Altered Carbon

Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
The wood of the bench had been worn by decades of occupants into a series of comfortable, buttock-shaped depressions, and the arms were similarly sculpted. I moulded myself lengthwise into the curves, cocked my boots on the bench end nearest the doors I was watching, and settled down to read the graffiti etched into the wood. I was soaked from the long walk back across town, but the hall was pleasantly heated and the rain rattled impotently on the long transparent panels of the tilted roof high above my head. After a while, one of the dog-sized cleaning robots came to wipe away my muddy footprints from the fused glass paving. I watched it idly until the job was done and the record of my arrival on the bench was totally erased.
It would have been nice to think my electronic traces could be wiped in the same way, but that kind of escape belonged to the legendary heroes of another age.
The cleaning robot trundled off and I went back to the graffiti. Most of it was Amanglic or Spanish, old jokes that I’d seen before in a hundred similar places; Cabron Modificado! and Absent without Sleeve!, the old crack The Altered Native Was Here!, but high on the bench’s backrest and chiselled upside down, like a tiny pool of inverted calm in all the rage and desperate pride, I found a curious haiku in Kanji:

Pull on the new flesh like borrowed gloves
And burn your fingers once again.

The author must have been leaning over the back of the bench when he cut it into the wood, but still each character was executed with elegant care. I gazed at the calligraphy for what was probably a long time, while memories of Harlan’s World sang in my head like high-tension cables.
A sudden burst of crying over to my right jolted me out of the reverie. A young black woman and her two children, also black, were staring at the stooped, middle-aged white man standing before them in tattered UN surplus fatigues. Family reunion. The young woman’s face was a mask of shock, it hadn’t hit her properly yet, and the smaller child, probably no more than four, just didn’t get it at all. She was looking right through the white man, mouth forming the repeated question Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy? The man’s features were glistening in the rainy light from the roof—he looked like he’d been crying since they dragged him out of the tank.
I rolled my head to an empty quadrant of the hall. My own father had walked right past his waiting family and out of our lives when he was re-sleeved. We never even knew which one he was, although I sometimes wonder if my mother didn’t catch some splinter of recognition in an averted gaze, some echo of stance or gait as he passed. I don’t know if he was too ashamed to confront us, or more likely too set up with the luck of drawing a sleeve sounder than his own alcohol-wrecked body had been, and already plotting a new course for other cities and younger women. I was ten at the time. The first I knew about it was when the attendants ushered us out of the facility just short of locking up for the night. We’d been there since noon.
The chief attendant was an old man, conciliatory and very good with kids. He put his hand on my shoulder and spoke kindly to me before leading us out. To my mother, he made a short bow and murmured something formal that allowed her to keep the dam of her self-control intact.
He probably saw a few like us every week.
I memorised Ortega’s discreet destination code, for something to do with my mind, then shredded that panel of the cigarette packet and ate it.
My clothes were almost dried through by the time Sullivan came through the doors leading out of the facility and started down the steps. His thin frame was cloaked in a long grey raincoat, and he wore a brimmed hat, something I hadn’t seen so far in Bay City. Framed in the V between my propped feet and reeled into close-up with the neurachem, his face looked pale and tired. I shifted a little on the bench and brushed the bolstered Philips gun with the tips of my fingers. Sullivan was coming straight towards me, but when he saw my form sprawled on the bench he pursed his mouth with disapproval and altered course to avoid what he presumably took for a derelict cluttering up the facility. He passed without giving me another glance.
I gave him a few metres start and then swung silently to my feet and went after him, slipping the Philips gun out of its holster under my coat. I caught up just as he reached the exit. As the doors parted for him, I shoved him rudely in the small of the back and stepped quickly outside in his wake. He was swinging back to face me, features contorted with anger, as the doors started to close.
“What do you think you’re—” The rest of it died on his lips as he saw who I was.
“Warden Sullivan,” I said affably, and showed him the Philips gun under my jacket. “This is a silent weapon, and I’m not in a good mood. Please do exactly as I tell you.”
He swallowed. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk about Trepp, among others. And I don’t want to do it in the rain. Let’s go.”
“My car is—”
“A really bad idea.” I nodded. “So let’s walk. And Warden Sullivan, if you so much as blink at the wrong person, I’ll shoot you in half. You won’t see the gun, no one will. But it’ll be there just the same.”
“You’re making a mistake, Kovacs.”
“I don’t think so.” I tipped my head towards the diminished ranks of parked vehicles in the lot. “Straight through, and left into the street. Keep going till I tell you to stop.”
Sullivan started to say something else, but I jerked the barrel of the Philips gun at him and he shut up. Sideways at first, he made his way down the steps to the parking lot and then, with occasional backward glances, across the uneven ground towards the sagging double gate that had rusted open on its runners what looked like centuries ago.
“Eyes front,” I called across the widening gap between us. “I’m still back here, you don’t need to worry about that.”
Out on the street, I let the gap grow to about a dozen metres and pretended complete dissociation from the figure ahead of me. It wasn’t a great neighbourhood and there weren’t many people out walking in the rain. Sullivan was an easy target for the Philips gun at double the distance.
Five blocks on, I spotted the steamed-up windows of the noodle house I was looking for. I quickened my pace and came up on Sullivan’s streetside shoulder.
“In here. Go to the booths at the back and sit down.”
I made a single sweep of the street, saw no one obvious, and followed Sullivan inside.
The place was almost empty, the daytime diners long departed and the evening not yet cranked up. Two ancient Chinese women sat in a corner with the withered elegance of dried bouquets, heads nodding together. On the other side of the restaurant four young men in pale silk suits lounged dangerously and toyed with expensive-looking chunks of hardware. At a table near one of the windows, a fat Caucasian was working his way through an enormous bowl of chow mein and simultaneously flicking over the pages of a holoporn comic. A video screen set high on one wall gave out coverage of some incomprehensible local sport.
“Tea,” I said to the young waiter who came to meet us, and seated myself opposite Sullivan in the booth.
“You aren’t going to get away with this,” he said unconvincingly. “Even if you kill me, really kill me, they’ll check the most recent re-sleevings and backtrack to you sooner or later.”
“Yeah, maybe they’ll even find out about the unofficial surgery this sleeve had before I arrived.”
“That bitch. She’s going to—”
“You’re in no position to be making threats,” I said mildly. “In fact you’re in no position to do anything except answer my questions and hope I believe you. Who told you to tag me?”
Silence, apart from the game coverage from the set on the wall. Sullivan stared sullenly at me.
“All right, I’ll make it easy for you. Simple yes or no. An artificial called Trepp came to see you. Was this the first time you’d had dealings with her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
With measured anger, I backhanded him hard across the mouth. He collapsed sideways against the wall of the booth, losing his hat. The conversation of the young men in silk stopped abruptly, then resumed with great animation as I cut them a sideways glance. The two old women got stiffly to their feet and filed out through a back entrance. The Caucasian didn’t even look up from his holoporn. I leaned across the table.
“Warden Sullivan, you’re not taking this in the spirit it’s intended. I am very concerned to know who you sold me to. I’m not going to go away, just because you have some residual scruples about client confidentiality. Believe me, they didn’t pay you enough to hold out on me.”
Sullivan sat back up, wiping at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. To his credit, he managed a bitter smile with the undamaged portion of his lips.
“You think I haven’t been threatened before, Kovacs?”
I examined the hand I’d hit him with. “I think you’ve had very little experience of personal violence, and that’s going to be a disadvantage. I’m going to give you the chance to tell me what I want to know here and now. After that we go somewhere with soundproofing. Now, who sent Trepp?”
“You’re a thug, Kovacs. Nothing but—”
I snapped folded knuckles across the table and into his left eye. It made less noise than the slap. Sullivan grunted in shock and reeled away from the blow, cowering into the seat. I watched impassively until he recovered. Something cold was rising in me, something born on the benches of the Newpest justice facility and tempered with the years of pointless unpleasantness I had been witness to. I hoped Sullivan wasn’t as tough as he was trying to appear, for both our sakes. I leaned close again.
“You said it, Sullivan. I’m a thug. Not a respectable criminal like you. I’m not a Meth, not a businessman. I have no vested interests, no social connections, no purchased respectability. It’s just me, and you’re in my way. So let’s start again. Who sent Trepp?”
“He doesn’t know, Kovacs. You’re wasting your time.”
The woman’s voice was light and cheerful, pitched a little loud to carry from the door where she stood, hands in the pockets of a long black coat. She was slim and pale with close-cropped dark hair and a poise to the way she stood that bespoke combat skills. Beneath the coat she wore a grey quilted tunic that looked impact resistant and matching work trousers tucked into ankle boots. A single silver earring in the shape of a discarded trode cable dangled from her left ear. She appeared to be alone.
I lowered the Philips gun slowly, and without acknowledging that it had ever been trained on her she took the cue to advance casually into the restaurant. The young men in silk watched her every step of the way, but if she was aware of their gazes, she gave no sign. When she was about five paces from our booth, she gave me a look of enquiry and began to lift her hands slowly out of her pockets. I nodded, and she completed the movement, revealing open palms and fingers set with rings of black glass.
“Trepp?”
“Good guess. You going to let me sit down?”
I waved the Philips gun at the seat opposite, where Sullivan was cupping both hands to his eye. “If you can persuade your associate here to move over. Just keep your hands above the table.”
The woman smiled and inclined her head. She glanced at Sullivan, who was already squeezing up to the wall to make space for her, and then, keeping her hands poised at her sides, she swung herself elegantly in beside him. The economy of motion was so tight that her pendant earring barely shifted. Once seated, she pressed both hands palm down on the table in front of her.
“That make you feel safer?”
“It’ll do,” I said, noticing that the black glass rings, like the earring, were a body joke. Each ring showed, X-ray like, a ghostly blue section of the bones in the fingers beneath. Trepp’s style, at least, I could get to like.
“I didn’t tell him anything,” Sullivan blurted.
“You didn’t know anything worth a jack,” said Trepp disinterestedly. She hadn’t even turned to look at him. “Lucky for you I turned up, I’d say. Mr.Kovacs doesn’t look like someone ready to take ‘don’t know’ for an answer. Am I right?”
“What do you want, Trepp?”
“Come to help out.” Trepp glanced up as something rattled in the restaurant. The waiter had arrived bearing a tray with a large teapot and two handleless cups. “You order this?”
“Yeah. Help yourself.”
“Thanks, I love this stuff.” Trepp waited while the waiter deposited everything, then busied herself with the teapot. “Sullivan, you want a cup too? Hey, bring him another cup, would you. Thanks. Now, where was I?”
“You’d come to help out,” I said pointedly.
“Yeah.” Trepp sipped at the green tea and looked at me over the rim of the cup. “That’s right. I’m here to clarify things. See, you’re trying to hammer the information out of Sullivan here. And he doesn’t know f*ck all. His contact was me, so here I am. Talk to me.”
I looked at her levelly. “I killed you last week, Trepp.”
“Yeah, so they tell me.” Trepp set down the tea cup and looked critically at her own fingerbones. “ ‘Course, I don’t remember that. In fact, I don’t even know you, Kovacs. Last thing I remember was putting myself into the tank about a month back. Everything after that’s gone. The me you torched in that cruiser, she’s dead. That wasn’t me. So, no hard feelings, huh?”
“No remote storage, Trepp?”
She snorted. “Are you kidding? I make a living doing this, same as you, but not that much. Anyway, who needs that remote shit? The way I figure it, you f*ck up, you’ve got to pay some kind of tab for it. I f*cked up with you, right?”
I sipped my own tea and played back the fight in the aircar, considering the angles. “You were a little slow,” I conceded. “A little careless.”
“Yeah, careless. I got to watch that. Wearing artificials makes you that way. Very anti-Zen. I got a sensei in New York, it drives him up the f*cking wall.”
“That’s too bad,” I said patiently. “You want to tell me who sent you now?”
“Hey, better than that. You’re invited to meet the Man.” She nodded at my expression. “Yeah, Ray wants to talk to you. Same as last time, except this is a voluntary ride. Seems coercion doesn’t work too well with you.”
“And Kadmin? He in on this as well?”
Trepp drew breath in through her teeth. “Kadmin’s, well, Kadmin’s a bit of a side issue right now. Bit of an embarrassment really. But I think we can deal on that as well. I really can’t tell you too much more now.” She shuttled her glance sideways at Sullivan, who was beginning to sit up and pay attention. “It’s better if we go someplace else.”
“All right.” I nodded. “I’ll follow you out. But let’s have a couple of ground rules before we go. One, no virtuals.”
“Way ahead of you there.” Trepp finished her tea and started to get up from the table. “My instructions are to convey you directly to Ray. In the flesh.”
I put a hand on her arm and she stopped moving abruptly.
“Two. No surprises. You tell me exactly what’s going to happen well before it does. Anything unexpected, and you’re likely to be disappointing your sensei all over again.”
“Fine. No surprises.” Trepp produced a slightly forced smile that told me she wasn’t accustomed to being grabbed by the arm. “We’re going to walk out of the restaurant and catch a taxi. That all right by you?”
“Just so long as it’s empty.” I released her arm and she resumed motion, coming fluidly upright, hands still well away from her sides. I reached into my pocket and tossed a couple of plastic notes at Sullivan. “You stay here. If I see your face come through the door before we’re gone, I’ll put a hole in it. Tea’s on me.”
As I followed Trepp to the door, the waiter arrived with Sullivan’s tea cup and a big white handkerchief, presumably for the warden’s smashed lip. Nice kid. He practically tripped over himself trying to stay out of my way, and the look he gave me was mingled disgust and awe. In the wake of the icy fury that had possessed me earlier, I sympathised more than he could have known.
The young men in silk watched us go with the dead-eyed concentration of snakes.
Outside, it was still raining. I turned up my collar and watched as Trepp produced a transport pager and waved it casually back and forth above her head. “Be a minute,” she said, and gave me a curious sidelong glance. “You know who that place belongs to?”
“I guessed.”
She shook her head. “Triad noodle house. Hell of a place for an interrogation. Or do you just like living dangerously?”
I shrugged. “Where I come from, criminals stay out of other people’s fights. They’re a gutless lot, generally. Much more likely to get interference from a solid citizen.”
“Not around here. Most solid citizens around here are a little too solid to get involved in a brawl on some stranger’s behalf. The way they figure it, that’s what the police are for. You’re from Harlan’s World, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe it’s that Quellist thing, then. You reckon?”
“Maybe.”
An autocab came spiralling down through the rain in response to the pager. Trepp stood aside at the open hatch and made an irony of demonstrating the empty compartment within. I smiled thinly.
“After you.”
“Suit yourself.” She climbed aboard and moved over to let me in. I settled back on the seat opposite her and watched her hands. When she saw where I was looking, she grinned and spread her arms cruciform along the back of the seat. The hatch hinged down, shedding rain in sliding sheets.
“Welcome to Urbline services,” said the cab smoothly. “Please state your destination.”
“Airport,” said Trepp, lounging back in her seat and looking for my reaction. “Private carriers’ terminal.”
The cab lifted. I looked past Trepp at the rain on the rear window. “Not a local trip, then,” I said tonelessly.
She brought her arms in again, hands held palm upward. “Well, we figured you wouldn’t go virtual, so now we have to do it the hard way. Sub-orbital. Take about three hours.”
“Sub-orbital?” I drew a deep breath and touched the bolstered Philips gun lightly. “You know, I’m going to get really upset if someone asks me to check this hardware before we fly.”
“Yeah, we figured that too. Relax Kovacs, you heard me say private terminal. This is a custom flight, just for you. Carry a f*cking tactical nuke on board if you like. OK?”
“Where are we going, Trepp?”
She smiled.
“Europe,” she said.