Altered Carbon

“I need some time alone,” she muttered.

Just the words sounded like a luxury to me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I watched him pour a drink from the bottle of fifteen-year-old malt, take it to the phone and seat himself carefully. The broken ribs had been welded back together in one of the ambulances, but the whole of that side was still one huge ache, with occasional, flinty stabs of agony. He sipped at the whisky, gathered himself visibly and punched out the call.

“Bancroft residence. With whom do you wish to speak?” It was the severely-suited woman who had answered last time I called Suntouch House. The same suit, the same hair, even the same make-up. Maybe she was a phone construct.

“Miriam Bancroft,” he said.

Once again, it was the sensation of being a passive observer, the same sensation of disco

“One moment, please.”

The woman disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the image of a windblown match flame in synch with piano music that sounded like autumn leaves being blown along a cracked and worn pavement. A minute passed, then Miriam Bancroft appeared, immaculately attired in a formal-looking jacket and blouse. She raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow.

“Mr. Kovacs. This is a surprise.”

“Yeah, well.” He gestured uncomfortably. Even across the comlink, Miriam Bancroft radiated a sensuality that unbalanced him. “Is this a secure line?”

“Reasonably so, yes. What do you want?”

He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking. There are some things I’d like to discuss with you. I, uh, I may owe you an apology.”

“Indeed?” This time it was both eyebrows. “When exactly did you have in mind?”

He shrugged. “I’m not doing anything right now.”

“Yes. I, however, am doing something right now, Mr. Kovacs. I am en route to a meeting in Chicago and will not be back on the coast until tomorrow evening.” The faintest hint of a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Will you wait?”

“Sure.”

She leaned towards the screen, eyes narrowing. “What happened to your face?”

He raised a hand to one of the emerging facial bruises. In the low light of the room, he had not expected it to be so noticeable. Nor had he expected Miriam Bancroft to be so attentive.

“Long story. Tell you when I see you.”

“Well, that I can hardly resist,” she said ironically. “I shall send a limousine to collect you from the Hendrix tomorrow afternoon. Shall we say about four o’clock? Good. Until then.”

The screen cleared. He sat, staring at it for a moment, then switched off the phone and swivelled the chair round to face the window shelf.

“She makes me nervous,” he said.

“Yeah, me too. Well, obviously.”

“Very fu

“I try.”

I got up to fetch the whisky bottle. As I crossed the room, I caught my reflection in the mirror beside the bed.

Where Ryker’s sleeve had the air of a man who had battered his way head first through life’s trials, the man in the mirror looked as if he would be able to slip neatly aside at every crisis and watch fate fall clumsily on its fat face. The body was cat-like in its movements, a smooth and effortless economy of motion that would have looked good on Anchana Salomao. The thick, almost blue-black hair fell in a soft cascade to the deceptively slim shoulders, and the elegantly tilted eyes had a gentle, unconcerned expression that suggested the universe was a good place to live in.

I had only been in the tech ninja sleeve a few hours—seven, and forty-two minutes according to the time display chipped into my upper left field of vision—but there were none of the usual download side effects. I collected the whisky bottle with one of the slim brown artist’s hands and the simple play of muscle and bone was a joy that glowed through me. The Khumalo neurachem system thrummed continually at the limit of perception, as if it were singing faintly the myriad possible things the body could do at any given moment. Never, even during my time with the Envoy Corps, had I worn anything like it.

I remembered Carnage’s words and mentally shook my head. If the UN thought they’d be able to impose a ten-year colonial embargo on this, they were living in another world.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but this feels fucking weird.”

“Tell me about it.” I filled my own tumbler and proffered the bottle. He shook his head. I went back to the window shelf and sat back against the glass.

“How the fuck did Kadmin stand it? Ortega says he used to work with himself all the time.”

“Get used to anything in time, I suppose. Besides, Kadmin was fucking crazy.”

“Oh, and we’re not?”

I shrugged. “We didn’t have a choice. Apart from walking away, I mean. Would that have been better?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who’s going up against Kawahara. I’m just the whore around here. Incidentally, I don’t reckon Ortega’s exactly overjoyed about that part of the deal. I mean, she was confused before, but now—”

“She’s confused! How do you think I feel?”

“I know how you feel, idiot. I am you.”

“Are you?” I sipped at my drink and gestured with the glass. “How long do you think it takes before we stop being exactly the same person?”

He shrugged. “You are what you remember. Right now we only have about seven or eight hours of separate perceptions. Can’t have made much of a dent yet, can it?”

“On forty-odd years of memory? I suppose not. And it’s the early stuff that builds personality.”

“Yeah, they say. And while we’re on the subject, tell me something. How do you feel, I mean how do we feel about the Patchwork Man being dead?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Do we need to talk about this?”

“We need to talk about something. We’re stuck here with each other until tomorrow evening—”

“You can go out, if you want. Come to that,” I jerked a thumb upward towards the roof, “I can get out of here the way I came in.”

“You really don’t want to talk about it that badly, huh?”

“Wasn’t that tough.”

That, at least, was true. The original draft of the plan had called for the ninja copy of me to stay at Ortega’s apartment until the Ryker copy had disappeared with Miriam Bancroft. Then it occurred to me that we’d need a working relationship with the Hendrix to bring off the assault on Head in the Clouds, and that there was no way for the ninja copy of myself to prove its identity to the hotel, short of submission to a storage scan. It seemed a better idea for the Ryker copy to introduce the ninja before departing with Miriam Bancroft. Since the Ryker copy was undoubtedly still under surveillance, at the very least, by Trepp, walking in through the front door of the Hendrix together looked like a very bad idea. I borrowed a grav harness and a stealth suit from Bautista, and just before it started to get light I skimmed in between the patchy high-level traffic and down onto a sheltered flange on the forty-second floor. The Hendrix had by this time been advised of my arrival by the Ryker copy and let me in through a ventilation duct.

With the Khumalo neurachem, it had been almost as easy as walking in through the front door.

“Look,” the Ryker copy said. “I’m you. I know everything you know. What’s the harm in talking about this stuff?”

“If you know everything I know, what’s the point of talking about it?”

“Sometimes, it helps to externalise things. Even if you talk to someone else about it, you’re usually talking to yourself. The other guy’s just providing a sounding board. You talk it out.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I buried all that shit about Dad a long time ago, it’s a long time dead.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”