'Whoever it was, they can have an endorsement from me any day of the week,' said Ortega cheerfully. 'Maybe there'll be something left for forensics after all.'
'You know who it was, don't you?'
'He called you Kov — '
'It was Kadmin.'
There was a short silence. I watched the smoke curling up from the ruined dome. Ortega breathed in, out.
'Kadmin's in the store.'
'Not any more he isn't.' I glanced sideways at her. 'You got a cigarette?'
She passed me the packet wordlessly. I shook one out, fitted it into the corner of my mouth, touched the ignition patch to the end and drew deeply. The movements happened as one, reflex conditioned over years like a macro of need. I didn't have to consciously do anything. The smoke curling into my lungs was like a breath of the perfume you remember an old lover wearing.
'He knew me.' I exhaled. 'And he knew his Quellist history too. "That's fucking enough" is what a Quellist guerrilla called Iffy Deme said when she died under interrogation during the Unsettlement on Harlan's World. She was wired with internal explosives and she brought the house down. Sound familiar? Now who do we know who can swap Quell quotes like a Millsport native?'
'He's in the fucking store, Kovacs. You can't get someone out of the store without — '
'Without an AI. With an AI, you can do it. I've seen it done. Core command on Adoracion did it with our prisoners of war, like that.' I snapped my fingers. 'Like hooking elephant rays off a spawning reef.'
'As easy as that?' Ortega said ironically.
I sucked down some more smoke and ignored her. 'You remember when we were in virtual with Kadmin, we got that lightning effect across the sky?'
'Didn't see it. No, wait, yeah. I thought it was a glitch.'
'It wasn't. It touched him. Reflected in the table. That's when he promised to kill me.' I turned towards her and grinned queasily. The memory of Kadmin's virtual entity was clear and monstrous. 'You want to hear a genuine first generation Harlan's World myth? An offworld fairy story?'
'Kovacs, even with an AI, they'd need — '
'Want to hear the story?'
Ortega shrugged, winced and nodded. 'Sure. Can I have my cigarettes back?'
I tossed her the pack and waited while she kindled the cigarette. She plumed smoke out across the street. 'Go on, then.'
'Right. Where I come from originally, Newpest, used to be a textile town. There's a plant on Harlan's World called belaweed, grows in the sea and on most shorelines too. Dry it out, treat it with chemicals and you can make something like cotton from it. During the Settlement Newpest was the belacotton capital of the World. Conditions in the mills were pretty bad even back then, and when the Quellists turned everything upside down it got worse. The belacotton industry went into decline and there was massive unemployment, unrelieved poverty and fuck all the Unsettlers could do about it. They were revolutionaries, not economists.'
'Same old song, huh?'
'Well, familiar tune anyway. Some pretty horrible stories came out of the textile slums around that time. Stuff like the Threshing Sprites, the Cannibal of Kitano Street.'
Ortega drew on her cigarette and widened her eyes. 'Charming.'
'Yeah, well, bad times. So you get the story of Mad Ludmila the seamstress. This is one they used to tell to kids to make them do their chores and come home before dark. Mad Ludmila had a failing belacotton mill and three children who never helped her out. They used to stay out late, playing the arcades across town and sleep all day. So one day, the story goes, Ludmila flips out.'
'She wasn't already mad, then?'
'No, just a bit stressed.'
'You called her Mad Ludmila.'
'That's what the story's called.'
'But if she wasn't mad at the beginning — '
'Do you want to hear this story or not?'
Ortega's mouth quirked at the corner. She waved me on with her cigarette.
'The story goes, one evening as her children were getting ready to go out, she spiked their coffee with something and when they were semi-conscious, but still aware, mind you, she drove them out to Mitcham's Point and threw them into the threshing tanks one by one. They say you could hear the screams right across the swamp.'
'Mh-mmmm.'
'Of course, the police were suspicious — '
'Really?'
' — but they couldn't prove anything. Couple of the kids had been into some nasty chemicals, they were jerking around with the local yakuza, no one was really surprised when they disappeared.'
'Is there a point to this story?'
'Yeah. See, Ludmila got rid of her fucking useless children, but it didn't really help. She still needed someone to man the curing vats, to haul the belaweed up and down the mill stairs, and she was still broke. So what did she do?'
'Something gory, I imagine.'
I nodded. 'What she did, she picked the bits of her mangled kids out of the thresher and stitched them into a huge three-metre-tall carcass. And then, on a night sacred to the dark powers, she invoked a Tengu to — '
'A what?'
'A Tengu. It's a sort of mischief-maker, a demon I guess you'd call it. She invoked the Tengu to animate the carcass, and then she stitched it in.'
'What, when it wasn't looking?'
'Ortega, it's a fairy story. She stitched the soul of the Tengu inside, but she promised to release it if it served her will nine years. Nine's a sacred number in the Harlanite pantheons, so she was as bound to the agreement as the Tengu. Unfortunately — '
'Ah.'
' — Tengu are not known for their patience, and I don't suppose old Ludmila was the easiest person to work for either. One night, not a third of the way through the contract, the Tengu turned on her and tore her apart. Some say it was Kishimo-jin's doing, that she whispered terrible incitements into the Tengu's ear at — '
'Kishimo Gin?'
'Kishimo-jin, the divine protectress of children. It was her revenge on Ludmila for the death of the children. That's one version, there's another that — ' I picked up Ortega's mutinous expression out of the corner of my eye and hurried on. 'Well, anyway, the Tengu tore her apart, but in so doing it locked itself into the spell and was condemned to remain imprisoned in the carcass. And now, with the original invoker of the spell dead, and worse still, betrayed, the carcass began to rot. A piece here, a piece there, but irreversibly. And so the Tengu was driven to prowling the streets and mills of the textile quarter, looking for fresh meat to replace the rotting portions of its body. It always killed children, because the parts it needed to replace were child-sized, but however many times it sewed new flesh to the carcass — '
'I''d learnt to sew, then?'
'Tengu are multi-talented. However many times it replaced itself, after a few days the new portions began to putrefy, and it was driven out once more to hunt. In the quarter they call it the Patchwork Man.'
I fell silent. Ortega mouthed a silent O, then slowly exhaled smoke through it. She watched the smoke dissipate, then turned to face me.
'Your mother tell you that story?'
'Father. When I was five.'
She looked at the end of her cigarette. 'Nice.'
'No. He wasn't. But that's another story.' I stood up and looked down the street to where the crowd was massed at one of the incident barriers. 'Kadmin's out there, and he's out of control. Whoever he was working for, he's working for himself now.'
'How?' Ortega spread her hands in exasperation. 'OK, an AI could tunnel into the Bay City PD stack. I'll buy that. But we're talking about microsecond intrusion here. Any longer and it'd ring bells from here to Sacramento.'
'Microsecond's all it needed.'
'But Kadmin isn't on stack. They'd need to know when he was being spun, and they'd need a fix. They'd need . . . '
She stopped as she saw it coming.
'Me.' I finished for her. 'They'd need me.'
'But you — '
'I'm going to need some time
to sort this out, Ortega.' I spun my cigarette into the gutter and grimaced as I tasted the inside of my own mouth. 'Today, maybe tomorrow too. Check the stack. Kadmin's gone. If I were you, I'd keep your head down for a while.'
Ortega pulled a sour face. 'You telling me to go undercover in my own city?'
'Not telling you to do anything.' I pulled out the Nemex and ejected the half-spent magazine with actions almost as automatic as the smoking had been. The clip went into my jacket pocket. 'I'm giving you the state of play. We'll need somewhere to meet. Not the Hendrix. And not anywhere you can be traced to either. Don't tell me, just write it down.' I nodded at the crowd beyond the barriers. 'Anybody down there with decent implants could have this conversation focused and amped.'
'Jesus.' She blew out her cheeks. 'That's technoparanoia, Kovacs.'
'Don't tell me that. I used to do this for a living.'
She thought about it for a moment, then produced a pen and scribbled on the side of the cigarette packet. I fished a fresh magazine from my pocket and jacked it into the Nemex, eyes still scanning the crowd.
'There you go.' Ortega tossed me the packet. 'That's a discreet destination code. Feed it to any taxi in the Bay area and it'll take you there. I'll be there tonight, tomorrow night. After that, it's back to business as usual.'
I caught the packet left-handed, glanced briefly at the numbers and put it away in my jacket. Then I snapped the slide on the Nemex to chamber the first slug and stuffed the pistol back into its holster.
'Tell me that when you've checked the stack,' I said, and started walking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I walked south.
Over my head, autocabs wove in and out of the traffic with programmed hyper-efficiency and swooped occasionally to ground level in attempts to stimulate custom. The weather above the traffic flow was on the change, grey cloud cover racing in from the west and occasional spots of rain hitting my cheek when I looked up. I left the cabs alone. Go primitive, Virginia Vidaura would have said. With an AI gunning for you, your only hope is to drop out of the electronic plane. Of course, on a battlefield that's a lot more easily done. Plenty of mud and chaos to hide in. A modern city — unbombed — is a logistical nightmare for this kind of evasion. Every building, every vehicle, every street is jacked into the web, and every transaction you make tags you for the datahounds.
I found a battered-looking currency dispenser and replenished my thinning sheaf of plastified notes from it. Then I backed up two blocks and went east until I found a public callbox. I searched through my pockets, came up with a card, settled the call trades on my head and dialled.
There was no image. No sound of connection. This was an internal chip. The voice spoke brusquely out of a blank screen.
'Who is this?'
'You gave me your card,' I said, 'in case of anything major. Well, now it seems there's something pretty fucking major we need to talk about, doctor.'
There was an audible click as she swallowed, just once, and then her voice was there again, level and cool. 'We should meet. I assume you don't want to come to the facility.'
'You assume right. You know the red bridge?'
'The Golden Gate, it's called,' she said dryly. 'Yes, I'm familiar with it.'
'Be there at eleven. Northbound carriageway. Come alone.'
I cut the connection. Dialled again.
'Bancroft residence, with whom do you wish to speak?' A severely-suited woman with a hairstyle reminiscent of Angin Chandra's pilot cuts arrived on the screen a fraction after she started speaking.
'Lauirens Bancroft, please.'
'Mr Bancroft is in conference at present.'
That made it even easier. 'Fine. When he's available, can you tell him Takeshi Kovacs called.'
'Would you like to speak to Mrs Bancroft? She has left instructions that —
'No,' I said rapidly. 'That won't be necessary. Please tell Mr Bancroft that I shall be out of contact for a few days, but that I will call him from Seattle. That's all.'
I cut the connection, and checked my watch. There was about an hour and forty minutes left of the time I'd given myself to be on the bridge. I went looking for a bar.
I'm stacked, backed up and I'm fifth dan
And I'm not afraid of the Patchwork Man
The small coin of urchin rhyme gleamed up at me from the silted bed of my childhood.
But I was afraid.
The rain still hadn't set in when we got onto the approach road to the bridge, but the clouds were massing sullenly above and the windscreen was splattered with heavy droplets too few to trigger the truck's wipers. I watched the rust-coloured structure looming up ahead through the distortion of the exploded raindrops and knew I was going to get soaked.
There was no traffic on the bridge. The suspension towers rose like the bones of some incalculably huge dinosaur above deserted asphalt lanes and side gantries lined with unidentifiable detritus.
'Slow down,' I told my companion as we passed under the first tower, and the heavy vehicle braked with uncalled for force. I glanced sideways. 'Take it easy. I told you, this is a no-risk gig. I'm just meeting someone.'
Graft Nicholson gave me a bleary look from the driver's seat, and a breath of stale alcohol came with it.
'Yeah, sure. You hand out this much plastique on drivers every week, right? Just pick them out of Licktown bars for charity?'
I shrugged. 'Believe what you want. Just keep your speed down. You can drive as fast as you like after you let me out.'
Nicholson shook his tangled head. 'This is fucked, man — '
'There. Standing on the walkway. Drop me there.' There was a solitary figure leaning on the rail up ahead, apparently contemplating the view of the bay. Nicholson frowned with concentration and hunched the vastly out-sized shoulders for which, presumably, he was named. The battered truck drifted sedately but not quite smoothly across two lanes and came to a bumpy halt beside the right-hand barrier.
I jumped down, glanced around for bystanders, saw none and pulled myself back up on the open door.
'All right now, listen. It's going to be at least two days till I get to Seattle, maybe three, so you just hole up in the first hotel the city limits datastack has to offer, and you wait for me there. Pay cash, but book in under my name. I'll contact you between ten and eleven in the morning, so be in the hotel at those times. The rest of the time, you can do what you like. I figure I gave you enough cash not to get bored.'
Graft Nicholson bared his teeth in a knowing leer that made me feel slightly sorry for anyone working in the Seattle leisure industry that week. 'Don't worry 'bout me, man. Old Graft knows how to grab a good time by the titties.'
'I'm glad. Just don't get too comfortable. We may need to move it in a hurry.'
'Yeah, yeah. What about the rest of the plastique, man?'
'I told you. You'll get paid when we're done.'
'And what about if you don't show up in three days?'
'In that case,' I said pleasantly, 'I'll be dead. That happens, it'd be better to drop out of sight for a few weeks. They're not going to waste time looking for you. They find me, they'll be happy.'
'Man, I don't think I'm — '
'You'll be fine. See you in three days.' I dropped back to the ground, slammed the truck door and banged on it twice. The engine rumbled into drive and Nicholson pulled the truck back out into the middle of the carriageway.
Watching him go, I wondered briefly if he'd actually go to Seattle at all. I'd given him a sizable chunk of credit, after all, and even with the promise of a second down payment if he followed instructions, the temptation would still be to double back somewhere up the coast and head straight back to the bar I'd picked him out of. Or he might get jumpy, sitting in the hotel waiting for a knock on the door, and skip before the three days were up. I couldn't really blame him for these potential betrayals, since I had no intention of turning up myself. Whatever he did was fine by me.
In systems evasion, you must
scramble the enemy's assumptions, said Virginia in my ear. Run as much interference as you can without breaking pace.
'A friend of yours, Mr Kovacs?' The doctor had come to the barrier and was watching the car recede.
'Met him in a bar,' I said truthfully, climbing over to her side, and making for the rail. It was the same view I'd seen when Curtis brought me back from Suntouch House the day of my arrival. In the gloomy, pre-rain light the aerial traffic glimmered above the buildings across the Bay like a swarm of fireflies. Narrowing my eyes, I could make out detail on the island of Alcatraz, the grey-walled and orange-windowed bunker of PsychaSec SA. Beyond lay Oakland. At my back, the open sea and to north and south a solid kilometre of empty bridge. Reasonably sure that nothing short of tactical artillery could surprise me here, I turned back to look at the doctor.
She seemed to flinch as my gaze fell on her.
'What's the matter?' I asked softly. 'Medical ethics pinching a little?'
'It was not my idea — '
'I know that. You just signed the releases, turned a blind eye, that kind of thing. So who was it?'
'I don't know,' she said not quite steadily. 'Someone came to see Sullivan. An artificial sleeve. Asian, I think.'
I nodded. Trepp.
'What were Sullivan's instructions?'
'Virtual net locater, fitted between the cortical stack and neural interface.' The clinical details seemed to give her strength. Her voice firmed up. 'We did the surgery two days before you were freighted. Microscalpelled into the vertebrae along the line of the original stack incision, and plugged it with graft tissue. No show under any kind of sweep outside virtual. You'd have to run a full neuro-electrical to find it. How did you guess?'
'I didn't have to guess. Someone used it to locate and lever a contract killer out of the Bay City police holding stack. That's Aiding and Abetting. You and Sullivan are both going down for a couple of decades minimum.'
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