Altered Carbon tk-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  The screen dropped into neutral, an unwinding tricoloured helix accompanied by sickly sweet string arrangements. I gritted my teeth.

  “Takeshi-san.” As always, Kawahara started in Japanese, as if it established some kind of common ground with me. “This is unlooked-for so early. Do you have good news for me?”

  I stayed doggedly in Amanglic. “Is this a secure line?”

  “As close as such a thing can be said to exist, yes.”

  “I have a shopping list.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “To begin with, I need access to a military virus. Rawling 4851 for preference, or one of the Condomar variants.”

  Kawahara’s intelligent features hardened abruptly. “The Innenin virus?”

  “Yeah. It’s over a century out of date now, shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of. Then I need—”

  “Kovacs, I think you’d better explain what you’re planning.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I understood this was my play, and you didn’t want to be involved.”

  “If I secure you a copy of the Rawling virus, I’d say I’m already involved.” Kawahara offered me a measured smile. “Now what are you planning to do with it?”

  “Bancroft killed himself, that’s the result you want, right?”

  A slow nod.

  “Then there has to be a reason,” I said, warming to the deceit structure I’d come up with, despite myself. I was doing what they’d trained me to do, and it felt good. “Bancroft has remote storage, it doesn’t make sense that he’d light himself up unless he had a very specific reason. A reason unrelated to the actual act of suicide. A reason like self preservation.”

  Kawahara’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

  “Bancroft uses whorehouses on a regular basis, real and virtual. He told me that himself a couple of days ago. And he’s not too particular about the quality of establishment he uses either. Now, let’s assume that there’s an accident in one of these virtuals while he’s getting his itch scratched. Accidental bleedover from some grimed-up old programs that no one’s bothered to even open for a few decades. Go to a low enough grade of house, there’s no telling what might be lying around.”

  “The Rawling virus.” Kawahara exhaled as if she had been holding her breath in anticipation.

  “Rawling variant 4851 takes about a hundred minutes to go fully active, by which time it’s too late to do anything.” I forced images of Jimmy de Soto from my mind. “The target’s contaminated beyond redemption. Suppose Bancroft finds this out through some kind of systems warning. He must be wired internally for that kind of thing. He suddenly discovers the stack he’s wearing and the brain it’s wired to is burnt. That’s not a disaster, if you’ve got clone backup and remote storage, but—”

  “Transmission.” Kawahara’s face lit up as she got it.

  “Right. He’d have to do something to stop the virus being ‘cast to the remote with the rest of his personality. With the next needlecast coming up that night, maybe in a few minutes’ time, there was only one way to ensure the remote stack didn’t get contaminated.”

  I mimed a pistol at my head.

  “Ingenious.”

  “That’s why he made the call, the timecheck. He couldn’t trust his own internal chip, the virus might already have scrambled it.”

  Solemnly, Kawahara lifted her hands into view and applauded. When she had finished, she clasped her hands together and looked at me over them.

  “Very impressive. I will obtain the Rawling virus immediately. Have you selected a suitable virtual house for it to be downloaded into?”

  “Not yet. The virus isn’t the only thing I need. I want you to arrange the parole and re-sleeving of Irene Elliott, currently held at Bay City Central on conviction of Dipping. I also want you to look into the possibility of acquiring her original sleeve back from its purchasers. Some corporate deal, there’ll be records.”

  “You’re going to use this Elliott to download Rawling?”

  “The evidence is she’s good.”

  “The evidence is she got caught,” observed Kawahara tartly. “I’ve got plenty of people can do this for you. Top line intrusion specialists. You don’t need—”

  “Kawahara.” I kept my temper with an effort, but heard some of it in the tightness in my voice. “This is my gig, remember. I don’t want your people climbing all over it. If you unstack Elliott, she’ll be loyal. Get her her own body back and she’ll be ours for life. That’s the way I want to do it, so that’s the way it’s going down.”

  I waited. Kawahara stayed expressionless for a moment, then bestowed on me another carefully calibrated smile.

  “Very well. We will do it your way. I’m sure you’re aware of the risks you are taking, and what will happen if you fail. I shall contact you at the Hendrix later today.”

  “What’s the word on Kadmin?”

  “Of Kadmin, there is no word.” Kawahara smiled once more, and the connection broke.

  I sat staring at the standby screen for a moment, reviewing the scam as I’d laid it out. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d been telling the truth in the midst of all the deceit. Or, more, that my carefully spun lies were treading in the tracks of the truth, following the same path. A good lie should shadow the truth closely enough to draw substance from it, but this was something else, something altogether more unnerving. I felt like a hunter who has tracked a swamp panther a little too close for comfort, and expects at any moment to see it rear up out of the swamp in all its fanged and tendril-maned horror. The truth was here, somewhere.

  It was a hard feeling to shake.

  I got up and went into the kitchen, where Ortega was foraging through the almost empty fridge unit. Light from within cast her features in a way I hadn’t seen before and below one raised arm her right breast filled the slack of her T-shirt like fruit, like water. The desire to touch her was an itching in my hands.

  She glanced up. “Don’t you cook?”

  “Hotel does it all for you. Comes up in the hatch. What do you want?”

  “I want to cook something.” She gave up looking through the fridge and closed the door of the unit. “Get what you wanted?”

  “Think so. Give the hotel a list of ingredients. There are pans and things in that rack down there, I think. Anything else you need, ask the hotel. I’m going to go through the list. Oh, and Kristin.”

  She looked round from the rack I’d indicated.

  “Miller’s head isn’t in here. I put it next door.”

  Her mouth tightened a little. “I know where you put Miller’s head,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for it.”

  A couple of minutes later, seated on the window shelf with the hardcopy unfolding away to the floor, I heard the low tones of Ortega conversing with the Hendrix. There was some banging about, more muted conversation, and then the sound of oil frying gently. I fought off the urge for a cigarette and bent my head to the hardcopy.

  I was looking for something that I’d seen every day of my young life in Newpest; the places I’d spent my teenage years, the narrow accessways of tiny properties sporting cheap holos that promised things like Better than the Real Thing, Wide Range of Scenarios and Dreams Come True. It didn’t take much to set up a virtual brothel. You just needed frontage and space for the client coffins stacked upright. The software varied in price, depending on how-elaborate and original it was, but the machines to run it could usually be bought out of military surplus at basement rates.

  If Bancroft could spend time and money in Jerry’s biocabins, he’d be at home in one of these.

  I was two thirds of my way through the list, more and more of my attention sifting away to the aromas issuing from the kitchen, when my eyes fell on a familiar entry and I grew abruptly still.

  I saw a woman with long, straight black hair and crimson lips

  I heard Trepp’s voice

  … head in the clouds. I want to be there before midnight.

  And the bar-coded chauffeur

  No proble
m. Coastal’s running light tonight.

  And the crimson-lipped woman

  Head in the clouds. This is what it’s like. Maybe you can’t afford to come up here.

  A choir in climax

  from the Houses, from the Houses, from the Houses …

  And the businesslike printout in my hands

  Head in the Clouds: accredited West Coast House, real and virtual product, mobile aerial site outside coastal limit…

  I scanned through the notes, head ringing as if it were crystal that had been delicately struck with a hammer.

  Navigational beams and beaconing system locked to Bay City and Seattle. Discreet membership coding. Routine searches, NR. No convictions. Operated under licence from Third Eye Holdings Inc.

  I sat still, thinking.

  There were pieces missing. It was like the mirror, wedged into place on jagged edges, enough to hold an image, but not the whole. I was peering hard at the irregular limits of what I had, trying to see round the edges, to get the backdrop. Trepp had been taking me to see Ray—Reileen—at Head in the Clouds. Not Europe, Europe was a blind, the sombre weight of the basilica designed to numb me to what should have been obvious. If Kawahara was involved in this thing, she wouldn’t be overseeing it from half a globe away. Kawahara was on Head in the Clouds, and …

  And what?

  Envoy intuition was a form of subliminal recognition, an enhanced awareness of pattern that the real world too often abraded with its demand for detailed focus. Given enough traces of continuity, you could make a leap that enabled you to see the whole as a kind of premonition of real knowledge. Working from that model, you could fill in the bits later. But there was a certain minimum you needed to get airborne. Like old-style linear prop aircraft, you needed a run up, and I didn’t have it. I could feel myself bumping along the ground, clawing at the air and falling back. Not enough.

  “Kovacs?”

  I glanced up, and saw it. Like a head-up display coming on line, like airlock bolts slamming back in my head.

  Ortega stood before me, a stirring implement in one hand, hair gathered back in a loose knot. Her T-shirt blazoned at me.

  RESOLUTION 653. Yes or No, depending.

  Oumou Prescott

  Mr. Bancroft has an undeclared influence in the UN Court.

  Jerry Sedaka

  Old Anenome’s Catholic … We take on a lot like that. Real convenient sometimes.

  My thoughts ran like a combustion fuse, flaming up the line of association.

  Tennis court

  Nalan Ertekin, Chief Justice of the UN Supreme Court

  Joseph Phiri, the Commission of Human Rights

  My own words

  You’re here to discuss Resolution 653, I imagine.

  An undeclared influence …

  Miriam Bancroft

  I’ll need some help keeping Marco off Nalan’s back. He’s fuming, by the way.

  And Bancroft

  The way he played today, I’m not surprised.

  Resolution 653. Catholics.

  My mind spewed the data back at me like a demented file search, scrolling down.

  Sedaka, gloating

  Sworn affidavit on disc, full Vow of Abstention filed with the Vatican.

  Real convenient sometimes.

  Ortega

  Barred by Reasons of Conscience decals.

  Mary Lou Hinchley.

  Last year the Coastals fished some kid out of the ocean.

  Not much left of the body, but they got the stack.

  Barred by Reasons of Conscience.

  Out of the ocean.

  Coastals.

  Mobile aerial site outside coastal limit …

  Head in the Clouds.

  It was a process that could not be braked, a kind of mental avalanche. Chunks of reality splintering away and tumbling downward, except that instead of chaos they were falling into something that had form, a kind of restructured whole whose final shape I still couldn’t make out.

  Beaconing system locked to Bay City —

  — and Seattle

  Bautista.

  See, it all went down in a black clinic up in Seattle.

  The intacts ditched in the Pacific.

  Ortega’s theory was that Ryker was set up.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  The words hung in the air for a moment like a hinge in time, and suddenly time hinged back and in the doorway behind, Sarah was just waking up in the Millsport hotel bed, with the rolling thunder of an orbital discharge rattling the loose windows in their frames and behind that, rotorblades against the night, and our own deaths waiting just up around the bend.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  I blinked and I was still staring at Ortega’s T-shirt, at the soft mounds she made in it and the legend printed across the chest. There was a slight smile on her face, but it was beginning to bleach out with concern.

  “Kovacs?”

  I blinked again and tried to reel in the metres of mental spillage that the T-shirt had set off. The looming truth of Head in the Clouds.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want to eat?”

  “Ortega, what if—” I found I had to clear my throat, swallow and start again. I didn’t want to say this, my body didn’t want me to say it. “What if I can get Ryker off the stack? Permanently, I mean. Clear him of the charges, prove Seattle was a set-up. What’s that worth to you?”

  For a moment, she looked at me as if I was speaking a language she didn’t understand. Then she moved to the window shelf and seated herself carefully on the edge, facing me. She was silent for a while, but I had already seen the answer in her eyes.

  “Are you feeling guilty?” she asked me finally.

  “About?”

  “About us.”

  I nearly laughed out loud, but there was just enough underlying pain to stop the reflex in my throat. The urge to touch her had not stopped. Over the last day it had ebbed and flowed in waves, but it had never wholly gone. When I looked at the curve of her hips and thighs on the window shelf, I could feel the way she had writhed back against me so clearly it was almost virtual. My palm recalled the weight and shape of her breast as if holding it had been this sleeve’s life’s work. As I looked at her, my fingers wanted to trace the geometry of her face. There was no room in me for guilt, no room for anything but this feeling.

  “Envoys don’t feel guilt,” I said shortly. “I’m serious. It’s likely, no it’s almost certain in fact that Kawahara had Ryker set up because he was heating up the Mary Lou Hinchley case too much. Do you remember anything about her employment records?”

  Ortega thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “She ran away from home to be with the boyfriend. Mostly unregistered stuff, anything to bring the rent in. Boyfriend was a piece of shit, got a record goes back to age fifteen. He dealt a little Stiff, crashed a few easy datastacks, mostly lived off his women.”

  “Would he have let her work the Meat Rack? Or the cabins?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Ortega nodded, face stony. “Soon as spit.”

  “If someone was recruiting for a snuff house, Catholics would be the ideal candidates, wouldn’t they? They’re not going to tell any tales after the event, after all. By reasons of conscience.”

  “Snuff.” If Ortega’s face had been stony before, it was weathered granite now. “Most of the snuff victims around here just get a bolt through the stack when it’s over. They don’t tell any tales.”

  “Right. But what if something went wrong. Specifically, what if Mary Lou Hinchley was going to be used as a snuff whore, so she tried to escape and fell out of an aerial whorehouse called Head in the Clouds. That would make her Catholicism very convenient, wouldn’t it?”

  “Head in the Clouds? Are you serious?”

  “And it’d make the owners of Head in the Clouds very anxious to stop Resolution 653 dead in its tracks, wouldn’t it?”

  “Kovacs.” Ortega was making slow-down gestures
with both palms. “Kovacs, Head in the Clouds is one of the Houses. Class prostitution. I don’t like those places, they make me want to vomit just as bad as the cabins, but they’re clean. They cater for elevated society and they don’t run scams like snuff—”

  “You don’t think the upper echelons go in for sadism and necrophilia, then. That’s strictly a lower-class thing, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Ortega evenly. “But if anyone with money wants to play at torturer, they can afford to do it in virtual. Some of the Houses run virtual snuff, but they run it because it’s legal, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And that’s the way they like it.”

  I drew a deep breath. “Kristin, someone was taking me to see Kawahara on board Head in the Clouds. Someone from the Wei Clinic. And if Kawahara is involved in the West Coast Houses, then they will do anything that turns a profit, because she will do anything, anything at all. You wanted a big bad Meth to believe in? Forget Bancroft, he’s practically a priest in comparison. Kawahara grew up in Fission City, dealing anti-radiation drugs to the families of fuel rod workers. Do you know what a water carrier is?”

  She shook her head.

  “In Fission City it’s what they used to call the gang enforcers. See, if someone refused to pay protection, or informed to the police, or just didn’t jump fast enough when the local yakuza boss said frog, the standard punishment was to drink contaminated water. The enforcers used to carry it around in shielded flasks, siphoned off low-grade reactor cooling systems. They’d turn up at the offender’s house one night and tell him how much he had to drink. His family would be made to watch. If he didn’t drink, they’d start cutting his family one by one until he did. You want to know how I know that delightful piece of Earth history trivia?”

  Ortega said nothing, but her mouth was tight with disgust.

  “I know because Kawahara told me. That’s what she used to do when she was a kid. She was a water carrier. And she’s proud of it.”

  The phone chimed.

  I waved back Ortega out of range and went to answer it.

  “Kovacs?” It was Rodrigo Bautista. “Is Ortega with you?”

  “No.” I lied automatically. “Haven’t seen her for a couple of days. Is there a problem?”