Altered Carbon

  “You waiting for me?” I asked the Mongol’s back, and saw how the muscles in it tensed.

  Maybe one of the dealers felt it coming. He held up his exposed hand in a placatory gesture. “Look, man,” he began weakly.

  I sliced him a glance out of the corner of my eye, and he shut up.

  “I said—”

  That was when it all came apart. The Mongol pushed himself off the car hood with a roar and swatted at me with an arm the size of a ham. The blow never landed, but even deflecting it, I staggered back a pace. The dealers skinned their weapons, deadly little slabs of black and gray metal that spat and yapped in the rain. I twisted away from the traceries of fire, using the Mongol for cover, and shot a palm heel into his contorted face. Bone crunched and I came around him onto the car while the dealers were still trying to work out where I was. The neurachem made their movements into the pouring of thick honey. One gun-filled fist came tracking toward me, and I smashed the fingers around the metal with a side-flung kick. The owner howled, and the edge of my hand cracked into the other dealer’s temple. Both men reeled off the car, one still moaning, the other insensible or dead. I came up into a crouch.

  The Mongol took off, running.

  I vaulted the roof of the ground car and went after him without thinking. The concrete jarred my feet as I landed, sent splinters of pain lancing up both shins, but the neurachem damped it down instantly and I was only a dozen meters behind. I threw out my chest and sprinted.

  Ahead of me, the Mongol bounced around in my field of vision like a combat jet trying to elude pursuing fire. For a man of his size, he was remarkably fast, flitting between the marching support pillars of the expressway and into the shadows a good twenty meters ahead now. I put on speed, wincing at the sharp pains in my chest. Rain slapped at my face.

  Fucking cigarettes.

  We came out from under the pillars and across a deserted intersection where the traffic lights leaned at drunken angles. One of them stirred feebly, lights changing, as the Mongol passed it. A senile robot voice husked out at me. Cross now. Cross now. Cross now. I already had. The echoes followed me beseechingly up the street.

  Past the derelict hulks of vehicles that hadn’t moved from their curbside resting places in years. Barred and shuttered frontages that might or might not be rolled up for business during daylight hours, steam rising from a grate in the side of the street like something alive. The paving under my feet was slick with the rain and a gray muck distilled from items of decaying garbage. The shoes that had come with Bancroft’s summer suit were thin soled and devoid of useful grip. Only the perfect balance of the neurachem kept me upright.

  The Mongol cast a glance back over his shoulder as he came level with two parked wrecks, saw I was still there, and broke left across the street as soon as he cleared the last vehicle. I tried to adjust my trajectory and cut him off, crossing the street at an angle before I reached the wrecked cars, but my quarry had timed the trap too well. I was already on the first wreck, and I skidded trying to stop in time. I bounced off the hood of the rusting vehicle into a shopfront shutter. The metal clanged and sizzled; a low-current antiloitering charge stung my hands. Across the street, the Mongol stretched the distance between us by another ten meters.

  A wayward speck of traffic moved in the sky above me.

  I spotted the fleeing figure on the other side of the street and kicked off from the curb, cursing the impulse that had made me turn down Bancroft’s offer of armaments. At this range a beam weapon would have carved the Mongol’s legs out from under him easily. Instead, I tucked in behind him and tried to find the lung capacity from somewhere to close up the gap again. Maybe I could panic him into tripping.

  That wasn’t what happened, but it was close enough. The buildings to our left gave way to wasteland bordered by a sagging fence. The Mongol looked back again and made his first mistake. He stopped, threw himself on the fence, which promptly collapsed, and scrambled over into the darkness beyond. I grinned and followed. Finally, I had the advantage.

  Perhaps he was hoping to lose himself in the darkness, or expecting me to twist an ankle over the uneven ground. But the Envoy conditioning squeezed my pupils into instant dilation in the low-light surroundings and mapped my steps over the uneven surface with lightning speed, and the neurachem put my feet there with a rapidity to match. The ground ghosted by beneath me the way it had beneath Jimmy de Soto in my dream. Given a hundred meters of this I was going to overtake my Mongol friend, unless he, too, had augmented vision.

  In the event, the wasteland ran out before that, but by then there was barely the original dozen meters between us when we both hit the fence on the far side. He scaled the wire, dropped to the ground, and started up the street while I was still climbing, but then, abruptly, he appeared to stumble. I cleared the top of the fence and swung down lightly. He must have heard me drop, though, because he spun out of the huddle, still not finished clipping together the thing in his hands. The muzzle came up, and I dived for the street.

  I hit hard, skinning my hands and rolling. Lightning torched the night where I had been. The stink of ozone washed over me, and the crackle of disrupted air curled in my ears. I kept rolling, and the particle blaster lit up again, charring past my shoulder. The damp street hissed with steam in its wake. I scrambled for cover that wasn’t there.

  “Lay down your weapon!”

  A cluster of pulsating lights dropped vertically from above, and the loudspeaker barked down the night like the voice of a robot god. A searchlight exploded in the street and flooded us with white fire. From where I lay, I screwed up my eyes and could just make out the police transport, a regulation crowd-control five meters off the street, lights flashing. The soft storm of its turbines swept flapping wings of paper and plastic up against the walls of nearby buildings and pinned them there like dying moths.

  “Stand where you are!” the loudspeaker thundered again. “Lay down your weapon!”

  The Mongol brought his particle blaster around in a searing arc, and the transport bucked as its pilot tried to avoid the beam. Sparks showered off one turbine where the weapon found its mark, and the transport sideslipped badly. Machine rifle fire answered from a mounting somewhere below the vessel’s nose, but by that time the Mongol was across the street, had torched down a door, and was gone through the smoking gap.

  Screams from somewhere within.

  I picked myself slowly up off the ground and watched as the transport settled to within a meter of the ground. An extinguisher canister fumed into life on the smoldering engine canopy and dripped white foam onto the street. Just behind the pilot’s window, a hatch whined up and Kristin Ortega stood framed in the opening.

  CHAPTEr TEN

  The transport was a stripped-down version of the one that had given me the ride out to Suntouch House, and it was noisy in the cabin. Ortega had to shout to make herself heard above the engines.

  “We’ll put in a sniffer squad, but if he’s connected, he can get stuff that’ll change his body’s chemical signature before dawn. After that, we’re down to witness sightings. Stone Age stuff. And in this part of town . . .”

  The transport banked, and she gestured down at the warren of streets below. “Look at it. Licktown, they call it. Used to be called Potrero way back. They say it was a nice area.”

  “So what happened?”

  Ortega shrugged in her steel lattice seat. “Economic crisis. You know how it is. One day you own a house, your sleeve policy’s paid up, the next you’re on the street looking at a single life span.”

  “That’s tough.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it,” the detective said dismissively. “Kovacs, what the fuck were you doing at Jerry’s?”

  “Getting an itch scratched,” I growled. “Any laws against it?”

  She looked at me. “You weren’t getting greased in Jerry’s. You were barely in there ten minutes.”

  I lifted my own shoulders and made an apologetic face. “You ever been downloaded into a
male body straight out of the tank, you’ll know what it’s like. Hormones. Things get rushed. Places like Jerry’s, performance isn’t an issue.”

  Ortega’s lips curved in something approximating a smile. She leaned forward across the space between us.

  “Bullshit, Kovacs. Bull. Shit. I accessed what they’ve got on you at Millsport. Psychological profile. They call it the Kemmerich gradient, and yours is so steep you’d need pitons and rope to get up it. Everything you do, performance is going to be an issue.”

  “Well.” I fed myself a cigarette and ignited it as I spoke. “You know, there’s a lot you can do for some women in ten minutes.”

  Ortega rolled her eyes and waved the comment away as if it was a fly buzzing around her face.

  “Right. And you’re telling me with the credit you have from Bancroft, Jerry’s is the best you can afford?”

  “It’s not about cost,” I said, and wondered if that was the truth of what brought people like Bancroft down to Licktown.

  Ortega leaned her head against the window and looked out at the rain. She didn’t look at me. “You’re chasing leads, Kovacs. You went down to Jerry’s to follow up something Bancroft did there. Given time, I can find out what that was, but it’d be easier if you just told me.”

  “Why? You told me the Bancroft case was closed. What’s your interest?”

  That brought her eyes back around to mine, and there was a light in them. “My interest is keeping the peace. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but every time we meet it’s to the sound of heavy-caliber gunfire.”

  I spread my hands. “I’m unarmed. All I’m doing is asking questions. And speaking of questions. How come you were sitting on my shoulder when the fun started?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  I let that one go. Ortega was tailing me, that much was certain. And that in turn meant there had to be more to the Bancroft case than she was admitting.

  “What’s going to happen to my car?” I asked.

  “We’ll have it picked up. Notify the rental company. Someone can come and get it from the impound. Unless you want it.”

  I shook my head.

  “Tell me something, Kovacs. Why’d you rent a ground car? On what Bancroft’s paying you, you could have had one of these.” She slapped the bulkhead by her side.

  “I like to go places on the ground,” I said. “You get a better sense of distance that way. And on Harlan’s World, we don’t go up in the air much.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Listen, the guy who nearly torched you out of the sky back there—”

  “Excuse me?” She cranked up one eyebrow in what by now I was beginning to think of as her trademark expression. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we saved your sleeve back there. You were the one looking down the wrong end of the hardware.”

  I gestured. “Whatever. He was waiting for me.”

  “Waiting for you?” Whatever she really thought, Ortega’s face was disbelieving. “According to those Stiff dealers we loaded into the wagon, he was buying product. An old customer, they say.”

  I shook my head. “He was waiting for me. I went to talk to him, he took off.”

  “Maybe he didn’t like your face. One of the dealers, I think it was the one whose skull you cracked, said you were looking jacked up to kill someone.” She shrugged again. “They say you started it, and it certainly looks that way.”

  “In that case, why aren’t you charging me?”

  “Oh, with what?” She exhaled an imaginary plume of smoke. “Organic damage, surgery reparable, to a pair of Stiff peddlers? Endangering police property? Breach of the peace in Licktown? Give me a break, Kovacs. This sort of thing goes down every night outside Jerry’s. I’m too tired for the paperwork.”

  The transport tipped, and through the window I could see the dim form of the Hendrix’s tower. I’d accepted Ortega’s offer of a ride home in much the same spirit as I had the police lift out to Suntouch House—to see where it would take me. Envoy wisdom. Go with the flow, and see what it shows you. I’d no reason to suppose Ortega was lying to me about our destination, but still part of me was surprised to see that tower. Envoys aren’t big on trust.

  After an initial wrangle with the Hendrix about landing permission, the pilot set us down on a grimy-looking drop pad atop the tower. I could feel the wind tugging at the transport’s lightweight body as we landed, and as the hatch unfolded upward, the cold came battering aboard. I got up to go. Ortega stayed where she was, watching me go with a lopsided look that I still couldn’t work out. The charge I’d felt last night was back. I could feel the need to say something pressing on me like an impending sneeze.

  “Hey, how’d the bust go down on Kadmin?”

  She shifted in the seat and stuck out one long leg to rest her boot on the chair I had just vacated. A thin smile.

  “Grinding through the machine,” she said. “We’ll get there.”

  “Good.” I climbed out into the wind and rain, raising my voice. “Thanks for the lift.”

  She nodded gravely, then tipped her head back to say something to the pilot behind her. The whine of the turbines built, and I ducked hurriedly out from under the hatch as it began to close. As I stepped back, the transport unglued itself and lifted away, lights flashing. I caught a final glimpse of Ortega’s face through the rain-streaked cabin window, then the wind seemed to carry the little craft away like an autumn leaf wheeling away and down toward the streets below. In seconds it was indistinguishable from the thousands of other flyers speckling the night sky. I turned and walked against the wind to the drop pad’s access staircase. My suit was sodden from the rain. What had possessed Bancroft to outfit me for summer with the scrambled weather systems that Bay City had so far exhibited was beyond me. On Harlan’s World, when it’s winter, it stays that way long enough for you to make decisions about your wardrobe.

  The upper levels of the Hendrix were in darkness relieved only by the occasional glow of dying illuminum tiles, but the hotel obligingly lit my way with neon tubes that flickered on in my path and died out again behind me. It was a weird effect, making me feel as if I was carrying a candle or torch.

  “You have a visitor,” the hotel said chattily as I got into the elevator and the doors whirred closed.

  I slammed my hand against the emergency stop button, raw flesh where I’d skinned my palm stinging. “What?”

  “You have a visi—”

  “Yeah, I heard.” It occurred to me, briefly, to wonder if the A.I. could take offense at my tone. “Who is it, and where are they?”

  “She identifies herself as Miriam Bancroft. Subsequent search of the city archives has confirmed sleeve identity. I have allowed her to wait in your room, since she is unarmed and you left nothing of consequence there this morning. Aside from refreshment, she has touched nothing.”

  Feeling my temper rising, I found focus on a small dent in the metal of the elevator door and made an attempt at calm.

  “This is interesting. Do you make arbitrary decisions like this for all your guests?”

  “Miriam Bancroft is the wife of Laurens Bancroft,” the hotel said reproachfully. “Who in turn is paying for your room. Under the circumstances, I thought it wise not to create unnecessary tensions.”

  I looked up at the ceiling of the elevator.

  “You been checking up on me?”

  “A background check is part of the contract I operate under. Any information retained is wholly confidential, unless subpoenaed under U.N. directive 231.4.”

  “Yeah? So what else you know?”

  “Lieutenant Takeshi Lev Kovacs,” the hotel said. “Also known as Mamba Lev, One Hand Rending, the Icepick; born Newpest, Harlan’s World, 35th May 187, colonial reckoning. Recruited to U.N. Protectorate Forces 11th September 204, selected for Envoy Corps enhancement 31st June 211 during routine screening—”

  “All right.” Inwardly I was a little surprised at how deep the A.I. had got. Most people’s records dry up as soon as
the trace goes offworld. Interstellar needlecasts are expensive. Unless the Hendrix had just broken into Warden Sullivan’s records, which was illegal. Ortega’s comment about the hotel’s previous charge sheet drifted back to me. What kind of crimes did an A.I. commit anyway?

  “It also occurred to me that Mrs. Bancroft is probably here in connection with the matter of her husband’s death, which you are investigating. I thought you would prefer to speak to her if possible, and she was not amenable to waiting in the lobby.”

  I sighed, and unpinned my hand from the elevator’s stop button.

  “No, I bet she wasn’t.”

  She was seated in the window, nursing a tall, ice-filled glass and watching the lights of the traffic below. The room was in darkness broken only by the soft glow of the service hatch and the tricolored neon-frame liquor cabinet. Enough to see that she wore some kind of shawl over work trousers and a body-molded leotard. She didn’t turn her head when I let myself in, so I advanced across the room into her field of vision.

  “The hotel told me you were here,” I said. “In case you were wondering why I didn’t unsleeve myself in shock.”

  She looked up at me and shook hair back from her face.

  “Very dry, Mr. Kovacs. Should I applaud?”

  I shrugged. “You might say thank you for the drink.”

  She examined the top of her glass thoughtfully for a moment, then flicked her eyes up again.

  “Thank you for the drink.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I went to the cabinet and surveyed the bottles racked there. A bottle of fifteen-year-old single malt suggested itself. I uncorked it, sniffed at the neck of the bottle, and picked out a tumbler. Keeping my eyes on my hands as they poured, I said, “Have you been waiting long?”