Altered Carbon

  “What have I got to gain?” the machine asked soberly.

  “Continued guest status. I’m staying here until this thing is finished, and depending on what data I get out of Miller, that could be quite a while.”

  There was a quiet broken only by the humming of air-conditioning systems before the Hendrix spoke again.

  “If sufficiently serious charges accrue against me,” it said, “the U.N. regulatory charter may be invoked directly. Under section 14a, I can be punished with either Capacity Reduction or, in extreme cases, Shutdown.” There was another, briefer hesitation. “Once shut down, it is unlikely that I would be reenabled by anybody.”

  Machine idiolect. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated they get, they still end up sounding like a playgroup learning box. I sighed and looked directly ahead at the slice-of-virtual-life holos on the wall. “You want out, now’d be a good time to tell me.”

  “I do not want out, Takeshi Kovacs. I merely wished to acquaint you with the considerations involved in this course of action.”

  “Okay. I’m acquainted.”

  I glanced up at the digital display and watched the next full minute turn over. Another four hours for Miller. In the routine the Hendrix was running, he would not get hungry or thirsty, or have to attend to any other bodily functions. Sleep was possible, although the machine would not allow it to become a withdrawal coma. All Miller had to contend with, apart from the discomfort of his surroundings, was himself. In the end it was that which would drive him insane.

  I hoped.

  None of the Right Hand of God martyrs we put through the routine had lasted more than fifteen minutes real time, but they had been flesh-and-blood warriors, fanatically brave in their own arena but totally unversed in virtual techniques. They had also been endowed with a strong religious dogma that permitted them to commit numerous atrocities so long as it held, but when it went, it went like a dam wall and their own resultant self-loathing had eaten them alive. Miller’s mind would be nowhere near as simplistic, nor as initially self-righteous, and his conditioning would be good.

  Outside, it would be getting dark. I watched the clock and forced myself not to smoke. Tried, with less success, not to think about Ortega.

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

  CHAPTEr THIrTY–FOUr

  Miller cracked at twenty-one minutes. I 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,” the hotel said 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 subprogram 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,” the Hendrix announced.

  I looked up, surprised and hopeful.

  “Ortega?”

  “Kadmin,” the hotel said 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 shelflike 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 gray 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,” Kadmin said. “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 matte gray cruiser waiting at the curb, li
ghts on in the gathering gloom of early evening. I approached hesitantly, hand on the butt of the Nemex.

  When I was five meters 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 around toward 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 resleeving 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 armored.”

  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 blindly toward the neck for a pulse and found it, weak but stable.

  “The lieutenant is alive and well,” Kadmin said 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 meters up the street. She can’t walk and you could cut us both down before I can carry her two meters. 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 toward the car.

  PART FIVE

  NEMESIS

  (SYSTEMS CRASH)

  CHAPTEr THIrTY–FIVE

  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 gray 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 color 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 broadcast? 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. What was it that the Envoy Corps took away from you in return for all your other powers? Your unpredictability? Your soul?”

  “Don’t get poetic on me, Carnage. Where is he?”

  “Oh, very well. This way.”

  There were a brace of large sentries outside the cabin door that might have been the two from the cruiser. I was too jangled to remember clearly. They bracketed me as we followed Carnage along claustrophobic corridors and down listing companionways, all rust-spotted and polymer-varnished metal. I tried vaguely to memorize the path but most of me was thinking about what Carnage had said. Who had predicted my actions to him? Kadmin? Unlikely. The Patchwork Man, for all his fury and death threats, knew next to nothing about me. The only real candidate for that kind of prediction was Reileen Kawahara. Which also helped to explain why Carnage wasn’t quaking in his synthetic flesh at the thought of what Kawahara might do to him for cooperating with Kadmin. Kawahara had sold me out. Bancroft was convinced, the crisis—whatever it had been—was over, and the same day Ortega was snatched as bait. The scenario I had sold to Bancroft left Kadmin out th
ere as a private contractor with a grudge, so there was no reason why he couldn’t be seen to take me down. And under the circumstances, I was safer disposed of than left alive.

  For that matter, so was Kadmin, so maybe it hadn’t been that blatant. Maybe the word had gone out to bring Kadmin down, but only for as long as I was needed. With Bancroft convinced, I was once more expendable and the word had gone out again, to let Kadmin be. He could kill me, or I could kill him, whichever way the luck turned. Leaving Kawahara to clean up whoever was left.

  I had no doubt that Kawahara would keep her word as far as releasing Sarah was concerned. The old-style yakuza were funny about that sort of thing. But she had made no such binding promises about me.

  We clambered down a final staircase, a little wider than the rest, and came out onto a glassed-in gantry over a converted cargo cell. Looking down, I saw one of the arenas Ortega and I had passed in the electromag train last week, but now the plastic coverings were off the killing ring, and a modest crowd had assembled in the forward rows of each bank of plastic seating. Through the glass I could hear the sustained buzz of excitement and anticipation that had always preceded the Freak Fights I’d attended in my youth.

  “Ah, your public awaits you.” Carnage was standing at my shoulder. “Well, more correctly, Ryker’s public. Though I have no doubt you’ll be able to dissemble for them with the same skill that you convinced me.”

  “And if I choose not to?”

  Carnage’s crude features formed a simulacrum of distaste. He gestured out at the crowd. “Well, I suppose you could try explaining it to them in midbout. But to be honest, the accoustics aren’t of the best, and anyway—” He smiled unpleasantly. “—I doubt you’ll have the time.”

  “Foregone conclusion, huh?”

  Carnage maintained his smile. Behind him, Pernilla Grip and the other synthetic were watching me with the predatory interest of cats in front of a birdcage. Below, the crowd was becoming noisy with expectation.