Altered Carbon

by Richard Morgan

  'Do you like it?' she asked.

  'Very much. This is from Mars, isn't: it.'

  Her face underwent a change that I caught out of the corner of my eye. She was reassessing. I turned for a closer look at her face.

  'I'm impressed,' she said.

  'People often are. Sometimes I do handsprings too.'

  She looked at me narrowly. 'Do you really know what this is?'

  'Frankly, no. I used to be interested in structural art. I recognise the stone from pictures, but . . . '

  'It's a Songspire.' She reached past me and let her fingers trail down one of the upright branches. A faint sighing awoke from the thing and a perfume like cherries and mustard wafted into the air.

  'Is it alive?'

  'No one knows.' There was a sudden enthusiasm in her tone that I liked her better for. 'On Mars they grow to be a hundred metres tall, sometimes as wide as this house at the root. You can hear them singing for kilometres. The perfume carries as well. From the erosion patterns, we think that most of them are at least ten thousand years old. This one might only have been around since the founding of the Roman empire.'

  'Must have been expensive. To bring it back to Earth, I mean.'

  'Money wasn't an object, Mr Kovacs.' The mask was back in place. Time to move on.

  We made double time down the left-hand corridor, perhaps to make up for our unscheduled stop. With each step Mrs Bancroft's breasts jiggled under the thin material of the leotard and I took a morose interest in the art on the other side of the corridor. More Empathist work, Angin Chandra with her slender hand resting on a thrusting phallus of a rocket. Not much help.

  The seaward lounge was built on the end of the house's west wing. Mrs Bancroft took me into it through an un­obtrusive wooden door and the sun hit us in the eyes as soon as we entered.

  'Laurens. This is Mr Kovacs.'

  I lifted a hand to shade my eyes and saw that the seaward lounge had an upper level with sliding glass doors that ac­cessed a balcony. Leaning on the balcony was a man. He must have heard us come in; come to that, he must have heard the police cruiser arrive and known what it signified, but still he stayed where he was, staring out to sea. Coming back from the dead sometimes makes you feel that way. Or maybe it was just arrogance. Mrs Bancroft nodded me for­ward and we went up a set of stairs made from the same wood as the door. For the first time I noticed that the walls of the room were shelved from top to bottom with books. The sun was laying an even coat of orange light along their spines.

  As we came out onto the balcony, Bancroft turned to face us. There was a book in his hand, folded closed over his fingers.

  'Mr Kovacs.' He transferred the book so that he could shake my hand. 'It's a pleasure to meet you at last. How do you find the new sleeve?'

  'It's fine. Comfortable.'

  'Yes, I didn't involve myself too much in the details, but I instructed my lawyers to find something . . . suitable.' He glanced back, as if looking for Ortega's cruiser on the horizon. 'I hope the police weren't too officious.'

  'Not so far.'

  Bancroft looked like a Man Who Read. There's a favourite experia star on Harlan's World called Alain Marriott, best known for his portrayal of a virile young Quellist philosopher who cuts a swathe through the brutal tyranny of the early Settlement years. It's questionable how accurate this portrayal of the Quellists is, but it's a good flic. I've seen it twice. Bancroft looked a lot like an older version of Marriott in that role. He was slim and elegant with a full head of iron grey hair which he wore back in a ponytail, and hard black eyes. The book in his hand and the shelves around him were like an utterly natural extension of the powerhouse of a mind that looked out from those eyes.

  Bancroft touched his wife on the shoulder with a dis­missive casualness that in my present state made me want to weep.

  'It was that woman, again,' said Mrs Bancroft. 'The lieutenant.'

  Bancroft nodded. 'Don't worry about it, Miriam. They're just sniffing around. I warned them I was going to do this, and they ignored me. Well, now Mr Kovacs is here, and they're finally taking me seriously.'

  He turned to me. 'The police have not been very helpful to me over this matter.'

  'Yeah. That's why I'm here, apparently.'

  We looked at each other while I tried to decide if I was angry with this man or not. He'd dragged me halfway across the settled universe, dumped me into a new body and offered me a deal that was weighted so I couldn't refuse. Rich people do this. They have the power and they see no reason not to use it. Men and women are just mer­chandise, like everything else. Store them, freight them, decant them. Sign at the bottom please.

  On the other hand, no one at Suntouch House had mispronounced my name yet, and I didn't really have a choice. And then there was the money. A hundred thousand UN was about six or seven times what Sarah and I had expected to make on the Millsport wetware haul. UN dollars, the hardest currency there was, negotiable on any world in the Protectorate.

  That had to be worth keeping your temper for.

  Bancroft gave his wife another casual touch, this time on her waist, pushing her away.

  'Miriam, could you leave us alone for a while. I'm sure Mr Kovacs has endless questions, and it's likely to be boring for you.'

  'Actually, I'm likely to have some questions for Mrs Bancroft as well.'

  She was already on her way back inside, and my com­ment stopped her in mid-stride. She cocked her head at an angle, and looked from me to Bancroft and back. Beside me, her husband stirred. This wasn't what he wanted.

  'Maybe I could speak to you later,' I amended. 'Sepa­rately.'

  'Yes, of course.' Her eyes met mine, then danced aside. 'I'll be in the chart room, Laurens. Send Mr Kovacs along when you've finished.'

  We both watched her leave, and when the door closed behind her Bancroft gestured me to one of the lounge chairs on the balcony. Behind them, an antique astronom­ical telescope stood levelled at the horizon, gathering dust. Looking down at the boards under my feet, I saw they were worn with use. The impression of age settled over me like a cloak, and I lowered myself into my chair with a tiny frisson of unease.

  'Please don't think of me as a chauvinist, Mr Kovacs. After nearly two hundred and fifty years of marriage, my relationship with Miriam is more politeness than anything. It really would be better if you spoke to her alone.'

  'I understand.' That was shaving the truth a bit, but it would do.

  'Would you care for a drink? Something alcoholic?'

  'No thank you. Just some fruit juice, if you have it.' The shakiness associated with downloading was beginning to assert itself, and in addition there was an unwelcome scratchiness in my feet and fingers which I assumed was nicotine dependency. Apart from the odd cigarette bummed from Sarah, I'd been quit for the last two sleeves and I didn't want to have to break the habit all over again. Alcohol on top of everything would finish me.

  Bancroft folded his hands in his lap. 'Of course. I'll have some brought up. Now, where would you like to begin?'

  'Maybe we should start with your expectations. I don't know what Reileen Kawahara told you, or what kind of profile the Envoy Corps has here on Earth, but don't ex­pect miracles from me. I'm not a sorcerer.'

  'I'm aware of that. I have read the Corps literature carefully. And all Reileen Kawahara told me was that you were reliable, if a trifle fastidious.'

  I remembered Kawahara's methods, and my reactions to them. Fastidious. Right.

  I gave him the standard spiel anyway. It felt funny, pitching for a client who was already in. Felt funny to play down what I could do, as well. The criminal community isn't long on modesty, and what you do to get serious backing is inflate whatever reputation you may already have. This was more like being back in the Corps. Long polished conference tables and Virginia Vidaura ticking off the capabilities of her team.

  'Envoy training was developed for the UN colonial commando units. That doesn't mean . . . '

  Doesn't mean every Envoy is a co
mmando. No, not exactly, but then what is a soldier anyway? How much of special forces training is engraved on the physical body and how much in the mind? And what happens when the two are separated?

  Space, to use a cliché, is big. The closest of the Settled Worlds is fifty light years out from Earth. The most far-flung four times that distance, and some of the Colony transports are still going. If some maniac starts rattling tac­tical nukes, or some other biosphere-threatening toys, what are you going to do? You can transmit the information, via hyperspatial needlecast, so close to instantaneously that scientists are still arguing about the terminology but that, to quote Quellcrist Falconer, deploys no bloody divisions. Even if you launched a troop carrier the moment the shit hit the fan, the marines would be arriving just in time to quiz the grandchildren of whoever won.

  That's no way to run a Protectorate.

  OK, you can digitise and freight the minds of a crack combat team. It's been a long time since weight of numbers counted for much in a war, and most of the military victories of the last half millennium have been won by small, mobile guerrilla forces. You can even decant your crack d.h.f. soldiers directly into sleeves with combat conditioning, jacked-up nervous systems and steroid built bodies. Then what do you do?

  They're in bodies they don't know, on a world they don't know, fighting for one bunch of total strangers against another bunch of total strangers over causes they've probably never even heard of and certainly don't understand. The climate is different, the language and culture is different, the wildlife and vegetation is different, the atmosphere is different. Shit, even the gravity is dif­ferent. They know nothing, and even if you download them with implanted local knowledge, it's a massive amount of information to assimilate at a time when they're likely to be fighting for their lives within hours of sleeving.

  That's where you get the Envoy Corps.

  Neurachem conditioning, cyborg interfaces, augmenta­tion — all this stuff is physical. Most of it doesn't even touch the pure mind, and it's the pure mind that gets freighted. That's where the Corps started. They took psychospiritual techniques that oriental cultures on Earth had known about for millennia and distilled them into a training system so complete that on most worlds graduates of it were instantly forbidden by law to hold any political or military office.

  Not soldiers, no. Not exactly.

  'I work by absorption,' I finished. 'Whatever I come into contact with, I soak up, and I use that to get by.'

  Bancroft shifted in his seat. He wasn't used to being lectured. It was time to start.

  'Who found your body?'

  'My daughter, Naomi.'

  He broke off as someone opened the door in the room below. A moment later, the maid that had attended Miriam Bancroft earlier came up the steps to the balcony bearing a tray with a visibly chilled decanter and tall glasses. Ban­croft was wired with internal tannoy, like everyone else at Suntouch House it seemed.

  The maid set down her tray, poured in machine-like silence and then withdrew on a short nod from Bancroft. He stared after her blankly for a while.

  Back from the dead. It's no joke.

  'Naomi,' I prompted him gently.

  He blinked. 'Oh. Yes. She barged in here, wanting something. Probably the keys to one of the limos. I'm an indulgent father, I suppose, and Naomi is my youngest.'

  'How young?'

  'Twenty-three.'

  'Do you have many children?'

  'Yes, I do. Very many.' Bancroft smiled faintly. 'When you have leisure and wealth, bringing children into the world is a pure joy. I have twenty-seven sons and thirty-four daughters.'

  'Do they live with you?'

  'Naomi does, most of the time. The others come and go. Most have families of their own now.'

  'How is Naomi?' I stepped my tone down a little.

  Finding your father without his head isn't the best way to start the day.

  'She's in psychosurgery,' said Bancroft shortly. 'But she'll pull through. Do you need to talk to her?'

  'Not at the moment.' I got up from the chair and went to the balcony door. 'You say she barged in here. This is where it happened?'

  'Yes.' Bancroft joined me at the door. 'Someone got in here and took my head off with a particle blaster. You can see the blast mark on the wall down there. Over by the desk.'

  I went inside and down the stairs. The desk was a heavy mirrorwood item — they must have freighted the gene code from Harlan's World and cultured the tree here. That struck me as almost as extravagant as the Songspire in the hall, and in slightly more questionable taste. On the World mirrorwood grows in forests on three continents, and practically every canal dive in Millsport has a bar top carved out of the stuff. I moved past it to inspect the stucco wall. The white surface was furrowed and seared black with the unmistakable signature of a beam weapon. The burn started at head height and followed a short arc down­wards.

  Bancroft had remained on the balcony. I looked up at his silhouetted face. 'This is the only sign of gunfire in the room?'

  'Yes.'

  'Nothing else was damaged, broken or disturbed in any way?'

  'No. Nothing.' It was clear that he wanted to say more, but he was keeping quiet until I'd finished.

  'And the police found the weapon beside you?'--

  'Yes.'

  'Do you own a weapon that would do this?'

  'Yes. It was mine. I keep it in a safe under the desk. Handprint coded. They found the safe open, nothing else removed. Do you want to see inside it?'

  'Not at the moment, thank you.' I knew from experience how difficult mirrorwood furniture is to shift. I turned up one corner of the woven rug under the desk. There was an almost invisible seam in the floor beneath. 'Whose prints will open this?'

  'Miriam's and my own.'

  There was a significant pause. Bancroft sighed, loud enough to carry across the room. 'Go on, Kovacs. Say it. Everyone else has. Either I committed suicide or my wife murdered me. There's just no other reasonable explana­tion. I've been hearing it since they pulled me out of the tank at Alcatraz.'

  I looked elaborately round the room before I met his eyes.

  'Well, you'll admit it makes for easier police work,' I said. 'It's nice and neat.'

  He snorted, but there was a laugh in it. I found myself beginning to like this man despite myself. I went back up, stepped out onto the balcony and leaned on the rail. Outside a black-clad figure prowled back and forth across the lawn below, weapon slung at port. In the distance the power fence shimmered. I stared in that direction for a while.

  'It's asking a lot to believe that someone got in here, past all the security, broke into a safe only you and your wife had access to and murdered you, without causing any dis­turbance. You're an intelligent man, you must have some reason for believing it.'

  'Oh, I do. Several.'

  'Reasons the police chose to ignore.'

  'Yes.'

  I turned to face him. 'All right. Let's hear it.'

  'You're looking at it, Mr Kovacs.' He stood there in front of me. 'I'm here. I'm back. You can't kill me just by wiping out my cortical stack.'

  'You've got remote storage. Obviously, or you wouldn't be here. How regular is the update?'

  Bancroft smiled. 'Every forty-eight hours.' He tapped the back of his neck. 'Direct needlecast from here into a shielded stack over at the PsychaSec installation at Alcatraz. I don't even have to think about it.'

  'And they keep your clones on ice there as well.'

  'Yes. Multiple units.'

  Guaranteed immortality. I sat there thinking about that for a while, wondering how I'd like it. Wondering if I'd like it.

  'Must be expensive,' I said at last.

  'Not really. I own PsychaSec.'

  'Oh.'

  'So you see, Kovacs, neither I nor my wife could have pulled that trigger. We both knew it wouldn't be enough to kill me. No matter how unlikely it seems, it had to be a stranger. Someone who didn't know about the remote.'

  I nodded. 'A
ll right, who else did know about It? Let's narrow the field.'

  'Apart from my family?' Bancroft shrugged. 'My lawyer, Oumou Prescott. A couple of her legal aides. The director at PsychaSec. That's about it.'

  'Of course,' I said, 'suicide is rarely a rational act.'

  'Yes, that's what the police said. They used it to explain all the other minor inconveniences in their theory as well.'

  'Which were?'

  This was what Bancroft had wanted to reveal earlier. It came out in a rush. 'Which were that I should choose to walk the last two kilometres home, and let myself into the grounds on foot, then apparently readjust my internal clock before I killed myself.'

  I blinked. 'I'm sorry?'

  'The police found traces of a cruiser landing in a field two kilometres from the perimeter of Suntouch House, which conveniently enough is just outside the pick-up range of the house security surveillance. Equally conveni­ently, there was apparently no satellite cover overhead at that precise time.'

  'Did they check taxi datastacks?'

  Bancroft nodded. 'For what it's worth, they did, yes. West Coast law does not require taxi companies to keep records of their fleets' whereabouts at any given time. Some of the more reputable firms do, of course, but there are others that don't. Some even make a selling point of it. Client confidentiality, that sort of thing.' A momentary hunted look crossed Bancroft's face. 'For some clients, in some cases, that would be a distinct advantage.'

  'Have you used these firms in the past?'

  'On occasion, yes.'

  The logical next question hung in the air between us. I left it unasked, and waited. If Bancroft wasn't going to share his reasons for wanting confidential transport, I wasn't going to press him until I had a few other landmarks locked down.

  Bancroft cleared his throat. 'There is, in any case, some evidence to suggest that: the vehicle in question might not have been a taxi. Field effect distribution, the police say. A pattern more in keeping with a larger vehicle.'

  'That depends on how hard it landed.'