Altered Carbon

“The corporates do whatever turns a profit. Don’t let your prejudices blind you. Sure, they’ll burn down entire villages if it pays. But if having a human face is what cuts it, they’ll whip out a human face and put it on.”

“And you’re the human face?”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s the work you want me to do? Something illegal?”

I pulled the cylindrical virus loader out of my pocket and passed it across to her. She took it in both hands and examined the decals with professional interest. As far as I was concerned, this was the first test. I’d pulled Elliott out of the store because that way she would be mine in a way no one supplied by Kawahara or skimmed off the street would ever be. But beyond that I had nothing to go on but instinct and Victor Elliott’s word that his wife was good, and I was feeling slightly queasy about the direction I’d let things go. Kawahara was right. Good Samaritan gestures can be expensive.

“So let’s see. You’ve got a first-generation Simultec virus here.” Scorn made her enunciate each syllable slowly. “Collector’s item, practically a relic. And you’ve got it in a state-of-the-art rapid deployment jacket with anti-locational casing. Why don’t you just cut the crap and tell me what’s really in here? You’re pla

I nodded.

“What’s the target?”

“Virtual whorehouse. AI-managed.”

Elliott’s new lips parted in a soundless whistle. “Liberation run?”

“No. We’re installing.”

“Installing this?” She hefted the cylinder. “So what is it?”

“Rawling 4851.”

Elliott stopped hefting abruptly. “That’s not fu

“Wasn’t intended to be. That’s a dormant Rawling variant. Set for rapid deployment, as you so rightly observed. The activation codes are in my pocket. We are going to plant Rawling inside an AI whorehouse database, inject the codes and then weld the lid shut on it. There’s some peripheral stuff with monitoring systems, and some tidying up, but basically that’s the run.”

She gave me a curious look. “Are you some kind of religious nut?”

“No.” I smiled faintly. “It’s nothing like that. Can you do it?”

“Depends on the AI. Do you have the specs?”

“Not here.”

Elliott handed me back the deployment jacket. “I can’t tell you, then, can I?”

“That was what I was hoping you’d say.” I stowed the cylinder, satisfied. “How’s the new sleeve?”

“It’s OK. Any reason why I couldn’t have my own body back? I’ll be a lot faster in my own—”

“I know. Unfortunately it’s out of my hands. Did they tell you how long you’ve been in the store?”

“Four years, someone said. ”

“Four and a half,” I said, glancing at the release forms I’d signed. “I’m afraid, in the meantime, someone took a shine to your sleeve and bought it.”

“Oh.” She was silent then. The shock of waking up inside someone else’s body for the first time is nothing compared to the sense of rage and betrayal you feel knowing that someone, somewhere, is walking around inside you. It’s like the discovery of infidelity, but at the intimacy range of rape. And like both those violations, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just get used to it.

When the silence stretched, I looked across at her still profile and cleared my throat.

“You sure you want to do this right now? Go home, I mean.”

She barely bothered to look at me. “Yes, I’m sure. I have a daughter and a husband that haven’t seen me in nearly five years. You think this —” she gestured down at herself “—is going to stop me?”

“Fair enough.”

The lights of Ember appeared on the darkened mass of the coastline up ahead, and the limousine began its descent. I watched Elliott out of the corner of my eye and saw the nervousness setting in. Palms rubbing together in her lap, lower lip caught in her teeth at one corner of her new mouth. She released her breath with a small but perfectly audible noise.

“They don’t know I’m coming?” she asked.

“No.” I said shortly. I didn’t want to follow this line of conversation. “The contract is between you and JacSol West. It doesn’t concern your family.”

“But you arranged for me to see them. Why?”

“I’m a sucker for family reunions.” I fixed my gaze on the darkened bulk of the wrecked aircraft carrier below, and we landed in silence. The autolimo banked round to align itself with the local traffic systems and touched down a couple of hundred metres north of Elliott’s Data Linkage. We powered smoothly along the shore road under the successive holos of Anchana Salomao and parked immaculately opposite the narrow frontage. The dead monitor doorstop had been removed and the door was closed but there were lights burning in the glass-walled office at the back.

We climbed out and crossed the street. The closed door proved to be locked as well. Irene Elliott banged impatiently at it with the flat of one copper-ski

“Who the hell—” He stopped as he recognised me. “What the fuck do you want, grasshopper? And who’s this?”

“Vic?” Irene Elliott’s new throat sounded nine tenths closed. “Vic, it’s me.”

For a moment, Elliott’s eyes ran a volley between my face and the delicate Asian woman beside me, then what she had said smacked into him like a truck. He flinched visibly with the impact.

“Irene?” he whispered.

“Yes, it’s me,” she husked back. There were tears leaking down her cheeks. For moments they stared at each other through the glass, then Victor Elliott was fumbling with the locking mechanism of the door, shoving at the frame to get it out of the way, and the copper-ski

Finally, Irene Elliott remembered me. She disengaged from her husband and twisted round, smearing the tears off her face with the heel of one hand and blinking bright-eyed at me.

“Can you—”

“Sure.” I said neutrally. “I’ll wait in the limo. See you in the morning.”

I caught one confused look from Victor Elliott as his wife bustled him inside, nodded good-naturedly at him and turned away to the parked limo and the beach. The door banged shut behind me. I felt in my pockets and came up with Ortega’s crumpled packet of cigarettes. Wandering past the limo to the iron railing, I kindled one of the bent and flattened cylinders and for once felt no sense that I was betraying something as the smoke curled into my lungs. Down on the beach, the surf was up, a chorus line of ghosts along the sand. I leaned on the railing and listened to the white noise of the waves as they broke, wondering why I could feel this much at peace with so much still unresolved. Ortega had not come back. Kadmin was still out there. Sarah was still under ransom, Kawahara still had me by the balls, and I still didn’t know why Bancroft had been killed.

And despite it all, there was space for this measure of quiet.

Take what is offered and that must sometimes be enough.

My gaze slipped out past the breakers. The ocean beyond was black and secret, merging seamlessly with the night a scant distance out from the shore. Even the massive bulk of the keeled-over Free Trade Enforcer was hard to make out. I imagined Mary Lou Hinchley hurtling down to her shattering impact with the unyielding water, then slipping broken beneath the swells to be cradled in wait for the sea’s predators. How long had she been out there before the currents contrived to carry what was left of her back to her own kind? How long had the darkness held her?