Altered Carbon (9 page)

I repeated
my request, following the move into Amanglic.

“Thank
you, sir. We have a number of rooms, all fully cabled to the city’s
information and entertainment stack. Please indicate your preference for floor
and size.”

“I’d
like a tower room, west facing. The biggest you’ve got.”

The face
recoiled into a corner inset and a three-dimensional skeleton of the
hotel’s room structure etched itself into place. A selector pulsed
efficiently through the rooms and stopped in one corner, then blew up and
rotated the room in question. A column of fine print data shuttered down on one
side of the screen.

“The
Watchtower suite, three rooms, dormitory thirteen point eight seven metres
by—

“That’s
fine, I’ll take it.”

The
three-dimensional map disappeared like a conjuror’s trick and the woman
leapt back to full screen.

“How
many nights will you be with us, sir?”

“Indefinite.”

“A
deposit
is
required,” said the hotel diffidently, “For
stays of more than fourteen days the sum of six hundred dollars UN should be
deposited now. In the event of departure before said fourteen days, a
proportion of this deposit
will
be refunded.”

“Fine.”

“Thank
you sir.” From the tone of voice, I began to suspect that paying
customers were a novelty at the Hotel Hendrix. “How will you be
paying?”

“DNA
trace. First Colony Bank of California.”

The payment
details were scrolling out when I felt a cold circle of metal touch the base of
my skull.

“That’s
exactly what you think it is,” said a calm voice. “You do the wrong
thing, and the cops are going to be picking bits of your cortical stack out of
that wall for weeks. I’m talking about
real
death, friend. Now,
lift your hands away from your body.”

I complied,
feeling an unaccustomed chill shoot up my spine to the point the gun muzzle was
touching. It was a while since I’d been threatened with real death.

“That’s
good,” said the same calm voice. “Now, my associate here is going
to pat you down. You let her do that, and no sudden moves.”

“Please
key your DNA signature onto the pad beside this screen.” The hotel had
accessed First Colony’s database. I waited impassively while a slim,
black-clad woman in a ski mask stepped around and ran a purring grey scanner
over me from head to foot. The gun at my neck never wavered. It was no longer
cold. My flesh had warmed it to a more intimate temperature.

“He’s
clean.” Another crisp, professional voice. “Basic neurachem, but
it’s inoperative. No hardware.”

“Really?
Travelling kind of light, aren’t you Kovacs?”

My heart
dropped out of my chest and landed soggily in my guts. I’d hoped this was
just local crime.

“I
don’t know you,” I said cautiously, turning my head a couple of
millimetres. The gun jabbed and I stopped.

“That’s
right, you don’t. Now, here’s what’s going to happen.
We’re going to walk outside—

“Credit
access will cease in thirty seconds,” said the hotel patiently.
“Please key in your DNA signature now.”

“Mr.Kovacs
won’t be needing his reservation,” said the man behind me, putting
a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Kovacs, we’re going for a
ride.”

“I
cannot assume host prerogatives without payment,” said the woman on the
screen.

Something
in the tone of that phrase stopped me as I was turning, and on impulse I forced
out a sudden, racking cough.

“What—”

Bending
forward with the force of the cough, I raised a hand to my mouth and licked my
thumb.

“The
fuck are you playing at, Kovacs?”

I
straightened again and snapped my hand out to the keypad beside the screen.
Traces of fresh spittle smeared over the matt black receiver. A split second
later a calloused palm edge cracked into the left side of my skull and I
collapsed to my hands and knees on the floor. A boot lashed into my face and I
went the rest of the way down.

“Thank
you sir.” I heard the voice of the hotel through a roaring in my head.
“Your account is being processed.”

I tried to
get up and got a second boot in the ribs for the trouble. Blood dripped from my
nose onto the carpet. The barrel of the gun ground into my neck.

“That
wasn’t smart, Kovacs.” The voice was marginally less calm.
“If you think the cops are going to trace us where you’re going,
then the stack must have fucked your brain. Now
get up
!”

He was
pulling me to my feet when the thunder cut loose.

Why someone
had seen fit to equip the Hendrix’s security systems with
twenty-millimetre automatic cannon was beyond me, but they did the job with
devastating totality. Out of the corner of one eye I glimpsed the twin-mounted
autoturret come snaking down from the ceiling just a moment before it
channelled a three-second burst of fire through my primary assailant. Enough
firepower to bring down a small aircraft. The noise was deafening.

The masked
woman ran for the doors, and with the echoes of fire still hammering in my ears
I saw the turret swivel to follow. She made about a dozen paces through the
gloom before a prism of ruby laser light dappled across her back and a fresh
fusillade exploded in the confines of the lobby. I clapped both hands over my
ears, still on my knees, and the shells punched through her. She went over in a
graceless tangle of limbs.

The firing
stopped.

In the
cordite reeking quiet that followed, nothing moved. The autoturret had gone
dormant, barrels slanting at a downward angle, smoke coiling from the breeches.
I unclasped my hands from my ears and climbed to my feet, pressing gingerly on
my nose and face to ascertain the extent of the damage done. The bleeding
seemed to be slowing down and though there were cuts in my mouth I
couldn’t find any loosened teeth. My ribs hurt where the second kick had
hit me, but it didn’t feel as if anything was broken. I glanced over at
the nearest corpse, and wished I hadn’t. Someone was going to have to get
a mop.

To my left
an elevator door opened with a faint chime.

“Your room is ready,
sir,” said the hotel.

Kristin Ortega was remarkably
restrained.

She came through
the hotel doors with a loping stride that bounced one heavily weighted jacket
pocket against her thigh, came to a halt in the centre of the lobby and
surveyed the carnage with her tongue thrust into one cheek.

“You
do this sort of thing a lot, Kovacs?”

“I’ve
been waiting a while,” I told her mildly. “I’m not in a great
mood.”

The hotel
had placed a call to the Bay City police about the time the autoturret had cut
loose, but it was a good half hour before the first cruisers came spiralling
down out of the sky traffic. I hadn’t bothered to go to my room, since I
knew they were going to drag me out of bed anyway, and once they arrived there
was no question of me going anywhere until Ortega got there. A police medic
gave me a cursory check, ascertained that I wasn’t suffering from
concussion and left me with a retardant spray to stop the nose bleed, after
which I sat in the lobby and let my new sleeve smoke some of the
lieutenant’s cigarettes. I was still sitting there an hour later when she
arrived.

Ortega
gestured. “Yeah, well. Busy city at night.”

I offered
her the packet. She looked at it as if I’d just posed a major
philosophical question, then took it and shook out a cigarette. Ignoring the
ignition patch on the side of the packet, she searched her pockets, produced a
heavy petrol lighter and snapped it open. She seemed to be on autopilot, moving
aside almost without noticing to let a forensics team bring in new equipment,
then returning the lighter to a different pocket. Around us, the lobby seemed suddenly
crowded with efficient people doing their jobs.

“So.”
She plumed smoke into the air above her head. “You know these
guys?”

“Oh,
give me a fucking break!”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,
I’ve been out of storage six hours, if that.” I could hear my voice
starting to rise. “Meaning, I’ve talked to precisely three people
since the last time we met. Meaning, I’ve never been on Earth in my life.
Meaning,
you know all this
. Now, are you going to ask me some
intelligent questions or am I going to bed?”

“All
right, keep your skull on.” Ortega looked suddenly tired. She sank into
the lounger opposite mine. “You told my sergeant they were
professionals.”

“They
were.” I’d decided it was the one piece of information I might as
well share with the police, since they’d probably find out anyway, as
soon as they ran the make on the two corpses through their files.

“Did
they call you by name?”

I furrowed
my brow with great care. “By name?”

“Yeah.”
She made an impatient gesture. “Did they call you Kovacs?”

“I
don’t think so.”

“Any
other names?”

I raised an
eyebrow. “Such as?”

The
weariness that had clouded her face retreated abruptly, and she gave me a hard
look. “Forget it. We’ll run the hotel’s memory, and
see.”

Oops.

“On
Harlan’s World you’d have to get a warrant for that.” I made
it come out lazily.

“We
do here.” Ortega knocked ash off her cigarette onto the carpet.
“But it won’t be a problem. Apparently this isn’t the first
time the Hendrix has been up on an organic damage charge. While ago, but the
archives go back.”

“So how
come it wasn’t decommissioned?”

“I
said up on charges, not convicted. Court threw it out. Demonstrable self
defence. Course,” she nodded over at the dormant gun turret, where two
members of the forensic team were running an emissions sweep,
“we’re talking about covert electrocution that time. Nothing like
this.”

“Yeah,
I was meaning to ask. Who fits that kind of hardware in a hotel anyway?”

“What
do you think I am, a search construct?” Ortega had started watching me
with a speculative hostility I didn’t much like. Then, abruptly, she
shrugged. “Archive précis I ran on the way over here says it got
done a couple of centuries back, when the corporate wars turned nasty. Makes
sense. With all that shit breaking loose, a lot of buildings were retooling to
cope. Course, most of the companies went under shortly afterwards with the
trading crash, so no one ever got around to passing a decommissioning bill. The
Hendrix graded to artificial intelligence status instead and bought itself
out.”

“Smart.”

“Yeah,
from what I hear the AIs were the only ones with any kind of real handle on
what was happening to the market anyway. Quite a few of them made the break
about then. Lot of the hotels on this strip are AI.” She grinned at me
through the smoke. “That’s why no one stays in them. Shame, really.
I read somewhere they’re hard-wired to want customers the way people want
sex. That’s got to be frustrating, right?”

“Right.”

One of the
mohicans came and hovered over us. Ortega glanced up at him with a look that
said she didn’t want to be disturbed.

“We
got a make on the DNA samples,” the mohican said diffidently, and handed
her a videofax slate. Ortega scanned it and started.

“Well,
well. You were in exalted company for a while, Kovacs.” She waved an arm
in the direction of the male corpse. “Sleeve last registered to Dimitri
Kadmin, otherwise known as Dimi the Twin. Professional assassin out of
Vladivostock.”

“And
the woman?”

Ortega and
the mohican exchanged glances. “Ulan Bator registry?”

“Got
it in one, chief.”

“Got
the motherfucker.” Ortega bounced to her feet with renewed energy.
“Let’s get their stacks excised and over to Fell Street. I want
Dimi downloaded into Holding before midnight.” She looked back at me.
“Kovacs, you may just have proved useful.”

The mohican
reached under his double-breasted suit and produced a heavy-bladed killing
knife with the nonchalance of a man getting out cigarettes. Together, they went
over to the corpse and knelt beside it. Interested uniformed officers drifted
across to watch. There was the wet, cracking sound of cartilage being cut open.
After a moment, I got up and went to join the spectators. Nobody paid any
attention to me.

It was not
what you’d call refined biotech surgery. The mohican had chopped out a
section of the corpse’s spine to gain access to the base of the skull,
and now he was digging around with the point of the knife, trying to locate the
cortical stack. Kristin Ortega was holding the head steady in both hands.

“They
bury them a lot deeper in than they used to,” she was saying. “See
if you can get the rest of the vertebrae out, that’s where it’ll
be.”