Altered Carbon

“Can I help you?”

This was a lawyer, no question about it. A smoothly groomed blonde woman in a loose skirt and jacket tailored to fit the room, hands resting comfortably in her pockets.

“Bay City police. Where’s Rutherford?”

The woman flickered a glance sideways at our escort and having received the nod did not bother to demand identification.

“I’m afraid Keith is occupied at the moment. He’s in virtual with New York.”

“Well get him out of virtual then,” said Ortega with dangerous mildness. “And tell him the officer who arrested his client is here to see him. I’m sure he’ll be interested.”

“That may take some time, officer.”

“No, it won’t.”

The two women locked gazes for a moment, and then the lawyer looked away. She nodded to the muscle, who went back outside, still looking disappointed.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said glacially. “Please wait here.”

We waited, Ortega at the floor-to-ceiling window, staring down at the beach with her back to the room and myself prowling the artwork. Some of it was quite good. With the separately ingrained habits of working in monitored environments, neither of us said anything for the ten minutes it took to produce Rutherford from the i

“Lieutenant Ortega.” The modulated voice reminded me of Miller’s at the clinic, and when I looked up from a print over the fireplace, I saw much the same kind of sleeve. Maybe a little older, with slightly craggier patriarchal features designed to inspire instant respect in jurors and judges alike, but the same athletic frame and off-the-rack good looks. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit? Not more harassment, I hope.”

Ortega ignored the allegation. “Detective Sergeant Elias Ryker,” she said, nodding at me. “Your client just admitted to one count of abduction, and made a first degree organic damage threat under monitor. Care to see the footage?”

“Not particularly. Care to tell me why you’re here?”

Rutherford was good. He’d barely reacted; barely, but enough to catch it out of the corner of my eye. My mind went into overdrive.

Ortega leaned on the back of an armchair. “For a man defending a mandatory erasure case, you’re showing a real lack of imagination.”

Rutherford sighed theatrically. “You have called me away from an important link. I assume you do have something to say.”

“Do you know what third party retro-associative complicity is?” I asked the question without turning from the print, and when I did lookup, I had Rutherford’s complete attention.

“I do not,” he said stiffly.

“That’s a pity, because you and the other partners of Prendergast Sanchez are right in the firing line if Kadmin rolls over. But of course, if that happens —” I spread my hands and shrugged “—it’ll be open season. In fact, it may already be.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Rutherford’s hand rose decisively to a remote summons emitter pi

I raised my voice. “Just wanted to know which side you want to be on when the program crashes, Rutherford. There is a statute. UN indictable offence, last handed down 4th May 2207. Look it up. I had to go back a long way to dig this one up, but it’ll take all of you down in the end. Kadmin knows it, that’s why he’s cracking.”

Rutherford smiled. “I don’t think so, detective.”

I repeated my shrug. “Shame. Like I said, look it up. Then decide which side you want to play for. We’re going to need inside corroboration, and we’re prepared to pay for it. If it isn’t you, Ulan Bator’s stuffed with lawyers who’ll give blow jobs for the chance.”

The smile wavered fractionally.

“That’s right, think about it.” I nodded at Ortega. “You can get me at Fell Street, same as the lieutenant here. Elias Ryker, offworld liaison. I’m promising you, this is going to go down, whatever happens, and when it does, I’ll be a good person to know.”

Ortega took the cue like she’d been doing it all her life. Like Sarah would have done. She unleaned herself from the chairback and made for the door.

“Be seeing you, Rutherford,” she said laconically, as we stepped back out onto the deck. The muscle was there, gri

I contented myself with the silent look that I had been told Ryker used to such great effect and followed my partner down the stairs.

Back in the cruiser, Ortega snapped on a screen and watched identity data from the bug scroll down.

“Where’d you put it?”

“Print over the fireplace. Corner of the frame.”

She grunted. “They’ll sweep it out of there in nothing flat, you know. And none of it’s admissible as evidence, anyway.”

“I know. You’ve told me that twice already. That’s not the point. If Rutherford’s rattled, he’ll jump first.”

“You think he’s rattled?”

“A little.”

“Yeah.” She glanced curiously at me. “So what the fuck is third party retro-associative complicity?”

“No idea. I made it up.”

Her eyebrow went up. “No shit?”

“Convinced you, huh? Know what, you could have given me a polygraph test while I was spi

“Which is what?”

“Provide the arena. Tell lies, you keep your opponent off balance. It’s like fighting on unfamiliar ground. Rutherford was rattled, but he smiled when I told him this stuff was why Kadmin was acting up.” I looked up through the windscreen at the house above, formulating the scrapings of intuition into understanding. “He was fucking relieved when I said that. I don’t suppose normally he would have given that much away, but the bluff had him ru

Ortega grunted approvingly. “Pretty good, Kovacs. You should have been a cop. You notice his reaction when I told him the good news about what Kadmin had done? He wasn’t surprised at all.”

“No. He was expecting it. Or something like it.”

“Yeah.” She paused. “This really what you used to do for a living?”

“Sometimes. Diplomatic missions, or deep-cover stuff. It wasn’t—”

I fell silent as she elbowed me in the ribs. On the screen, a series of coded sequences were unwinding like snakes of blue fire.

“Here we go. Simultaneous calls, he must be doing this in virtual to save time. One, two, three—that one’s New York, must be to update the senior partners, and oops.”

The screen flared and went abruptly dark.

“They found it,” I said.

“They did. The New York line probably has a sweeper attached, flushes out the call vicinity on co

“Or one of the others does.”

“Yeah.” Ortega punched up the screen’s memory and stared at the call codes. “They’re all three routed through discreet clearing. Take us a while to locate them. You want to eat?”

Homesickness isn’t something a veteran Envoy should confess to. If the conditioning hasn’t already ironed it out of you, the years of sleeving back and forth across the Protectorate should have done. Envoys are citizens of that elusive state, Here-and-Now, a state that jealously admits of no dual nationalities. The past is relevant only as data.

Homesickness was what I felt as we stepped past the kitchen area of the Flying Fish and the aroma of sauces I had last tasted in Millsport hit me like a friendly tentacle.

Teriyaki, frying tempura and the undercurrent of miso. I stood wrapped in it for a moment, remembering that time. A ramen bar Sarah and I had skulked in while the heat from the Gemini Biosys gig died down, eyes hooked to newsnet broadcasts and a corner videophone with a smashed screen that was supposed to ring, any time now. Steam on the windows and the company of taciturn Millsport skippers.