Altered Carbon

I found I could recall the phone number with gleaming clarity.

The sweat cooled rapidly to a shiver. I flexed my shoulders and started walking, trying not to notice the knowing looks of the people around me. I was almost into a full stride again when a gap opened in the strollers ahead and I saw the long, low limousine parked outside the Hendrix’s front doors.

Jangling nerves sent my hand leaping towards the holstered Nemex before I recognised the vehicle as Bancroft’s. Forcing out a deep breath, I circled the limousine and ascertained that the driver’s compartment was empty. I was still wondering what to do when the rear compartment hatch cracked open and Curtis unfolded himself from the seating inside.

“We need to talk, Kovacs,” he said in a man-to-man sort of voice that put me on the edge of a slightly hysterical giggle. “Decision time.”

I looked him up and down, reckoned from the tiny eddies in his stance and demeanour that he was chemically augmented at the moment, and decided to humour him.

“Sure. In the limo?”

“S cramped in there. How about you ask me up to your room?”

My eyes narrowed. There was an unmistakable hostility in the chauffeur’s voice, and a just as unmistakable hard-on pressing at the front of his immaculate chinos. Granted, I had a similar, if detumescing, lump of my own, but I remembered distinctly that Bancroft’s limo had shielding against the street ‘casts. This was something else.

I nodded at the hotel entrance.

“OK, let’s go.”

The doors parted to let us in and the Hendrix came to life.

“Good evening, sir. You have no visitors this evening—”

Curtis snorted. “Disappointed, hah, Kovacs?”

“—nor any calls since you left.” The hotel continued smoothly. “Do you wish this person admitted as a guest.”

“Yeah, sure. You got a bar we can go to?”

“I said your room,” growled Curtis, behind me, then yelped as he barked his shin on one of the lobby’s low metal-edged tables.

“The Midnight Lamp bar is located on this floor,” said the hotel doubtfully, “but has not been used for a considerable time.”

“I said—”

“Shut up, Curtis. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to rush a first date? The Midnight Lamp is fine. Fire it up for us.”

Across the lobby, adjacent to the check-in console, a wide section of the back wall slid grudgingly aside and lights flickered on in the space beyond. With Curtis making sneering sounds behind me, I went to the opening and peered down a short flight of steps into the Midnight Lamp bar.

“This’ll do fine. Come on.”

Someone overliteral in imagination had done the interior decoration of the Midnight Lamp bar. The walls, themselves psychedelic whirls of midnight blues and purples, were festooned with a variety of clock faces showing either the declared hour or a few minutes to, interwoven with every form of lamp known to man, from clay prehistoric to enzyme decay light canisters. There was indented bench seating along both walls, clock-face tables and in the centre of the room a circular bar in the shape of a countdown dial. A robot composed entirely of clocks and lamps waited immobile just beside the dial’s twelve mark.

It was all the more eerie for the complete absence of any other customers, and as we made our way towards the waiting robot, I could feel Curtis’s earlier mood quieten a little.

“What will it be, gentlemen?” said the machine unexpectedly, from no apparent vocal outlet. Its face was an antique white analogue clock with spider-thin baroque hands and the hours marked off in Roman numerals. A little u

“Vodka,” he said shortly. “Subzero.”

“And a whisky. Whatever it is I’ve been drinking out of the cabinet in my room. At room temperature, please. Both on my tab.”

The clock face inclined slightly and one multi-jointed arm swung up to select glasses from an overhead rack. The other arm, which ended in a lamp with a forest of small spouts, trickled the requested spirits into the glasses.

Curtis picked up his glass and threw a generous portion of the vodka down his throat. He drew breath hard through his teeth and made a satisfied growling noise. I sipped at my own glass a little more circumspectly, wondering how long it had been since liquid last flowed through the bar’s tubes and spigots. My fears proved unfounded, so I deepened the sip and let the whisky melt its way down into my stomach.

Curtis banged down his glass.

“Now you ready to talk?”

“All right, Curtis,” I said slowly, looking into my drink. “I imagine you have a message for me.”

“Sure have.” His voice was cranked to snapping point. “The lady says, you going to take her very generous offer, or not. Just that. I’m supposed to give you time to make up your mind, so I’ll finish my drink.”

I fixed my gaze on a Martian sand lamp hanging from the opposite wall. Curtis’s mood was begi

“Muscling in on your territory, am I?”

“Don’t push your luck, Kovacs.” There was a desperate edge to the words. “You say the wrong thing here, and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I set my glass down and turned to face him. He was less than half my subjective age, young and muscled and chemically wound up in the illusion that he was dangerous. He reminded me so much of myself at the same age it was maddening. I wanted to shake him. “You’ll what?

Curtis gulped. “I was in the provincial marines.”

“What as, a pin-up?” I went to push him in the chest with one stiffened hand, then dropped it, ashamed. I lowered my voice. “Listen, Curtis. Don’t do this to us both.”

“You think you’re pretty fucking tough, don’t you?”

“This isn’t about tough, C—urtis.” I’d almost called him kid. It seemed as if part of me wanted the fight after all. “This is about two different species. What did they teach you in the provincial marines? Hand-to-hand combat? Twenty-seven ways to kill a man with your hands? Underneath it all you’re still a man. I’m an Envoy, Curtis. It’s not the same.”

He came for me anyway, leading with a straight jab that was supposed to distract me while the following roundhouse kick scythed in from the side at head height. It was a skull cracker if it landed, but it was hopelessly over-dramatic. Maybe it was the chemicals he’d dressed up in that night. No one in their right mind throws lacks above waist height in a real fight. I ducked the jab and the kick in the same movement and grabbed his fool;. A sharp twist and Curtis tipped, staggered and landed spreadeagled on the bar top. I smashed his face against the unyielding surface and held him there with my hand knotted in his hair.

“See what I mean?”

He made muffled noises and thrashed impotently about while the clock-faced bartender stood immobile. Blood from his broken nose was streaked across the bar’s surface. I studied the patterns it had made while I brought my breathing back down. The lock I had on my conditioning was making me pant. Shifting my grip to his right arm, I jerked it up high into the small of his back. The thrashing stopped.

“Good. Now you keep still or I’ll break it. I’m not in the mood for this.” As I spoke, I was feeling rapidly through his pockets. In the i