Altered Carbon (12 page)

“The
point is, Mr.Kovacs, we have an appointment with Dennis Nyman at PsychaSec
in…” Her eyes flicked briefly upward to consult a retinal watch. ”Thirty
minutes.”

“I
see,” I said, chewing slowly. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve
been calling since eight this morning, but the hotel refused to put me through.
I didn’t realise you would sleep so late.”

I grinned
at her through a mouthful of chicken. “Faulty research, then. I was only
sleeved yesterday.”

She
stiffened a little at that, but then a professional calm asserted itself. She
crossed the room and took a seat on the window shelf.

“We’ll
be late, then,” she said. “I guess you need breakfast.”

It was cold
in the middle of the Bay.

I climbed
out of the autocab into watery sunshine and a buffeting wind. It had rained
during the night, and there were still a few piles of grey cumulus skulking
around inland, sullenly resisting the attempts of a stiff sea breeze to sweep
them away. I turned up the collar of my summer suit and made a mental note to
buy a coat. Nothing serious, something coming to mid thigh with a collar and
pockets big enough to stuff your hands in.

Beside me,
Prescott was looking unbearably snug inside her coat. She paid off the cab with
a swipe of her thumb and we both stood back as it rose. A welcome rush of warm
air from the lift turbines washed over my hands and face. I blinked my eyes
against the small storm of grit and dust and saw how Prescott raised one
slender arm to do the same. Then the cab was gone, droning away to join the
beehive activity in the sky above the mainland. Prescott turned to the building
behind us and gestured with one laconic thumb.

“This
way.”

I pushed my
hands into the inadequate pockets of my suit and followed her lead. Bent
slightly into the wind, we picked our way up the long, winding steps to
PsychaSec Alcatraz.

I’d
expected a high-security installation, and I wasn’t disappointed.
PsychaSec was laid out in a series of long, low double-storey modules with
deeply recessed windows reminiscent of a military command bunker. The only
break in this pattern was a single dome at the western end which I guessed had
to house the satellite uplink gear. The whole complex was a pale granite grey
and the windows a smoky reflectant orange. There was no holodisplay, or
broadcast publicity, in fact nothing to announce we’d got the right place
except a sober plaque laser-engraved into the sloping stone wall of the entrance
block:

PsychaSec
S.A.

________________

D.H.F.
Retrieval and Secure Holding

Clonic
Re-sleeving

Above the
plaque was a small black sentry eye flanked by heavily grilled speakers. Oumou
Prescott raised her arm and waved at it.

“Welcome
to PsychaSec Alcatraz,” said a construct voice briskly. “Please
identify yourself within the fifteen-second security time limit.”

“Oumou
Prescott and Takeshi Kovacs to see Director Nyman. We have an
appointment.”

A thin,
green scanning laser flickered over us both from head to foot and then a
section of the wall hinged smoothly back and down forming a passage inside.
Glad to get out of the wind, I stepped nimbly into the niche and followed
orange runway lights down a short corridor into a reception area, leaving
Prescott to bring up the rear. As soon as we stepped off the walkway and into
reception, the massive door slab rumbled upright and closed again. Solid
security.

Reception
was a circular, warmly lit area with banks of seats and low tables set at the
cardinal compass points. There were small groups of people seated north and
east, conversing in low tones. In the centre was a circular desk where a
receptionist sat behind a battery of secretarial equipment. No artificial
constructs here; this was a real human being, a slim young man barely out of
his teens who looked up with intelligent eyes as we approached.

“You
can go right through, Ms.Prescott. The Director’s office is up the stairs
and third door on your right.”

“Thank
you.” Prescott took the lead again, turning back briefly to mutter as
soon as we were out of earshot of the receptionist, “Nyman’s a bit
impressed with himself since this place was built, but he’s basically a
good person. Try not to let him irritate you.”

“Sure.”

We followed
the receptionist’s instructions until, outside the aforementioned door I
had to stop and suppress a snigger. Nyman’s door, no doubt in the best
possible Earth taste, was pure mirrorwood from top to bottom. After the
high-profile security system and flesh and blood reception, it seemed about as
subtle as the vaginal spittoons at Madame Mi’s Wharfwhore Warehouse. My
amusement must have been evident because Prescott gave me a frown as she
knocked on the door.

“Come.”

Sleep had
done wonders for the interface between my mind and my new sleeve. Composing my
rented features, I followed Prescott into the room.

Nyman was
at his desk, ostensibly working at a grey and green coloured holodisplay. He
was a thin, serious-looking man who affected steel-rimmed external eyelenses to
go with his expensively cut black suit and short, tidy hair. His expression,
behind the lenses, was slightly resentful. He’d not been happy when
Prescott phoned him from the cab to say we would be delayed, but Bancroft had
obviously been in touch with him because he accepted the later appointment time
with the stiff acquiescence of a disciplined child.

“Since
you have requested a viewing of our facilities here, Mr.Kovacs, shall we start?
I have cleared my agenda for the next couple of hours, but I do have clients
waiting.”

Something
about Nyman’s manner brought Warden Sullivan to mind, but it was an
altogether smoother, less embittered Sullivan. I glanced over Nyman’s
suit and face. Perhaps if the Warden had made his career in storage for the
super rich instead of the criminal element he might have turned out like this.

“Fine.”

It got
pretty dull after that. PsychaSec, like most d.h.f. depots, wasn’t much
more than a gigantic set of air-conditioned warehouse shelves. We tramped
through basement rooms cooled to the 7 to 11 degrees Celsius recommended by the
makers of altered carbon, peered at racks of the big thirty-centimetre expanded
format discs and admired the retrieval robots that ran on wide-gauge rails
along the storage walls. “It’s a duplex system,” said Nyman
proudly. “Every client is stored on two separate discs in different parts
of the building. Random code distribution, only the central processor can find
them both and there’s a lock on the system to prevent simultaneous access
to both copies. To do any real damage, you’d have to break in and get
past all the security systems twice.”

I made
polite noises.

“Our
satellite uplink operates through a network of no less than eighteen secure
clearing orbital platforms, leased in random sequence.” Nyman was getting
carried away with his own sales pitch. He seemed to have forgotten that neither
Prescott nor myself were in the market for PsychaSec’s services.
“No orbital is leased for more than twenty seconds at a time. Remote
storage updates come in via needlecast, with no way to predict the transmission
route.”

Strictly
speaking, that wasn’t true. Given an artificial intelligence of
sufficient size and inclination, you’d get it right sooner or later, but
this was clutching at straws. The kind of enemies who used AIs to get at you
didn’t need to finish you off with a particle blaster to the head. I was
looking in the wrong place.

“Can
I get access to Bancroft’s clones?” I asked Prescott abruptly.

“From
a legal point of view?” Prescott shrugged. “Mr.Bancroft’s
instructions give you carte blanche as far as I know.”

Carte
blanche
? Prescott had been springing
these on me all morning. The words almost had the taste of the heavy parchment.
It was like something an Alain Marriott character would say in a Settlement
years flic.

Well,
you’re on Earth now
. I turned
to Nyman, who nodded grudgingly.

“There
are some procedures,” he said.

We went
back up to ground level, along corridors that forcibly reminded me of the
re-sleeving facility at Bay City Central by their very dissimilarity. No rubber
gurney wheel tracks here—the sleeve transporters would be air cushion
vehicles—and the corridor walls were decked out in pastel shades. The
windows, bunker peepholes from the outside, were framed and corniched in
Gaudí-style waves on the inside. At one corner we passed a woman
cleaning them by hand. I raised an eyebrow. No end to the extravagance.

Nyman
caught the look. “There are some jobs that robot labour just never gets
quite right,” he said.

“I’m
sure.”

The clone
banks appeared on our left, heavy, sealed doors in beveled and sculpted steel
counterpointing the ornate windows. We stopped at one and Nyman peered into the
retina scan set beside it. The door hinged smoothly outwards, fully a metre
thick in tungsten steel. Within was a four-metre long chamber with a similar
door at the far end. We stepped inside, and the outer door swung shut with a
soft thud that pushed the air into my ears.

“This
is an airtight chamber,” said Nyman redundantly. “We will receive a
sonic cleansing to ensure that we bring no contaminants into the clone bank. No
reason to be alarmed.”

A light in
the ceiling pulsed on and off in shades of violet to signify that the dust-off
was in progress and then the second door opened with no more sound than the
first. We walked out into the Bancroft family vault.

I’d
seen this sort of thing before. Reileen Kawahara had maintained a small one for
her transit clones on New Beijing, and of course the Corps had them in
abundance. Still, I’d never seen anything quite like this.

The space
was oval, dome-ceilinged, and must have extended through both storeys of the
installation. It was huge, the size of a temple back home. Lighting was low, a
drowsy orange, and the temperature was blood-warm. The clone sacs were
everywhere, veined translucent pods of the same orange as the light, suspended
from the ceiling by cables and nutrient tubes. The clones were vaguely
discernible within, foetal bundles of arms and legs, but fully grown. Or at
least, most were; towards the top of the dome I could see smaller sacs where
new additions to the stock were being cultured. The sacs were organic, a
toughened analogue of womb lining, and they would grow with the foetus within
to become like the metre and a half lozenges in the lower half of the vault.
The whole crop hung there like an insane mobile, just waiting for some huge
sickly breeze to stir it into motion.

Nyman
cleared his throat, and both Prescott and I shook off the paralysed wonder that
had gripped us on the threshold.

“This
may look haphazard,” he said, “but the spacing
is
computer
generated.”

“I
know.” I nodded and went closer to one of the lower sacs.
“It’s fractal-derived, right?”

“Ah,
yes.” Nyman seemed almost to resent my knowledge.

I peered in
at the clone. Centimetres away from my face Miriam Bancroft’s features
dreamed in amniotic fluid beneath the membrane. Her arms were folded
protectively across her breasts and her hands were folded lightly into fists
under her chin. Her hair had been gathered into a thick, coiled snake on the
top of her head and covered in some kind of web.

“The
whole family’s here,” murmured Prescott at my shoulder.
“Husband and wife, and all sixty-one children. Most only have one or two
clones, but Bancroft and his wife run to six each. Impressive, huh?”

“Yeah.”
Despite myself, I had to put out a hand and touch the membrane above Miriam
Bancroft’s face. It was warm, and gave slightly under my hand. There was
raised scarring around the entry points of the nutrient feeds and waste pipes, and
in tiny pimples where needles had been pushed through to extract tissue samples
or provide IV additives. The membrane would give in to such penetrations and
heal afterwards.

I turned
away from the dreaming woman and faced Nyman.

“This
is all very nice, but presumably you don’t shell one of these whenever
Bancroft comes in here. You must have tanks as well.”

“This
way.” Nyman gestured us to follow him and went to the back of the chamber
where another pressure door was set into the wall. The lowest sacs swayed eerily
in the wake of our passage, and I had to duck to avoid brushing against one.
Nyman’s fingers played a brief tarantella over the keypad of the pressure
door and we went though into a long, low room whose clinical illumination was
almost blinding after the womb light of the main vault. A row of eight metallic
cylinders not unlike the one I’d woken up in yesterday were ranked along
one wall, but where my birthing tube had been unpainted and scarred with the
million tiny defacements of frequent use, these units carried a thick gloss of
cream paint with yellow trim around the transparent observation plate and the
various functional protrusions.