Free Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan

“She’s a mechanic. Got to work most Saturdays.”
    He sipped his coffee and watched for a reaction, but Suki either didn’t care one way or the other or had been trained to black belt in social graces. She smiled as she unfastened Ariana from the high chair.
    “Yes, Michael said. You know, one of the Shorn partners had a girlfriend who worked in auto reclaim. Now, what was his name?” She snapped her fingers. “I met him at the Christmas bash.”
    “Notley,” said Bryant.
    “That’s it, Notley. Jack Notley. Well, you must both come over for dinner, Chris. What’s your wife’s name?”
    “Carla.”
    “Carla. Lovely name. Like that Italian holoporn star Mike gets so turned on over.” She put a playful hand over Bryant’s mouth as he protested. “Yes, ask her to come over. In fact, why don’t you come over tonight? We’ve got no plans, have we, Mike?”
    Bryant shook his head.
    “Well, then. I’ll cook sukiyaki. You’re not vegetarian, either of you?”
    “No.” Chris hesitated. There had been some notion of going to visit Carla’s father today, and in the whirl of the week just gone he wasn’t sure quite how solidified the plan was. “Uh, I’m not sure if—”
    “Not to be missed, that sukiyaki,” said Michael, draining his coffee and setting down the mug. “Beef direct from the Sutherland Croft Association herds. Hey, you reckon Carla’d like a look at the BMW? Seeing as she’s a mechanic and all. That’s the new Omega Injection series under the bonnet. State of the art, not even on general release outside Germany yet. I bet she’d love to watch it turn over.”
    Chris, aware suddenly of the exact depth to which he did not want to visit his father-in-law, made a decision.
    “Yeah, she’d like that,” he said.
    “Good, that’s settled then,” Suki said brightly. “I’ll get the beef this afternoon. Shall we say about eight thirty?”
             
    M IKE INSISTED ON dropping Chris right beside his car. The underground parking decks beneath the Shorn block were largely deserted, and the level Chris had parked on showed only three other vehicles. Bryant slewed to a halt across the battery of empty spaces opposite, killed the engine, and got out.
    “Hewitt’s,” he said, nodding at the nearest of the isolated vehicles. “Audi built it for her to spec when she made partner. Fancy seeing that coming up in your rearview?”
    Chris looked at it. Broad black windshield; heavy-impact collision bars that jutted from the end of the raked hood.
    “Not much,” he admitted. “But I thought Hewitt was a BMW fan.”
    Mike snorted. “Hewitt’s a fan of money. Back when she made partner, Shorn had this deal with Audi. They supplied all our company cars and hardware, and the partners got special-edition battlewagons thrown in for free. Two years ago BMW made Shorn a better offer and they went with it. As a partner, Hewitt can opt for any vehicle she likes, but when this baby gets written off or superseded, you can bet she’ll just take a top-of-the-line Omega with all the armor options, free to partners of BMW clients. To her, it’s all just a cost–benefit analysis.”
    “So what does Notley think of all this?”
    “Notley’s a patriot.” Mike grinned. “I mean, in the real, uncut sense of the word. Last of the diehard anti-Europeans. Anti-American, too, come to that. He actually believes in the cultural superiority of England over other nations. Shit like that. I mean, you’d think he’d be able to see a little more clearly from the fiftieth floor, wouldn’t you? Anyway, when
he
made partner, he didn’t want to know about the German makes. He had Land Rover build him a customized battlewagon from scratch. And he’s still driving it ten years later. Fucking thing looks like a tank but it’ll do nearly two hundred kilometers an hour. Except he won’t use metric, so that’d be . . . what, about a hundred and twenty something? Miles an hour? Whatever. That’s what his