Altered Carbon (45 page)

“
There
are some arenas so corrupt that the only clean acts possible are nihilistic
.”

“Oh,
that’s Quell, isn’t it? Mine was Shakespeare, but then I
don’t expect colonial culture goes back that far, does it?” She was
still smiling, poised like a total body theatre gymnast about to launch into
her aria. For a moment I suffered the almost hallucinatory conviction that she
was going to break into a little dance, choreographed to a junk rhythm beat
from speakers hidden in the dome above us.

“Takeshi,
where did you get this belief that everything can be resolved with such brute
simplicity? Surely not from the Envoys? Was it the Newpest gangs? The
thrashings your father gave you as a child? Did you really think I would allow
you to force my hand? Did you really think I would have come to the table this
empty-handed? Think about it. You know me. Did you really believe it would be
this easy?”

The
neurachem seethed within me. I bit it back, hung from the moment like a
parachutist braced in the jump hatch.

“All
right,” I said evenly. “Impress me.”

“Gladly.”
Kawahara reached into the breast pocket of her liquid black blouse. She
produced a tiny holofile and flicked it into active with a thumbnail. As the
images evolved in the air above the unit, she passed it to me. “A lot of
the detail is legalistic, but you will of course recognise the salient
points.”

I took the
little sphere of light as if it were a poisonous flower. The name hit me at
once, leaping out of the print
—

—
Sarah Sachilowska
—

—and then the contract terminology, like a building coming down on
me in slow motion.

—
released into private
storage
—

—
provision for virtual
custody
—

—
unlimited period
—

—
subject to review at UN
discretion
—

—
under vested
authority of the Bay City justice facility
—

The knowledge coursed sickly through me. I should have killed Sullivan
when I had the chance.

“Ten
days.” Kawahara was watching my reactions closely. “That’s
how long you have to convince Bancroft the investigation is over, and to walk
away. After that, Sachilowska goes into virtual at one of my clinics.
There’s a whole new generation of virtual interrogation software out
there, and I will personally see to it that she pioneers the lot.”

The
holofile hit the marble floor with a brittle crack. I lurched at Kawahara, lips
peeling back from my teeth. There was a low growling coming up through my
throat that had nothing to do with any combat training I had ever undergone and
my hands crooked into talons. I knew what her blood was going to taste like.

The cold
barrel of a gun touched down on my neck before I got halfway.

“I’d
advise against that,” said Trepp in my ear.

Kawahara
came and stood closer to me. “Bancroft isn’t the only one that can
buy troublesome criminals off colonial stacks. The Kanagawa justice facility
were overjoyed when I came to them two days later with a bid for Sachilowska.
The way they see it, if you’re freighted offworld, the chances of you
ever having enough money to buy a needlecast back again are pretty slim. And of
course they get paid for the privilege of waving you goodbye. It must seem too
good to be true. I imagine they’re hoping it’s the start of a
trend.” She fingered the lapel of my jacket thoughtfully. “And in
fact the way the virtuals market is at the moment, it might be a trend worth
starting.”

The muscle
under my eye jumped violently.

“I’ll
kill you,” I whispered. “I’ll rip your fucking heart out and
eat it. I’ll bring this place down around you—”

Kawahara
leaned in until our faces were almost touching. Her breath smelt faintly of
mint and oregano. “No, you won’t,” she said.
“You’ll do exactly as I say, and you’ll do it within ten
days. Because if you don’t, your friend Sachilowska will be starting her
own private tour of hell without redemption.”

She stepped
back and lifted her hands. “Kovacs, you should be thanking whatever
deities they’ve got on Harlan’s World that I’m not some kind
of sadist. I mean, I’ve given you an either/or. We could just as easily
be negotiating exactly how much agony I put Sachilowska through. I mean, I
could start now. That would give you an incentive to wrap things up speedily,
wouldn’t it? Ten days in most virtuals adds up to about three or four
years. You were in the Wei Clinic; do you think she could stand three years of
that? I think she’d probably go insane, don’t you?”

The effort
it cost me to contain my hate was like a rupture down behind my eyeballs and
into my chest. I forced the words out.

“Terms.
How do I know you’ll release her?”

“Because
I give you my word.” Kawahara let her arms fall to her sides. “I
believe you’ve had some experience of its validity in the past.”

I nodded
slowly.

“Subsequent
to Bancroft’s acceptance that the case is closed, and your own
disappearance from view, I will freight Sachilowska back to Harlan’s
World to complete her sentence.” Kawahara bent to pick up the holofile
I’d dropped and held it up. She tipped it deftly a couple of times to
flick through the pages. “I think you can see here that there is a
reversal clause written into the contract. I will of course forfeit a large
proportion of the original fee paid, but under the circumstances I’m
prepared to do that.” She smiled faintly. “But please bear in mind
that a reversal can work in both directions. What I return, I can always buy
again. So if you were considering skulking in the undergrowth for a while and
then running back to Bancroft, please abandon the idea now. This is a hand that
you cannot win.”

The gun
barrel lifted away from my neck and Trepp stepped back. The neurachem held me
upright like a paraplegic’s mobility suit. I stared numbly at Kawahara.

“Why
the fuck did you do all this?” I whispered. “Why involve me at all,
if you didn’t want Bancroft to find his answers?”

“Because
you are an Envoy, Kovacs.” Kawahara spoke slowly, as if talking to a
child. “Because if anybody can convince Laurens Bancroft that he died by
his own hand, it is you. And because I knew you well enough to predict your
moves. I arranged to have you brought to me almost as soon as you arrived, but
the hotel intervened. And then when chance brought you to the Wei Clinic I
endeavoured to bring you here once again.”

“I
bluffed my way out of the Wei Clinic.”

“Oh,
yes. Your biopirate story. You really think you sold them that second-rate
experia rubbish? Be reasonable, Kovacs. You might have backed them up a couple
of steps while they thought about it, but the reason, the
only
reason
you got out of the Wei Clinic intact was because I told them to send you that
way.” She shrugged. “But then you insisted upon escaping. It has
been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a
behaviourist who has designed her rat’s maze poorly.”

“All right.”
I noted vaguely that I was trembling. “I’ll do it.”

“Yes.
Of course you will.”

I searched
for something else to say, but it felt as if I had been clinically drained of
the potential for resistance. The cold of the basilica seemed to be creeping
into my bones. I mastered the trembling with an effort and turned to go. Trepp
moved silently forward to join me. We had gone about a dozen steps when
Kawahara called out behind me.

“Oh,
Kovacs…”

I turned as
if in a dream. She was smiling.

“If
you do manage to wrap it up cleanly, and very quickly, I might consider some
kind of cash incentive. A bonus, so to speak. Negotiable. Trepp will give you a
contact number.”

I turned
away again, numb to a degree I hadn’t felt since the smoking ruins of
Innenin. Vaguely, I felt Trepp clap me on the shoulder.

“Come
on,” she said companionably. “Let’s get out of here.”

I followed
her out under the soul-bruising architecture, beneath the sneering smiles of
the hooded guardians, and I knew that from among her grey-wombed clones,
Kawahara was watching me all the way with a similar smile. It seemed to take
forever to leave the hall and when the huge steel portals cracked open to
reveal the outside world, the light that spilled inward was an infusion of life
that I grabbed at like a drowning man. All at once, the basilica was a
vertical, a cold depth of ocean out of which I was reaching for the sun on the
rippled surface. As we left the shadows, my body sucked up the warmth on offer
as if it were a solid sustenance. Very gradually, the shivering began to leave
me.

But as I walked away,
beneath the brooding power of the cross, I could still feel the presence of the
place like a cold hand on the nape of my neck.

That night was a blur. Later, when I
tried to get it back, even Envoy recall would only give me fragments.

Trepp
wanted a night on the town. The best nightlife in Europe, she maintained, was
only minutes away, and she had all the right addresses.

I wanted my
thought processes stopped dead in their tracks.

We started
in a hotel room on a street I could not pronounce. Some tetrameth analogue
fired through the whites of our eyes by needlespray. I sat passively in a chair
by the window and let Trepp shoot me up, trying to not think about Sarah and
the room in Millsport. Trying not to think at all. Two-tone holographies
outside the window cast Trepp’s concentrated features in shades of red
and bronze, a demon in the act of sealing the pact. I felt the insidious tilt
at the corners of perception as the tetrameth went barrelling along my
synapses, and when it was my turn to do Trepp I almost got lost in the
geometries of her face. This was very good stuff …

There were
murals of the Christian hell, flames leaping like clawed fingers over a
procession of screaming, naked sinners. At one end of the room, where the
figures on the walls seemed to blend with the denizens of the bar in smoke and
noise, a girl danced on a rotating platform. A cupped petal of black glass
scythed around with the platform and each time it passed between audience and
dancer, the girl was gone and a skeleton danced grinning in her place.

“This
place is called All Flesh Will Perish,” yelled Trepp above the noise as
we forced our way in through the crowd. She pointed to the girl and then to the
black glass rings on her fingers. “Where I got the idea for these. Great
effect, isn’t it?”

I got
drinks, quickly.

The
human race has dreamed of heaven and hell for millennia. Pleasure or pain
unending, undiminished and uncurtailed by the strictures of life or death.
Thanks to virtual formatting, these fantasies can now exist. All that is needed
is an industrial-capacity power generator. We have indeed made hell—and heaven—on
earth
.

“Sounds
a bit epic, Angin Chandra’s outward-bound valediction to the people sort
of thing,” shouted Trepp. “But I take your point.”

Evidently
the words that had been running through my mind were also running out of my
mouth. If it was a quote, I didn’t know where it was from. Certainly not
a Quellism; she would have slapped anyone making that kind of speech.

“Thing
is,” Trepp was still yelling, “you’ve got ten days.”

Reality
tilts, flows sideways in gobs of flame-coloured light. Music. Motion and
laughter. The rim of a glass under’ my teeth. A warm thigh pressed
against my own which I think is Trepp’s, but when I turn another woman
with long straight black hair and crimson lips is grinning at me. Her look of
open invitation reminds me vaguely of something I’ve seen recently
—

Street
scene:

Tiered
balconies on either side, tongues of light and sound splashed out onto
pavements from the myriad tiny bars, the street itself knotted with people. I
walked beside the woman I had killed last week and tried to hold up my end of a
conversation about cats.

There was
something I had forgotten. Something clouded.

Something
impor—

“You
can’t nicking believe something like that,” Trepp burst out. Or in,
into my skull at the moment I had almost crystallised what I—

Was she
doing it deliberately? I couldn’t even remember what it was I’d
believed so strongly about cats a moment ago.

Dancing,
somewhere.

More meth,
eye-shot on a street corner, leaning against a wall. Someone walked past,
called something out to us. I blinked and tried to look.