Altered Carbon

“Very thoughtful of you.”

Kawahara sighed. “How do I get through to you, Takeshi? We provide a service here. If it can be made legal, then so much the better.”

“That’s bullshit, Reileen. You sell them the virtual, and in a couple of months they come sniffing after the real thing. There’s a causal link, and you know it. Selling them something illegal gives you leverage, probably over some very influential people. Get many UN governors up here, do you? Protectorate generals, that kind of scum?”

“Head in the Clouds caters to an elite.”

“Like that white-haired fuck I greased upstairs? He was someone important, was he?”

“Carlton McCabe?” From somewhere, Kawahara produced an alarming smile. “You could say that, I suppose, yes. A person of influence.”

“Would you care to tell me which particular person of influence you’d promised they could rip the i

Kawahara tautened slightly. “No, I would not.”

“Suppose not. You’ll want that for a bargaining line later, won’t you? OK, skip it. So what happened? Hinchley was brought up here, accidentally found out what she was being fattened up for and tried to escape? Stole a grav harness, perhaps?”

“I doubt that. The equipment is kept under tight security. Perhaps she thought she could cling to the outside of one of the shuttles. She was not a very bright girl, apparently. The details are still unclear, but she must have fallen somehow.”

“Or jumped.”

Kawahara shook her head. “I don’t think she had the stomach for that. Mary Lou Hinchley was not a samurai spirit. Like most of common humanity, she would have clung to life until the last undignified moment. Hoping for some miracle. Begging for mercy.”

“How inelegant. Was she missed immediately?”

“Of course she was missed! She had a client waiting for her. We scoured the ship.”

“Embarrassing.”

“Yes.”

“But not as embarrassing as having her wash up on the shore a couple of days later, huh? The luck fairies were out of town that week.”

“It was unfortunate,” Kawahara conceded, as if we were discussing a bad hand of poker. “But not entirely unexpected. We were not anticipating a real problem.”

“You knew she was Catholic?”

“Of course. It was part of the requirements.”

“So when Ryker dug up that iffy conversion, you must have shat yourself. Hinchley’s testimony would have dragged you right into the open, along with fuck knows how many of your influential friends. Head in the Clouds, one of the Houses, indicted for snuff and you with it. What was the word you used on New Beijing that time? Intolerable risk. Something had to be done, Ryker had to be shut down. Stop me if I’m losing the thread here.”

“No, you’re quite correct.”

“So you framed him?”

Kawahara shrugged again. “An attempt was made to buy him off. He proved … unreceptive.”

“Unfortunate. So what did you do then?”

“You don’t know?”

“I want to hear you say it. I want details. I’m doing too much of the talking here. Try to keep your end of the conversation up, or I might think you’re being uncooperative.”

Kawahara raised her eyes theatrically to the ceiling. “I framed Elias Ryker. I set him up with a false tip about a clinic in Seattle. We built a phone construct of Ryker and used it to pay Ignacio Garcia to fake the Reasons of Conscience decals on two of Ryker’s kills. We knew the Seattle PD wouldn’t buy it and that Garcia’s faking wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. There, is that better?”

“Where’d you get Garcia from?”

“Research on Ryker, back when we were trying to buy him off.” Kawahara shifted impatiently on the lounger. “The co

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

“How perceptive of you.”

“So everything was nicely nailed down. Until Resolution 653 came along, and stirred it all up again. And Hinchley was still a live case.”

Kawahara inclined her head. “Just so.”

“Why didn’t you just stall it? Buy some decision makers on the UN Council?”

“Who? This isn’t New Beijing. You met Phiri and Ertekin. Do they look as if they’re for sale?:

I nodded. “So it was you in Marco’s sleeve. Did Miriam Bancroft know?”

“Miriam?” Kawahara looked perplexed. “Of course not. No one knew, that was the point. Marco plays Miriam on a regular basis. It was a perfect cover.”

“Not perfect. You play shit te

“I didn’t have time for a competence disc,”

“Why Marco? Why not just go as yourself?”

Kawahara waved a hand. “I’d been hammering at Bancroft since the resolution was tabled. Ertekin too, whenever she let me near her. I was making myself conspicuous. Marco putting in a word on my behalf makes me look more detached.”

“You took that call from Rutherford,” I said, mostly to myself. “The one to Suntouch House after we dropped in on him. I figured it was Miriam, but you were there as a guest, playing Marco on the sidelines of the great Catholic debate.”

“Yes.” A faint smile. “You seem to have greatly overestimated Miriam Bancroft’s role in all this. Oh, by the way, who is that you’ve got wearing Ryker’s sleeve at the moment? Just to satisfy my curiosity. They’re very convincing, whoever they are.”

I said nothing, but a smile leaked from one corner of my mouth. Kawahara caught it.

“Really? Double sleeving. You really must have Lieutenant Ortega wrapped around your little finger. Or wrapped around something, anyway. Congratulations. Manipulation worthy of a Meth.” She barked a short laugh. “That was meant as a compliment, Takeshi-san.”

I ignored the jibe. “You talked to Bancroft in Osaka? Thursday 16th August. You knew he was going?”

“Yes. He has regular business there. It was made to look like a chance encounter. I invited him to Head in the Clouds on his return. It’s a pattern for him. Buying sex after business deals. You probably found that out.”

“Yeah. So when you got him up here, what did you tell him?”

“I told him the truth.”

“The truth?” I stared at her. “You told him about Hinchley, and expected him to back you?”

“Why not?” There was a chilling simplicity in the look she gave me back. “We have a friendship that goes back centuries. Common business strategies that have sometimes taken longer than a normal human lifetime to bring to fruition. I hardly expected him to side with the little people.”

“So he disappointed you. He wouldn’t keep the Meth faith.”

Kawahara sighed again, and this time there was a genuine weariness in it that gusted out of somewhere centuries deep in dust.

“Laurens maintains a cheap romantic streak that I continually underestimate. He is not unlike you in many ways. But, unlike you, he has no excuse for it. The man is over three centuries old. I assumed—wanted to assume, perhaps—that his values would reflect that. That the rest was just posturing, speechmaking for the herd.” Kawahara made a negligent what-can-you-do gesture with one slim arm. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid.”

“What did he do? Take some kind of moral stand?”

Kawahara’s mouth twisted without humour. “You mock me? You, with the blood of dozens from the Wei Clinic fresh on your hands. A butcher for the Protectorate, an extinguisher of human life on every world where it has managed to find a foothold. You are, if I may say so, Takeshi, a little inconsistent.”

Secure in the cool wrap of the betathanatine, I could feel nothing beyond a mild irritation at Kawahara’s obtuseness. A need to clarify.

“The Wei Clinic was personal.”

“The Wei Clinic was business, Takeshi. They had no personal interest in you at all. Most of the people you wiped were merely doing their jobs.”

“Then they should have chosen another job.”

“And the people of Sharya. What choice should they have made? Not to be born on that particular world, at that particular time? Not to allow themselves to be conscripted, perhaps?”