Altered Carbon (44 page)

“How
come?”

“Ask
Ray.” Now it was Trepp who seemed uninterested in conversation. It was
almost as if something in the vast structure was calling a different part of
her character into ascendancy. She drifted to the doors as if attracted there
by magnetism.

As we
reached the portals, they yawned slowly open with a dull hum of powered hinges
and stopped with an aperture of two metres between them. I gestured at Trepp,
and she stepped over the threshold with a shrug. Something big moved spiderlike
down the walls in the dimness to either side of the entrance. I slipped a hand
to the butt of the Nemex, knowing as I did that it was futile. We were in the
land of the giants now.

Skeletal
gun barrels the length of a man’s body emerged from the gloom as the two
robot sentry systems sniffed us over. I judged the calibre as about the same as
the Hendrix’s lobby defence system, and relinquished my weapons. With a
vaguely insectile chittering, the automated killing units drew back and
spidered up the walls to their roosting points. At the base of the two alcoves
they lived in, I could make out massive iron angels with swords.

“Come
on.” Trepp’s voice was unnaturally loud in the cathedral hush.
“You think if we wanted to kill you, we would have brought you all the
way here?”

I followed
her down a flight of stone steps and into the main body of the chamber. We were
in a huge basilica that must run the length of the rock buttress beneath the
cross and whose ceiling was lost in gloom high above us. Up ahead was another
set of steps, leading onto a raised and slightly narrower section where the
lighting was stronger. As we reached it, I saw that the roof here was vaulted
over the stone statues of hooded guardians, their hands resting on thick
broadswords and their lips curled into faintly contemptuous smiles below their
hoods.

I felt my
own lips twist in fractional response, and my thoughts were all of high yield
explosives.

At the end
of the basilica, grey things were hanging in the air. For a moment I thought I
was looking at a series of shaped monoliths embedded in a permanent force
field, and then one of the grey things shifted slightly in a stray current of
the chilly air, and I suddenly knew what they were.

“Are
you impressed, Takeshi-san?”

The voice,
the elegant Japanese in which I was addressed, hit me like cyanide. My
breathing locked up momentarily with the force of my emotions and I felt a
jagged current go though the neurachem system as it responded. I allowed myself
to turn towards the voice, slowly. Somewhere under my eye, a muscle twitched
with the suppressed will to do violence.

“Ray,”
I said, in Amanglic. “I should have fucking seen this one on the launch
pad.”

Reileen
Kawahara stepped from a doorway to one side of the circular chamber where the
basilica ended and made an ironic bow. She followed me into Amanglic
flawlessly.

“Perhaps
you should have seen it coming, yes,” she mused. ”But if
there’s a single thing that I like about you, Kovacs, it is your endless
capacity to be surprised. For all your war veteran posturing, you remain at
core an innocent. And in these times that is no mean achievement. How do you do
it?”

“Trade
secret. You’d have to be a human being to understand it.”

The insult
fell unregarded. Kawahara looked down at the marbled floor as if she could see
it lying there.

“Yes,
well, I believe we’ve been over this ground before.”

My mind
fled back to New Beijing and the cancerous power structures that
Kawahara’s interests had created there, the discordant screams of the
tortured that I had come to associate with her name.

I stepped
closer to one of the grey envelopes and slapped it. The coarse surface gave
under my hand and the thing swung a little on its cables. Something shifted
sluggishly within.

“Bullet-proof,
right?”

“Mmm.”
Kawahara tipped her head to one side. “Depends on the bullet, I would
say. But impact resistant, certainly.”

I
manufactured a laugh from somewhere. “Bullet-proof womb lining! Only you,
Kawahara. Only you would need to bullet-proof your clones, and then bury them
under a mountain.”

She stepped
forward into the light then, and the force of my hate came up and hit me in the
pit of the stomach as I looked at her. Reileen Kawahara claimed upbringing
among the contaminated slums of Fission City, Western Australia, but if it was
true, she had long ago left behind any trace of her origins. The figure opposite
me had the poise of a dancer, a balance of body that was subtly attractive
without calling forth any immediate hormonal response, and the face above was
elfin and intelligent. It was the sleeve she had worn on New Beijing, custom
cultured and untouched by implants of any kind. Pure organism, elevated to the
level of art. Kawahara had garbed it in black, stiff tulip-petalled skirts
cupping her lower body to mid-calf and a soft silk blouse settling over her
torso like dark water. The shoes on her feet were modelled on spacedeck
slippers but with a modest heel, and her auburn hair was short and winged back
from the clean-boned face. She looked like the inhabitant of a screen ad for
some slightly sexy investment fund.

“Power
is habitually buried,” she said. “Think of the Protectorate bunkers
on Harlan’s World. Or the caverns the Envoy Corps hid you in while you
were made over in their image. The essence of control is to remain hidden from
view, is it not?”

“Judging
by the way I’ve been led around the last week, I’d say yes. Now do
you want to get on with this pitch?”

“Very
well.” Kawahara glanced aside at Trepp, who wandered away into the gloom,
neck craned up at the ceiling like a tourist. I looked around for a seat and
found none. “You are aware, no doubt, that I recommended you to Laurens
Bancroft.”

“He
mentioned it.”

“Yes,
and had your hotel proved slightly less psychotic, matters would never have got
as far out of hand as they have. We could have had this conversation a week
ago, and saved everyone a lot of unnecessary pain. It was not my intention for
Kadmin to harm you. His instructions were to bring you here alive.”

“There’s
been a change of programme,” I said, walking along the curve of the end
chamber. “Kadmin’s not following his instructions. He tried to kill
me this morning.”

Kawahara
made a gesture of irritation. “I know that. That’s why you’ve
been brought here.”

“Did
you spring him?”

“Yes,
of course.”

“He
was going to roll over on you?”

“He
told Keith Rutherford that he felt he was not deployed to his best advantage in
holding. That it would be hard to honour his contract with me in such a
position.”

“Subtle.”

“Wasn’t
it. I never can resist sophisticated negotiation. I feel he earnt the
re-investment.”

“So
you beaconed in on me, hooked him out and beamed him over to Carnage for
re-sleeving, right?” I felt in my pockets and found Ortega’s
cigarettes. In the grim twilight of the basilica, the familiar packet was like
a postcard from another place. “No wonder the
Panama Rose
didn’t have his second fighter decanted when we got there. He’d
probably only just finished sleeving Kadmin. That motherfucker walked out of
there in a Right Hand of God martyr.”

“About
the same time you were coming aboard,” agreed Kawahara. ”In fact, I
understand he was posing as a menial and you walked right past him. I’d
rather you didn’t smoke in here.”

“Kawahara,
I’d rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don’t suppose
you’ll oblige me.” I touched my cigarette to the ignition patch and
drew it to life, remembering. The man knelt in the ring. I played it back
slowly. On the deck of the fightdrome ship, peering down at the design being
painted onto the killing floor. The upturned face as we passed. Yes, he’d
even smiled. I grimaced at the memory.

“You’re
being a lot less courteous than befits a man in your situation.” I
thought that, underneath the cool, I could detect a ragged edge in her voice.
Despite her much vaunted self-control, Reileen Kawahara wasn’t much
better at coping with disrespect than Bancroft, General Maclntyre or any other
creature of power I’d had dealings with. “Your life is in danger
and I am in a position to safeguard it.”

“My
life’s been in danger before,” I told her. “Usually as a
result of some piece of shit like you making large-scale decisions about how
reality ought to be run. You’ve already let Kadmin get too close for my
comfort. In fact, he probably used your fucking virtual locater to do
it.”

“I
sent him,” Kawahara gritted, “to collect you. Again he disobeyed
me.”

“Didn’t
he just.” I rubbed reflexively at the bruise on my shoulder. “So
why should I believe you can do any better next time?”

“Because
you know I can.” Kawahara came across the centre of the chamber, ducking
her head to avoid the leathery grey clone sacs, and intercepting my path around
the perimeter. Her face was taut with anger. “I am one of the seven most
powerful human beings in this solar system. I have access to powers that the UN
Field Commander General would kill for.”

“This
architecture’s going to your head, Reileen. You wouldn’t even have
found
me
if you hadn’t been keeping tabs on Sullivan. How the
fuck are you going to find Kadmin?”

“Kovacs,
Kovacs.” There was a definite trembling in her laugh, as if she was
fighting an urge to put her thumbs through my eye sockets. “Do you have
any idea what happens on the streets of any given city on Earth, if I put out a
search on someone? Do you have
any idea
how easy it would be to snuff
you out here and now?”

I drew
deliberately on the cigarette and plumed the smoke out at her. “As your
faithful retainer Trepp said, not ten minutes ago, why bring me here just to
snuff me out? You want something from me. Now what is it?”

She
breathed in through her nose, hard. A measure of calm seeped onto her face and
she stepped back a couple of paces, turned away from the confrontation.

“You’re
right, Kovacs. I want you alive. If you disappear now, Bancroft’s going
to get the wrong message.”

“Or
the right message.” I scuffed absently at engraved lettering on the stone
beneath my feet. “Did you torch him?”

“No.”
Kawahara looked almost amused. “He killed himself.”

“Yeah,
right.”

“Whether
you believe it or not is immaterial to me, Kovacs. What I want from you is an
end to the investigation. A tidy end.”

“And
how do you suggest I achieve that?”

“I
don’t care. Make something up. You’re an Envoy, after all. Convince
him. Tell him you think the police verdict was correct. Produce a culprit, if
you must.” A thin smile. “I do not include myself in that
category.”

“If
you didn’t kill him, if he torched his own head off, why should you care
what happens? What’s your interest in this?”

“That
isn’t under discussion here.”

I nodded
slowly. “And what do I get in return for this tidy ending?”

“Apart
from the hundred thousand dollars?” Kawahara tilted her head quizzically.
“Well, I understand you’ve been made a very generous recreational
offer by other parties. And for my part, I will keep Kadmin off your back by
whatever means necessary.”

I looked
down at the lettering beneath my feet, and thought it through, link by link.

“Francisco
Franco,” said Kawahara, mistaking the direction of my gaze for focused
interest. “Petty tyrant a long time back. He built this place.”

“Trepp
said it belonged to the Catholics.”

Kawahara
shrugged. “Petty tyrant with delusions of religion. Catholics get on well
with tyranny. It’s in the culture.”

I glanced
around, ostensibly casual, scanning for robot security systems. “Yeah,
looks like it. So let me get this straight. You want me to sell Bancroft a
parabolic full of shit, in return for which you’ll call off Kadmin, who
you set on me in the first place. That’s the deal?”

“That,
as you put it, is the deal.”

I took one
last lungful of smoke, savoured it and exhaled.

“You
can go fuck yourself, Kawahara.” I dropped my cigarette on the engraved
stonework and ground it out with my heel. “I’ll take my chances
with Kadmin, and let Bancroft know you probably had him killed. So. Change your
mind about letting me live now?”

My hands
hung open at my sides, twitching to be filled with the rough woven bulk of
handgun butts. I was going to put three Nemex shells through Kawahara’s
throat, at stack height, then put the gun in my mouth and blow my own stack
apart. Kawahara almost certainly had remote storage anyway, but fuck it,
you’ve got to make a stand somewhere. And a man can only stave off his
own death wish for so long.

It could
have been worse. It could have been Innenin.

Kawahara
shook her head regretfully. She was smiling. “Always the same Kovacs.
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Romantic nihilism. Haven’t
you learnt
anything
since New Beijing?”