Altered Carbon (57 page)

Ryker’s sleeve was
getting to be a pain in the balls.

Miller cracked at twenty-one minutes. It
didn’t need the Hendrix to tell me, the datalink terminal that I had
jacked into the virtual phone suddenly sputtered to life and started chittering
out hardcopy. I got up and went over to look at what was coming out. The
program was supposed to tidy up what Miller was saying so it read sanely, but
even after processing, the transcript was pretty incoherent. Miller had let himself
slide close to the edge before he’d given in. I scanned the first few
lines and saw the beginnings of what I wanted emerging from the gibberish.

“Wipe
the file replicants,” I told the hotel, crossing rapidly back to the
rack. “Give him a couple of hours to calm down, then jack me in.”

“Connection
time will exceed one minute, which at current ratio is three hours fifty-six
minutes. Do you wish a construct installed until you can be delivered to the
format.”

“Yeah,
that would be—” I stopped halfway through settling the hypnophones
around my head. “Wait a minute, how good’s the construct?”

“I am
an Emmerson series mainframe synthetic intelligence,” said the hotel
reproachfully. “At maximum fidelity, my virtual constructs are
indistinguishable from the projected consciousness they are based on. Subject
has now been alone for one hour and twenty-seven minutes. Do you wish the
construct installed?”

“Yes.”
The words gave me an eerie feeling even as I was speaking them. “In fact,
let it do the whole interrogation.”

“Installation
complete.”

I snapped
the phones back again and sat on the edge of the rack, thinking about the
implications of a second me inside the Hendrix’s vast processing system.
It was something that I had never—as far as I knew—been subject to
in the Corps, and I had certainly never trusted any machine enough to do it
once I was operating in a criminal context.

I cleared
my throat. “This construct. Will it know what it is?”

“Initially,
no. It will know everything that you knew when you exited from the format and
no more, though, given your intelligence, it will deduce the facts eventually
unless otherwise programmed. Do you wish a blocking subprogramme
installed?”

“No,”
I said quickly.

“Do
you wish me to maintain the format indefinitely?”

“No.
Close it down when I, I mean when he, when the construct decides we’ve
got enough.” Another thought struck me. “Does the construct carry
that virtual locator they wired into me?”

“At
present, yes. I am running the same mirror code to mask the signal as I did with
your own consciousness. However, since the construct is not directly connected
to your cortical stack, I can subtract the signal if you wish.”

“Is
it worth the trouble?”

“The
mirror code is easier to administer,” the hotel admitted.

“Leave
it, then.”

There was
an uncomfortable bubble sitting in the pit of my stomach at the thought of
editing my virtual self. It reflected far too closely on the arbitrary measures
that the Kawaharas and Bancrofts took in the real world with real people. Raw
power, unleashed.

“You
have a virtual format call,” announced the Hendrix.

I looked
up, surprised and hopeful.

“Ortega?”

“Kadmin,”
said the hotel diffidently. “Will you accept the call?”

The format
was a desert. Reddish dust and sandstone underfoot, sky nailed down from
horizon to horizon, cloudless blue. Sun and a pale three-quarter moon hung high
and sterile above a distant range of shelf-like mountains. The temperature was
a jarring chill, making a mockery of the sun’s blinding glare.

The
Patchwork Man stood waiting for me. In the empty landscape he looked like a
graven image, a rendering of some savage desert spirit. He grinned when he saw
me.

“What
do you want, Kadmin? If you’re looking for influence with Kawahara
I’m afraid you’re out of luck. She’s pissed off with you
beyond repair.”

A flicker
of amusement crossed Kadmin’s face and he shook his head slowly, as if to
dismiss Kawahara from the proceedings completely. His voice was deep and
melodic.

“You
and I have unfinished business,” he said.

“Yeah,
you fucked up twice in a row.” I ladled scorn into my voice. “What
do you want, a third shot at it?”

Kadmin
shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, third time lucky, they say. Allow
me to show you something.”

He gestured
in the air beside him and a flap of the desert backdrop peeled away from a
blackness beyond. The screen it formed sizzled and sprang to life. Close focus
on sleeping features. Ortega’s. A fist snapped closed around my heart.
Her face was grey and bruised-looking under the eyes. A thin thread of drool ran
from one corner of her mouth.

Stunbolt at
close range.

The last
time I’d caught a full stun charge was courtesy of the Millsport Public
Order police and, although the Envoy conditioning had forced me back to a kind
of consciousness in about twenty minutes, I hadn’t been up to much more
than shivering and twitching for the next couple of hours. There was no telling
how long ago Ortega had been hit, but she looked bad.

“It’s
a simple exchange,” said Kadmin. “You for her. I’m parked
around the block on a street called Minna. I’ll be there for the next
five minutes. Come alone, or I blow her stack out the back of her neck. Your
choice.”

The desert
fizzled out on the Patchwork Man smiling.

I made the
two corners of the block and Minna in a minute flat. Two weeks without smoking
was like a newly discovered compartment at the bottom of Ryker’s lungs.

It was a
sad little street of sealed-up frontages and vacant lots. There was no one
around. The only vehicle in sight was a matt grey cruiser waiting at the curb,
lights on in the gathering gloom of early evening. I approached hesitantly,
hand on the butt of the Nemex.

When I was
five metres from the rear of the cruiser, a door opened and Ortega’s body
was pitched out. She hit the street like a sack and stayed down, crumpled. I
cleared the Nemex as she hit and circled warily round towards her, eyes fixed
on the car.

A door
cracked open on the far side and Kadmin climbed out. So soon after seeing him
in virtual, it took a moment to click. Tall, dark-skinned, the hawk visage I
had last seen dreaming in fluid behind the glass of the
Panama Rose
’s
re-sleeving tank. The Right Hand of God martyr clone, and hiding beneath its
flesh, the Patchwork Man.

I drew a
bead on his throat with the Nemex. Across the width of the cruiser and very
little more, whatever else happened afterwards, it would take his head off and
probably rip the stack out of his spine.

“Don’t
be ridiculous, Kovacs. This vehicle is armoured.”

I shook my
head. “Only interested in you. Just stay exactly where you are.”

With the
Nemex still extended, my eyes still fixed on the target area above his
Adam’s apple, I lowered myself into a crouch beside Ortega and reached
down to her face with the fingers of my free hand. Warm breath stirred around
my fingertips. I felt blind towards the neck for a pulse and found it, weak but
stable.

“The
lieutenant is alive and well,” said Kadmin impatiently. “Which is
more than we shall be able to say for either of you in two minutes’ time
if you don’t put down that cannon and get into the car.”

Beneath my
hand, Ortega’s face moved. Her head rolled and I caught her scent. Her
half of the pheromonal match that had locked us both into this in the first
place. Her voice was weak and slurred from the stun charge.

“Don’t
do this, Kovacs. You don’t owe me.”

I stood up
and lowered the Nemex slightly.

“Back
off. Fifty metres up the street. She can’t walk and you could cut us both
down before I can carry her two metres. You back off. I walk to the car.”
I wagged the gun. “Ortega keeps the hardware. It’s all I’m
carrying.”

I lifted my
jacket to demonstrate. Kadmin nodded. He ducked back inside the cruiser and the
vehicle rolled smoothly down the block. I watched it until it stopped, then
knelt beside Ortega again. She struggled to sit up.

“Kovacs,
don’t. They’re going to kill you.”

“Yes,
they’re certainly going to try.” I took her hand and folded it
around the butt of the Nemex. “Listen, I’m all finished here in any
case. Bancroft’s sold, Kawahara will keep her word and freight Sarah
back. I know her. What you’ve got to do is bust her for Mary Lou Hinchley
and get Ryker off stack. Talk to the Hendrix. I left you a few loose ends
there.”

From down
the street, the cruiser sounded its collision alert impatiently. In the
gathering gloom of the street, it sounded mournful and ancient, like the hoot
of a dying elephant ray on Hirata’s Reef. Ortega looked up out of her
stunblasted face as if she was drowning there.

“You—”

I smiled
and rested a hand against her cheek.

“Got
to get to the next screen, Kristin. That’s all.”

Then I stood up, locked my
hands together on the nape of my neck, and walked towards the car.

(SYSTEMS CRASH)

In the cruiser, I was sandwiched between
two impressive musclemen who, with a bit of cosmetic surgery to mess up their
clone good looks, could have hired out as freak fighters on bulk alone. We
climbed sedately away from the street and banked around. I tipped a glance out
of the side window and saw Ortega below, trying to prop herself upright.

“I cream
the Sia cunt?” the driver wanted to know. I tensed myself for a forward
leap.

“No.”
Kadmin turned in his seat to look at me. “No, I gave Mr.Kovacs my word. I
believe the lieutenant and I will cross paths again in the not too distant
future.”

“Too
bad for you,” I told him unconvincingly, and then they shot me with the
stunner.

When I woke
up, there was a face watching me from close up. The features were vague, pale
and blurred, like some kind of theatrical mask. I blinked, shivered and hauled
in focus. The face drew back, still doll-like in its lack of resolution. I
coughed.

“Hello,
Carnage.”

The crude
features sketched a smile. “Welcome back to the
Panama Rose
,
Mr.Kovacs.”

I sat up
shakily on a narrow metal bunk. Carnage stepped back to give me space, or just
to stay out of grabbing range. Smeared vision gave me a cramped cabin in grey
steel behind him. I swung my feet to the floor and stopped abruptly. The nerves
in my arms and legs were still jangling from the stunbolt and there was a sick,
trembling feeling in the pit of my stomach. All things considered, it felt like
the results of a very dilute beam. Or maybe a series. I glanced down at myself
and saw that I was dressed in a heavy canvas gi the colour of quarried granite.
On the floor beside the bunk were a pair of matching spacedeck slippers and a
belt. I began to get an unpleasant inkling of what Kadmin had planned.

Behind
Carnage, the door of the cabin opened. A tall, blonde woman, apparently in her
early forties, stepped in, followed by another synthetic, this one smoothly
modern-looking apart from a gleaming steel direct interface tool in place of a
left hand.

Carnage
busied himself with introductions.

“Mr.Kovacs,
may I present Pernilla Grip of Combat Broadcast Distributors, and her technical
assistant Miles Mech. Pernilla, Miles, I’d like to present Takeshi
Kovacs, our surrogate Ryker for tonight. Congratulations, by the way, Kovacs.
At the time I was utterly convinced, despite the unlikelihood of Ryker making
it off stack for the next two hundred years. All part of the Envoy technique, I
understand.”

“Not
really. Ortega was the convincing factor. All I did was let you talk.
You’re good at that.” I nodded at Carnage’s companions.
“Did I hear the word broadcasting? I thought that went against the creed.
Didn’t you perform radical surgery on a journalist for that particular
crime?”

“Different
products, Mr.Kovacs. Different products. To broadcast a scheduled fight would
indeed be a breach of our creed. But this is not a scheduled fight, this is a
humiliation bout.” Carnage’s surface charm froze over on the
phrase. “With a different and necessarily very limited live audience, we
are forced to make up for the loss in revenue somehow. There are a great many
networks who are anxious to get their hands on anything that comes out of the
Panama
Rose
. This is the effect our reputation has, but unfortunately it is that
same reputation that precludes us doing any such business directly. Ms.Grip
handles this market dilemma for us.”

“Nice
of her.” My own voice grew cold. “Where’s Kadmin?”

“In
due time, Mr.Kovacs. In due time. You know, when I was told you would react
this way and give yourself up for the lieutenant, I confess I doubted it at the
time. But you fulfill expectations like a machine. Was it that that the Envoy
Corps took away from you in return for all your other powers? Your
unpredictability? Your soul?”