Altered Carbon (35 page)

We followed
him towards the back of the ship and found ourselves skirting the pit formed by
the rolled-back cover of the rearmost cargo cell. I glanced down inside and saw
a circular white fighting ring, walled on four sides by slopes of steel and
plastic seating. Banks of lighting equipment were strung above but there were
none of the spiky spherical units I associated with telemetry. In the centre of
the ring, someone was knelt, painting a design on the mat by hand. He looked up
as we passed.

“Thematic,”
said Carnage, seeing where I was looking. “Means something in Arabic.
This season’s fights are all themed around Protectorate police actions.
Tonight it’s Sharya. Right Hand of God Martyrs versus Protec Marines.
Hand to hand, no blades over ten centimetres.”

“Bloodbath,
in other words,” said Ortega.

The synth
shrugged. “What the public wants, the public pays for. I understand it
is
possible to inflict an outright mortal wound with a ten-centimetre blade. Just
very difficult. A real test of skill, they say. This way.”

We went
down a narrow companionway into the body of the ship, our own footsteps
clanging around us in the tight confines.

“Arenas
first, I presume,” Carnage shouted above the echoes.

“No,
let’s see the tanks first,” suggested Ortega.

“Really?”
It was hard to tell with the low-grade synthetic voice, but Carnage seemed to
be amused. “Are you quite sure it’s a bomb you’re looking
for, lieutenant? It seems to me the arena would be the obvious place
to—”

“Got
something to hide, Carnage?”

The
synthetic turned back to look at me for a moment, quizzically. “No, not
at all, detective Ryker. The tanks it is, then. Welcome to the conversation, by
the way. Was it cold on stack? Of course, you probably never expected to be
there yourself.”

“That’s
enough.” Ortega interposed herself. “Just take us to the tanks and
save the small talk for tonight.”

“But
of course. We aim to co-operate with law enforcement. As a legally
incorporated—”

“Yeah,
yeah.” Ortega waved the verbiage away with weary patience. “Just
take us to the fucking tanks.”

I reverted
to my dangerous stare.

We rode to
the tank area in a dinky little electromag train that ran along one side of the
hull, through two more converted cargo cells equipped with the same fighting
rings and banks of seats but this time covered over with plastic sheeting. At
the far end, we disembarked and stepped through the customary sonic cleansing
lock. A great deal dirtier than PsychaSec’s facilities, ostensibly made
of black iron, the heavy door swung outward to reveal a spotlessly white
interior.

“At
this point we dispense with image,” said Carnage carelessly. “Bare
bones low-tech is all very well for the audience, but behind the scenes,
well,” he gestured around at the gleaming facilities, “you
can’t make an omelette without a little oil in the pan.”

The forward
cargo section was huge and chilly, the lighting gloomy, the technology
aggressively massive. Where Bancroft’s low-lit womb mausoleum at
PsychaSec had spoken in soft, cultured tones of the trappings of wealth, where the
re-sleeving room at the Bay City storage facility had groaned minimal funding
for minimal deservers, the
Panama Rose
’s body bank was a brutal
growl of power. The storage tubes were racked on heavy chains like torpedoes on
either side of us, jacked into a central monitor system at one end of the hold
via thick black cables that twisted across the floor like pythons. The monitor
unit itself squatted heavily ahead of us like an altar to some unpleasant
spider god. We approached it on a metal jetty raised a quarter-metre above the
frozen writhings of the data cables. Behind it to left and right, set into the
far wall, were the square glass sides of two spacious decanting tanks. The
right-hand tank already held a sleeve, floating backlit and tethered cruciform
by monitor lines.

It was like
walking into the Andric cathedral in New-pest.

Carnage
walked to the central monitor, turned and spread his arms rather like the
sleeve above and behind him.

“Where
would you like to start? I
assume
you’ve brought sophisticated
bomb detection equipment with you.”

Ortega
ignored him. She took a couple of steps closer to the decanting tank and looked
up into the wash of cool green light it cast down into the gloom. “This
one of tonight’s whores?” she asked.

Carnage
sniffed. “In not so many words, it is. I do wish you’d understand
the difference between what they peddle in those greasy little shops down the
coast, and this.”

“So
do I,” Ortega told him, eyes still upward on the body.
“Where’d you get this one from, then?”

“How
should I know?” Carnage made a show of studying the plastic nails on his
right hand. “Oh, we have the bill of sale somewhere, if you
must
look. By the look of him, I’d say this one’s out of Nippon
Organics, or one of the Pacific Rim combines. Does it really matter?”

I went to
the wall and stared up at the floating sleeve. Slim, hard-looking and brown,
with the delicately lifted Japanese eyes on the shelf of unscaleably high
cheekbones, a thick, straight drift of impenetrably black hair like seaweed in
the tank fluid. Gracefully flexible with the long hands of an artist, but
muscled for speed combat. It was the body of a tech ninja, the body I’d
dreamed about having at fifteen, on dreary rain-filled days in Newpest. It
wasn’t far off the sleeve they’d given me to fight the Sharya war
in. It was a variation on the sleeve I’d bought with my first big pay-off
in Millsport, the sleeve I’d met Sarah in.

It was like
looking at myself under glass. The self I’d built somewhere in the coils
of memory that trail all the way back to childhood. Suddenly I stood, exiled
into Caucasian flesh, on the wrong side of the mirror.

Carnage
came up to me and slapped the glass. “You approve, detective
Ryker?” When I said nothing, he went on. “I’m sure you do,
someone with your appetite for, well, brawling. The specs are quite remarkable.
Reinforced chassis, the bones are all culture-grown marrow alloy jointed with
polybond ligamenting, carbon-reinforced tendons, Khumalo
neurachem—”

“Got
neurachem,” I said, for something to say.

“I
know all about your neurachem, detective Ryker.” Even through the
poor-quality voice, I thought I could hear a soft, sticky delight. “The
fightdrome scanned your specs when you were on stack. There was some talk of
buying you up, you know. Physically I mean. It was thought your sleeve could be
used in a humiliation bout. Faked, of course, we would never dream of the
actual thing here. That would be, well,
criminal
?” Carnage
paused dramatically.“But then it was decided that humiliation fights were
not the, uh, the spirit of the establishment. A lowering of tone, you
understand. Not a real contest. Shame really, with all the friends you’ve
made, it would have been a big crowd-puller.”

I
wasn’t really listening to him, but it dawned on me that Ryker was being
insulted and I pivoted away from the glass to fix Carnage with what seemed like
an appropriate glare.

“But
I digress,” the synthetic went on smoothly. “What I meant to say is
that your neurachem is to this system as my voice is to that of Anchana
Salomao.
This
,” he gestured once more at the tank, “is
Khumalo
neurachem, patented by Cape Neuronics only last year. A development of almost
spiritual proportions. There are no synaptic chemical amplifiers, no servo
chips or implanted wiring. The system is grown in, and it responds
directly
to thought
. Consider that, detective. No one offworld has it yet, the UN
are thought to be considering a ten-year colonial embargo, though myself I
doubt the efficacy of such—”

“Carnage.”
Ortega drifted in behind him, impatiently. “Why haven’t you
decanted the other fighter yet?”

“But
we are doing, lieutenant.” Carnage waved one hand at the rack of body
tubes on the left. From behind them came the sound of prowling heavy machinery.
I peered into the gloom and made out a big automated forklift unit rolling down
the rows of containers. As we watched, it locked to a stop and bright, directed
lighting sprang up on its frame. The forks reached and clamped on a tube,
extracting it from the chained cradle while smaller servos disconnected the cabling
from it. Separation complete, the machine withdrew slightly, swivelled about
and trundled back along the rows towards the empty decanting tank.

“The
system is entirely automated,” said Carnage superfluously.

Below the
tank, I now noticed a line of three circular openings, like the forward
discharge ports of an IP dreadnought. The forklift rose up a little on
hydraulic pistons and loaded the tube it was carrying smoothly into the centre
port. The tube fitted snugly, the visible end rotating through about ninety
degrees before a steel baffle slammed down over it. Its task completed, the
forklift sank back down on its hydraulics and its engines died.

I watched
the tank.

It seemed
like a while, but in fact probably took less than a minute. A hatch broke open
in the floor of the tank and a silvery shoal of bubbles erupted upwards.
Drifting after them came the body. It bobbed fetally for a moment, turning this
way and that in the eddies caused by the air, then its arms and legs began to
unfold, aided by the gently tugging monitor wires secured at wrist and ankle.
It was bigger boned than the Khumalo sleeve, blocky and more heavily muscled
but similar in colour. A strong-boned, hawk-nosed visage tipped lazily towards us
as the thin wires pulled it upright.

“Sharyan
Right Hand of God martyr,” said Carnage beamingly. “Not really, of
course, but the race type’s accurate and it’s got an authentic Will
of God enhanced response system.” He nodded at the other tank. “The
marines on Sharya were multi-racial, but there were enough Jap-types there to
make it believable.”

“Not
much of a contest, is it?” I said. “State-of-the-art neurachem
against century-old Sharyan biomech.”

Carnage
grinned with his slack silicoflesh face. “Well, that will depend on the
fighters. I’m told the Khumalo system takes a bit of getting used to, and
to be honest it isn’t always the best sleeve that wins. It’s more
about psychology. Endurance, pain tolerance…”

“Savagery,”
added Ortega. “Lack of empathy.”

“Things
like that,” agreed the synthetic. “That’s what makes it
exciting, of course. If you’d care to come tonight, lieutenant,
detective, I’m sure I can find you a couple of remaindered seats near the
back.”

“You’ll
be commentating,” I surmised, already hearing the specs-rich vocabulary
that Carnage used come tumbling out over the tannoy, the killing ring drenched
in focused white light, the roaring, surging crowd in the darkened seating, the
smell of sweat and bloodlust.

“Of
course I will.” Carnage’s logo’d eyes narrowed. “You
haven’t been away so long, you know.”

“Are
we going to look for these bombs?” said Ortega loudly.

It took us over an hour to
go over the hold, looking for imaginary bombs, while Carnage looked on with
poorly veiled amusement. Up above, the two sleeves destined for slaughter in
the arena looked clown on us from their green-lit glass-sided wombs, their
presences weighing no less heavily for their closed eyes and dreaming visages.

Ortega dropped me on Mission Street as
evening was falling over the city. She’d been withdrawn and monosyllabic
on the flight back from the fightdrome, and I guessed the strain of reminding
herself I was not Ryker was beginning to take a toll. But when I made a
production of brushing off my shoulders as I got out of the cruiser, she
laughed impulsively.

“Stick
around the Hendrix tomorrow,” she said. “There’s someone I
want you to talk to, but it’ll take a while to set up.”

“Fair
enough.” I turned to go.

“Kovacs.”

I turned
back. She was leaning across to look up and out of the open door at me. I put
an arm on the uplifted door wing of the cruiser and looked down. There was a
longish pause during which I could feel my blood beginning to adrenalise
gently.

“Yes?”

She
hesitated a moment longer, then said, “Carnage was hiding something back
there, right?”

“From
the amount he talked, I’d say yes.”

“That’s
what I thought.” She prodded hurriedly at the control console and the
door began to slide back down. “See you tomorrow.”

I watched
the cruiser into the sky and sighed. I was reasonably sure that going to Ortega
openly had been a good move, but I hadn’t expected it to be so messy.
However long she and Ryker had been together, the chemistry must have been
devastating. I remembered reading somewhere how the initial pheromones of
attraction between bodies appeared to undergo a form of encoding the longer
said bodies were in proximity, binding them increasingly close. None of the
biochemists interviewed appeared to really understand the process, but there
had been some attempts to play with it in labs. Speeding up or interrupting the
effect had met with mixed results, one of which was empathin and its
derivatives.