Altered Carbon

“I doubt you’ll get the chance for that,” said Jerry, crouching opposite me and looking at the floor. “Your daughter was a stupid, starstruck little cunt who thought she could put a lock on me and—”

He stopped and shook his head disbelievingly.

“The fuck am I talking to? I see you standing there, and still I’m buying this shit. You’re good, Ryker, I’ll give you that.” He sniffed. ”Now, I’m going to ask you one more time, nicely. Maybe see if we can cut a deal. After that I’m going to send you to see some very sophisticated friends of mine. You understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded once, slowly.

“Good. So here it comes, Ryker. What are you doing in Licktown?”

I looked into his face. Small-time punk with delusions of co

“Who’s Ryker?”

The blond lowered his head again and looked at the floor between my feet. He seemed unhappy about what was going to happen next. Finally he licked his lips, nodded slightly to himself and made a brushing gesture across his knees as he stood up.

“All right, tough guy. But I want you to remember you had the choice.” He turned to the synthetic woman. “Get him out of here. I want no traces. And tell them, he’s n-wired to the eyes, they’ll get nothing out of him in this sleeve.”

The woman nodded and gestured me to my feet with her blaster. She prodded Louise’s corpse with the toe of one boot. “And this?”

“Get rid of it. Milo, Deek, go with her.”

The pipe-wielder shoved his weapon into his waistband and stooped to shoulder the corpse as if it were a bundle of kindling. Deek, close behind, slapped it affectionately on one bruised buttock.

The Mongol made a noise in his throat. Jerry glanced across at him with faint distaste. “No, not you. They’re going places I don’t want you to see. Don’t worry, there’ll be a disc.”

“Sure, man,” said Deek over his shoulder. “We’ll bring it right back across.”

“All right, that’s enough,” said the woman roughly, moving to face me. “Let’s have an understanding here, Ryker. You got neurachem, so do I. And this is a high-impact chassis. Lockheed-Mitoma test pilot specs. You can’t damage me worth a jack. And I’ll be happy to burn your guts out if you even look at me wrong. They don’t care what state you’re in where we’re going. That clear, Ryker?”

“My name’s not Ryker,” I said irritably.

“Right.”

We went through the frosted glass door, into a tiny space that held a make-up table and shower stall, and out onto a corridor parallel to the one at the front of the booths. Here the lighting was unambiguous, there was no music, and the corridor gave onto larger, partially curtained dressing rooms where young men and women slumped smoking or just staring into space like untenanted synthetics. If any of them saw the little procession go past, they gave no indication. Milo went ahead with the corpse. Deck took up position at my back and the synthetic woman brought up the rear, blaster held casually at her side. My last glimpse of Jerry was a proprietorial figure standing with hands on hips in the corridor behind us. Then Deek cuffed me across the side of the head and I turned to face the front again. Louise’s dangling, mutilated legs preceded me out into a gloomy covered parking area, where a pure black lozenge of aircar awaited us.

The synthetic cracked the vehicle’s boot open and waved the blaster at me.

“Plenty of room. Make yourself comfortable.”

I climbed into the boot space and discovered she was right. Then Milo tipped Louise’s corpse in with me and slammed the lid down, leaving the two of us in darkness together. I heard the dull clunk of other doors opening and closing elsewhere, and then the whispering of the car’s engines and the faint bump as we lifted from the ground.

The journey was quick, and smoother than a corresponding surface trip would have been. Jerry’s friends were driving carefully—you don’t want to be pulled down by a bored patrolman for unsignalled lane change when you’ve got passengers in the boot. It might almost have been pleasantly womb-like there in the dark, but for the faint stench of faeces from the corpse. Louise had voided her bowels during the torture.

I spent most of the journey feeling sorry for the girl, and worrying at the Catholic madness like a dog with a bone. This woman’s stack was utterly undamaged. Financial considerations aside, she could be brought back to life on the spin of a disc. On Harlan’s World she’d be temporarily re-sleeved for the court hearing, albeit probably in a synthetic, and once the verdict came down there’d be a Victim Support supplement from the state added to whatever policy her family already held. Nine cases out of ten that was enough money to ensure re-sleeving of some sort. Death, where is thy sting?

I didn’t know if they had VS supplements on earth. Kristin Ortega’s angry monologue two nights ago seemed to suggest not, but at least there was the potential to bring this girl back to life. Somewhere on this fucked-up planet, some guru had ordained otherwise, and Louise, alias Anenome, had queued up with how many others to ratify the insanity.

Human beings. Never figure them out.

The car tilted and the corpse rolled unpleasantly against me as we spiralled down. Something wet seeped through the leg of my trousers. I could feel myself starting to sweat with the fear. They were going to decant me into some flesh with none of the resistance to pain that my current sleeve had. And while I was imprisoned there, they could do whatever they liked to that sleeve, up to and including physically killing it.

And then they would start again, in a fresh body.

Or, if they were really sophisticated, they could jack my consciousness into a virtual matrix similar to the ones used in psychosurgery, and do the whole thing electronically. Subjectively, there’d be no difference, but there what might take days in the real world could be done in as many minutes.

I swallowed hard, using the neurachem while I still had it to stifle the fear. As gently as I could, I pushed Louise’s cold embrace away from my face and tried not to think about the reason she had died.

The car touched down and rolled along the ground for a few moments before it stopped. When the boot cracked open again, all I could see was the roof of another covered car park strung with illuminum bars.

They took me out with professional caution, the woman standing well back, Deck and Milo to the sides giving her a clear field of fire. I clambered awkwardly over Louise and out onto a floor of black concrete. Sca

“So where are we?” I asked.

“End of the line’s where you are,” grunted Milo, lifting Louise out. He looked at the woman. “This going to the usual place?”

She nodded, and he set off across the car park towards a set of double doors. I was moving to follow when a jerk of the woman’s blaster brought me up short.

“Not you. That’s the chute—the easy way out. We got people want to talk to you before you get to go down the chute. You go this way.”

Deck gri

They marched me through another set of doors into a commercial capacity elevator which, according to the flashing LED display on the wall, sank two dozen levels before we stopped. Throughout the ride, Deck and the woman stood in opposite corners of the car, guns levelled. I ignored them and watched the digit counter.