Altered Carbon (56 page)

“What?”

My voice
hardened. “You heard.”

“I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I sighed.
This was to be expected. I’d encountered it before, wherever Reileen
Kawahara appeared in the equation. The terrified loyalty she inspired would
have humbled her old yakuza bosses in Fission City.

“Miller,
I don’t have time to fuck about with you. The Wei Clinic has ties to an
airborne whorehouse called Head in the Clouds. You probably liaised mostly
through an enforcer called Trepp, out of New York. The woman you’re
dealing with ultimately is Reileen Kawahara. You will have been to Head in the
Clouds, because I know Kawahara and she always invites her associates into the
lair, first to demonstrate an attitude of invulnerability, and second to offer
some messy object lesson in the value of loyalty. You ever see something like
that?”

From his
eyes, I could see that he had.

“OK,
that’s what I know. Your cue. I want you to draw me a rough blueprint of
Head in the Clouds. Include as much detail as you can remember. A surgeon like
you ought to have a good eye for detail. I also want to know what the
procedures are for visiting the place. Security coding, minimum reasons to
justify you visiting, stuff like that. Plus some idea of what the
security’s like inside the place.”

“You
think I’ll just tell you.”

I shook my
head. “No, I think I’m going to have to torture you first. But
I’ll get it out of you, one way or the other. Your decision.”

“You
won’t do it.”

“I
will do it,” I said mildly. “You don’t know me. You
don’t know who I am, or why we’re having this conversation. You
see, the night before I turned up and blew your face open, your clinic put me
through two days of virtual interrogation. Sharyan religious police routine.
You’ve probably vetted the software, you know what it’s like. As
far as I’m concerned, we’re still in payback time.”

There was a
long pause in which I saw the belief creeping into his face. He looked away.

“If
Kawahara found out that—”

“Forget
Kawahara. By the time I’m finished with Kawahara, she’ll be a
street memory. Kawahara is going down.”

He
hesitated, brought to the brink, then shook his head. He looked up at me and I
knew I was going to have to do it. I lowered my head and forced myself to
remember Louise’s body, opened from throat to groin on the
auto-surgeon’s table with her internal organs arranged in dishes around
her head like appetisers. I remembered the copper-skinned woman I had been in
the stifling loft space, the grip of the tape as they pinned me to the naked
wooden floor, the shrill dinning of agony behind my temples as they mutilated
my flesh. The screaming and the two men who had drunk it in like perfume.

“Miller.”
I found I had to clear my throat and start again. “You want to know
something about Sharya?”

Miller said
nothing. He was going into some kind of controlled breathing pattern. Steeling
himself for the upcoming unpleasantness. This was no Warden Sullivan that could
be punched around in a seedy corner and scared into spilling what he knew.
Miller was tough, and probably conditioned too. You don’t work
directorship in a place like Wei and not option some of the available tech for
yourself.

“I
was there, Miller. Winter of 217, Zihicce. Hundred and twenty years ago. You
probably weren’t around then, but I reckon you’ve read about it in
history books. After the bombardments, we went in as regime engineers.”
As I talked, the tension began to ease out of my throat. I gestured with my
cigarette. “That’s a Protectorate euphemism for crush all
resistance and install a puppet government. Of course, to do that, you’ve
got to do some interrogating, and we didn’t have much in the way of fancy
software to do it with. So, we had to get inventive.”

I stubbed
out my cigarette on the table and stood up.

“Someone
I want you to meet,” I said, looking past him.

Miller
turned to follow my gaze and froze. Coalescing in the shadow of the nearest
support pillar was a tall figure in a blue surgical smock. As we both watched,
the features became clear enough to recognise, though Miller must have guessed
what was coming as soon as he saw the predominant colour of the clothing. He
wheeled back to me, mouth open to say something, but instead his eyes fixed on
something behind me and his face turned pale. I glanced over my shoulder to
where the other figures were materialising, all with the same tall build and
tanned complexion, all in blue surgical smocks. When I looked back again,
Miller’s expression seemed to have collapsed.

“File
overprint,” I confirmed. “Most places in the Protectorate this
isn’t even illegal. Course, when it’s a Machine Error, it’s
not usually so extreme, just a double-up probably, and the retrieval systems
yank you out in a few hours anyway. Makes a good story. How I met myself, and
what I learned. Good dating conversation, maybe something to tell your kids.
You got kids, Miller?”

“Yes.”
His throat worked. “Yes, I have.”

“Yeah?
They know what you do for a living?”

He said
nothing. I took a phone from my pocket and dumped it on the table. “When
you’ve had enough, let me know. It’s a direct line. Just press
send, and start talking into it. Head in the Clouds. Relevant detail.”

Miller
looked at the phone and then back at me. Around us the doppelgängers had
almost assumed full substance. I lifted a hand in farewell.

“Enjoy
yourself.”

I surfaced
in the Hendrix’s virtual recreation studio, cradled in one of the
spacious participant racks. A digital time display on the far wall said I had
been under less than a full minute, of which my real time in virtual probably
only accounted for a couple of seconds. It was the processing in and out that
took the time. I lay still for a while, thinking about what I had just done.
Sharya was a long time ago, and a part of me I liked to think I’d left
behind. Miller wasn’t the only person meeting himself today.

Personal
, I reminded myself, but I knew it wasn’t this
time. This time I wanted something. The grudge was just a convenience.

“The
subject is showing signs of psychological stress,” said the Hendrix.
“A preliminary model suggests the condition will extend into personality
breakdown in less than six virtual days. At current ratios, this equates to
approximately thirty-seven minutes real time.”

“Good.”
Unpinning the trodes and snapping back the hypnophones, I climbed out of the
angled rack. “Call me if he cracks. Did you lift that monitor footage I
asked you for?”

“Yes.
Do you wish to view it?”

I glanced
at the clock again. “Not now. I’ll wait for Miller. Any problems
with the security systems?”

“None.
The data was not secured.”

“How
very careless of Director Nyman. How much is there?”

“The
relevant clinic footage is twenty-eight minutes, fifty-one seconds. To track
the employee from departure as you suggested will take considerably
longer.”

“How
much longer?”

“It
is impossible to give an estimate at this time. Sheryl Bostock departed the
PsychaSec facility in a twenty-year-old military surplus microcopter. I do not
believe that ancillary staff at the facility are well paid.”

“Now
why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Possibly
because—”

“Skip
it. It was a figure of speech. What about the microcopter?”

“The
navigation system has no traffic net access, and so is invisible in traffic
control data. I shall have to rely on the vehicle’s appearance on visual
monitors in its flight path.”

“You’re
talking about satellite tracking?”

“As a
last resort, yes. I’d would prefer to begin with lower level and
ground-based systems. They are likely to be more accessible. Satellite security
is usually of high resilience and breaching such systems is often both
difficult and dangerous.”

“Whatever.
Let me know when you’ve got something.”

I wandered
around the studio, brooding. The place was deserted, most of the racks and
other machines shrouded in protective plastic. In the dim light provided by the
illuminum tiles on the walls, their ambiguous bulk could equally have belonged
to a fitness centre or a torture chamber.

“Can
we have some real lights in here?”

Brightness
sprang out across the studio from high-intensity bulbs recessed into the low
ceiling. I saw that the walls were postered with images drawn from some of the
virtual environments on offer. Dizzying mountain-scapes seen through racing
goggles, impossibly beautiful men and women in smoky bars, huge savage animals
leaping directly at sniperscope sights. The images had been cut directly from
format into hologlass and when you stared at them they seemed to come alive. I
found a low bench and sat on it, remembering wistfully the bite of smoke in my
lungs from the format I had just left.

“Although
the program I am running is not technically illegal,” said the Hendrix
tentatively, “it
is
an offence to hold a digitised human
personality against that person’s will.”

I glanced
bleakly at the ceiling. “What’s the matter, you getting cold
feet?”

“The
police have already subpoenaed my memory once, and they may charge me with
compliance at your request to freeze Felipe Miller’s head. They will also
want to know what has happened to his stack.”

“Yeah,
and there’s got to be some hotel charter somewhere says you don’t
let people into your guests’ rooms without authorisation, but you did
that
,
didn’t you?”

“It
is not a criminal offence, unless criminality results from the breach of
security. What resulted from Miriam Bancroft’s visit was not
criminality.”

I jerked
another glance upwards. “You trying to be funny?”

“Humour
is not within the parameters I currently operate, though I can install it at
request:.”

“No,
thanks. Listen, why can’t you just blank the areas of memory you
don’t want anyone looking up later? Delete them?”

“I
have a series of inbuilt blocks that prevent me from taking such action.”

“That’s
too bad. I thought you were an independent entity.”

“Any
synthetic intelligence can only be independent within the boundaries of the UN
regulatory charter. The charter is hardwired into my systems, so in effect I
have as much to fear from the police as a human.”

“You
let me worry about the police,” I said, affecting a confidence that had
been ebbing steadily since Ortega disappeared. “With a little luck, that
evidence won’t even be presented. And if it is, well, you’re
already in to the depth of compliance, so what have you got to lose?”

“What
have I got to gain?” asked the machine soberly.

“Continued
guest status. I’m staying here until this thing is finished, and
depending on what data I get out of Miller, that could be quite a while.”

There was a
quiet broken only by the humming of air conditioning systems before the Hendrix
spoke again.

“If
sufficiently serious charges accrue against me,” it said, “the UN
regulatory charter may be invoked directly. Under section 143a, I can be
punished with either Capacity Reduction or, in extreme cases, Shutdown.”
There was another, briefer hesitation. “Once shut down, it is unlikely
that I would be re-enabled by anybody.”

Machine
idiolect. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated they get, they still end up
sounding like a playgroup learning box. I sighed and looked directly ahead at
the slice-of-virtual-life holos on the wall. “You want out, now’d
be a good time to tell me.”

“I do
not want out, Takeshi Kovacs. I merely wished to acquaint you with the
considerations involved in this course of action.”

“OK.
I’m acquainted.”

I glanced
up at the digital display and watched the next full minute turn over. Another
four hours for Miller. In the routine the Hendrix was running, he would not get
hungry or thirsty, or have to attend to any other bodily functions. Sleep was
possible, although the machine would not allow it to become a withdrawal coma.
All Miller had to contend with, apart from the discomfort of his surroundings,
was himself. In the end it was that which would drive him insane.

I hoped.

None of the
Right Hand of God martyrs we put through the routine had lasted more than
fifteen minutes real time, but they had been flesh and blood warriors,
fanatically brave in their own arena but totally unversed in virtual
techniques. They had also been endowed with a strong religious dogma that
permitted them to commit numerous atrocities so long as it held, but when it
went, it went like a dam wall and their own resultant self-loathing had eaten
them alive. Miller’s mind would be nowhere near as simplistic, nor as
initially self-righteous, and his conditioning would be good.

Outside, it
would be getting dark. I watched the clock, and forced myself not to smoke.
Tried, with less success, not to think about Ortega.