Altered Carbon, Page 50

  “How very astute.” She turned to look at me. “And what now, Mr. Kovacs? More justice? More crucifixion of the Meths?”

  I tossed the disk onto the table.

  “I had the Hendrix go in and erase the injection footage from PsychaSec’s files. Like I said, they’ll probably assume your husband was dosed aboard Head in the Clouds. The expedient solution. Oh, and we erased the Hendrix’s memory of your visit to my room, too, just in case someone wanted to make something of what you said about buying me off. One way or another, I’d say you owe the Hendrix a couple of big favors. It said a few guests every now and then would do. Shouldn’t cost much, relatively speaking. I sort of promised on your behalf.”

  I didn’t tell her about Ortega’s sight of the bedroom scene, or how long it had taken to talk the policewoman around. I still wasn’t sure why she’d agreed myself. Instead I watched the wonder on Miriam Bancroft’s face for the full half minute it took her to reach out and close her hand around the disk. She looked up at me over her clenched fingers as she took it.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said morosely. “Who knows, maybe you and Laurens deserve each other. Maybe you deserve to go on loving a faithless sexual maladjust who can’t deal with respect and appetite in the same relationship. Maybe he deserves to go on not knowing whether he murdered Rentang unprovoked or not. Maybe you’re just like Reileen, both of you. Maybe all you Meths deserve is each other. All I know is, the rest of us don’t deserve you.”

  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 fossilized 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,” Irene Elliott said beside me.

  “It’s in the pipe. Harlan’s World is dragging out the needlecast authorization. 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 come through only 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 U.N. 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 resleeve her.” She turned a shy smile toward 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 gray 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 around 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, Virginia Vidaura said somewhere. And that must sometimes be enough.

  It took them another eleven days to authorize 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 U.N. Special Inquiry remained veiled in secrecy, and when the rumors 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, nor did mine.

  I never spoke to Bancroft again. The needlecast authorization and resleeving 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 honored 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 U.N. 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 gray.

  “Fucking clowns,” Ortega growled, 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 organization 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 humor floating in her voice, rather like a corpse in a swimming pool, and she must have realized how it sounded, because the sentence was bitten off. An awkwardness was growing between us, something that had started as soon as they resleeved 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 to was out of control now, unsafe, like the flames from a smashed storm lantern, and trying to hold on to 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 dialed 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 U.N. 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 offstage 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 pack. “And you can have these back. I don’t need them anymore, nor does he, so don’t start him off again. You owe me that much, at least. Just make sure he stays off them.”

  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.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RICHARD MORGAN was born in London in 1965 but didn’t stick around for the Kings Road sixties experience. A relaxed, rural upbringing in the Fens followed, then a rude wake-up call at the University of Cambridge where study suddenly became something requiring substantial effort. Richard never quite recovered from the shock and recoiled out of academia three years later with a very average degree in political history and very little interest in any career other than writing and/or traveling. Accidentally, he became a teacher of English as a foreign language and despite his best efforts ended up building a fourteen-year career in the profession as teacher, then director of studies, then teacher trainer. During this time, he taught variously in Spain, Turkey, Scotland, and his birthplace, London. His unexpected teaching career came to an equally unexpected end when Hollywood was kind enough to option his first novel, which you now hold in your hands. Richard currently lives in Scotland with his Spanish wife-to-be and is hard at work on another Takeshi Kovacs novel.

  More praise for Altered Carbon

  “Carbon-black noir with drive and wit, a tight plot, and a back-story that leaves the reader wanting a sequel like another fix.” —KEN MCLEOD

  “Altered
Carbon is a really impressive debut, an auspicious start to what will be an ongoing series. I look forward to seeing more from this talented author.” —SF Site

  “A marvelous updating of Marlowe film noir . . . Morgan comes up with a twist on the soul-as-software idea that’s both original and effective. . . . All the disturbing implications of the big SF idea are worked through to their conclusions, and there’s some subtle musings on the true nature of identity hidden away beneath the enjoyable surface of the tale.” —Starburst

  “First-rate . . . A mystery that could only derive from its particular SF setting, and one that validates this setting not by opening it up, but by enriching its texture and, like some Chandler and bit more Hammett, revealing ever-deepening layers of corruption and ever more sinister characters.” —Locus

  “Exciting . . . Addictive . . . This is a ceaseless, permanently off-balance sprint through an all-too-grimly-familiar future where miraculous technologies are degraded through everyday use and abuse. There are occasional throwaway mentions of background details here that beg entire novels on their own; ubiquitous pieces of history dismissed in single lines that had my nose twitching, scenting something far bigger lurking, hidden under the surface. If Richard Morgan can use these to even come close to repeating the harsh triumph of Altered Carbon in his next novel then I would suggest we have another bona fide UK sf triumph on our hands. Go and get yourself a copy of Altered Carbon now, if only to forestall other people telling you how much you need to read this book.” —Infinity Plus

  “A Dazzling Debut . . .

  An excellent, no-holds-barred, fast-paced thriller with a strong central character and plenty of betrayals, twists, shocks, and action.” —Dreamwatch

  “Richard Morgan has just written the first great cyberpunk novel of the twenty-first century. This new author is going to be stunningly, nay amazingly, big.” —SFCrowsnest

  “Excellent . . . Set to become one of the genre’s major publishing highlights of the year. One of the most impressive debuts the genre has ever seen.” —Outland magazine