Altered Carbon (22 page)

I lowered
the body in my arms gently onto the satin padded floor and stood up again.
Bright white light sprang up in the cabin, and the revolving cherry blinked
pinkly twice and went out. The door behind me thudded shut on the music while
before me, a tall blond man in close-fitting black advanced into the room,
knuckles whitened on the trigger of his particle blaster. His moudi was
compressed and the whites of his eyes were flaring around stimulant-blasted
pupils. The gun in my back bore me forward and the blond kept coming until the
muzzle of the blaster was smearing my lower lip against my teeth.

“Now
who the
fuck
are you?” he hissed at me.

I turned my
head aside far enough to open my mouth. “Irene Elliott. My daughter used
to work here.”

The blond
stepped forward, gun muzzle tracing a line down my cheek and under my chin.

“You’re
lying to me,” he said softly. “I’ve got a friend out at the
Bay City justice facility, and he tells me Irene Elliott’s still on
stack. See, we checked out the bag of shit you sold this cunt.”

He kicked
at the inert body on the floor and I peered down out of the corner of my
nearest eye. In the harsh white light the marks of torture were livid on the
girl’s flesh.

“Now
I want you to think real carefully about your next answer, whoever you are. Why
are you asking after Lizzie Elliott?”

I slid my
eyes back over the barrel of the blaster to the clenched face beyond. It
wasn’t the expression of someone who’d been dealt in. Too scared.

“Lizzie
Elliott’s my daughter, you piece of shit, and if your friend up at the
city store had any real access, you’d know why the record still says
I’m on stack.”

The gun in
my back shoved forward more sharply, but unexpectedly the blond seemed to
relax. His mouth flexed in a rictus of resignation. He lowered the blaster.

“All
right,” he said. “Deck, go and get Oktai.”

Someone at
my back slipped out of the cabin. The blond waved his gun at me. “You.
Sit down in the corner.” His tone was distracted, almost casual.

I felt the
gun taken out of my back and moved to obey. As I settled onto the satin floor,
I weighed the odds. With Deck gone, there were still three of them. The blond,
a woman in what looked to me like a synthetic Asian-skinned sleeve, toting the
second particle blaster whose imprint I could still feel in my spine, and a
large black man whose only weapon appeared to be an iron pipe. Not a chance.
These were not the street sharks I’d faced down on Nineteenth Street.
There was a cold embodied purpose about them, a kind of cheap version of what
Kadmin had had back at the Hendrix.

For a moment
I looked at the synthetic woman and wondered, but it couldn’t be. Even if
he’d somehow managed to slip the charges Kristin Ortega had talked about
and got himself re-sleeved. Kadmin was on the inside. He knew who had hired
him, and who I was. The faces peering at me from around the biocabin, on their
own admission, knew nothing.

Let’s
keep it that way
.

My gaze
crept across to Louise’s battered sleeve. It looked as if they had cut
slits in the skin of her thighs and then forced the wounds apart until they
tore. Simple, crude and very effective. They would have made her watch while
they did it, compounding the pain with terror. It’s a gut-swooping
experience seeing that happen to your body. On Sharya, the religious police
used it a lot. She’d probably need psychosurgery to get over the trauma.

The blond
saw where my eyes had gone and offered me a grim nod, as if I’d been an
accomplice to the act.

“Want
to know why her head’s still on, huh?”

I looked
bleakly across the room at him. “No. You look like a busy man but I guess
you’ll get round to it.”

“No
need,” he said casually, enjoying his moment. “Old Anenome’s
Catholic. Third or fourth generation, the girls tell me. Sworn affidavit on
disc, full Vow of Abstention filed with the Vatican. We take on a lot like
that. Real convenient sometimes.”

“You
talk too much, Jerry,” said the woman.

The
blond’s eyes flared whitely at her, but whatever retort he was mustering
behind the curl of his lip quietened as two men, presumably Deek and Oktai,
pushed into the tiny room on another wave of junk rhythm from the corridor. My
eyes measured Deck and placed him in the same category—muscle—as
the pipe-wielder, then switched to his companion, who was staring steadily at
me. My heart twitched. Oktai was the Mongol.

Jerry
jerked his head in my direction.

“This
him?” he asked.

Oktai
nodded slowly, a savage grin of triumph etched across his broad face. His
massive hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. He was working
through an extreme of hate so deep it was choking him. I could see the bump
where someone had inexpertly repaired his broken nose with tissue weld, but
that didn’t seem like enough to warrant the fury I was watching.

“All
right, Ryker.” The blond leaned forward a little. “You want to
change your story? You want to tell me why you’re breaking my balls down
here?”

He was
talking to me.

Deck spat
into a corner of the room.

“I
don’t know,” I said clearly, “what the fuck you are talking
about. You turned my daughter into a prostitute, and then you killed her. And
for that, I’m going to kill you.”

“I
doubt you’ll get the chance for that,” said Jerry, crouching
opposite me and looking at the floor. “Your daughter was a stupid,
starstruck little cunt who thought she could put a lock on me and—”

He stopped
and shook his head disbelievingly.

“The
fuck am I talking to? I
see
you standing there, and still I’m
buying this shit. You’re good, Ryker, I’ll give you that.” He
sniffed. ”Now, I’m going to ask you one more time, nicely. Maybe
see if we can cut a deal. After that I’m going to send you to see some
very sophisticated friends of mine. You understand what I’m
saying?”

I nodded
once, slowly.

“Good.
So here it comes, Ryker. What are you doing in Licktown?”

I looked
into his face. Small-time punk with delusions of connection. I wasn’t
going to learn anything here.

“Who’s
Ryker?”

The blond
lowered his head again and looked at the floor between my feet. He seemed
unhappy about what was going to happen next. Finally he licked his lips, nodded
slightly to himself and made a brushing gesture across his knees as he stood
up.

“All
right, tough guy. But I want you to remember you had the choice.” He
turned to the synthetic woman. “Get him out of here. I want no traces.
And tell them, he’s n-wired to the eyes, they’ll get nothing out of
him in this sleeve.”

The woman
nodded and gestured me to my feet with her blaster. She prodded Louise’s
corpse with the toe of one boot. “And this?”

“Get
rid of it. Milo, Deek, go with her.”

The
pipe-wielder shoved his weapon into his waistband and stooped to shoulder the
corpse as if it were a bundle of kindling. Deek, close behind, slapped it
affectionately on one bruised buttock.

The Mongol
made a noise in his throat. Jerry glanced across at him with faint distaste.
“No, not you. They’re going places I don’t want you to see.
Don’t worry, there’ll be a disc.”

“Sure,
man,” said Deek over his shoulder. “We’ll bring it right back
across.”

“All
right, that’s enough,” said the woman roughly, moving to face me.
“Let’s have an understanding here, Ryker. You got neurachem, so do
I. And this is a high-impact chassis. Lockheed-Mitoma test pilot specs. You
can’t damage me worth a jack. And I’ll be happy to burn your guts
out if you even look at me wrong. They don’t care what state you’re
in where we’re going. That clear, Ryker?”

“My
name’s not Ryker,” I said irritably.

“Right.”

We went
through the frosted glass door, into a tiny space that held a make-up table and
shower stall, and out onto a corridor parallel to the one at the front of the
booths. Here the lighting was unambiguous, there was no music, and the corridor
gave onto larger, partially curtained dressing rooms where young men and women
slumped smoking or just staring into space like untenanted synthetics. If any
of them saw the little procession go past, they gave no indication. Milo went
ahead with the corpse. Deck took up position at my back and the synthetic woman
brought up the rear, blaster held casually at her side. My last glimpse of
Jerry was a proprietorial figure standing with hands on hips in the corridor
behind us. Then Deek cuffed me across the side of the head and I turned to face
the front again. Louise’s dangling, mutilated legs preceded me out into a
gloomy covered parking area, where a pure black lozenge of aircar awaited us.

The
synthetic cracked the vehicle’s boot open and waved the blaster at me.

“Plenty
of room. Make yourself comfortable.”

I climbed
into the boot space and discovered she was right. Then Milo tipped
Louise’s corpse in with me and slammed the lid down, leaving the two of
us in darkness together. I heard the dull clunk of other doors opening and closing
elsewhere, and then the whispering of the car’s engines and the faint
bump as we lifted from the ground.

The journey
was quick, and smoother than a corresponding surface trip would have been.
Jerry’s friends were driving carefully—you don’t want to be pulled
down by a bored patrolman for unsignalled lane change when you’ve got
passengers in the boot. It might almost have been pleasantly womb-like there in
the dark, but for the faint stench of faeces from the corpse. Louise had voided
her bowels during the torture.

I spent
most of the journey feeling sorry for the girl, and worrying at the Catholic
madness like a dog with a bone. This woman’s stack was utterly undamaged.
Financial considerations aside, she could be brought back to life on the spin
of a disc. On Harlan’s World she’d be temporarily re-sleeved for
the court hearing, albeit probably in a synthetic, and once the verdict came
down there’d be a Victim Support supplement from the state added to
whatever policy her family already held. Nine cases out of ten that was enough
money to ensure re-sleeving of some sort. Death, where is thy sting?

I
didn’t know if they had VS supplements on earth. Kristin Ortega’s
angry monologue two nights ago seemed to suggest not, but at least there was
the potential to bring this girl back to life. Somewhere on this fucked-up
planet, some guru had ordained otherwise, and Louise, alias Anenome, had queued
up with how many others to ratify the insanity.

Human
beings. Never figure them out.

The car
tilted and the corpse rolled unpleasantly against me as we spiralled down.
Something wet seeped through the leg of my trousers. I could feel myself
starting to sweat with the fear. They were going to decant me into some flesh
with none of the resistance to pain that my current sleeve had. And while I was
imprisoned there, they could do whatever they liked to that sleeve, up to and
including physically killing it.

And then
they would start again, in a fresh body.

Or, if they
were really sophisticated, they could jack my consciousness into a virtual
matrix similar to the ones used in psychosurgery, and do the whole thing
electronically. Subjectively, there’d be no difference, but there what
might take days in the real world could be done in as many minutes.

I swallowed
hard, using the neurachem while I still had it to stifle the fear. As gently as
I could, I pushed Louise’s cold embrace away from my face and tried not
to think about the reason she had died.

The car
touched down and rolled along the ground for a few moments before it stopped.
When the boot cracked open again, all I could see was the roof of another
covered car park strung with illuminum bars.

They took
me out with professional caution, the woman standing well back, Deck and Milo
to the sides giving her a clear field of fire. I clambered awkwardly over
Louise and out onto a floor of black concrete. Scanning the gloom covertly, I
saw about a dozen other vehicles, nondescript, registration bar codes illegible
at this distance. A short ramp at the far end led up to what must be the
landing pad. Indistinguishable from a million other similar installations. I
sighed and as I straightened up I felt the damp on my leg again. I glanced down
at my clothes. There was a dark stain of something on my thigh.

“So
where are we?” I asked.

“End
of the line’s where you are,” grunted Milo, lifting Louise out. He
looked at the woman. “This going to the usual place?”

She nodded,
and he set off across the car park towards a set of double doors. I was moving
to follow when a jerk of the woman’s blaster brought me up short.

“Not
you. That’s the chute—the easy way out. We got people want to talk
to you before you get to go down the chute. You go this way.”

Deck
grinned and produced a small weapon from his back pocket. “That’s
right, Mr.Badass Cop. You go this way.”