Altered Carbon (52 page)

“Should
you need any repetition of these details, the disc will remain playable for the
next eighteen minutes, at which point it will self wipe. You are now on your
own.”

Kawahara’s
features arranged themselves in a PR smile and the image faded as the printer
chittered out the hardware list. I scanned it briefly on my way down to the
limo.

Ortega had
not come back.

At SilSet
Holdings I was treated like a Harlan Family heir. Polished human receptionists
busied themselves with my comfort while a technician brought out a metal
cylinder roughly the dimensions of a hallucinogen grenade.

Trepp was
less impressed. I met her early that evening, as per her phoned instructions,
in a bar in Oakland, and when she saw the JacSol image she laughed sourly.

“You
look like a fucking programmer, Kovacs. Where’d you get that suit?”

“My
name’s Anderson,” I reminded her. “And the suit goes with the
name.”

She pulled
a face.

“Well
next time you go shopping,
Anderson
, take me with you. I’ll save
you a lot of money, and you won’t come out looking like a guy takes the
kids to Honolulu at weekends.”

I leaned
across the tiny table. “You know Trepp, last time you gave me a hard time
about my dress sense, I killed you.”

She
shrugged. “Goes to show. Some people just can’t take the
truth.”

“Did
you bring the stuff?”

Trepp put
her hand flat on the table, and when she removed it there was a nondescript
grey disc sealed in impact plastic between us.

“There
you go. As requested. Now I know you’re crazy.” There might have
been something like admiration in her voice. “You know what they do to
you on Earth for playing with this stuff?”

I covered
the disc with my own hand and pocketed it. “Same as anywhere else, I
guess. Federal offence, down the double barrel. You forget, I don’t have
any choice.”

Trepp
scratched an ear. “Double barrel, or the Big Wipe. I haven’t
enjoyed carrying this around all day. You got the rest of it there?”

“Why?
Worried about being seen in public with me?”

She smiled.
“A bit. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I hoped so
too. The bulky, grenade-sized package I’d collected from SilSet had been
burning a hole in my expensive coat pocket all day.

I went back
to the Hendrix and checked for messages. Ortega had not called. I killed time
in the hotel room, thinking through the line I was going to feed Elliott. At
nine I got back in the limo and took it down to Bay City Central.

I sat in a
reception room while a young doctor completed the necessary paperwork and I
initialled the forms where he indicated. There was an eerie familiarity to the
process. Most of the clauses in the parole were
on behalf of
stipulations, which effectively made me responsible for Irene Elliott’s
conduct during the release period. She had even less say in the matter than
I’d had when I arrived the week before.

When
Elliott finally emerged from the RESTRICTED ZONE doors beyond the reception
rooms, it was with the halting step of someone recovering from a debilitating
illness. The shock of the mirror was written into her new face. When you
don’t do it for a living, it’s no easy thing to face the stranger
for the first time and the face that Elliott now wore was almost as far from
the big-boned blonde I remembered from her husband’s photocube as Ryker
was from my own previous sleeve. Kawahara had described the new sleeve as
compatible, and it fitted that bleak description perfectly. It was a female
body, about the same age as Elliott’s original body had been, but there
the resemblance ended. Where Irene Elliott had been big and fair-skinned, this
sleeve had the sheen of a narrow vein of copper seen through falling water.
Thick black hair framed a face with eyes like hot coals and lips the colour of
plums, and the body was slim and delicate.

“Irene
Elliott?”

She leaned
unsteadily on the reception counter as she turned to look at me. “Yes.
Who are you?”

“My
name is Martin Anderson. I represent JacSol Division West. We arranged for your
parole.”

Her eyes
narrowed a little, scanning me from head to foot and back again. “You
don’t look like a programmer. Apart from the suit, I mean.”

“I’m
a security consultant, attached to JacSol for certain projects. There is some
work we would like you to do for us.”

“Yeah?
Couldn’t get anyone else to do it cheaper than this?” She gestured
around her. “What happened, did I get famous while I was in the
store?”

“In a
sense,” I said carefully. “Perhaps it would be better if we dealt
with the formalities here and moved on. There is a limousine waiting.”

“A
limo
?”
The incredulity in her voice put a genuine smile on my face for the first time
that day. She signed the final release as if in a dream.

“Who
are you really?” she asked when the limousine was in the air. It felt
like a lot of people had been asking me that over the past few days. I was
almost beginning to wonder myself.

I stared
ahead over the navigation block of the limo. “A friend,” I said
quietly. “That’s all you need to know for now.”

“Before
we start anything, I want—”

“I
know.” The limousine was banking in the sky as I said it.
“We’ll be in Ember in about half an hour.”

I
hadn’t turned but I could feel the heat of her stare on the side of my
face.

“You’re
not corporate,” she said definitely. “Corporates don’t do
this stuff. Not like this.”

“The
corporates do whatever turns a profit. Don’t let your prejudices blind
you. Sure, they’ll burn down entire villages if it pays. But if having a
human face is what cuts it, they’ll whip out a human face and put it
on.”

“And
you’re the human face?”

“Not
exactly.”

“What’s
the work you want me to do? Something illegal?”

I pulled
the cylindrical virus loader out of my pocket and passed it across to her. She
took it in both hands and examined the decals with professional interest. As
far as I was concerned, this was the first test. I’d pulled Elliott out
of the store because that way she would be mine in a way no one supplied by
Kawahara or skimmed off the street would ever be. But beyond that I had nothing
to go on but instinct and Victor Elliott’s word that his wife was good,
and I was feeling slightly queasy about the direction I’d let things go.
Kawahara was right. Good Samaritan gestures can be expensive.

“So
let’s see. You’ve got a first-generation Simultec virus here.”
Scorn made her enunciate each syllable slowly. “Collector’s item,
practically a relic. And you’ve got it in a state-of-the-art rapid
deployment jacket with anti-locational casing. Why don’t you just cut the
crap and tell me what’s really in here? You’re planning a run,
aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“What’s
the target?”

“Virtual
whorehouse. AI-managed.”

Elliott’s
new lips parted in a soundless whistle. “Liberation run?”

“No.
We’re installing.”

“Installing
this?” She hefted the cylinder. “So what is it?”

“Rawling
4851.”

Elliott
stopped hefting abruptly. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t
intended to be. That’s a dormant Rawling variant. Set for rapid
deployment, as you so rightly observed. The activation codes are in my pocket.
We are going to plant Rawling inside an AI whorehouse database, inject the
codes and then weld the lid shut on it. There’s some peripheral stuff
with monitoring systems, and some tidying up, but basically that’s the
run.”

She gave me
a curious look. “Are you some kind of religious nut?”

“No.”
I smiled faintly. “It’s nothing like that. Can you do it?”

“Depends
on the AI. Do you have the specs?”

“Not
here.”

Elliott
handed me back the deployment jacket. “I can’t tell you, then, can
I?”

“That
was what I was hoping you’d say.” I stowed the cylinder, satisfied.
“How’s the new sleeve?”

“It’s
OK. Any reason why I couldn’t have my own body back? I’ll be a lot
faster in my own—”

“I
know. Unfortunately it’s out of my hands. Did they tell you how long
you’ve been in the store?”

“Four
years, someone said. ”

“Four
and a half,” I said, glancing at the release forms I’d signed.
“I’m afraid, in the meantime, someone took a shine to your sleeve
and bought it.”

“Oh.”
She was silent then. The shock of waking up inside someone else’s body
for the first time is nothing compared to the sense of rage and betrayal you
feel knowing that someone, somewhere, is walking around inside you. It’s
like the discovery of infidelity, but at the intimacy range of rape. And like
both those violations, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just get
used to it.

When the
silence stretched, I looked across at her still profile and cleared my throat.

“You
sure you want to do this right now? Go home, I mean.”

She barely
bothered to look at me. “Yes, I’m sure. I have a daughter and a husband
that haven’t seen me in nearly five years. You think this
—” she gestured down at herself
“—is going to stop me?”

“Fair
enough.”

The lights
of Ember appeared on the darkened mass of the coastline up ahead, and the
limousine began its descent. I watched Elliott out of the corner of my eye and
saw the nervousness setting in. Palms rubbing together in her lap, lower lip
caught in her teeth at one corner of her new mouth. She released her breath
with a small but perfectly audible noise.

“They
don’t know I’m coming?” she asked.

“No.”
I said shortly. I didn’t want to follow this line of conversation.
“The contract is between you and JacSol West. It doesn’t concern
your family.”

“But
you arranged for me to see them. Why?”

“I’m
a sucker for family reunions.” I fixed my gaze on the darkened bulk of
the wrecked aircraft carrier below, and we landed in silence. The autolimo
banked round to align itself with the local traffic systems and touched down a
couple of hundred metres north of Elliott’s Data Linkage. We powered
smoothly along the shore road under the successive holos of Anchana Salomao and
parked immaculately opposite the narrow frontage. The dead monitor doorstop had
been removed and the door was closed but there were lights burning in the
glass-walled office at the back.

We climbed
out and crossed the street. The closed door proved to be locked as well. Irene
Elliott banged impatiently at it with the flat of one copper-skinned hand and
someone sat up sluggishly in the back office. After a moment, a figure
identifiable as Victor Elliott came down to the transmission floor, past the
reception counter and towards us. His grey hair was untidy and his face swollen
with sleep. He peered out at us with a lack of focus I’d seen before on
datarats when they’d been cruising the stacks for too long. Jack-happy.

“Who
the hell—” He stopped as he recognised me. “What the fuck do
you want, grasshopper? And who’s this?”

“Vic?”
Irene Elliott’s new throat sounded nine tenths closed. “Vic,
it’s me.”

For a
moment, Elliott’s eyes ran a volley between my face and the delicate
Asian woman beside me, then what she had said smacked into him like a truck. He
flinched visibly with the impact.

“Irene?”
he whispered.

“Yes,
it’s me,” she husked back. There were tears leaking down her cheeks.
For moments they stared at each other through the glass, then Victor Elliott
was fumbling with the locking mechanism of the door, shoving at the frame to
get it out of the way, and the copper-skinned woman sagged across the threshold
into his arms. They locked together in an embrace that looked set to break the
new sleeve’s delicate bones. I took a mild interest in street lamps up
and down the promenade.

Finally,
Irene Elliott remembered me. She disengaged from her husband and twisted round,
smearing the tears off her face with the heel of one hand and blinking
bright-eyed at me.

“Can
you—”

“Sure.”
I said neutrally. “I’ll wait in the limo. See you in the
morning.”

I caught
one confused look from Victor Elliott as his wife bustled him inside, nodded
good-naturedly at him and turned away to the parked limo and the beach. The
door banged shut behind me. I felt in my pockets and came up with
Ortega’s crumpled packet of cigarettes. Wandering past the limo to the
iron railing, I kindled one of the bent and flattened cylinders and for once
felt no sense that I was betraying something as the smoke curled into my lungs.
Down on the beach, the surf was up, a chorus line of ghosts along the sand. I
leaned on the railing and listened to the white noise of the waves as they
broke, wondering why I could feel this much at peace with so much still
unresolved. Ortega had not come back. Kadmin was still out there. Sarah was
still under ransom, Kawahara still had me by the balls, and I still
didn’t know why Bancroft had been killed.