I got up to go.
‘Thanks for the drink.’
I got as far as the door -
‘Takeshi.’
- and turned back, unwillingly, to face her.
‘That isn’t it,’ she said with certainty. ‘Maybe you believe all those things, but that isn’t it. Is it?’
I shook my head. ‘No, that isn’t it,’ I agreed.
‘Then why?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know why.’ I stared at her, wondering if I was glad I couldn’t remember or not. My voice softened. ‘But he asked me to do it, if I won. It was part of the deal. He didn’t tell me why.’
I left her sitting alone amidst the martyrweed.
EPILOGUE
The tide was out at Ember, leaving a wet expanse of sand that stretched almost to the listing wreck of the Free Trade Enforcer. The rocks that the carrier had gashed herself on were exposed, gathered in shallow water at the bow like a fossilised outpouring of the ship’s guts. Seabirds were perched there, screaming shrilly at each other. A thin wind came in across the sand and made minute ripples in the puddles left by our footprints. Up on the promenade, Anchana Salomao’s face had been taken down, intensifying the bleak emptiness of the street.
‘I thought you’d have gone,’ said Irene Elliott beside me.
‘It’s in the pipe. Harlan’s World are dragging out the needlecast authorisation. They really don’t want me back.’
‘And no one wants you here.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s not a new situation for me.’
We walked on in silence for a while. It was a peculiar feeling, talking to Irene Elliott in her own body. In the days leading up to the Head in the Clouds gig, I’d become accustomed to looking down to her face, but this big-boned blonde sleeve was almost as tall as me, and there was an aura of gaunt competence about her that had only come through faintly in her mannerisms in the other body.
‘I’ve been offered a job,’ she said at length. ‘Security consulting for Mainline d.h.f. You heard of them?’
I shook my head.
‘Quite high profile on the East Coast. They must have their headhunters on the inquiry board or something. Soon as the UN cleared me, they were knocking on the door. Exploding offer, five grand if I signed there and then.’
‘Yeah, standard practice. Congratulations. You moving east, or are they going to wire the job through to you here?’
‘Probably do it here, at least for a while. We’ve got Elizabeth in a virtual condo down in Bay City, and it’s a lot cheaper to wire in locally. The start-up cost us most of that five grand, and we figure it’ll be a few years before we can afford to re-sleeve her.’ She turned a shy smile towards me. ‘We spend most of our time there at the moment. That’s where Victor went today.’
‘You don’t need to make excuses for him,’ I said gently. ‘I didn’t figure he’d want to talk to me anyway.’
She looked away. ‘It’s, you know, he was always so proud and—’
‘Forget it. Someone walked all over my feelings the way I did over his, I wouldn’t feel like talking to them either.’ I stopped and reached in my pocket. ‘Reminds me. I brought something for you.’
She looked down at the anonymous grey credit chip in my hand.
‘What’s this?’
‘About eighty thousand,’ I said. ‘I figure with that you can afford something custom-grown for Elizabeth. If she chooses quick, you could have her sleeved before the end of the year.’
‘What?’ She stared at me with a smile slipping off and on her face, like someone who has been told a joke she’s not sure she understands. ‘You’re giving us—Why? Why are you doing this?’
This time I had an answer. I’d been thinking about it all the way up from Bay City that morning. I took Irene Elliott’s hand and pressed the chip into it.
‘Because I want there to be something clean at the end of all this,’ I said quietly. ‘Something I can feel good about.’
For a moment she went on staring at me. Then she closed the small gap between us and flung her arms around me with a cry that sent the nearest gulls wheeling up off the sand in alarm. I felt a trickle of tears smeared onto the side of my face, but she was laughing at the same time. I folded my arms round her in return and held her.
And for the moments that the embrace lasted, and a little while after, I felt as clean as the breeze coming in off the sea.
You take what is offered, said Virginia Vidaura, somewhere. And that must sometimes be enough.
It took them another eleven days to authorise the needlecast returning me to Harlan’s World, most of which I spent hanging around the Hendrix watching the news and feeling oddly guilty about my impending checkout. There were very few actual facts publicly available about the demise of Reileen Kawahara, so the resulting coverage was lurid, sensational and largely inaccurate. The UN Special Inquiry remained veiled in secrecy, and when the rumours about the forthcoming adoption of Resolution 653 finally broke there was little to connect them to what had gone before. Bancroft’s name never appeared, and nor did mine.
I never spoke to Bancroft again. The needlecast authorisation and re-sleeving bond for Harlan’s World were delivered to me by Oumou Prescott who, though she was pleasant enough and assured me that the terms of my contract would be honoured to the letter, also conveyed a smoothly menacing message that I was not to attempt any further communication with any member of the Bancroft family ever again. The reason cited by Prescott was my deceit over the Jack It Up story, the breach of my much-vaunted word, but I knew better. I’d seen it in Bancroft’s face across the inquiry chamber when the facts about Miriam’s whereabouts and activities during the assault on Head in the Clouds came out. Despite all his urbane Meth bullshit, the old bastard was stabbed through with jealousy. I wondered what he would have done if he’d had to sit through the deleted Hendrix bedroom files.
Ortega rode with me to Bay City Central the day of the needlecast, the same day that Mary Lou Hinchley was downloaded into a witness stand synthetic for the opening hearing on Head in the Clouds. There were chanting crowds on the steps up to the entrance hall, faced off against a line of grim-looking black-uniformed UN Public Order police. The same crude holographic placards that I remembered from my arrival on Earth bobbed about over our heads as we forced our way through the press. The sky above was an ominous grey.
‘Fucking clowns,’ growled Ortega, elbowing the last of the demonstrators out of her way. ‘If they provoke the Pubs, they’ll be sorry. I’ve seen these boys in action before and it isn’t pretty.’
I ducked around a shaven-headed young man who was punching violently at the sky with one fist and holding one of the placard generators with the other. His voice was hoarse and he appeared to be working himself into a frenzied trance. I joined Ortega at the upper fringe of the crowd, a little out of breath.
‘There isn’t enough organisation here to be a real threat,’ I said, raising my voice to compete with the crowd. ‘They’re just making a noise.’
‘Yeah, well that never stopped the Pubs before. They’re likely to break a few skulls just on general principles. What a fucking mess.’
‘Price of progress, Kristin. You wanted Resolution 653.’ I gestured at the sea of angry faces below. ‘Now you’ve got it.’
One of the masked and padded men above us broke ranks and came down the steps, riot prod fractionally lifted at his side. His jacket bore a sergeant’s crimson slash at the shoulder. Ortega flipped her badge at him and after a brief, shouted conversation, we were allowed up. The line parted for us and then the double doors into the hall beyond. It was hard to tell which was the most smoothly mechanical, the doors or the black-clad faceless figures that stood guard over them.
Inside, it was quiet and gloomy with the storm light coming through the roof panels. I looked around at the deserted benches and sighed. Whatever world it is, whatever you’ve done there for better or worse, you always leave the same way.
Alone.
�
��You need a minute?’
I shook my head. ‘Need a lifetime, Kristin. Maybe then some.’
‘Stay out of trouble, maybe you’ll get it.’ There was an attempt at humour floating in her voice, rather like a corpse in a swimming pool, and she must have realised how it sounded because the sentence was bitten off. An awkwardness was growing between us, something that had started as soon as they re-sleeved me in Ryker’s body for the real-time committee hearings. During the inquiry we’d been kept too busy to see much of each other and when the proceedings finally closed and we all went home, the pattern had endured. There’d been a few gusty if only superficially satisfying couplings, but even these had stopped once it became clear that Ryker would be cleared and released. Whatever shared warmth we’d been gathered in to was out of control now, unsafe, like the flames from a smashed storm lantern, and trying to hold onto it was only getting us both painfully scorched.
I turned and gave her a faint smile. ‘Stay out of trouble, huh? That what you told Trepp?’
It was an unkind blow, and I knew it. Against all the odds, it seemed Kawahara had missed Trepp with everything but the edge of the stun beam. The shard gun, I remembered when they told me, had been dialled down to minimum dispersal just before I went in to face Kawahara. Sheer luck I’d left it that way. By the time the rapidly summoned UN forensics team arrived on Head in the Clouds to take evidence under Ortega’s direction, Trepp had vanished, as had my grav harness from the atmosphere sampling turret where I’d come aboard. I didn’t know whether Ortega and Bautista had seen fit to let the mercenary go in view of the testimony she could give concerning the Panama Rose, or if Trepp had simply staggered off stage before the police got there. Ortega had volunteered no information and there wasn’t enough left of our previous intimacy for me to ask her outright. This was the first time we’d discussed it openly.
Ortega scowled at me. ‘You asking me to equate the two of you?’
‘Not asking you to do anything, Kristin.’ I shrugged. ‘But for what it’s worth, I don’t see a lot of ground between her and me.’
‘Go on thinking like that, nothing’ll ever change for you.’
‘Kristin, nothing ever does change.’ I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. ‘You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves. You’ll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don’t get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules themselves, they’ll send people like Trepp and me to do it. That’s the truth, Kristin. It’s been the truth since I was born a hundred and fifty years ago and from what I read in the history books, it’s never been any different. Better get used to it.’
She looked at me levelly for a moment, then nodded as if coming to an internal decision. ‘You always meant to kill Kawahara, didn’t you? This confession bullshit was just to get me along for the ride.’
It was a question I’d asked myself a lot, and I still didn’t have a clear answer. I shrugged again.
‘She deserved to die, Kristin. To really die. That’s all I know for certain.’
Over my head, a faint pattering sounded from the roof panels. I tipped my head back and saw transparent explosions on the glass. It was starting to rain.
‘Got to go,’ I said quietly. ‘Next time you see this face, it won’t be me wearing it, so if there’s anything you want to say . . .’
Ortega’s face flinched almost imperceptibly as I said it. I cursed myself for the awkwardness and tried to take her hand.
‘Look, if it makes it any easier, no one knows. Bautista probably suspects we got it together, but no one really knows.’
‘I know,’ she said sharply, not giving me her hand. ‘I remember.’
I sighed. ‘Yeah, so do I. It’s worth remembering, Kristin. But don’t let it fuck up the rest of your life. Go get Ryker back, and get on to the next screen. That’s what counts. Oh yeah.’ I reached into my coat and extracted a crumpled cigarette packet. ‘And you can have these back. I don’t need them any more, and nor does he, so don’t start him off again. You owe me that much, at least. Just make sure he stays quit.’
She blinked and kissed me abruptly, somewhere between mouth and cheek. It was an inaccuracy I didn’t try to correct either way. I turned away before I could see if there were going to be any tears and started for the doors at the far end of the hall. I looked back once, as I was mounting the steps. Ortega was still standing there, arms wrapped around herself, watching me leave. In the stormlight, it was too far away to see her face clearly.
For a moment something ached in me, something so deep-rooted that I knew to tear it out would be to undo the essence of what held me together. The feeling rose and splashed like the rain behind my eyes, swelling as the drumming on the roof panels grew and the glass ran with water.
Then I had it locked down.
I turned back to the next step, found a chuckle somewhere in my chest and coughed it out. The chuckle fired up and became a laugh of sorts.
Get to the next screen.
The doors were waiting at the top, the needlecast beyond.
Still trying to laugh, I went through.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There is a vast distance between deciding to write a first novel and actually seeing it published, and the journey across this distance can be emotionally brutal. It comes with loneliness attached, but at the same time requires a massive faith in what you’re doing that is hard to sustain alone. I was only able to complete this journey thanks to a number of people along the way, who lent me their faith when my own was running very low. Since the technology imagined in Altered Carbon doesn’t exist yet, I’d better get on and thank these travelling companions while I can, because without their support, I’m pretty certain Altered Carbon itself would not exist either.
In order of appearance, then: Thanks to Margaret and John Morgan for putting together the original organic material, to Caroline (Dit-Dah) Morgan for enthusiasm from before she could speak, to Gavin Burgess for friendship when often neither of us were in any condition to speak, to Alan Young for depths of unconditional commitment there isn’t any way to speak, and to Virginia Cottinelli for giving me her twenties when I’d almost used mine up. Then, the light at the end of a very long tunnel, thanks to my agent Carolyn Whitaker for considering drafts of Altered Carbon not once, but twice, and to Simon Spanton at Gollancz for being the man to finally make it happen.
May the road always rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back
Broken Angels
RICHARD MORGAN
Orion
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
PART ONE - Injured Parties
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
PART TWO - Commercial Considerations
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PART THREE - Disruptive Elements
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PART FOUR - Unexplained Phenomena
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRT
Y-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
PART FIVE - Divided Loyalties
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
This one’s for Virginia Cottinelli -
compañera
afileres, camas, sacapuntas
PART ONE
Injured Parties
War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off ?
Quellcrist Falconer Campaign Diaries
CHAPTER ONE
I first met Jan Schneider in a Protectorate orbital hospital, three hundred kilometres above the ragged clouds of Sanction IV and in a lot of pain. Technically there wasn’t supposed to be a Protectorate presence anywhere in the Sanction system - what was left of planetary government was insisting loudly from its bunkers that this was an internal matter, and local corporate interests had tacitly agreed to sign along that particular dotted line for the time being.
Accordingly, the Protectorate vessels that had been hanging around the system since Joshua Kemp raised his revolutionary standard in Indigo City had had their recognition codes altered, in effect being bought out on long-term lease by various of the corporations involved, and then reloaned to the embattled government as part of the - tax deductible - local development fund. Those that were not pulled out of the sky by Kemp’s unexpectedly efficient second-hand marauder bombs would be sold back to the Protectorate, lease unexpired, and any net losses once again written off to tax. Clean hands all round. In the meantime, any senior personnel injured fighting against Kemp’s forces got shuttled out of harm’s way, and this had been my major consideration when choosing sides. It had the look of a messy war.
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