Altered Carbon (63 page)

“Take
your time,” I suggested, with a warning glance at Ortega. “Now what
about wiring me for sight and sound. You know anyone who can do that
discreetly?”

“Yeah,
we got people here can do that. But you can forget a telemetry system. You try
and transmit out of there, you
will
bring the house down. No pun
intended.” She moved to the arm-mounted terminal and punched up a general
access screen. “I’ll see if Reese can dig you up a grab-and-stash
mike. Shielded microstack, you’ll be able to record a couple of hundred
hours high res and we can retrieve it here later.”

“Good
enough. This going to be expensive?”

Elliott
turned back to us, eyebrows hoisted. “Talk to Reese. She’ll
probably have to buy the parts in, but maybe you can get her to do the surgery
on a retrospective federal basis. She could use the juice at UN level.”

I glanced
at Ortega, who shrugged exasperatedly.

“I
guess,” she said ungraciously, as Elliott busied herself with the screen.
I stood up and turned to the policewoman.

“Ortega,”
I muttered into her ear, abruptly aware that in the new sleeve I was completely
unmoved by her scent. “It isn’t my fault we’re short of
funds. The JacSol account’s gone, evaporated, and if I start drawing on
Bancroft’s credit for stuff like this, it’s going to look fucking
odd. Now get a grip.”

“It
isn’t that,” she hissed back.

“Then
what is it?”

She looked
at me, at our brutally casual proximity. “You know goddamn well what it
is.”

I drew a
deep breath and closed my eyes to avoid having to meet her gaze. “Did you
sort out that hardware for me?”

“Yeah.”
She stepped back, voice returning to normal volume and empty of tone.
“The stungun from the Fell Street tackle room, no one’ll miss it.
The rest is coming out of NYPD confiscated weapon stocks. I’m flying out
to pick it up tomorrow personally. Material transaction, no records. I called
in a couple of favours.”

“Good.
Thanks.”

“Don’t
mention it,” Her tone was savagely ironic. “Oh, by the way, they
had a hell of a time getting hold of the spider venom load. I don’t
suppose you’d care to tell me what that’s all about, would
you?”

“It’s
a personal thing.”

Elliott got
someone on the screen. A serious-looking woman in a late fifties African
sleeve.

“Hey,
Reese,” she said cheerfully. “Got a customer for you.”

Despite the
pessimistic estimate, Irene Elliott finished her preliminary scan a day later.
I was down by the lake, recovering from Reese’s simple microsurgery and
skimming stones with a girl of about six who seemed to have adopted me. Ortega
was still in New York, the chill between us not really resolved.

Elliott
emerged from the encampment and yelled out the news of her successful covert
scan without bothering to come down to the water’s edge. I winced as the
echoes floated out across the water. The open atmosphere of the little
settlement took some getting used to, and how it fitted in with successful data
piracy I still couldn’t see. I handed my stone to the girl and rubbed reflexively
at the tiny soreness under one eye where Reese had gone in and implanted the
recording system.

“Here.
See if you can do it with this one.”

“Your
stones are
heavy
.” she said plaintively.

“Well,
try anyway. I got nine skips out of the last one.” She squinted up at me.
“You’re wired for it. I’m only six.”

“True.
On both counts.” I placed a hand on her head. “But you’ve got
to work with what you’ve got.”

“When
I’m big I’m going to be wired like Auntie Reese.”

I felt a
small sadness well up on the cleanly swept floor of my Khumalo neurachem brain.
“Good for you. Look, I’ve got to go. Don’t go too close to
the water, right?”

She looked
at me exasperatedly. “I can swim.”

“So
can I, but it looks cold, don’t you think?”

“Ye-e-es…”

“There
you are then.” I ruffled her hair and set off up the beach. At the first
bubblefab I looked back. She was hefting the big flat stone at the lake as if
the water were an enemy.

Elliott was
in the expansive, post-mission mood that most datarats seem to hit after a long
spell cruising the stacks.

“I’ve
been doing a little historical digging,” she said, swinging the terminal
arm outward from its resting place. Her hands danced across the terminal deck
and the screen flared into life, shedding colours on her face. “How’s
the implant?”

I touched
my lower eyelid again. “Fine. Tapped straight into the same system that
runs the timechip. Reese could have made a living doing this.”

“She
used to,” said Elliott shortly. “Till they busted her for
anti-Protectorate literature. When this is all over, you make sure that someone
puts in a word for her at federal level, because she sure as shit needs
it.”

“Yeah,
she said.” I peered over her shoulder at the screen. “What have you
got there?”

“Head
in the Clouds. Tampa aeroyard blueprints. Hull specs, the works. This stuff is
centuries old. I’m amazed they still keep it on stack at all. Anyway,
seems she was originally commissioned as part of the Caribbean storm management
flotilla, back before SkySystems orbital weather net put them all out of business.
A lot of the long-range scanning equipment got ripped out when they refitted,
but they left the local sensors in and that’s what provides basic skin
security. Temperature pick-ups, infrared, that sort of thing. Anything with
body heat lands anywhere on the hull, they’ll know it’s
there.”

I nodded,
unsurprised. “Ways in?”

She
shrugged. “Hundreds. Ventilation ducts, maintenance crawlways. Take your
pick.”

“I’ll
need to have another look at what Miller told my construct. But assume
I’m going in from the top. Body heat’s the only real
problem?”

“Yeah,
but those sensors are looking for anything over a square millimetre of
temperature differential. A stealth suit won’t cover you. Christ, even
the breath coming out of your lungs will probably trip them. And it
doesn’t stop there.” Elliott nodded sombrely at the screen.
“They must have liked the system a lot, because when they refitted they
ran it through the whole ship. Room temperature monitors on every corridor and
walkway.”

“Yeah,
Miller said something about a heat signature tag.”

“That’s
it. Incoming guests get it on boarding and their codes are incorporated into
the system. Anyone else walks down a corridor uninvited, or goes somewhere
their tag says they can’t, they set off every alarm in the hull. Simple,
and very effective. And I don’t think I can cut in there and write you a
welcome code. Too much security.”

“Don’t
worry about it,” I said. “I don’t think it’s going to
be a problem.”

“You
what?” Ortega looked at me with fury and disbelief spreading across her
face like a storm front. She stood away from me as if I might be contagious.

“It
was just a suggestion. If you don’t—”

“No.”
She said the word as if it was new to her and she liked the taste. “No.
No fucking way. I’ve connived at viral crime for you, I’ve hidden
evidence for you, I’ve assisted you in multiple sleeving—”

“Hardly
multiple.”

“It’s
a fucking crime,” she said through her teeth. “I am not going to
steal confiscated drugs out of police holding for you.”

“OK,
forget it.” I hesitated, put my tongue in my cheek for a moment.
“Want to help me confiscate some more, then?”

Something
inside me cheered as the unwilling smile broke cover on her face.

The dealer
was in the same place he had been when I walked into his ‘cast radius two
weeks ago. This time I saw him twenty metres away, skulking in an alcove with
the bat-eyed broadcast unit on his shoulder like a familiar. There were very
few people on the street in any direction. I nodded to Ortega who was stationed
across the street and walked on. The sales ‘cast had not changed, the
street of ridiculously ferocious women and the sudden cool of the betathanatine
hit, but this time I was expecting it and in any case the Khumalo neurachem had
a definite damping effect on the intrusion. I stepped up to the dealer with an
eager smile.

“Got
Stiff, man.”

“Good,
that’s what I’m looking for. How much have you got?”

He started
a little, expression coiling between greed and suspicion. His hand slipped down
towards the horrorbox at his belt just in case.

“How
much you want, man?”

“All
of it,” I said cheerfully. “Everything you’ve got.”

He read me,
but by then it was too late. I had the lock on two of his fingers as they
stabbed at the horrorbox controls.

“Ah-ah.”

He took a
swipe at me with the other arm. I broke the fingers. He howled and collapsed
around the pain. I lacked him in the stomach and took the horrorbox away from
him. Behind me, Ortega arrived and flashed her badge in his sweat-beaded face.

“Bay
City police,” she said laconically. “You’re busted.
Let’s see what you’ve got, shall we.”

The
betathanatine was in a series of dermal pads with tiny glass decanters folded
in cotton. I held one of the vials up to the light and shook it. The liquid
within was a pale red.

“What
do you reckon?” I asked Ortega. “About eight per cent?”

“Looks
like. Maybe less.” Ortega put a knee into the dealer’s neck,
grinding his face into the pavement. “Where do you cut this stuff,
pal?”

“This
is good merchandise,” the dealer squealed. “I buy direct. This
is—”

Ortega
rapped hard on his skull with her knuckles and he shut up.

“This
is shit,” she said patiently. “This has been stepped on so hard it
wouldn’t give you a cold. We don’t want it. So you can have your
whole stash back and walk, if you like. All we want to know is where you cut
it. An address.”

“I
don’t know any—”

“Do
you want to be shot while escaping?” Ortega asked him pleasantly, and he
grew suddenly very quiet.

“Place
in Oakland,” he said sullenly.

Ortega gave
him a pencil and paper. “Write it down. No names, just the address. And
so help me, if you’re tinselling me I’ll come back here with fifty
ccs of real Stiff and feed you the lot, unstepped.”

She took
back the scrawled paper and glanced at it, removed her knee from the
dealer’s neck and patted him on the shoulder.

“Good.
Now get up and get the fuck off the street. You can go back to work tomorrow,
if this is the right place. And if it’s not, remember, I know your
patch.”

We watched
him lurch off and Ortega tapped the paper.

“I
know this place. Controlled Substances busted them a couple of times last year,
but some slick lawyer gets the important guys off every time. We’ll make
a lot of noise, let them think they’re buying us off with a bag of
uncut.”

“Fair
enough.” I looked after the retreating figure of the dealer. “Would
you really have shot him?”

“Nah.”
Ortega grinned. “But he doesn’t know that. ConSub do it sometimes,
just to get major dealers off the street when there’s something big going
down. Official reprimand for the officer involved and compensation pays out for
a new sleeve, but it takes time, and the scumbag does that time in the store.
Plus it hurts to get shot. I was convincing, huh?”

“Convinced
the fuck out of me.”

“Maybe
I should have been an Envoy.”

I shook my
head. “Maybe you should spend less time around me.”

I stared up
at the ceiling, waiting for the hypnophone sonocodes to lull me away from
reality. On either side of me, Davidson, the Organic Damage datarat, and Ortega
had settled into their racks and even through the hypnophones I could hear
their breathing, slow and regular, at the limits of my neurachem perception. I
tried to relax more, to let the hypnosystem press me down through levels of
softly decreasing consciousness, but instead my mind was whirring through the
details of the set-up like a program check scanning for error. It was like the
insomnia I’d suffered after Innenin, an infuriating synaptic itch that
refused to go away. When my peripheral vision time display told me that at
least a full minute had gone by, I propped myself up on one elbow and looked
around at the figures dreaming in the other racks.

“Is
there a problem?” I asked loudly.

“The
tracking of Sheryl Bostock is complete,” said the hotel. “I assumed
you would prefer to be alone when I informed you.”

I sat
upright and started picking the trodes off my body. “You assumed right.
You sure everyone else is under?”

“Lieutenant
Ortega and her colleagues were installed in the virtuality approximately two
minutes ago. Irene Elliott has been established there since earlier this
afternoon. She asked not to be disturbed.”