'Should you need any repetition of these details, the disc will remain playable for the next eighteen minutes, at which point it will self wipe. You are now on your own.'
Kawahara's features arranged themselves in a PR smile and the image faded as the printer chittered out the hardware list. I scanned it briefly on my way down to the limo.
Ortega had not come back.
At SilSet Holdings I was treated like a Harlan Family heir. Polished human receptionists busied themselves with my comfort while a technician brought out a metal cylinder roughly the dimensions of a hallucinogen grenade.
Trepp was less impressed. I met her early that: evening, as per her phoned instructions, in a bar in Oakland, and when she saw the JacSol image she laughed sourly.
'You look like a fucking programmer, Kovacs. Where'd you get that suit?'
'My name's Anderson,' I reminded her. 'And the suit goes with the name.'
She pulled a face.
'Well next time you go shopping, Anderson, take me with you. I'll save you a lot of money, and you won't come out looking like a guy takes the kids to Honolulu at weekends.'
I leaned across the tiny table. 'You know Trepp, last time you gave me a hard time about my dress sense, I killed you.'
She shrugged. 'Goes to show. Some people just can't take the truth.'
'Did you bring the stuff?'
Trepp put her hand flat on the table, and when she removed it there was a nondescript grey disc sealed in impact plastic between us.
'There you go. As requested. Now I know you're crazy.' There might have been something like admiration in her voice. 'You know what they do to you on Earth for playing with this stuff?'
I covered the disc with my own hand and pocketed it. 'Same as anywhere else, I guess. Federal offence, down the double barrel. You forget, I don't have any choice.'
Trepp scratched an ear. 'Double barrel, or the Big Wipe. I haven't enjoyed carrying this around all day. You got the rest of it there?'
'Why? Worried about being seen in public with me?'
She smiled. 'A bit. I hope you know what you're doing.'
I hoped so too. The bulky, grenade-sized package I'd collected from SilSet had been burning a hole in my expensive coat pocket all day.
I went back to the Hendrix and checked for messages. Ortega had not called. I killed time in the hotel room, thinking through the line I was going to feed Elliott. At nine I got back in the limo and took it down to Bay City Central.
I sat in a reception room while a young doctor completed the necessary paperwork and I initialled the forms where he indicated. There was an eerie familiarity to the process. Most of the clauses in the parole were on behalf of stipulations, which effectively made me responsible for Irene Elliott's conduct during the release period. She had even less say in the matter than I'd had when I arrived the week before.
When Elliott finally emerged from the RESTRICTED ZONE doors beyond the reception rooms, it was with the halting step of someone recovering from a debilitating illness. The shock of the mirror was written into her new face. When you don't do it for a living, it's no easy thing to face the stranger for the first time and the face that Elliott now wore was almost as far from the big-boned blonde I remembered from her husband's photocube as Ryker was from my own previous sleeve. Kawahara had described the new sleeve as compatible, and it fitted that bleak description perfectly. It was a female body, about the same age as Elliott's original body had been, but there the resemblance ended. Where Irene Elliott had been big and fair-skirmed, this sleeve had the sheen of a narrow vein of copper seen through falling water. Thick black hair framed a face with eyes like hot coals and lips the colour of plums, and the body was slim and delicate.
'Irene Elliott?'
She leaned unsteadily on the reception counter as she turned to look at me. 'Yes. Who are you?'
'My name is Martin Anderson. I represent JacSol Division West. We arranged for your parole.'
Her eyes narrowed a little, scanning me from head to foot and back again. 'You don't look like a programmer. Apart from the suit, I mean.'
'I'm a security consultant, attached to JacSol for certain projects. There is some work we would like you to do for us.'
'Yeah? Couldn't get anyone else to do it cheaper than this?' She gestured around her. 'What happened, did I get famous while I was in the store?'
'In a sense,' I said carefully. 'Perhaps it would be better if we dealt with the formalities here and moved on. There is a limousine waiting.'
'A limo?' The incredulity in her voice put a genuine smile on my face for the first time that day. She signed the final release as if in a dream.
'Who are you really?' she asked when the limousine was in the air. It felt like a lot of people had been asking me that over the past few days. I was almost beginning to wonder myself.
I stared ahead over the navigation block of the limo. 'A friend,' I said quietly. 'That's all you need to know for now.'
'Before we start anything, I want — '
'I know.' The limousine was banking in the sky as I said it. 'We'll be in Ember in about half an hour.'
I hadn't turned but I could feel the heat of her stare on the side of my face.
'You're not corporate,' she said definitely. 'Corporates don't do this stuff. Not like this.'
'The corporates do whatever turns a profit. Don't let your prejudices blind you. Sure, they'll burn down entire villages if it pays. But if having a human face is what cuts it, they'll whip out a human face and put it on.'
'And you're the human face?'
'Not exactly.'
'What's the work you want me to do? Something illegal?'
I pulled the cylindrical virus loader out of my pocket and passed it across to her. She took it in both hands and examined the decals with professional interest. As far as I was concerned, this was the first test. I'd pulled Elliott out of the store because that way she would be mine in a way no one supplied by Kawahara or skimmed off the street would ever be. But beyond that I had nothing to go on but instinct and Victor Elliott's word that his wife was good, and I was feeling slightly queasy about the direction I'd let things go. Kawahara was right. Good Samaritan gestures can be expensive.
'So let's see. You've got a first-generation Simultec virus here.' Scorn made her enunciate each syllable slowly. 'Collector's item, practically a relic. And you've got it in a state-of-the-art rapid deployment jacket with anti-locational casing. Why don't you just cut the crap and tell me what's really in here? You're planning a run, aren't you?'
I nodded.
'What's the target?'
'Virtual whorehouse. AI-managed.'
Elliott's new lips parted in a soundless whistle. 'Liberation run?'
'No. We're installing.'
'Installing this?' She hefted the cylinder. 'So what is it?'
'Rawling 4851.'
Elliott stopped hefting abruptly. 'That's not funny.'
'Wasn't intended to be. That's a dormant Rawling variant. Set for rapid deployment, as you so rightly observed. The activation codes are in my pocket. We are going to plant Rawling inside an AI whorehouse database, inject the codes and then weld the lid shut: on it. There's some peripheral stuff with monitoring systems, and some tidying up, but basically that's the run.'
She gave me a curious look. 'Are you some kind of religious nut?'
'No.' I smiled faintly. 'It's nothing like that. Can you do it?'
'Depends on the AI. Do you have the specs?'
'Not here.'
Elliott handed me back the deployment jacket. 'I can't tell you, then, can I?'
'That was what I was hoping you'd say.' I stowed the cylinder, satisfied. 'How's the new sleeve?'
'It's OK. Any reason why I couldn't have my own body back? I'll be a lot faster in my own — '
'I know. Unfortunately it's out of my hands. Did they tell you how long you've been in the store?'
'Four years, someone said.'
'Four and a hal
f,' I said, glancing at the release forms I'd signed. Tin afraid, in the meantime, someone took a shine to your sleeve and bought it.'
'Oh.' She was silent then. The shock of waking up inside someone else's body for the first time is nothing compared to the sense of rage and betrayal you feel knowing that someone, somewhere, is walking around inside you. It's like the discovery of infidelity, but at the intimacy range of rape. And like both those violations, there's nothing you can do about it. You just get used to it.
When the silence stretched, I looked across at her still profile and cleared my throat.
'You sure you want to do this right now? Go home, I mean.'
She barely bothered to look at me. 'Yes, I'm sure. I have a daughter and a husband that haven't seen me in nearly five years. You think this — ' she gestured down at herself ' — is going to stop me?'
'Fair enough.'
The lights of Ember appeared on the darkened mass of the coastline up ahead, and the limousine began its descent. I watched Elliott out of the corner of my eye and saw the nervousness setting in. Palms rubbing together in her lap, lower lip caught in her teeth at one corner of her new mouth. She released her breath with a small but perfectly audible noise.
'They don't know I'm coming?' she asked.
'No.' I said shortly. I didn't want to follow this line of conversation. 'The contract is between you and JacSol West. It doesn't concern your family.'
'But you arranged for me to see them. Why?'
'I'm a sucker for family reunions.' I fixed my gaze on the darkened bulk of the wrecked aircraft carrier below, and we landed in silence. The autolimo banked round to align itself with the local traffic systems and touched down a couple of hundred metres north of Elliott's Data Linkage. We powered smoothly along the shore road under the successive holos of Anchana Salomao and parked immaculately opposite the narrow frontage. The dead monitor doorstop had been removed and the door was closed but there were lights burning in the glass-walled office at the back.
We climbed out and crossed the street. The closed door proved to be locked as well. Irene Elliott: banged impatiently at it with the flat of one copper-skinned hand and someone sat up sluggishly in the back office. After a moment, a figure identifiable as Victor Elliott came down to the transmission floor, past the reception counter and towards us. His grey hair was untidy and his face swollen with sleep. He peered out at us with a lack of focus I'd seen before on datarats when they'd been cruising the stacks for too long. Jack-happy.
'Who the hell — ' He stopped as he recognised me. 'What the fuck do you want, grasshopper? And who's this?'
'Vic?' Irene Elliott's new throat sounded nine tenths closed. 'Vic, it's me.'
For a moment, Elliott's eyes ran a volley between my face and the delicate Asian woman beside me, then what she had said smacked into him like a truck. He flinched visibly with the impact.
'Irene?' he whispered.
'Yes, it's me,' she husked back. There were tears leaking down her cheeks. For moments they stared at each other through the glass, then Victor Elliott was fumbling with the locking mechanism of the door, shoving at the frame to get it out of the way, and the copper-skinned woman sagged across the threshold into his arms. They locked together in an embrace that looked set to break the new sleeve's delicate bones. I took a mild interest in street: lamps up and down the promenade.
Finally, Irene Elliott remembered me. She disengaged from her husband and twisted round, smearing the tears off her face with the heel of one hand and blinking bright-eyed at me.
'Can you — '
'Sure.' I said neutrally. 'I'll wait in the limo. See you in the morning.'
I caught one confused look from Victor Elliott as his wife bustled him inside, nodded good-naturedly at him and turned away to the parked limo and the beach. The door banged shut behind me. I felt in my pockets and came up with Ortega's crumpled packet of cigarettes. Wandering past the limo to the iron railing, I kindled one of the bent and flattened cylinders and for once felt no sense that I was betraying something as the smoke curled into my lungs. Down on the beach, the surf was up, a chorus line of ghosts along the sand. I leaned on the railing and listened to the white noise of the waves as they broke, wondering why I could feel this much at peace with so much still unresolved. Ortega had not come back. Kadmin was still out there. Sarah was still under ransom, Kawahara still had me by the balls, and I still didn't know why Bancroft had been killed.
And despite it all, there was space for this measure of quiet.
Take what is offered and that must sometimes be enough.
My gaze slipped out past the breakers. The ocean beyond was black and secret, merging seamlessly with the night a scant distance out from the shore. Even the massive bulk of the keeled-over Free Trade Enforcer was hard to make out. I imagined Mary Lou Hinchley hurtling down to her shattering impact with the unyielding water, then slipping broken beneath the swells to be cradled in wait for the sea's predators. How long had she been out there before the currents contrived to carry what was left of her back to her own kind? How long had the darkness held her?
My thoughts skipped aimlessly, cushioned on the vague sense of acceptance and well-being. I saw Bancroft's antique telescope, trained on the heavens and the tiny motes of light that were Earth's first hesitant steps beyond the limits of the solar system. Fragile arks carrying the recorded selves of a million pioneers and the deep-frozen embryo banks that might someday re-sleeve them on distant worlds, if the promise of the vaguely understood Martian astrogation charts bore fruit. If not they would drift forever, because the universe is mostly night and darkened ocean.
Raising an eyebrow at my own introspection, I heaved myself off the rail and glanced up at the holographic face above my head. Anchana Salomao had the night to herself. Her ghostly countenance gazed down at repeated intervals along the promenade, compassionate but uninvolved. Looking at the composed features, it was easy to see why Elizabeth Elliott had wanted so badly to attain those heights. I would have given a lot for that same detached composure. I shifted my attention to the windows above Elliott's. The lights were on there, and as I watched a female form moved across one of them in naked silhouette. I sighed, spun the stub of my cigarette into the gutter and took refuge in the limo. Let Anchana keep the vigil. I called up channels at random on the entertainment deck and let the mindless barrage of images and sounds numb me into a kind of half-sleep. The night passed around the vehicle like cold mist and I suffered the vague sensation that I was drifting away from the lights of the Elliotts' home, out to sea on snapped moorings with nothing between me and the horizon where there was a storm building . . .
A sharp rapping on the window beside my head shook me awake. I jerked round from the position I'd slumped into and saw Trepp standing patiently outside. She gestured at me to wind down the window, then leaned in with a grin.
'Kawahara was right about you. Sleeping in the car so this Dipper can get laid. You've got delusions of priesthood, Kovacs.'
'Shut up, Trepp,' I said irritably. 'What time is it?'
'About five.' Her eyes swivelled up and left to consult the chip. 'Five-sixteen. Be getting light soon.'
I struggled into a more upright position, tasting the residue of the single cigarette on my tongue. 'What are you doing here?'
'Watching your back. We don't want Kadmin taking you out before you can sell the goods to Bancroft, do we? Hey, is that the Wreckers?'
I followed her gaze forward to the entertainment deck, which was still screening some kind of sports coverage. Minuscule figures rushed backwards and forwards on a cross-hatched field, accompanied by a barely audible commentary. A brief collision between two players occasioned an insectile roar of cheering. I must have lowered the volume before I fell asleep. Switching the deck off, I saw in the ensuing dimness that Trepp had been right. The night had washed out to a soft blue gloom that was creeping over the buildings beside us like a bleach stain on the darkness.
'Not a fan, th
en?' Trepp nodded at the screen. 'I didn't use to be, but you live in New York long enough, you get the habit.'
'Trepp, how the fuck are you supposed to watch my back if your head is jammed in here watching screen?'
Trepp gave me a hurt look and withdrew her head. I climbed out of the limo and stretched in the chilly air. Overhead, Anchana Salomao was still resplendent, but the lights above Elliott's were out.
'They stayed up until a couple of hours ago,' said Trepp helpfully. 'I thought they might be running out on you, so I checked the back.'
I gazed up at the darkened windows. 'Why are they going to run out on me? She hasn't even heard what the terms of the deal are.'
'Well, involvement in an erasure offence tends to make most people nervous.'
'Not this woman,' I said, and wondered how much I believed myself.
Trepp shrugged. 'Suit yourself. I still think you're crazy, though. Kawahara's got Dippers could do this stuff standing on their heads.'
Since my own reasons for not accepting Kawahara's offer of technical support were almost entirely instinctive, I said nothing. The icy certainty of my revelations about Bancroft, Kawahara and Resolution 653 had faded with the previous day's rush of set-up details for the run, and any sense of interlocking well-being had gone when Ortega left. All I had now was the gravity pull of mission time, the cold dawn and the sound of the waves on the shore. The taste of Ortega in my mouth and the warmth of her long-limbed body curled into mine was a tropical island in the chill, receding in my wake.
'You reckon there's somewhere open this early that serves coffee,' I asked.
'Town this size?' Trepp drew breath in through her teeth. 'Doubt it. But I saw a bank of dispensers on the way in. Got to be one that does coffee.'
'Machine coffee?' I curled my lip.
'Hey, what are you, a fucking connoisseur? You're living in a hotel that's just one big goddamned dispenser. Christ, Kovacs, this is the Machine Age. Didn't anybody tell you that?'
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