Altered Carbon (67 page)

“Are
you wired for this?”

I tapped my
left eyelid where the recording system had gone in and smiled.

“You
really think I’m going to do this?” Kawahara’s rage glinted
at me from behind her eyes. She was waiting, coiled, for an opening. I had seen
her like this before, but then I hadn’t been on the receiving end of that
look. I was in as much danger under those eyes as I had ever been under fire in
the streets of Sharya. “You really think you’re going to get this
from me?”

“Look
on the bright side, Reileen. You can probably buy and influence your way out of
the erasure penalty, and for the rest you might only get a couple of hundred
years in the store.” My voice hardened. “Whereas, if you
don’t talk, you’ll die right here and now.”

“Confession
under duress is inadmissible under law.”

“Don’t
make me laugh. This isn’t going to the UN. You think I’ve never
been in a court before? You think I’d trust
lawyers
to deal with
this? Everything you say here tonight is going express needlecast to WorldWeb
One as soon as I’m back on the ground. That, and footage of whoever it
was I wasted in the doggie room upstairs.” Kawahara’s eyes widened
and I nodded. “Yeah, I should have said earlier. You’re a client
down. Not really dead, but he’ll need re-sleeving. Now with all that, I
reckon about three minutes after Sandy Kim goes live, the UN tacs are going to
be blowing down your door with a fistful of warrants. They’ll have no
choice. Bancroft alone will force their hand. You think the same people who
authorised Sharya and Innenin are going to stick at a little constitutional
rule bending to protect their power base?
Now start talking
.”

Kawahara
raised her eyebrows, as if this was nothing more than a slightly distasteful
joke she’d just been told. “Where would you like me to start,
Takeshi-san?”

“Mary
Lou Hinchley. She fell from here, right?”

“Of
course.”

“You
had her slated for the snuff deck? Some sick fuck wanted to pull on the tiger
sleeve and play kitty?”

“Well,
well.” Kawahara tipped her head on one side as she made connections.
“Who have you been talking to? Someone from the Wei Clinic, is it? Let me
think. Miller was here for that little object lesson, but you torched him, so
… Oh. You haven’t been headhunting again, Takeshi? You didn’t
take Felipe Miller home in a hatbox, did you?”

I said
nothing, just looked at her over the barrel of the shard gun, hearing again the
weakened screaming through the door I’d listened at. Kawahara shrugged.

“It
wasn’t the tiger, as it happens. But something of that sort, yes.”

“And
she found out?”

“Somehow,
yes.” Kawahara seemed to be relaxing, which under normal circumstances
would have made me nervous. Under the betathanatine, it just made me more
watchful. “A word in the wrong place, maybe something a technician said.
You know, we usually put our snuff clients through a virtual version before we
let them loose on the real thing. It helps to know how they’re going to
react, and in some cases we even persuade them not to go through with
it.”

“Very
thoughtful of you.”

Kawahara
sighed. “How do I get through to you, Takeshi? We provide a service here.
If it can be made legal, then so much the better.”

“That’s
bullshit, Reileen. You sell them the virtual, and in a couple of months they
come sniffing after the real thing. There’s a causal link, and you know
it. Selling them something illegal gives you leverage, probably over some very
influential people. Get many UN governors up here, do you? Protectorate
generals, that kind of scum?”

“Head
in the Clouds caters to an elite.”

“Like
that white-haired fuck I greased upstairs? He was someone important, was
he?”

“Carlton
McCabe?” From somewhere, Kawahara produced an alarming smile. “You
could say that, I suppose, yes. A person of influence.”

“Would
you care to tell me which particular person of influence you’d promised
they could rip the innards out of Mary Lou Hinchley?”

Kawahara
tautened slightly. “No, I would not.”

“Suppose
not. You’ll want that for a bargaining line later, won’t you? OK,
skip it. So what happened? Hinchley was brought up here, accidentally found out
what she was being fattened up for and tried to escape? Stole a grav harness,
perhaps?”

“I
doubt that. The equipment is kept under tight security. Perhaps she thought she
could cling to the outside of one of the shuttles. She was not a very bright
girl, apparently. The details are still unclear, but she must have fallen
somehow.”

“Or
jumped.”

Kawahara
shook her head. “I don’t think she had the stomach for that. Mary
Lou Hinchley was not a samurai spirit. Like most of common humanity, she would
have clung to life until the last undignified moment. Hoping for some miracle.
Begging for mercy.”

“How
inelegant. Was she missed immediately?”

“Of
course she was missed! She had a client waiting for her. We scoured the
ship.”

“Embarrassing.”

“Yes.”

“But
not as embarrassing as having her wash up on the shore a couple of days later,
huh? The luck fairies were out of town that week.”

“It
was unfortunate,” Kawahara conceded, as if we were discussing a bad hand
of poker. “But not entirely unexpected. We were not anticipating a real
problem.”

“You
knew she was Catholic?”

“Of
course. It was part of the requirements.”

“So
when Ryker dug up that iffy conversion, you must have shat yourself.
Hinchley’s testimony would have dragged you right into the open, along
with fuck knows how many of your influential friends. Head in the Clouds, one
of the Houses, indicted for snuff and you with it. What was the word you used
on New Beijing that time? Intolerable risk. Something had to be done, Ryker had
to be shut down. Stop me if I’m losing the thread here.”

“No,
you’re quite correct.”

“So
you framed him?”

Kawahara
shrugged again. “An attempt was made to buy him off. He proved …
unreceptive.”

“Unfortunate.
So what did you do then?”

“You
don’t know?”

“I
want to hear you say it. I want details. I’m doing too much of the
talking here. Try to keep your end of the conversation up, or I might think
you’re being uncooperative.”

Kawahara
raised her eyes theatrically to the ceiling. “I framed Elias Ryker. I set
him up with a false tip about a clinic in Seattle. We built a phone construct
of Ryker and used it to pay Ignacio Garcia to fake the Reasons of Conscience
decals on two of Ryker’s kills. We knew the Seattle PD wouldn’t buy
it and that Garcia’s faking wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
There, is that better?”

“Where’d
you get Garcia from?”

“Research
on Ryker, back when we were trying to buy him off.” Kawahara shifted
impatiently on the lounger. “The connection came up.”

“Yeah,
that’s what I figured.”

“How
perceptive of you.”

“So
everything was nicely nailed down. Until Resolution 653 came along, and stirred
it all up again. And Hinchley was still a live case.”

Kawahara
inclined her head. “Just so.”

“Why
didn’t you just stall it? Buy some decision makers on the UN
Council?”

“Who?
This isn’t New Beijing. You met Phiri and Ertekin. Do they look as if
they’re for sale?
^:

I nodded.
“So it was you in Marco’s sleeve. Did Miriam Bancroft know?”

“Miriam?”
Kawahara looked perplexed. “Of course not. No one knew, that was the
point. Marco plays Miriam on a regular basis. It was a perfect cover.”

“Not
perfect. You play shit tennis, apparently.”

“I
didn’t have time for a competence disc,”

“Why
Marco? Why not just go as yourself?”

Kawahara
waved a hand. “I’d been hammering at Bancroft since the resolution
was tabled. Ertekin too, whenever she let me near her. I was making myself
conspicuous. Marco putting in a word on my behalf makes me look more
detached.”

“You
took that call from Rutherford,” I said, mostly to myself. “The one
to Suntouch House after we dropped in on him. I figured it was Miriam, but you
were there as a guest, playing Marco on the sidelines of the great Catholic
debate.”

“Yes.”
A faint smile. “You seem to have greatly overestimated Miriam
Bancroft’s role in all this. Oh, by the way, who
is
that
you’ve got wearing Ryker’s sleeve at the moment? Just to satisfy my
curiosity. They’re very convincing, whoever they are.”

I said
nothing, but a smile leaked from one corner of my mouth. Kawahara caught it.

“
Really
?
Double sleeving. You really must have Lieutenant Ortega wrapped around your
little finger. Or wrapped around something, anyway. Congratulations.
Manipulation worthy of a Meth.” She barked a short laugh. “That was
meant as a compliment, Takeshi-san.”

I ignored
the jibe. “You talked to Bancroft in Osaka? Thursday 16th August. You
knew he was going?”

“Yes.
He has regular business there. It was made to look like a chance encounter. I
invited him to Head in the Clouds on his return. It’s a pattern for him.
Buying sex after business deals. You probably found that out.”

“Yeah.
So when you got him up here, what did you tell him?”

“I
told him the truth.”

“The
truth?” I stared at her. “You told him about Hinchley, and expected
him to back you?”

“Why
not?” There was a chilling simplicity in the look she gave me back.
“We have a friendship that goes back centuries. Common business
strategies that have sometimes taken longer than a normal human lifetime to
bring to fruition. I hardly expected him to side with the little people.”

“So
he disappointed you. He wouldn’t keep the Meth faith.”

Kawahara
sighed again, and this time there was a genuine weariness in it that gusted out
of somewhere centuries deep in dust.

“Laurens
maintains a cheap romantic streak that I continually underestimate. He is not
unlike you in many ways. But, unlike you, he has no excuse for it. The man is
over three centuries old. I assumed—wanted to assume, perhaps—that
his values would reflect that. That the rest was just posturing, speechmaking
for the herd.” Kawahara made a negligent what-can-you-do gesture with one
slim arm. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid.”

“What
did he do? Take some kind of moral stand?”

Kawahara’s
mouth twisted without humour. “You mock me? You, with the blood of dozens
from the Wei Clinic fresh on your hands. A butcher for the Protectorate, an
extinguisher of human life on every world where it has managed to find a
foothold. You are, if I may say so, Takeshi, a little inconsistent.”

Secure in
the cool wrap of the betathanatine, I could feel nothing beyond a mild
irritation at Kawahara’s obtuseness. A need to clarify.

“The
Wei Clinic was personal.”

“The
Wei Clinic was business, Takeshi. They had no personal interest in you at all.
Most of the people you wiped were merely doing their jobs.”

“Then
they should have chosen another job.”

“And
the people of Sharya. What choice should they have made? Not to be born on that
particular world, at that particular time? Not to allow themselves to be
conscripted, perhaps?”

“I
was young and stupid,” I said simply. “I was used. I killed for
people like you because I knew no better. Then I learnt better. What happened
at Innenin taught me better. Now I don’t kill for anyone but myself, and
every time that I take a life, I know the value of it.”

“The
value of it. The
value
of a human life.” Kawahara shook her head
like a teacher with an exasperating student. “You are
still
young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven’t you learned that yet,
Takeshi, with all you’ve seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself.
Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But
people?” She made a tiny spitting sound. “You can always get some
more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not.
They are
abundant
, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know
that it costs us
less
to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it
does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is
cheaper
than a machine. It’s the axiomatic truth of our times.”

“Bancroft
didn’t think so.”

“Bancroft?”
Kawahara made a disgusted noise deep in her throat. “Bancroft is a
cripple, limping along on his archaic notions. It’s a mystery to me how
he’s survived this long.”

“So
you programmed him to suicide? Gave him a little chemical push?”

“Programmed
him to…” Kawahara’s eyes widened and a delighted chuckle that
was just the right blend of husk and chime issued from her sculpted lips.
“Kovacs, you can’t be that stupid. I told you he killed himself. It
was his idea, not mine. There was a time when you trusted my word, even if you
couldn’t stomach my company. Think about it. Why would I want him
dead?”