Altered Carbon

  She was talking to the man and woman I didn’t know when I approached to offer my congratulations. She saw me coming and turned to include me in the little group.

  “Mr. Kovacs.” Her eyes widened the slightest bit. “Did you enjoy watching?”

  “Very much,” I said truthfully. “You’re quite merciless.”

  She tipped her head to one side and began to towel her sweat-soaked hair with one hand. “Only when required,” she said. “You won’t know Nalan or Joseph, of course. Nalan, Joseph, this is Takeshi Kovacs, the Envoy Laurens hired to look into his murder. Mr. Kovacs is from offworld. Mr. Kovacs, this is Nalan Ertekin, chief justice of the U.N. Supreme Court, and Joseph Phiri from the Commission of Human Rights.”

  “Delighted.” I made a brief formal bow to both of them. “You’re here to discuss Resolution 653, I imagine.”

  The two officials exchanged a glance, then Phiri nodded. “You’re very well informed,” he said gravely. “I’ve heard a lot about the Envoy Corps, but still I’m impressed. How long have you been on Earth, exactly?”

  “About a week,” I exaggerated, hoping to play down the usual paranoia elected officials exhibit around Envoys.

  “A week, yes. Impressive indeed.” Phiri was a heavyset black man, apparently in his fifties, with hair that was graying a little and careful brown eyes. Like Dennis Nyman, he affected external eyewear, but where Nyman’s steely lenses had been designed to enhance the planes of his face, this man wore the glasses to deflect attention. They were heavy framed and gave him the appearance of a forgetful cleric, but behind the lenses, the eyes missed nothing.

  “And are you making progress with your investigation?” This was Ertekin, a handsome Arab woman a couple of decades younger than Phiri, and therefore likely on at least her second sleeve. I smiled at her.

  “Progress is difficult to define, your honor. As Quell would have it, they come to me with progress reports, but all I see is change, and bodies burnt.”

  “Ah, you are from Harlan’s World, then,” Ertekin said politely. “And do you consider yourself a Quellist, Mr. Kovacs?”

  I let the smile become a grin. “Sporadically. I’d say she had a point.”

  “Mr. Kovacs has been quite busy, in fact,” Miriam Bancroft said hurriedly. “I imagine he and Laurens have a lot to discuss. Perhaps it might be better if we left them to these matters.”

  “Yes, of course.” Ertekin inclined her head. “Perhaps we’ll talk again later.”

  The three of them drifted over to commiserate with Miriam’s opponent, who was ruefully stowing his racket and towels in a bag; but for all Miriam’s diplomatic steerage, Nalan Ertekin did not seem unduly concerned to make her escape. I felt a momentary glimmer of admiration for her. Telling a U.N. executive—in effect, an officer of the Protectorate—that you’re a Quellist is a bit like confessing to ritual slaughter at a vegetarian dinner; it’s not really the done thing.

  I turned to find Oumou Prescott at my shoulder.

  “Shall we?” she said grimly, and pointed up toward the house. Bancroft was already striding ahead. We went after him at what I thought was an excessive pace.

  “One question,” I managed, between breathing. “Who’s the kid? The one Mrs. Bancroft crucified.”

  Prescott flicked me an impatient glance.

  “Big secret, huh?”

  “No, Mr. Kovacs, it is not a secret, large or otherwise. I merely think you might do better occupying your mind with other matters than the Bancrofts’ houseguests. If you must know, the other player was Marco Kawahara.”

  “Was it, indeed.” Accidentally, I’d slipped into Phiri’s speech patterns. Chalk up a double strike for personality. “So that’s where I’ve seen his face before. Takes after his mother, doesn’t he?”

  “I really wouldn’t know,” Prescott said dismissively. “I have never met Ms. Kawahara.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Bancroft was waiting for us in an exotic conservatory pinned to the seaward wing of the house. The glass walls were a riot of alien colors and forms, among which I picked out a young mirrorwood tree and numerous stands of martyrweed. Bancroft was standing next to one of the latter, spraying it carefully with a white metallic dust. I don’t know much about martyrweed beyond its obvious uses as a security device, so I had no idea what the powder was.

  Bancroft turned as we came in. “Please keep your voices reasonably low.” His own voice was curiously flat in the sound-absorbent environment. “Martyrweed is highly sensitive at this stage of development. Mr. Kovacs, I assume you are familiar with it.”

  “Yeah.” I glanced at the vaguely hand-shaped cups of the leaves, with the central crimson stains that had given the plant its name. “You sure these are mature?”

  “Fully. On Adoracion, you’ll have seen them larger, but I had Nakamura tailor these for indoor use. This is as secure as a Nilvibe cabin and—” He gestured to a trio of steel-frame chairs beside the martyrweed. “—a great deal more comfortable.”

  “You wanted to see me,” I said impatiently. “What about?”

  For just a moment that black iron stare bent on me with the full force of Bancroft’s three and a half centuries, and it was like locking gazes with a demon. For that second, the Meth soul was looking out and I saw reflected in those eyes all the myriad ordinary single lives that they had watched die, like the pale flickerings of moths at a flame. It was an experience I’d had only once before, and that was when I’d taken issue with Reileen Kawahara. I could feel the heat on my wings.

  Then it was gone, and there was only Bancroft, moving to seat himself and setting the powder spray aside on an adjacent table. He looked up and waited to see if I would sit down, as well. When I did not, he steepled his fingers and frowned. Oumou Prescott hovered between us.

  “Mr. Kovacs, I am aware that by the terms of our contract I agreed to meet all reasonable expenses in this investigation, but when I said that, I did not expect to be paying for a trail of willful organic damage from one side of Bay City to another. I have spent most of this morning buying off both the West Coast triads and the Bay City police, neither of whom were very well disposed toward me even before you started this carnage. I wonder if you realize how much it is costing me just to keep you alive and out of storage.”

  I looked around at the conservatory and shrugged.

  “I imagine you can afford it.”

  Prescott flinched. Bancroft allowed himself the splinter of a smile.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Kovacs, I no longer wish to afford it.”

  “Then pull the fucking plug.” The martyrweed trembled visibly at the sudden change in tone. I didn’t care. Abruptly, I was no longer in the mood for playing the Bancrofts’ elegant games. I was tired. Discounting the brief period of unconsciousness at the clinic, I had been awake for over thirty hours, and my nerves were raw from the continual use of the neurachem system. I had been in a firefight. I had escaped from a moving aircar. I had been subjected to interrogation routines that would have traumatized most human beings for a lifetime. I had committed multiple combat murders. And I had been in the act of crawling into bed when the Hendrix let Bancroft’s curt summons through the call block I’d requested, quote, “in the interests of maintaining good client relations and so assuring continued guest status.” Someday, someone was going to have to overhaul the hotel’s antique service-industry idiolect; I had weighed the idea of doing it myself with the Nemex when I got off the phone, but my irritation at the hotel’s enslaved responses to guest holding was overridden by the anger I felt toward Bancroft himself. It was that anger that had stopped me ignoring the call and going to bed anyway, and propelled me out to Suntouch House dressed in the same rumpled clothes I had been wearing since the previous day.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Kovacs?” Oumou Prescott was staring at me. “Are you suggesting—”

  “No, I’m not, Prescott. I’m threatening.” I switched my gaze back to Bancroft. “I didn’t ask to join this fucking Noh dance. You dragged me here
, Bancroft. You pulled me out of the store on Harlan’s World, and you jacked me into Elias Ryker’s sleeve just to piss Ortega off. You sent me out there with a few vague hints and watched me stumble around in the dark, cracking my shins on your past misdemeanors. Well, if you don’t want to play anymore, now that the current’s running a little hard, that’s fine with me. I’m through risking my stack for a piece of shit like you. You can just put me back in the box, and I’ll take my chances a hundred and seventeen years from now. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and whoever wants you toasted will have wiped you off the face of the planet by then.”

  I’d had to check my weapons at the main gate, but I could feel the dangerous looseness of the Envoy combat mode stealing over me as I spoke. If the Meth demon came back and got out of hand, I was going to choke the life out of Bancroft there and then just for the satisfaction.

  Curiously, what I said seemed only to make him thoughtful. He heard me out, inclined his head as if in agreement, then turned to Prescott.

  “Ou, can you drop out for a while? There are some things that Mr. Kovacs and I need to discuss in private.”

  Prescott looked dubious. “Shall I post someone outside?” she queried, with a hard glance at me. Bancroft shook his head.

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

  Prescott left, still looking dubious, while I struggled not to admire Bancroft’s cool. He’d just heard me say I was happy to go back into storage, he’d been reading my body count all morning, and still he thought he had my specs down tight enough to know whether I was dangerous or not.

  I took a seat. Maybe he was right.

  “You’ve got some explaining to do,” I said evenly. “You can start with Ryker’s sleeve, and go on from there. Why’d you do it, and why conceal it from me?”

  “Conceal it?” Bancroft’s brows arched. “We barely discussed it.”

  “You told me you’d left the sleeve selection to your lawyers. You were at pains to stress that. But Prescott insists you made the selection yourself. You should have briefed her a bit better on the lies you were going to tell.”

  “Well.” Bancroft made a gesture of acceptance. “A reflexive caution, then. One tells the truth to so few people in the end, it becomes a habit. But I had no idea it would matter to you so much. After your career in the corps, and your time in storage, I mean. Do you usually exhibit this much interest in the past history of the sleeves you wear?”

  “No, I don’t. But ever since I arrived, Ortega’s been all over me like anticontaminant plastic. I thought it was because she had something to hide. Turns out, she’s just trying to protect her boyfriend’s sleeve while he’s in the store. Incidentally, did you bother to find out why Ryker was on stack?”

  This time Bancroft’s open-handed motion was dismissive. “A corruption charge. Unjustified organic damage, and attempted falsification of personality detail. I understand it wasn’t his first offense.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. In fact, he was well known for it. Well known and very unpopular, especially around places like Licktown, which is where I’ve been the last couple of days, following the trail of your dripping dick. But we’ll come back to that. I want to know why you did it. Why am I wearing Ryker’s sleeve?”

  Bancroft’s eyes flared momentarily at the insult, but he really was too good a player to rise to it. Instead, he shot his right cuff in a displacement gesture I recognized from Diplomatic Basic, and smiled faintly.

  “Really, I had no idea it would prove inconvenient. I was looking to provide you with suitable armor, and the sleeve carries—”

  “Why Ryker?”

  There was a beat of silence. Meths were not people you interrupted lightly, and Bancroft was having a hard time dealing with the lack of respect. I thought about the tree beyond the tennis courts. No doubt Ortega, had she been there, would have cheered.

  “A move, Mr. Kovacs. Merely a move.”

  “A move? Against Ortega?”

  “Just so.” Bancroft settled back into his seat. “Lieutenant Ortega made her prejudices quite clear the moment she stepped into this house. She was unhelpful in the extreme. She lacked respect. It was something that I remembered, an account to be adjusted. When the shortlist Oumou provided me with included Elias Ryker’s sleeve, and listed Ortega as paying the tank mortgage, I saw the move as almost karmic. It dictated itself.”

  “A little childish for someone your age, don’t you think?”

  Bancroft inclined his head. “Perhaps. But then, do you recall a General MacIntyre of Envoy Command, resident of Harlan’s World, who was found gutted and decapitated in his private jet a year after the Innenin massacre?”

  “Vaguely.” I sat, cold, remembering. But if Bancroft could play the control game, so could I.

  “Vaguely?” Bancroft raised an eyebrow. “I’d have thought a veteran of Innenin could scarcely fail to recall the death of the commander who presided over the whole debacle, the man many claim was actually guilty by negligence of all those real deaths.”

  “MacIntyre was exonerated of all blame by the Protectorate Court of Inquiry,” I said quietly. “Do you have a point to make?”

  Bancroft shrugged. “Only that it seems his death was a revenge killing, despite the verdict handed down by the court, a pointless act, in fact, since it could not bring back those who died. Childishness is a common enough sin amongst humans. Perhaps we should not be so quick to judge.”

  “Perhaps not.” I stood up and went to stand at the door of the conservatory, looking out. “Well, then don’t feel that I’m sitting in judgment, but why exactly didn’t you tell me you spent so much time in whorehouses?”

  “Ah, the Elliott girl. Yes, Oumou has told me about this. Do you seriously think her father had something to do with my death?”

  I turned back. “Not now, no. I seriously believe he had nothing to do with your death, in fact. But I’ve wasted a lot of time finding that out.”

  Bancroft met my eye calmly. “I’m sorry if my briefing was inadequate, Mr. Kovacs. It is true, I spend some of my leisure time in purchased sexual release, both real and virtual. Or, as you so elegantly put it, whorehouses. I’d not considered it especially important. Equally, I spend part of my time in small-scale gambling. And occasionally null-gravity knife fighting. All of these things could make me enemies, as indeed could most of my business interests. I didn’t feel that your first day in a new sleeve on a new world was the time for a line-by-line explanation of my life. Where would I expect to begin? Instead, I told you the background of the crime and suggested that you talk to Oumou. I didn’t expect you to take off after the first clue like a heatseeker. Nor did I expect you to lay waste to everything that got in your way. I was told the Envoy Corps had a reputation for subtlety.”

  Put like that, he had a point. Virginia Vidaura would have been furious. She probably would have been right behind Bancroft, waiting to deck me for gross lack of finesse. But then, neither she nor Bancroft had been looking into Victor Elliott’s face the night he told me about his family. I swallowed a sharp retort and marshaled what I knew, trying to decide how much to let go of.

  “Laurens?”

  Miriam Bancroft was standing just outside the conservatory, a towel draped around her neck and her racquet under one arm.

  “Miriam.” There was a genuine deference in Bancroft’s tone, but little else that I could determine.

  “I’m taking Nalan and Joseph out to Hudson’s Raft for a scuba lunch. Joseph’s never done it before, and we’ve talked him into it.” She glanced from Bancroft to myself and back. “Will you be coming with us?”

  “Maybe later,” Bancroft said. “Where will you be?”

  Miriam shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about it. Somewhere on the starboard decks. Benton’s, maybe?”

  “Fine. I’ll catch up with you. Spear me a kingfish if you see one.”

  “Aye aye.” She touched the blade of one hand to the side of her head in a ludicrous salute that made both of us smile unexpectedly. Mi
riam’s gaze quivered and settled on me. “Do you like seafood, Mr. Kovacs?”

  “Probably. I’ve had very little time to exercise my tastes on Earth, Mrs. Bancroft. So far I’ve eaten only what my hotel has to offer.”

  “Well, once you’ve developed a taste for it,” she said significantly, “maybe we’ll see you, as well?”

  “Thank you, but I doubt it.”

  “Well,” she repeated brightly, “try not to be too much longer, Laurens. I’ll need some help keeping Marco off Nalan’s back. He’s fuming, by the way.”

  Bancroft grunted. “The way he played today, I’m not surprised. I thought for a while he was doing it deliberately.”

  “Not the last game,” I said, to no one in particular.

  The Bancrofts focused on me, he unreadably, she with her head tipped to one side and a sudden wide smile that made her look unexpectedly childlike. For a moment I met her gaze, and one hand rose to touch her hair with what seemed like fractional uncertainty.

  “Curtis will be bringing the limousine around,” she said. “I’ll have to go. It was a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Kovacs.”

  We both watched her stride away across the lawn, her tennis skirt tilting back and forth. Even allowing for Bancroft’s apparent indifference to his wife as a sexual being, Miriam’s wordplay was steering fractionally too close to the wind for my liking. I had to plug the silence with something.

  “Tell me something, Bancroft,” I said with my eyes still on the receding figure. “No disrespect intended, but why does someone who’s married to her, who’s chosen to stay married, spend his time in, quote, purchased sexual release?”

  I turned casually back and found him watching me without expression. He said nothing for several seconds, and when he spoke, his voice was carefully bland.

  “Have you ever come in a woman’s face, Kovacs?”

  Culture shock is something they teach you to lock down very early on in the corps, but just occasionally a blast gets through the armor and the reality around you feels like a jigsaw that won’t quite fit together. I barely chopped off my stare before it got started. This man, older than the entire human history of my planet, was asking me this question. It was as if he’d asked me had I ever played with water pistols.