Altered Carbon

CHAPTER TWO
The hall outside was huge, and all but deserted. It looked like nothing so much as the Millsport rail terminal back home. Beneath a tilted roof of long transparent panels, the fused glass paving of the floor shone amber in the afternoon sun. A couple of children were playing with the automatic doors at the exit, and there was a solitary cleaning robot sniffing along in the shade at one wall. Nothing else moved. Marooned in the glow on benches of old wood, a scattering of humanity waited in silence for friends or family to ride in from their altered carbon exiles.
Download Central.
These people wouldn’t recognise their loved ones in their new sleeves; recognition would be left to the home-comers, and for those who awaited them the anticipation of reunion would be tempered with a cool dread at what face and body they might have to learn to love. Or maybe they were a couple of generations down the line, waiting for relatives who were no more to them now than a vague childhood memory or a family legend. I knew one guy in the Corps, Murakami, who was waiting on the release of a great-grandfather put away over a century back. Was going up to Newpest with a litre of whisky and a pool cue for homecoming gifts. He’d been brought up on stories of his great-grandfather in the Kanagawa pool halls. The guy had been put away before Murakami was even born.
I spotted my reception committee as I went down the steps into the body of the hall. Three tall silhouettes were gathered around one of the benches, shifting restlessly in the slanting rays of sunlight and creating eddies in the dust motes that floated there. A fourth figure sat on the bench, arms folded and legs stretched out. All four of them were wearing reflective sunglasses that at a distance turned their faces into identical masks.
Already on course for the door, I made no attempt to detour in their direction and this must have occurred to them only when I was halfway across the hall. Two of them drifted over to intercept me with the easy calm of big cats that had been fed recently. Bulky and tough-looking with neatly groomed crimson mohicans, they arrived in my path a couple of metres ahead, forcing me either to stop in turn or cut an abrupt circle around them. I stopped. Newly arrived and newly sleeved is the wrong state to be in if you plan to piss off the local militia. I tried on my second smile of the day.
“Something I can do for you?”
The older of the two waved a badge negligently in my direction, then put it away as if it might tarnish in the open air.
“Bay City police. The lieutenant wants to talk to you.” The sentence sounded bitten off, as if he was resisting the urge to add some epithet to the end of it. I made an attempt to look as if I was seriously considering whether or not to go along with them, but they had me and they knew it. An hour out of the tank, you don’t know enough about your new body to be getting into brawls with it. I shut down my images of Sarah’s death and let myself be shepherded back to the seated cop.
The lieutenant was a woman in her thirties. Under the golden discs of her shades, she wore cheekbones from some Amerindian ancestor and a wide slash of a mouth that was currently set in a sardonic line. The sunglasses were jammed on a nose you could have opened cans on. Short, untidy hair framed the whole face, stuck up in spikes at the front. She had wrapped herself in an outsize combat jacket but the long, black-encased legs that protruded from its lower edge were a clear hint of the lithe body within. She looked up at me with her arms folded on her chest for nearly a minute before anyone spoke.
“It’s Kovacs, right?”
“Yes.”
“Takeshi Kovacs?” Her pronunciation was perfect. “Out of Harlan’s World? Millsport via the Kanagawa storage facility?”
“Tell you what, I’ll just stop you when you get one wrong.”
There was a long, mirror-lensed pause. The lieutenant unfolded fractionally and examined the blade of one hand.
“You got a licence for that sense of humour, Kovacs?”
“Sorry. Left it at home.”
“And what brings you to Earth?”
I gestured impatiently. “You know all this already, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Have you got something to say to me, or did you just bring these kids along for educational purposes?”
I felt a hand fasten on my upper arm and tensed. The lieutenant made a barely perceptible motion with her head and the cop behind me let go again.
“Cool down, Kovacs. I’m just making conversation here. Yeah, I know Laurens Bancroft sprung you. Matter of fact, I’m here to offer you a lift up to the Bancroft residence.” She sat forward suddenly, and stood up. On her feet she was almost as tall as my new sleeve. “I’m Kristin Ortega, Organic Damage Division. Bancroft was my case.”
“Was?”
She nodded. “Case is closed, Kovacs.”
“Is that a warning?”
“No, it’s just the facts. Open-and-shut suicide.”
“Bancroft doesn’t seem to think so. He claims he was murdered.”
“Yeah, so I hear.” Ortega shrugged. “Well, that’s his prerogative. I guess it might be difficult for a man like that to believe he’d blow his own head clean off.”
“A man like what?”
“Oh come—” She stopped herself and gave me a small smile. ”Sorry, I keep forgetting.”
“Forgetting what?”
Another pause, but this time Kristin Ortega seemed to be off balance for the first time in our brief acquaintance. There was hesitancy blurring her tone when she spoke again. “You’re not from here.”
“So?”
“So anyone from here would know what kind of man Laurens Bancroft is. That’s all.”
Fascinated at why someone would lie so ineptly to a total stranger, I tried to put her back at her ease. “A rich man,” I hazarded. “A powerful man.”
She smiled thinly. “You’ll see. Now do you want this lift or not?”
The letter in my pocket said a chauffeur would be outside the terminal to pick me up. Bancroft had made no mention of the police. I shrugged.
“I’ve never turned down a free ride yet.”
“Good. Then shall we go?”
They flanked me to the door and stepped out ahead like bodyguards, heads tilted back and lensed eyes scanning. Ortega and I stepped through the gap together and the warmth of the sunlight hit me in the face. I screwed up my new eyes against the glare and made out angular buildings behind real wire fences on the other side of a badly-kept landing lot. Sterile, and off-white, quite possibly original pre-millennial structures. Between the oddly monochrome walls, I could see sections of a grey iron bridge that came vaulting in to land somewhere hidden from view. A similarly drab collection of sky and ground cruisers sat about in not particularly neat lines. The wind gusted abruptly and I caught the faint odour of some flowering weed growing along the cracks in the landing lot. In the distance was the familiar hum of traffic, but everything else felt like a period drama set piece.
“…and I tell you there is only one judge! Do not believe the men of science when they tell you…”
The squawk of the poorly operated ampbox hit us as we went down the steps from the exit. I glanced across the landing area and saw a crowd assembled around a black-clad man on a packing crate. Holographic placards wove erratically in the air above the heads of the listeners. NO TO RESOLUTION 653!! ONLY GOD CAN RESURRECT!! D.H.F. = D.E.A.T.H. Cheers drowned out the speaker.
“What’s this?”
“Catholics,” said Ortega, lip curling. “Old-time religious sect.”
“Yeah? Never heard of them.”
“No. You wouldn’t have. They don’t believe you can digitise a human being without losing the soul.”
“Not a widespread faith then.”
“Just on Earth,” she said sourly. “I think the Vatican—that’s their central church—financed a couple of cryoships to Starfall and Latimer—”
“I’ve been to Latimer, I never ran into anything like this.”
“The ships only left at the turn of the century, Kovacs. They won’t get there for a couple more decades yet.”
We skirted the gathering, and a young woman with her hair pulled severely back thrust a leaflet at me. The gesture was so abrupt that it tripped my sleeve’s unsettled reflexes and I made a blocking motion before I got it under control. Hard-eyed, the woman stood with the leaflet out and I took it with a placating smile.
“They have no right,” the woman said.
“Oh, I agree…”
“Only the Lord our God can save your soul.”
“I—” But by this time Kristin Ortega was steering me firmly away, one hand on my arm, in a manner that suggested a lot of practice. I shook her off politely but equally firmly.
“Are we in some kind of hurry?”
“I think we both have better things to do, yes,” she said, tight lipped, looking back to where her colleagues were engaged in fending off leaflets of their own.
“I might have wanted to talk to her.”
“Yeah? Looked to me like you wanted to throat-chop her.”
“That’s just the sleeve. I think it had some neurachem conditioning way back when, and she tripped it. You know, most people lie down for a few hours after downloading. I’m a little on edge.”
I stared at the leaflet in my hands. CAN A MACHINE SAVE YOUR SOUL? it demanded of me rhetorically. The word ‘machine’ had been printed in script designed to resemble an archaic computer display. ‘Soul’ was in flowing stereographic letters that danced all over the page. I turned over for the answer.
NO!!!!!
“So cryogenic suspension is okay, but digitised human freight isn’t. Interesting.” I looked back at the glowing placards, musing. “What’s Resolution 653?”
“It’s a test case going through the UN Court,” said Ortega shortly. “Bay City public prosecutor’s office want to subpoena a Catholic who’s in storage. Pivotal witness. The Vatican say she’s already dead and in the hands of God. They’re calling it blasphemy.”
“I see. So your loyalties are pretty undivided here.”
She stopped and turned to face me.
“Kovacs, I hate these goddamn freaks. They’ve been grinding us down for the best part of two and a half thousand years. They’ve been responsible for more misery than any other organisation in history. You know they won’t even let their adherents practise birth control, for Christ’s sake, and they’ve stood against every significant medical advance of the last five centuries. Practically the only thing you can say in their favour is that this d.h.f. thing has stopped them from spreading with the rest of humanity.”
My lift turned out to be a battered but undeniably rakish-looking Lockheed-Mitoma transport decked out in what were presumably police colours. I’d flown Lock-Mits on Sharya, but they’d been a dull radar-reflective black all over. The red and white stripes on this one looked garish by comparison. A pilot in sunglasses to match the rest of Ortega’s little gang sat motionless in the cockpit. The hatch into the belly of the cruiser was already hinged up. Ortega banged on the hatch coaming as we climbed aboard and the turbines awoke with a whispery sound.
I helped one of the mohicans manhandle the hatch down, steadied myself against the lift of the cruiser and found my way to a window seat. As we spiralled up, I craned my neck to keep the crowd below in sight. The transport straightened out about a hundred metres up and dropped its nose slightly. I sank back into the arms of the automould and found Ortega watching me.
“Still curious huh?” she said.
“I feel like a tourist. Answer me a question?”
“If I can.”
“Well, if these guys don’t practise birth control, there’s got to be an awful lot of them, right. And Earth isn’t exactly a hive of activity these days, so … Why aren’t they running things?”
Ortega and her men swapped a set of unpleasant smiles. “Storage,” said the mohican on my left.
I slapped myself on the back of the neck, and then wondered if the gesture was in use here. It’s the standard site for a cortical stack, after all, but then cultural quirks don’t always work like that.
“Storage. Of course.” I looked around at their faces. “There’s no special exemption for them?”
“Nope.” For some reason, this little exchange seemed to have made us all buddies. They were relaxing. The same mohican went on to elaborate. “Ten years or three months, it’s all the same to them. A death sentence every time. They never come off stack. It’s cute, huh?”
I nodded. “Very tidy. What happens to the bodies?”
The man opposite me made a throwaway gesture. “Sold off, broken down for transplants. Depends on the family.”
I turned away and stared out of the window.
“Something the matter, Kovacs?”
I faced Ortega with a fresh smile gripping my face. It felt as if I was getting quite good at them.
“No, no. I was just thinking. It’s like a different planet.”
That cracked them up.

Suntouch House
October 2nd

Takeshi-san,
When you receive this letter, you will doubtless be somewhat disoriented. I offer my sincere apologies for this, but I have been assured that the training you underwent with the Envoy Corps should enable you to deal with the situation. Similarly, I assure you that I would not have subjected you to any of this had my own situation not been desperate.
My name is Laurens Bancroft. Coming as you do from the colonies, this may not mean anything to you. Suffice it to say that I am a rich and powerful man here on Earth, and have made many enemies as a result. Six weeks ago I was murdered, an act which the police, for reasons of their own, have chosen to regard as suicide. Since the murderers ultimately failed I can only assume that they will try again and, in view of the police attitude, they may well succeed.
Clearly you will wonder what all this has to do with you and why you have been dragged a hundred and eighty-six light years out of storage to deal with such a local matter. I have been advised by my lawyers to retain a private investigator, but owing to my prominence in the global community, I am unable to trust anyone I could engage locally. I was given your name by Reileen Kawahara, for whom I understand you did some work on New Beijing eight years ago. The Envoy Corps were able to locate you in Kanagawa within two days of my requesting your whereabouts, though in view of your discharge and subsequent activities they were unable to offer any kind of operational guarantees or pledges. It is my understanding that you are your own man.
The terms under which you have been released are as follows: You are contracted to work for me for a period of six weeks with an option for me to renew at the end of that time should further work be necessary. During this time I shall be responsible for all reasonable expenses incurred by your investigation. In addition, I shall cover the cost of sleeve rental for this period. In the event that you conclude the investigation successfully, the remainder of your storage sentence at Kanagawa—one hundred and seventeen years and four months—will be annulled and you will be refreighted to Harlan’s World for immediate release in a sleeve of your own choosing. Alternatively, I undertake to pay off the balance of the mortgage on your current sleeve here on Earth and you may become a naturalised UN citizen. In either case the sum of one hundred thousand UN dollars, or equivalent, will be credited to you.
I believe these terms to be generous but I should add that I am not a man to be trifled with. In the event that your investigation fails and I am killed, or that you attempt to in any way escape or evade the terms of your contract, the sleeve lease will be terminated immediately and you will be returned to storage to complete your sentence here on Earth. Any further legal penalties that you incur may be added to that sentence. Should you choose not to accept my contract from the outset, you will also be returned to storage immediately, though I cannot undertake to refreight you to Harlan’s World in this case.
I am hopeful that you will see this arrangement as an opportunity, and agree to work for me. In anticipation of this, I am sending a driver to collect you from the storage facility. His name is Curtis and he is one of my most trusted employees. He will be waiting for you in the release hall.
I look forward to meeting you at Suntouch House.

Yours sincerely,
Laurens J. Bancroft.