Altered Carbon

I hauled Curtis to his feet and shoved him away from me. He managed to stay on his feet, clutching at his nose with one hand and glaring at me.

“You want to tip your head back to stop that,” I told him. “Go ahead, I’m not going to hurt you again.”

“Botherfucker!”

I held up the crystals and the little gun. “Where did you get these?”

“Suck by prick, Kovacs.” Curtis tipped his head back fractionally, despite himself, trying to keep me in view at the same time. His eyes rolled in their sockets like a panicked horse’s. “Ib dot tellig you a fuckig thig.”

“Fair enough.” I put the chemicals back on the bar and regarded him gravely for a couple of seconds. “Then let me tell you something instead. When they make an Envoy, do you want to know what they do? They burn out every evolved violence limitation instinct in the human psyche. Submission signal recognition, pecking order dynamics, pack loyalties. It all goes, tuned out a neuron at a time; and they replace it with a conscious will to harm.”

He stared back at me in silence.

“Do you understand me? It would have been easier to kill you just then. It would have been easier. I had to stop myself. That’s what an Envoy is, Curtis. A reassembled human. An artifice.”

The silence stretched. There was no way to know if he was taking it in or not. Thinking back to Newpest a century and a half ago, and the young Takeshi Kovacs, I doubted he was. At his age, the whole thing would have sounded like a dream of power come true.

I shrugged. “In case you hadn’t guessed already, the answer to the lady’s question is no. I’m not interested. There, that should make you happy, and it only cost you a broken nose to find out. If you hadn’t dosed yourself to the eyes it might not even have cost that much. Tell her thank you very much, the offer is appreciated, but there’s too much going on here to walk away from. Tell her I’m starting to enjoy it.”

There was a slight cough from the entrance to the bar. I looked up and saw a suited, crimson-haired figure on the stairs.

“Am I interrupting something?” The mohican enquired. The voice was slow and relaxed. Not one of the heavies from Fell Street.

I picked up my drink from the bar. “Not at all, officer. Come on down and join the party. What’ll you have?”

“Overproof rum,” said the cop, drifting over to us. “If they’ve got it. Small glass.”

I raised a finger at the clock face. The bartender produced a square-cut glass from somewhere and filled it with a deep red liquid. The mohican ambled past Curtis, sparing him a curious glance on the way, and apprehended the drink with a long arm.

“Appreciated.” He sipped at the drink and inclined his head. “Not bad. I’d like a word with you, Kovacs. In private.”

We both glanced at Curtis. The chauffeur glared back at me with hate-filled eyes, but the new arrival had defused the confrontation. The cop jerked his head in the direction of the exit. Curtis went, still clutching his wounded face. The cop watched him out of sight before he turned back to me.

“You do that?” he asked casually.

I nodded. “Provoked. Things got a bit out of hand. He thought he was protecting someone.”

“Well, I’m glad he ain’t protecting me.”

“Like I said, it got a bit out of hand. I overreacted.”

“Hell, you don’t need to explain yourself to me.” The cop leaned on the bar and looked around him with frank interest. I recalled his face now. Bay City storage. The one with the quick-tarnishing badge. “He feels aggrieved enough, he can press charges and we’ll play back some more of this place’s memory.”

“Got your warrant, then?” I put the question with a lightness I didn’t feel.

“Almost. Always takes a while with the legal department. Fucking AIs. Look, I wanted to apologise for Mercer and Davidson, the way they were at the station. They act like a brace of dickheads sometimes, but they’re fundamentally OK.”

I waved my glass laterally. “Forget it.”

“Good. I’m Rodrigo Bautista, detective sergeant. Ortega’s partner most of the time.” He drained his glass and gri

“Noted.” I signalled the bartender for refills. “Tell me something. You guys all go to the same hairdresser, or is it some kind of team bonding thing?”

“Same hairdresser.” Bautista shrugged sorrowfully. “Old guy up on Fulton. Ex-con. Apparently mohicans were cool back when they threw him in the store. It’s the only goddamn style he knows, but he’s a nice old guy and he’s cheap. One of us started going there a few years back, he gave us discounts. You know how it is.”

“But not Ortega?”

“Ortega cuts her own hair.” Bautista made a what-can-you-do gesture. “Got a little holocast sca

“Different.”

“Yeah, she is.” Bautista paused reflectively, gaze soaking up the middle distance. He sipped absently at his freshened drink. “It’s her I’m here about.”

“Oh-oh. Is this going to be a friendly warning?”

Bautista pulled a face. “Well, it’s going to be friendly, whatever you call it. I ain’t looking for a broken nose.”

I laughed despite myself. Bautista joined me with a gentle smile.

“Thing is, it’s tearing her up you walking around with that face on. She and Ryker were real close. She’s been paying the sleeve mortgage a year now, and on a lieutenant’s pay that ain’t an easy thing to do. Never figured on an overbid like that fucker Bancroft pulled. After all, Ryker ain’t exactly young and he never was a beauty.”

“Got neurachem,” I pointed out.

“Oh, sure. Got neurachem.” Bautista waved an arm with largesse. “You tried it yet?”

“Couple of times.”

“Like dancing flamenco in a fishing net, right?”

“It’s a little rough,” I admitted.

This time we both laughed. When it cranked down, the cop focused on his glass again. His face grew serious.

“I ain’t trying to lean on you. All I’m saying is, go easy. This ain’t exactly what she needs right now.”

“Me neither,” I said feelingly. “This isn’t even my nicking planet.”

Bautista looked sympathetic, or maybe just slightly drunk. “Harlan’s World’s a lot different to this, I guess.”

“You guess right. Look, I don’t mean to be unsubtle, but hasn’t anyone pointed out to Ortega that Ryker’s as gone for good as it gets without real death? She’s not looking to wait two hundred years for him, is she?”

The cop looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You heard about Ryker, huh?”

“I know he’s down for the double barrel. I know what he went down for.”

Bautista got something in his eyes then that looked like shards of old pain. It can’t be much fun talking about your corrupt colleagues. For a moment I regretted what I’d said.

Local colour. Soak it up.

“You want to sit down?” said the cop unhappily, casting around for bar stools that had evidently been removed at some stage. “Over in the booths, maybe? This’ll take a while to tell.”

We settled at one of the clock face tables and Bautista fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes. I twitched, but when he offered me one I shook my head. Like Ortega, he looked surprised.

“I quit.”

“In that sleeve?” Bautista’s eyebrows lifted respectfully behind a veil of fragrant blue smoke. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. You were going to tell me about Ryker.”

“Ryker,” the cop jetted smoke out of his nostrils and sat back, “was working with the Sleeve Theft boys until a couple of years ago. They’re quite a sophisticated bunch compared to us. It ain’t so easy to steal a whole sleeve intact and that breeds a smarter class of criminal. There’s some crossover of jurisdiction with Organic Damage, mostly when they start breaking down the bodies. Places like the Wei Clinic.”

“Oh?” I said neutrally.

Bautista nodded. “Yeah, someone saved us an awful lot of time and effort over there yesterday. Turned the place into a spare parts sale. But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that.”