Altered Carbon (49 page)

I grimaced.
Compared to Kawahara, Death was a three-bout pushover.

I stopped
at the prow and picked a point on the horizon to watch until Ortega made up her
mind.

Suppose you
know someone, a long time ago. You share things, drink deeply of each other.
Then you drift apart, life takes you in different directions, the bonds are not
strong enough. Or maybe you get torn apart by external circumstance. Years
later, you meet that person again, in the same sleeve, and you go through it
all over again. What’s the attraction? Is this the same person? They
probably have the same name, the same approximate physical appearance, but does
that make them the same? And if not, does that make the things that have
changed unimportant or peripheral? People change, but how much? As a child
I’d believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality
around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the
integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of
perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What
we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the
waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a
sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene
blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change. The only way to beat that was
to go on stack forever.

Just as
a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate
around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of
stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance,
nothing can be done
.

Virginia
Vidaura, pacing the seminar room, lost in lecture mode.

But the
fact that a sextant will let you navigate accurately across an ocean does not
mean that the sun and stars do rotate around us. For all that we have done, as
a civilisation, as individuals, the universe is not stable, and nor is any
single thing within it. Stars consume themselves, the universe itself rushes
apart, and we ourselves are composed of matter in constant flux. Colonies of
cells in temporary alliance, replicating and decaying and housed within, an
incandescent cloud of electrical impulse and precariously stacked carbon code
memory. This is reality, this is self knowledge, and the perception of it will,
of course, make you dizzy. Some of you have served in Vacuum Command, and will
no doubt think that out there you have confronted existence vertigo
.

A thin
smile.

I
promise you that the Zen moments you may have enjoyed in hard space are not
much more than the beginning of what you must learn here. All and anything you
achieve as Envoys must be based on the understanding that there is nothing but
flux. Anything you wish to even perceive as an Envoy, let alone create or
achieve, must be carved out of that flux
.

I wish
you all luck
.

If you
couldn’t even meet the same person twice in one lifetime, in one sleeve,
what did that say about all the families and friends waiting in Download
Central for someone they once knew to peer out through the eyes of a stranger.
How could that even be close to the same person?

And where
did that leave a woman consumed with passion for a stranger wearing a body she
once loved. Was that closer, or further away?

Where, for
that matter, did it leave the stranger who responded?

I heard her
coming along the rail towards me. She stopped a couple of paces away and cleared
her throat quietly. I quelled a smile, and turned round.

“I
didn’t tell you how Ryker came to have all this, did I?”

“It
didn’t seem the time to ask.”

“No.”
A grin that faded as if swept away by the breeze. “He stole it. A few
years back, while he was still working Sleeve Theft. Belonged to some big-time
clone marketeer from Sydney. Ryker caught the case because this guy was moving
broken-down merchandise through the West Coast clinics. He got co-opted into a
local taskforce and they tried to take the guy down at his marina. Big
firefight, lots of dead people.”

“And
lots of spoils.”

She nodded.
“They do things differently down there. Most of the police work gets
picked up by private contractors. The local government handle it by tying
payment to the assets of the criminals you bring down.”

“Interesting
incentive,” I said reflectively. “Ought to make for a lot of rich
people getting busted.”

“Yeah,
they say it works that way. The yacht was Ryker’s piece. He did a lot of
the groundwork on the case, and he was wounded in the firefight.” Her
voice was curiously undefensive as she related these details, and for once I
felt that Ryker was a long way away. “That’s where he got the scar
under the eye, that stuff on his arm. Cable gun.”

“Nasty.”
Despite myself, I felt a slight twinge in the scarred arm. I’d been up
against cable fire before, and not enjoyed the encounter very much.

“Right.
Most people reckoned Ryker earned every rivet of this boat. The point is,
policy here in Bay City is that officers may not keep gifts, bonuses or
anything else awarded for line-of-duty actions.”

“I
can see the rationale for that.”

“Yeah,
so can I. But Ryker couldn’t. He paid some cut-rate Dipper to lose the
ship’s records and reregister her through discreet holding. Claimed he needed
a safe house, if he ever had to stash someone.”

I grinned a
little. “Thin. But I like his style. Would that be the same Dipper who
ratted him out in Seattle?”

“Good
memory you’ve got. Yeah, the very same. Nacho the Needle. Bautista tells
a well-balanced story, doesn’t he?”

“Saw
that too, huh?”

“Yeah.
Ordinarily, I’d have ripped Bautista’s fucking head off for that
paternal uncle shit. Like I need emotional sheltering, he’s been through
two fucking divorces and he’s not even forty yet.” She stared reflectively
out to sea. “I haven’t had the time to confront him yet. Too busy
being fucked off with you. Look, Kovacs, reason I’m telling you all this
is, Ryker stole the boat, he broke West Coast law. I knew.”

“And
you didn’t do anything,” I guessed.

“Nothing.”
She looked at her hands, palms upturned. “Oh, shit, Kovacs, who are we
kidding? I’m no angel myself. I kicked the shit out of Kadmin in police
custody. You saw me. I should have busted you for that fight outside
Jerry’s and I let you walk.”

“You
were too tired for the paperwork, as I recall.”

“Yeah,
I remember.” She grimaced, then turned to look me in the eyes, searching
Ryker’s face for a sign that she could trust me. “You say
you’re going to break the law, but no one gets hurt. That’s
right?”

“No
one who matters,” I corrected gently.

She nodded
slowly to herself, like someone weighing up a convincing argument that may just
change their mind for good.

“So
what do you need?”

I levered
myself off the rail. “A list of whorehouses in the Bay City area, to start
with. Places that run virtual stuff. After that, we’d better get back to
town. I don’t want to call Kawahara from out here.”

She
blinked. “Virtual whorehouses?”

“Yeah. And the mixed
ones as well. In fact, make it every place on the West Coast that runs virtual
porn. The lower grade the better. I’m going to sell Bancroft a package so
filthy he won’t want to look at it close enough to check for cracks. So
bad he won’t even want to
think
about it.”

Ortega’s list was over two
thousand names long, each annotated with a brief surveillance report and any
Organic-Damage convictions tied to the operators or clientele. In hardcopy
format it ran to about two hundred concertina’d sheets, which started to
unravel like a long paper scarf as soon as I got past page one. I tried to scan
the list in the cab back to Bay City, but gave up when it threatened to overwhelm
us both on the back seat. I wasn’t in the mood anyway. Most of me wished
I was still bedded down in the stern cabin of Ryker’s yacht, isolated
from the rest of humanity and its problems by hundreds of kilometres of
trackless blue.

Back at the
Watchtower suite, I put Ortega in the kitchen while I called Kawahara at the
number Trepp had given me. It was Trepp that came on screen first, features
smeared with sleep. I wondered if she’d been up all night trying to track
me.

“Morning.”
She yawned and presumably checked an internal timechip. “Afternoon, I
mean. Where’ve you been?”

“Out
and about.”

Trepp
rubbed inelegantly at one eye and yawned again. “Suit yourself. Just
making conversation. How’s your head?”

“Better,
thanks. I want to talk to Kawahara.”

“Sure.”
She reached towards the screen. “Talk to you later.”

The screen
dropped into neutral, an unwinding tricoloured helix accompanied by sickly
sweet string arrangements. I gritted my teeth.

“Takeshi-san.”
As always, Kawahara started in Japanese, as if it established some kind of
common ground with me. “This is unlooked-for so early. Do you have good
news for me?”

I stayed
doggedly in Amanglic. “Is this a secure line?”

“As
close as such a thing can be said to exist, yes.”

“I
have a shopping list.”

“Go
ahead.”

“To
begin with, I need access to a military virus. Rawling 4851 for preference, or
one of the Condomar variants.”

Kawahara’s
intelligent features hardened abruptly. “The Innenin virus?”

“Yeah.
It’s over a century out of date now, shouldn’t be too hard to get
hold of. Then I need—”

“Kovacs,
I think you’d better explain what you’re planning.”

I raised an
eyebrow. “I understood this was my play, and you didn’t want to be
involved.”

“If I
secure you a copy of the Rawling virus, I’d say I’m already
involved.” Kawahara offered me a measured smile. “Now what are you
planning to do with it?”

“Bancroft
killed himself, that’s the result you want, right?”

A slow nod.

“Then
there has to be a reason,” I said, warming to the deceit structure
I’d come up with, despite myself. I was doing what they’d trained
me to do, and it felt good. “Bancroft has remote storage, it
doesn’t make sense that he’d light himself up unless he had a very
specific reason. A reason unrelated to the actual act of suicide. A reason like
self preservation.”

Kawahara’s
eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

“Bancroft
uses whorehouses on a regular basis, real and virtual. He told me that himself
a couple of days ago. And he’s not too particular about the quality of
establishment he uses either. Now, let’s assume that there’s an
accident in one of these virtuals while he’s getting his itch scratched.
Accidental bleedover from some grimed-up old programs that no one’s
bothered to even open for a few decades. Go to a low enough grade of house, there’s
no telling what might be lying around.”

“The
Rawling virus.” Kawahara exhaled as if she had been holding her breath in
anticipation.

“Rawling
variant 4851 takes about a hundred minutes to go fully active, by which time
it’s too late to do anything.” I forced images of Jimmy de Soto
from my mind. “The target’s contaminated beyond redemption. Suppose
Bancroft finds this out through some kind of systems warning. He must be wired
internally for that kind of thing. He suddenly discovers the stack he’s
wearing and the brain it’s wired to is burnt. That’s not a
disaster, if you’ve got clone backup and remote storage,
but—”

“Transmission.”
Kawahara’s face lit up as she got it.

“Right.
He’d have to do something to stop the virus being ‘cast to the
remote with the rest of his personality. With the next needlecast coming up
that night, maybe in a few minutes’ time, there was only one way to
ensure the remote stack didn’t get contaminated.”

I mimed a
pistol at my head.

“Ingenious.”

“That’s
why he made the call, the timecheck. He couldn’t trust his own internal
chip, the virus might already have scrambled it.”

Solemnly,
Kawahara lifted her hands into view and applauded. When she had finished, she
clasped her hands together and looked at me over them.

“Very
impressive. I will obtain the Rawling virus immediately. Have you selected a
suitable virtual house for it to be downloaded into?”

“Not
yet. The virus isn’t the only thing I need. I want you to arrange the
parole and re-sleeving of Irene Elliott, currently held at Bay City Central on
conviction of Dipping. I also want you to look into the possibility of
acquiring her original sleeve back from its purchasers. Some corporate deal,
there’ll be records.”

“You’re
going to use this Elliott to download Rawling?”

“The
evidence is she’s good.”