Spin 01 - Spin State Read Free

wasn’t going to volunteer anything.
    “Well, what?” he asked, smiling the little-boy-in-trouble smile she’d seen shunted through a dozen different interfaces.
    Today’s ’face was another of Cohen’s soft-skinned boys—or was it even a boy? Either way it was beautiful, and just far enough over the threshold of adulthood to fill out the expensively tailored suit. Where did Cohen find these kids? And assuming even half of them were as young as they looked, how did he finesse the laws about implanting shunts in minors?
    Well, at least it’s not Roland , she thought. That was one mistake she didn’t need to be reminded of at the moment.
    “Were you even planning to tell me?” she asked.
    “I can’t,” Cohen said. “ Desolée .”
    “Can’t? Or won’t?”
    “Can’t. Truly.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m persona non grata at Alba ever since the Tel Aviv fiasco.”
    “Yeah,” Li said. She’d thought Cohen would never work for TechComm again after Tel Aviv. If he was on Metz, then Nguyen must be after something so important that she had to use the best AI she could find—even though the best meant Cohen. “What happened in Tel Aviv, by the way?”
    “The usual story. Good intentions gone sour.”
    “Gone rancid, from what I hear. There’s a rumor going the rounds that they tried to strip you of your French citizenship.”
    He glanced sidelong at her, an enigmatic smile curving the ’face’s lips. “Is there?”
“Fine, don’t tell me. It’s none of my business anyway. Unlike Soza’s little secret.”
    “My dear, I’d tell you that, of course. I’d tell you anything and everything if only I could be sure my confessions wouldn’t work their way back to the charming General Nguyen. But, as I’ve said once already, I can’t. TechComm made me give them every cutout and back door in my networks before they’d clear me for this job. Then they sicced one of their tame AIs on me. He fiddled me so good I can’t even find the kinks.” The soft girlish mouth twitched. “Humiliating.”
    “So why take the job?” Li asked. “And don’t tell me the money. I know better.” Cohen looked away.
    “Jesus wept! You’re getting paid in tech? On a shooting mission? How could you do that to Kolodny? To all of us?”
    He fished in his trouser pocket and pulled out a slim enameled cigarette case. “Smoke?” he asked.
    “No,” she said angrily. But then she said yes and took one; Ring-made cigarettes were too good to pass up, even on principle. And Cohen only smoked the best.
    He reached over and lit it for her—not touching her, not leaning too far into her space, not making eye contact. All the elaborate nots of friends who have been lovers but no longer are.
    They smoked in silence. She wondered what he was thinking, but when she glanced at him he was just staring at the floor and blowing smoke rings.
    “Listen,” he said when she was about to tell him it was time to get back into the briefing room. “We need it. I wouldn’t do this to you, to Kolodny, if we didn’t.”
    “We need it? We who?”
    “We me.” He spoke with the typical Emergent AI’s disregard of individual boundaries. Pronouns meant nothing to him; me and not me changed every time he signed a network share or associative contract. We could be no one or a hundred someones. But at least it sounded like he wasn’t planning to auction the tech off to the highest bidder. That was something, Li supposed.
    She threw down her cigarette and crushed it under a bootheel. The virufactured alloy floor mobilized its scrubbers as soon as the butt landed, and within seconds there was no sign on its matte gray surface that the cigarette had ever been there.
    “I hate those floors,” Cohen said, scowling prettily at the place where the cigarette had been. “I have yet to see one that can actually tell the difference between something you meant to throw out and something that just fell out of your pocket. I’ve lost some really nice