Altered Carbon

There was a long pause in which I saw the belief creeping into his face. He looked away.

“If Kawahara found out that—”

“Forget Kawahara. By the time I’m finished with Kawahara, she’ll be a street memory. Kawahara is going down.”

He hesitated, brought to the brink, then shook his head. He looked up at me and I knew I was going to have to do it. I lowered my head and forced myself to remember Louise’s body, opened from throat to groin on the auto-surgeon’s table with her internal organs arranged in dishes around her head like appetisers. I remembered the copper-ski

“Miller.” I found I had to clear my throat and start again. “You want to know something about Sharya?”

Miller said nothing. He was going into some kind of controlled breathing pattern. Steeling himself for the upcoming unpleasantness. This was no Warden Sullivan that could be punched around in a seedy corner and scared into spilling what he knew. Miller was tough, and probably conditioned too. You don’t work directorship in a place like Wei and not option some of the available tech for yourself.

“I was there, Miller. Winter of 217, Zihicce. Hundred and twenty years ago. You probably weren’t around then, but I reckon you’ve read about it in history books. After the bombardments, we went in as regime engineers.” As I talked, the tension began to ease out of my throat. I gestured with my cigarette. “That’s a Protectorate euphemism for crush all resistance and install a puppet government. Of course, to do that, you’ve got to do some interrogating, and we didn’t have much in the way of fancy software to do it with. So, we had to get inventive.”

I stubbed out my cigarette on the table and stood up.

“Someone I want you to meet,” I said, looking past him.

Miller turned to follow my gaze and froze. Coalescing in the shadow of the nearest support pillar was a tall figure in a blue surgical smock. As we both watched, the features became clear enough to recognise, though Miller must have guessed what was coming as soon as he saw the predominant colour of the clothing. He wheeled back to me, mouth open to say something, but instead his eyes fixed on something behind me and his face turned pale. I glanced over my shoulder to where the other figures were materialising, all with the same tall build and ta

“File overprint,” I confirmed. “Most places in the Protectorate this isn’t even illegal. Course, when it’s a Machine Error, it’s not usually so extreme, just a double-up probably, and the retrieval systems yank you out in a few hours anyway. Makes a good story. How I met myself, and what I learned. Good dating conversation, maybe something to tell your kids. You got kids, Miller?”

“Yes.” His throat worked. “Yes, I have.”

“Yeah? They know what you do for a living?”

He said nothing. I took a phone from my pocket and dumped it on the table. “When you’ve had enough, let me know. It’s a direct line. Just press send, and start talking into it. Head in the Clouds. Relevant detail.”

Miller looked at the phone and then back at me. Around us the doppelgängers had almost assumed full substance. I lifted a hand in farewell.

“Enjoy yourself.”

I surfaced in the Hendrix’s virtual recreation studio, cradled in one of the spacious participant racks. A digital time display on the far wall said I had been under less than a full minute, of which my real time in virtual probably only accounted for a couple of seconds. It was the processing in and out that took the time. I lay still for a while, thinking about what I had just done. Sharya was a long time ago, and a part of me I liked to think I’d left behind. Miller wasn’t the only person meeting himself today.

Personal, I reminded myself, but I knew it wasn’t this time. This time I wanted something. The grudge was just a convenience.

“The subject is showing signs of psychological stress,” said the Hendrix. “A preliminary model suggests the condition will extend into personality breakdown in less than six virtual days. At current ratios, this equates to approximately thirty-seven minutes real time.”

“Good.” Unpi

“Yes. Do you wish to view it?”

I glanced at the clock again. “Not now. I’ll wait for Miller. Any problems with the security systems?”

“None. The data was not secured.”

“How very careless of Director Nyman. How much is there?”

“The relevant clinic footage is twenty-eight minutes, fifty-one seconds. To track the employee from departure as you suggested will take considerably longer.”

“How much longer?”

“It is impossible to give an estimate at this time. Sheryl Bostock departed the PsychaSec facility in a twenty-year-old military surplus microcopter. I do not believe that ancillary staff at the facility are well paid.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Possibly because—”

“Skip it. It was a figure of speech. What about the microcopter?”

“The navigation system has no traffic net access, and so is invisible in traffic control data. I shall have to rely on the vehicle’s appearance on visual monitors in its flight path.”

“You’re talking about satellite tracking?”

“As a last resort, yes. I’d would prefer to begin with lower level and ground-based systems. They are likely to be more accessible. Satellite security is usually of high resilience and breaching such systems is often both difficult and dangerous.”

“Whatever. Let me know when you’ve got something.”

I wandered around the studio, brooding. The place was deserted, most of the racks and other machines shrouded in protective plastic. In the dim light provided by the illuminum tiles on the walls, their ambiguous bulk could equally have belonged to a fitness centre or a torture chamber.

“Can we have some real lights in here?”

Brightness sprang out across the studio from high-intensity bulbs recessed into the low ceiling. I saw that the walls were postered with images drawn from some of the virtual environments on offer. Dizzying mountain-scapes seen through racing goggles, impossibly beautiful men and women in smoky bars, huge savage animals leaping directly at sniperscope sights. The images had been cut directly from format into hologlass and when you stared at them they seemed to come alive. I found a low bench and sat on it, remembering wistfully the bite of smoke in my lungs from the format I had just left.

“Although the program I am ru

I glanced bleakly at the ceiling. “What’s the matter, you getting cold feet?”

“The police have already subpoenaed my memory once, and they may charge me with compliance at your request to freeze Felipe Miller’s head. They will also want to know what has happened to his stack.”

“Yeah, and there’s got to be some hotel charter somewhere says you don’t let people into your guests’ rooms without authorisation, but you did that, didn’t you?”

“It is not a criminal offence, unless criminality results from the breach of security. What resulted from Miriam Bancroft’s visit was not criminality.”

I jerked another glance upwards. “You trying to be fu

“Humour is not within the parameters I currently operate, though I can install it at request:.”