Free Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan Page A

speedo reads in.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “No, really. He made them fit an imperial speedo. Miles per hour. Ask him to let you look at the dashboard sometime.”
    “He’s not here today?”
    “No way. You won’t catch Notley working weekends. Calls it the American disease, working all the hours God sends you.” Bryant’s eyes flicked away with recollection. “I remember one quarterly do, I ran into him in the men’s room, we were both pretty pissed and I was asking him if being a partner was really worth all the extra shit, the weekend work, the all-nighters, and he looked at me like I was insane. Then he says, still treating me like I’m a headcase, talking very slowly, you know, he says
Mike, if you make partner and you’re still working weekends then there’s something wrong somewhere. You make partner so they can’t tell you to do that shit anymore. Otherwise, what’s the point?
You believe that?”
    “Sounds like a decent philosophy.”
    “Yeah, not like the rest of these fucking wannabes.” Mike gestured around dismissively. He wandered across to Chris’s car. “So what have we got here? This looks Scandinavian to me.”
    “Yeah.” Chris laid a proprietary hand on the car’s flank. “Saab combat chassis. Carla’s family are Norwegian, but she did her apprenticeship in Stockholm. Been around Saabs and Volvos all her life. She says the Swedes were building cars for road raging decades before anybody even thought of it.”
    Bryant nodded. “It looks pretty mean. But I reckon you’d still lose on speed to an Omega.”
    “She’s faster than she looks, Mike. A lot of that bulk’s Volvo spaced armoring. Strut-braced stuff. It isn’t solid, and the slipstream channels through flues on the outer edges for stability, but by Christ you’d still know if it hit you. Volvo’ve crash-tested the struts at airplane speeds, and they hold.”
    “Spaced armoring, huh?” Bryant looked thoughtful for a couple of moments, and Chris had the unsettling sensation that he had given away something important to the big man. Then another grin swept the calculating expression out of his eyes. He clapped Chris on the shoulder. “Remind me to divorce Suki and get a Swedish mechanic to shack up.”
    The parking deck was filled with a soft chime. The Shorn elevator voice announced two o’clock for the whole building. Mike glanced reflexively at his watch.
    “That’s me,” he said sourly. “Look, Chris, I’d better run. Corporate police can be a real drag when they’re determined to do something by the book. See you tonight, all right?”
    “Yeah.” Chris watched him stride away toward the double doors that led upward into the Shorn tower. “Hey, Mike.”
    “Yo.”
    “Good luck.”
    Bryant raised a hand and waved it sideways. “Ah, don’t worry about it. Piece of piss. Be out of here by three. See you tonight.”
             
    “H E SAID
what
?”
    Carla paused in the act of fastening one earring and stared disbelievingly at Chris in the mirror.
    Chris looked back at her, confused. “He said it’d be a piece of piss and they’d—”
    “No, before that. That stuff about divorcing Suki.”
    “He said to remind him to get a divorce so he could shack up with a Swedish mechanic.” Chris saw the look on her face and sighed, feeling the edge of the argument they were teetering on. “He’s just trying to be friendly, Carla. It’s a kind of compliment, you know.”
    “It’s a load of sexist shit is what it is. Anyway—” Carla finished with the earring and came away from the mirror. “—that’s not the point.”
    “No? Then what is the point, Carla?”
    This time it was Carla who sighed. “The point,” she said heavily, “is that I’m not some curiosity for you to show off. This is my wife, by the way she’s a mechanic. I’m sure it’s fun to say. The shock value. The looks you get. I know you get a kick out of taking me to these corporate functions, showing everyone what a rebel you