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“The Rawling virus.” Kawahara exhaled as if she had been holding her breath in anticipation.
“Rawling variant 4851 takes about a hundred minutes to go fully active, by which time it’s too late to do anything.” I forced images of Jimmy de Soto from my mind. “The target’s contaminated beyond redemption. Suppose Bancroft finds this out through some kind of systems warning. He must be wired internally for that kind of thing. He suddenly discovers the stack he’s wearing and the brain it’s wired to is burnt. That’s not a disaster, if you’ve got clone backup and remote storage, but—”
“Transmission.” Kawahara’s face lit up as she got it.
“Right. He’d have to do something to stop the virus being ‘cast to the remote with the rest of his personality. With the next needlecast coming up that night, maybe in a few minutes’ time, there was only one way to ensure the remote stack didn’t get contaminated.”
I mimed a pistol at my head.
“Ingenious.”
“That’s why he made the call, the timecheck. He couldn’t trust his own internal chip, the virus might already have scrambled it.”
Solemnly, Kawahara lifted her hands into view and applauded. When she had finished, she clasped her hands together and looked at me over them.
“Very impressive. I will obtain the Rawling virus immediately. Have you selected a suitable virtual house for it to be downloaded into?”
“Not yet. The virus isn’t the only thing I need. I want you to arrange the parole and re-sleeving of Irene Elliott, currently held at Bay City Central on conviction of Dipping. I also want you to look into the possibility of acquiring her original sleeve back from its purchasers. Some corporate deal, there’ll be records.”
“You’re going to use this Elliott to download Rawling?”
“The evidence is she’s good.”
“The evidence is she got caught,” observed Kawahara tartly. “I’ve got plenty of people can do this for you. Top line intrusion specialists. You don’t need—”
“Kawahara.” I kept my temper with an effort, but heard some of it in the tightness in my voice. “This is my gig, remember. I don’t want your people climbing all over it. If you unstack Elliott, she’ll be loyal. Get her her own body back and she’ll be ours for life. That’s the way I want to do it, so that’s the way it’s going down.”
I waited. Kawahara stayed expressionless for a moment, then bestowed on me another carefully calibrated smile.
“Very well. We will do it your way. I’m sure you’re aware of the risks you are taking, and what will happen if you fail. I shall contact you at the Hendrix later today.”
“What’s the word on Kadmin?”
“Of Kadmin, there is no word.” Kawahara smiled once more, and the co
I sat staring at the standby screen for a moment, reviewing the scam as I’d laid it out. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d been telling the truth in the midst of all the deceit. Or, more, that my carefully spun lies were treading in the tracks of the truth, following the same path. A good lie should shadow the truth closely enough to draw substance from it, but this was something else, something altogether more u
It was a hard feeling to shake.
I got up and went into the kitchen, where Ortega was foraging through the almost empty fridge unit. Light from within cast her features in a way I hadn’t seen before and below one raised arm her right breast filled the slack of her T-shirt like fruit, like water. The desire to touch her was an itching in my hands.
She glanced up. “Don’t you cook?”
“Hotel does it all for you. Comes up in the hatch. What do you want?”
“I want to cook something.” She gave up looking through the fridge and closed the door of the unit. “Get what you wanted?”
“Think so. Give the hotel a list of ingredients. There are pans and things in that rack down there, I think. Anything else you need, ask the hotel. I’m going to go through the list. Oh, and Kristin.”
She looked round from the rack I’d indicated.
“Miller’s head isn’t in here. I put it next door.”
Her mouth tightened a little. “I know where you put Miller’s head,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for it.”
A couple of minutes later, seated on the window shelf with the hardcopy unfolding away to the floor, I heard the low tones of Ortega conversing with the Hendrix. There was some banging about, more muted conversation, and then the sound of oil frying gently. I fought off the urge for a cigarette and bent my head to the hardcopy.
I was looking for something that I’d seen every day of my young life in Newpest; the places I’d spent my teenage years, the narrow accessways of tiny properties sporting cheap holos that promised things like Better than the Real Thing, Wide Range of Scenarios and Dreams Come True. It didn’t take much to set up a virtual brothel. You just needed frontage and space for the client coffins stacked upright. The software varied in price, depending on how-elaborate and original it was, but the machines to run it could usually be bought out of military surplus at basement rates.
If Bancroft could spend time and money in Jerry’s biocabins, he’d be at home in one of these.
I was two thirds of my way through the list, more and more of my attention sifting away to the aromas issuing from the kitchen, when my eyes fell on a familiar entry and I grew abruptly still.
I saw a woman with long, straight black hair and crimson lips
I heard Trepp’s voice
… head in the clouds. I want to be there before midnight.
And the bar-coded chauffeur
No problem. Coastal’s ru
And the crimson-lipped woman
Head in the clouds. This is what it’s like. Maybe you can’t afford to come up here.
A choir in climax
from the Houses, from the Houses, from the Houses …
And the businesslike printout in my hands
Head in the Clouds: accredited West Coast House, real and virtual product, mobile aerial site outside coastal limit…
I sca
Navigational beams and beaconing system locked to Bay City and Seattle. Discreet membership coding. Routine searches, NR. No convictions. Operated under licence from Third Eye Holdings Inc.
I sat still, thinking.
There were pieces missing. It was like the mirror, wedged into place on jagged edges, enough to hold an image, but not the whole. I was peering hard at the irregular limits of what I had, trying to see round the edges, to get the backdrop. Trepp had been taking me to see Ray—Reileen—at Head in the Clouds. Not Europe, Europe was a blind, the sombre weight of the basilica designed to numb me to what should have been obvious. If Kawahara was involved in this thing, she wouldn’t be overseeing it from half a globe away. Kawahara was on Head in the Clouds, and …
And what?
Envoy intuition was a form of subliminal recognition, an enhanced awareness of pattern that the real world too often abraded with its demand for detailed focus. Given enough traces of continuity, you could make a leap that enabled you to see the whole as a kind of premonition of real knowledge. Working from that model, you could fill in the bits later. But there was a certain minimum you needed to get airborne. Like old-style linear prop aircraft, you needed a run up, and I didn’t have it. I could feel myself bumping along the ground, clawing at the air and falling back. Not enough.
“Kovacs?”
I glanced up, and saw it. Like a head-up display coming on line, like airlock bolts slamming back in my head.