites of his eyes similarly eerie. He put his hand out, palm wide, and indicated the sofa he sat on.
Otto's MT buzzed, a fizz of painful static. Someone trying to hook in. A squad icon that had lain dark for many years ignited. Vier; Kaplinski's number. Kaplinski's personal ident, a grinning shark's face, glowed by it.
Hello Otto, came Kaplinski's emotionless machine burr over the MT. Please, join me.
Otto weighed his options. A Cossack guard stood to attention at the top of the stairs, staring resolutely ahead. He carried a caseless carbine and a charged sabre. Neither would stop the Ky-tech, but there were a great many of his friends aboard the train, and some of them would carry specialised equipment. Cyborgs were a common tool of the plutocracy and the Sino-gangs. Not all of them had good manners, and the Cossacks were equipped accordingly.
Otto made his decision and walked over to the booth, stepping into its acoustic privacy cone, cutting the shitty music out.
'Isn't there anyone on this damn planet that doesn't have access to my MT encryption?' he said, sliding himself onto the horseshoe sofa, his knees tight under the table.
'So good to see you, Leutnant,' said Kaplinski. He'd become lean, his face sharp and more wolfish. He'd aged as hard as Otto, the stresses from being Ky-tech written on his skin. Only Lehmann had escaped those. Kaplinski was smaller than the other Ky-tech in Otto's squad, wiry with hard ropes of natural and implanted muscle, hair shaved close, electoos set into his shiny scalp, both glinting in the light. 'Not going to kill me?'
Otto held Kaplinski's gaze. The fugitive's eyes were dark as flint, calculating, devoid of pity. And yet Otto could see no sign of the feverishness that had been there last time they'd met. 'I could kill you right here, or maybe,
