Altered Carbon (5 page)

Her face
underwent a change that I caught out of the corner of my eye. She was
reassessing. I turned for a closer look at her face.

“I’m
impressed,” she said.

“People
often are. Sometimes I do handsprings too.”

She looked
at me narrowly. “Do you really know what this is?”

“Frankly,
no. I used to be interested in structural art. I recognise the stone from
pictures, but…”

“It’s
a Songspire.” She reached past me and let her fingers trail down one of
the upright branches. A faint sighing awoke from the thing and a perfume like
cherries and mustard wafted into the air.

“Is
it alive?”

“No
one knows.” There was a sudden enthusiasm in her tone that I liked her
better for. “On Mars they grow to be a hundred metres tall, sometimes as
wide as this house at the root. You can hear them singing for kilometres. The
perfume carries as well. From the erosion patterns, we think that most of them
are at least ten thousand years old. This one might only have been around since
the founding of the Roman empire.”

“Must
have been expensive. To bring it back to Earth, I mean.”

“Money
wasn’t an object, Mr.Kovacs.” The mask was back in place. Time to
move on.

We made
double time down the left-hand corridor, perhaps to make up for our unscheduled
stop. With each step Mrs.Bancroft’s breasts jiggled under the thin
material of the leotard and I took a morose interest in the art on the other
side of the corridor. More Empathist work, Angin Chandra with her slender hand
resting on a thrusting phallus of a rocket. Not much help.

The seaward
lounge was built on the end of the house’s west wing. Mrs.Bancroft took
me into it through an unobtrusive wooden door and the sun hit us in the eyes as
soon as we entered.

“Laurens.
This is Mr.Kovacs.”

I lifted a
hand to shade my eyes and saw that the seaward lounge had an upper level with
sliding glass doors that accessed a balcony. Leaning on the balcony was a man.
He must have heard us come in; come to that, he must have heard the police
cruiser arrive and known what it signified, but still he stayed where he was,
staring out to sea. Coming back from the dead sometimes makes you feel that
way. Or maybe it was just arrogance. Mrs.Bancroft nodded me forward and we went
up a set of stairs made from the same wood as the door. For the first time I
noticed that the walls of the room were shelved from top to bottom with books.
The sun was laying an even coat of orange light along their spines.

As we came
out onto the balcony, Bancroft turned to face us. There was a book in his hand,
folded closed over his fingers.

“Mr.Kovacs.”
He transferred the book so that he could shake my hand. “It’s a
pleasure to meet you at last. How do you find the new sleeve?”

“It’s
fine. Comfortable.”

“Yes,
I didn’t involve myself too much in the details, but I instructed my
lawyers to find something … suitable.” He glanced back, as if
looking for Ortega’s cruiser on the horizon. “I hope the police
weren’t too officious.”

“Not
so far.”

Bancroft
looked like a Man Who Read. There’s a favourite experia star on
Harlan’s World called Alain Marriott, best known for his portrayal of a
virile young Quellist philosopher who cuts a swathe through the brutal tyranny
of the early Settlement years. It’s questionable how accurate this
portrayal of the Quellists is, but it’s a good flic. I’ve seen it
twice. Bancroft looked a lot like an older version of Marriott in that role. He
was slim and elegant with a full head of iron grey hair which he wore back in a
ponytail, and hard black eyes. The book in his hand and the shelves around him
were like an utterly natural extension of the powerhouse of a mind that looked
out from those eyes.

Bancroft
touched his wife on the shoulder with a dismissive casualness that in my
present state made me want to weep.

“It
was that woman, again,” said Mrs.Bancroft. “The lieutenant.”

Bancroft
nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Miriam. They’re just sniffing
around. I warned them I was going to do this, and they ignored me. Well, now
Mr.Kovacs is here, and they’re finally taking me seriously.”

He turned
to me. “The police have not been very helpful to me over this
matter.”

“Yeah.
That’s why I’m here, apparently.”

We looked
at each other while I tried to decide if I was angry with this man or not.
He’d dragged me halfway across the settled universe, dumped me into a new
body and offered me a deal that was weighted so I couldn’t refuse. Rich
people do this. They have the power and they see no reason not to use it. Men
and women are just merchandise, like everything else. Store them, freight them,
decant them. Sign at the bottom please.

On the
other hand, no one at Suntouch House had mispronounced my name yet, and I
didn’t really have a choice. And then there was the money. A hundred
thousand UN was about six or seven times what Sarah and I had expected to make
on the Millsport wetware haul. UN dollars, the hardest currency there was,
negotiable on any world in the Protectorate.

That had to
be worth keeping your temper for.

Bancroft
gave his wife another casual touch, this time on her waist, pushing her away.

“Miriam,
could you leave us alone for a while? I’m sure Mr.Kovacs has endless
questions, and it’s likely to be boring for you.”

“Actually,
I’m likely to have some questions for Mrs.Bancroft as well.”

She was already
on her way back inside, and my comment stopped her in mid-stride. She cocked
her head at an angle, and looked from me to Bancroft and back. Beside me, her
husband stirred. This wasn’t what he wanted.

“Maybe
I could speak to you later,” I amended. “Separately.”

“Yes,
of course.” Her eyes met mine, then danced aside. “I’ll be in
the chart room, Laurens. Send Mr.Kovacs along when you’ve
finished.”

We both
watched her leave, and when the door closed behind her Bancroft gestured me to
one of the lounge chairs on the balcony. Behind them, an antique astronomical
telescope stood levelled at the horizon, gathering dust. Looking down at the
boards under my feet, I saw they were worn with use. The impression of age
settled over me like a cloak, and I lowered myself into my chair with a tiny
frisson of unease.

“Please
don’t think of me as a chauvinist, Mr.Kovacs. After nearly two hundred
and fifty years of marriage, my relationship with Miriam is more politeness
than anything. It really would be better if you spoke to her alone.”

“I
understand.” That was shaving the truth a bit, but it would do.

“Would
you care for a drink? Something alcoholic?”

“No
thank you. Just some fruit juice, if you have it.” The shakiness
associated with downloading was beginning to assert itself, and in addition
there was an unwelcome scratchiness in my feet and fingers which I assumed was
nicotine dependency. Apart from the odd cigarette bummed from Sarah, I’d
been quit for the last two sleeves and I didn’t want to have to break the
habit all over again. Alcohol on top of everything would finish me.

Bancroft
folded his hands in his lap. “Of course. I’ll have some brought up.
Now, where would you like to begin?”

“Maybe
we should start with your expectations. I don’t know what Reileen Kawahara
told you, or what kind of profile the Envoy Corps has here on Earth, but
don’t expect miracles from me. I’m not a sorcerer.”

“I’m
aware of that. I have read the Corps literature carefully. And all Reileen
Kawahara told me was that you were reliable, if a trifle fastidious.”

I
remembered Kawahara’s methods, and my reactions to them. Fastidious.
Right.

I gave him
the standard spiel anyway. It felt funny, pitching for a client who was already
in. Felt funny to play down what I could do, as well. The criminal community
isn’t long on modesty, and what you do to get serious backing is inflate
whatever reputation you may already have. This was more like being back in the
Corps. Long polished conference tables and Virginia Vidaura ticking off the
capabilities of her team.

“Envoy
training was developed for the UN colonial commando units. That doesn’t
mean…”

Doesn’t
mean every Envoy is a commando. No, not exactly, but then what is a soldier
anyway? How much of special forces training is engraved on the physical body
and how much in the mind? And what happens when the two are separated?

Space, to
use a cliché, is big. The closest of the Settled Worlds is fifty light
years out from Earth. The most far-flung four times that distance, and some of
the Colony transports are still going. If some maniac starts rattling tactical
nukes, or some other biosphere-threatening toys, what are you going to do? You
can transmit the information, via hyperspatial needlecast, so close to
instantaneously that scientists are still arguing about the terminology but
that, to quote Quellcrist Falconer, deploys no bloody divisions. Even if you
launched a troop carrier the moment the shit hit the fan, the marines would be
arriving just in time to quiz the grandchildren of whoever won.

That’s
no way to run a Protectorate.

OK, you can
digitise and freight the minds of a crack combat team. It’s been a long
time since weight of numbers counted for much in a war, and most of the
military victories of the last half millennium have been won by small, mobile
guerrilla forces. You can even decant your crack d.h.f. soldiers directly into
sleeves with combat conditioning, jacked-up nervous systems and steroid built
bodies. Then what do you do?

They’re
in bodies they don’t know, on a world they don’t know, fighting for
one bunch of total strangers against another bunch of total strangers over
causes they’ve probably never even heard of and certainly don’t
understand. The climate is different, the language and culture is different,
the wildlife and vegetation is different, the atmosphere is different. Shit,
even the
gravity
is different. They know nothing, and even if you
download them with implanted local knowledge, it’s a massive amount of
information to assimilate at a time when they’re likely to be fighting
for their lives within hours of sleeving.

That’s
where you get the Envoy Corps.

Neurachem
conditioning, cyborg interfaces, augmentation—all this stuff is
physical
.
Most of it doesn’t even touch the pure mind, and it’s the pure mind
that gets freighted. That’s where the Corps started. They took
psychospiritual techniques that oriental cultures on Earth had known about for
millennia and distilled them into a training system so complete that on most
worlds graduates of it were instantly forbidden by law to hold any political or
military office.

Not
soldiers, no. Not exactly.

“I
work by absorption,” I finished. “Whatever I come into contact
with, I soak up, and I use that to get by.”

Bancroft
shifted in his seat. He wasn’t used to being lectured. It was time to
start.

“Who
found your body?”

“My
daughter, Naomi.”

He broke
off as someone opened the door in the room below. A moment later, the maid that
had attended Miriam Bancroft earlier came up the steps to the balcony bearing a
tray with a visibly chilled decanter and tall glasses. Bancroft was wired with
internal tannoy, like everyone else at Suntouch House it seemed.

The maid
set down her tray, poured in machine-like silence and then withdrew on a short
nod from Bancroft. He stared after her blankly for a while.

Back from
the dead. It’s no joke.

“Naomi,”
I prompted him gently.

He blinked.
“Oh. Yes. She barged in here, wanting something. Probably the keys to one
of the limos. I’m an indulgent father, I suppose, and Naomi is my
youngest.”

“How
young?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Do
you have many children?”

“Yes,
I do. Very many.” Bancroft smiled faintly. “When you have leisure
and wealth, bringing children into the world is a pure joy. I have twenty-seven
sons and thirty-four daughters.”

“Do
they live with you?”

“Naomi
does, most of the time. The others come and go. Most have families of their own
now.”

“How
is Naomi?” I stepped my tone down a little.

Finding
your father without his head isn’t the best way to start the day.

“She’s
in psychosurgery,” said Bancroft shortly. “But she’ll pull
through. Do you need to talk to her?”

“Not
at the moment.” I got up from the chair and went to the balcony door.
“You say she barged in here. This is where it happened?”

“Yes.”
Bancroft joined me at the door. “Someone got in here and took my head off
with a particle blaster. You can see the blast mark on the wall down there.
Over by the desk.”

I went
inside and down the stairs. The desk was a heavy mirrorwood item—they
must have freighted the gene code from Harlan’s World and cultured the
tree here. That struck me as almost as extravagant as the Songspire in the
hall, and in slightly more questionable taste. On the World mirrorwood grows in
forests on three continents, and practically every canal dive in Millsport has
a bar top carved out of the stuff. I moved past it to inspect the stucco wall.
The white surface was furrowed and seared black with the unmistakable signature
of a beam weapon. The burn started at head height and followed a short arc
downwards.