Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon Page 43

by Richard Morgan

  'Ortega can polygraph us if it comes to that.'

  'I think I'd rather gamble.'

  'Give me that fucking bottle. If you're not going to take this seriously, nor am I. Fuck it, you might even get torched out there and solve the problem for us.'

  'Thanks.'

  I passed him the bottle and watched as he decanted two careful fingers. Jimmy de Soto had always said it was sacrilege to sink more than five fingers of single malt on any one occasion. After that, he maintained, you might as well be drinking blended. I had a feeling that we were going to profane that particular article of faith tonight.

  I raised my glass.

  'To unity of purpose.'

  'Yeah, and an end to drinking alone.'

  The hangover was still with me nearly a full day later as I watched him leave on one of the hotel monitors. He stepped out onto the pavement and waited while the long, polished limousine settled to the kerb. As the kerbside door hinged up, I caught a brief glimpse of Miriam Bancroft's profile within. Then he was climbing in and the door swung smoothly back down to cover them both. The limousine trembled along its length and lifted away.

  I dry-swallowed more painkillers, gave it ten minutes and then went up to the roof to wait for Ortega.

  It was cold.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Ortega had a variety of news.

  Irene Elliott had called in a location and said she was willing to talk about another run. The call had come in on one of the tightest needlecasts Fell Street had ever seen and Elliott said she would only deal directly with me.

  Meanwhile, the Panama Rose patch-up was holding water, and Ortega still had the Hendrix memory tapes. Kadmin's death had rendered Fell Street's original case pretty much an administrative formality, and no one was in any hurry to tackle it any more. An Internal Affairs inquiry into how exactly the assassin had been pulled out of holding in the first place was just getting started. In view of the assumed AI involvement, the Hendrix would come under scrutiny at some point, but it wasn't in the pipeline yet. There were some interdepartmental procedures to be gone through and Ortega had sold Murawa a story about loose ends. The Fell Street captain gave her a couple of weeks open-ended, to tidy up; the tacit assumption was that Ortega had no liking for Internal Affairs and wasn't going to make life easy for them.

  A couple of IA detectives were sniffing around the Panama Rose, but Organic Damage had closed ranks around Ortega and Bautista like a stack shutdown. IA were getting nothing so far.

  We had a couple of weeks.

  Ortega flew north-east. Elliott's instructions vectored us in on a small huddle of bubblefabs clustered around the western end of a tree-fringed lake hundreds of kilometres from anywhere. Ortega grunted in recognition as we banked above the encampment.

  'You know this place?'

  'Places like it. Grifter town. See that dish in the centre? They've got: it webbed into some old geosynch weather platform, gives them free access to anything in the hemi­sphere. This place probably accounts for a single figure percentage of all the data crime on the West Coast.'

  'They never get busted?'

  'Depends.' Ortega put the cruiser down on the lake shore a short distance from the nearest bubblefabs. 'The way it stands, these people keep the old orbitals ticking over. Without them, someone'd have to pay for decom­missioning and that's kind of pricey. So long as the stuff they turn over is small-scale, no one bothers. Transmission Felony Division have got bigger discs to spin, and no one else is interested. You coming?'

  I climbed out and we walked along the shoreline to the encampment. From the air, the place had had a certain structural uniformity, but now I could see that the bubblefabs were all painted with brightly coloured pictures or abstract patterns. No two designs were alike, although I could discern the same artistic hand at work in several of the examples we passed. In addition, a lot of the 'fabs were fitted out with porch canopies, secondary extension bulges and in some cases even more permanent log cabin annexes. Clothing hung on lines between the buildings and small children ran about, getting cheerfully filthy.

  Camp security met us inside the first ring of 'fabs. He stood over two metres tall in flat workboots and probably weighed as much as both my current selves put together. Beneath loose grey coveralls, I could see the stance of a fighter. His eyes were a startling red and short horns sprouted from his temples. Beneath the horns, his face was scarred and old. The effect was startlingly offset by the small child he was cradling in his left arm.

  He nodded at me.

  'You Anderson?'

  'Yes. This is Kristin Ortega.' I was surprised how flat the name suddenly sounded to me. Without Ryker's pheromonal interface, I was left with little more than a vague appreciation that the woman beside me was very attractive in a lean, self-sufficient way that recalled Virginia Vidaura.

  That, and my memories.

  I wondered if she was feeling the same.

  'Cop, huh?' The ex-freak fighter's tone was not over­flowing with warmth, but it didn't sound too hostile either.

  'Not at the moment,' I said firmly. 'Is Irene here?'

  'Yeah.' He shifted the child to his other arm and pointed. 'The 'fab with the stars on it. Been expecting you.'

  As he spoke, Irene Elliott emerged from the structure in question. The horned man grunted and led us across, picking up a small train of additional children on the way. Elliott watched us approach with her hands in her pockets. Like the ex-fighter, she was dressed in boots and coveralls whose grey was startlingly offset by a violently-coloured rainbow headband.

  'Your visitors,' said the horned man. 'You OK with this?'

  Elliott nodded evenly, and he hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged and wandered off with the children in tow. Elliott watched him go, then turned back to us.

  'You'd better come inside,' she said.

  Inside the bubblefab, the utilitarian space had been sec­tioned off with wooden partitions and woven rugs hung from wires set in the plastic dome. Walls were covered in more artwork, most of which looked as if it had been contributed by the children of the camp. Elliott took us to a softly lit space set with lounging bags and a battered-looking access terminal on a hinged arm epoxied to the wall of the bubble. She seemed to have adjusted well to the sleeve, and her movements were smoothly unselfconscious. I'd noticed the improvement on board the Panama Rose in the early hours of the morning, but here it was clearer. She lowered herself easily into one of the loungers and looked speculatively up at me.

  'That's you inside there, Anderson, I presume?'

  I inclined my head.

  'You going to tell me why?'

  I seated myself opposite her. 'That depends on you, Irene. Are you in or out?'

  'You guarantee I get my own body back.' She was trying hard to sound casual, but there was no disguising the hunger in her voice. 'That's the deal?'

  I glanced up at Ortega, who nodded. 'That's correct. If this comes off successfully, we'll be able to requisition it under a federal mandate. But it has to be successful. If we fuck up, we'll probably all go down the double barrel.'

  'You are operating under a federal brief, lieutenant?'

  Ortega smiled tightly. 'Not exactly. But under the UN charter, we'll be able to apply the brief retrospectively. If, as I said, we are successful.'

  'A retrospective federal brief.' Elliott looked back to me, brows raised. 'That's about as common as whalemeat. This must be something gigantic.'

  'It is,' I said.

  Elliott's eyes narrowed. 'And you're not with JacSol any more, are you? Who the fuck are you, Anderson?'

  'I'm your fairy godmother, Elliott. Because if the lieu­tenant's requisition doesn't work out, I'll buy your sleeve back. That's a guarantee. Now are you in, or are you out?'

  Irene Elliott hung on to her detachment: for a moment longer, a moment in which I felt my technical respect for her take on a more personal tone. Then she nodded.

  'Tell me,' she said.

  I told her.
<
br />   It took about half an hour to lay it out, while Ortega stood about or paced restlessly in and out of the bubblefab. I couldn't blame her. Over the past ten days she'd had to face the breakdown of practically every professional tenet she owned, and she was now committed to a project that, if it went wrong, offered a bristling array of hundred-year or better storage offences for all concerned. I think, without Bautista and the others behind her, she might not have risked it, even with her cordial hatred of the Meths, even for Ryker.

  Or maybe I just tell myself that.

  Irene Elliott sat and listened in silence broken only by three technical queries to which I had no answers. When I was finished, she said nothing for a long time. Ortega stopped her pacing and came to stand behind me, waiting.

  'You're insane,' said Elliott finally.

  'Can you do it?'

  She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Her face went dreamy, and I guessed she was reviewing a previous Dipping episode from memory. After a few moments she snapped back and nodded as if she might be trying to convince herself.

  'Yes,' she said slowly. 'It can be done, but not in real time. This isn't like rewriting your fightdrome friends' security system, or even downloading into that AI core. This makes what we did to the AI look like a systems check. To do this, to even attempt this, I've got to have a virtual forum.'

  'That's not a problem. Anything else?'

  'That depends on what counter-intrusion systems Head in the Clouds is running.' Disgust, and an edge of tears coloured her tone for a couple of instants. 'You say this is a high-class whorehouse?'

  'Very,' said Ortega.

  Elliott's feelings went back underground. 'Then I'll have to run some checks. That'll take time.'

  'How much time?' Ortega wanted to know.

  'Well, I can do it two ways.' Professional scorn surfaced in her voice, scarring over the emotion that had been there before. 'I can do a fast scan and maybe ring every alarm aboard this prick in the sky. Or I can do it right, which'll take a couple of days. Your choice. We're running on your clock.'

  'Take your time,' I suggested, with a warning glance at Ortega. 'Now what about wiring me for sight and sound. You know anyone who can do that discreetly?'

  'Yeah, we got people here can do that. But you can forget a telemetry system. You try and transmit out of there, you will bring the house down. No pun intended.' She moved to the arm-mounted terminal and punched up a general access screen. 'I'll see if Reese can dig you up a grab-and-stash mike. Shielded microstack, you'll be able to record a couple of hundred hours high res and we can retrieve it here later.'

  'Good enough. This going to be expensive?'

  Elliott turned back to us, eyebrows hoisted. 'Talk to Reese. She'll probably have to buy the parts in, but maybe you can get her to do the surgery on a retrospective federal basis. She could use the juice at UN level.'

  I glanced at Ortega, who shrugged exasperatedly.

  'I guess,' she said ungraciously, as Elliott busied herself with the screen. I stood up and turned to the policewoman.

  'Ortega,' I muttered into her ear, abruptly aware that in the new sleeve I was completely unmoved by her scent. 'It isn't my fault we're short of funds. The JacSol account's gone, evaporated, and if I start drawing on .Bancroft's credit for stuff like this, it's going to look fucking odd. Now get a grip.'

  'It isn't that,' she hissed back.

  'Then what is it?'

  She looked at me, at our brutally casual proximity. 'You know goddamn well what it is.'

  I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes to avoid having to meet her gaze. 'Did you sort out that hardware for me?'

  'Yeah.' She stepped back, voice returning to normal volume and empty of tone. 'The stungun from the Fell Street tackle room, no one'll miss it. The rest is coming out of NYPD confiscated weapon stocks. I'm flying out to pick it up tomorrow personally. Material transaction, no records. I called in a couple of favours.'

  'Good. Thanks.'

  'Don't mention it,' Her tone was savagely ironic. 'Oh, by the way, they had a hell of a time getting hold of the spider venom load. I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what that's all about, would you?'

  'It's a personal thing.'

  Elliott got someone on the screen. A serious-looking woman in a late fifties African sleeve.

  'Hey, Reese,' she said cheerfully. 'Got a customer for you.'

  Despite the pessimistic estimate, Irene Elliott finished her preliminary scan a day later. I was down by the lake, recovering from Reese's simple microsurgery and skim­ming stones with a girl of about six who seemed to have adopted me. Ortega was still in New York, the chill between us not really resolved.

  Elliott emerged from the encampment and yelled out the news of her successful covert scan without bothering to come down to the water's edge. I winced as the echoes floated out across the water. The open atmosphere of the little settlement took some getting used to, and how it fitted in with successful data piracy I still couldn't see. I handed my stone to the girl and rubbed reflexively at the tiny soreness under one eye where Reese had gone in and implanted the recording system.

  'Here. See if you can do it with this one.'

  'Your stones are heavy' she said plaintively.

  'Well, try anyway. I got nine skips out of the last one.' She squinted up at me. 'You're wired for it. I'm only six.'

  'True. On both counts.' I placed a hand on her head. 'But you've got to work with what you've got.'

  'When I'm big I'm going to be wired like Auntie Reese.'

  I felt a small sadness well up on the cleanly swept floor of my Khumalo neurachem brain. 'Good for you. Look, I've got to go. Don't go too close to the water, right?'

  She looked at me exasperatedly. 'I can swim.'

  'So can I, but it looks cold, don't you think?'

  'Ye-e-es . . . '

  'There you are then.' I ruffled her hair and set off up the beach. At the first bubblefab I looked back. She was hefting the big flat stone at the lake as if the water were an enemy.

  Elliott was in the expansive, post-mission mood that most datarats seem to hit after a long spell cruising the stacks.

  'I've been doing a little historical digging,' she said, swinging the terminal arm outward from its resting place. Her hands danced across the terminal deck and the screen flared into life, shedding colours on her face. 'How's the implant?'

  I touched my lower eyelid again. 'Fine. Tapped straight into the same system that runs the timechip. Reese could have made a living doing this.'

  'She used to,' said Elliott shortly. 'Till they busted her for anti-Protectorate literature. When this is all over, you make sure that someone puts in a word for her at federal level, because she sure as shit needs it.'

  'Yeah, she said.' I peered over her shoulder at the screen. 'What have you got there?'

  'Head in the Clouds. Tampa aeroyard blueprints. Hull specs, the works. This stuff is centuries old. I'm amazed they still keep it on stack at all. Anyway, seems she was ori­ginally commissioned as part of the Caribbean storm management flotilla, back before SkySysterns orbital weather net put them all out of business. A lot of the long-range scanning equipment got ripped out when they refitted, but they left the local sensors in and that's what provides basic skin security. Temperature pick-ups, infra­red, that sort of thing. Anything with body heat lands anywhere on the hull, they'll know it's there.'

  I nodded, unsurprised. 'Ways in?'

  She shrugged. 'Hundreds. Ventilation ducts, mainte­nance crawlways. Take your pick.'

  'I'll need to have another look at what Miller told my construct. But assume I'm going in from the top. Body heat's the only real problem?'

  'Yeah, but those sensors are looking for anything over a square millimetre of temperature differential. A stealth suit won't cover you. Christ, even the breath coming out of your lungs will probably trip them. And it doesn't stop there.' Elliott nodded sombrely at the screen. 'They must have liked the system a lot, because when they refitted they r
an it through the whole ship. Room temperature moni­tors on every corridor and walkway.'

  'Yeah, Miller said something about a heat signature tag.'

  'That's it. Incoming guests get it on boarding and their codes are incorporated into the system. Anyone else walks down a corridor uninvited, or goes somewhere their tag says they can't, they set off every alarm in the hull. Simple, and very effective. And I don't think I can cut in there and write you a welcome code. Too much security.'

  'Don't worry about it,' I said. 'I don't think it's going to be a problem.'

  'You what?' Ortega looked at me with fury and disbelief spreading across her face like a storm front. She stood away from me as if I might be contagious

  'It was just a suggestion. If you don't — '

  'No.' She said the word as if it was new to her and she liked the taste. 'No. No fucking way. I've connived at viral crime for you, I've hidden evidence for you, I've assisted you in multiple sleeving — '

  'Hardly multiple.'

  'It's a fucking crime,' she said through her teeth. 'I am not going to steal confiscated drugs out of police holding for you.'

  'OK, forget it.' I hesitated, put my tongue in my cheek for a moment. 'Want to help me confiscate some more, then?'

  Something inside me cheered as the unwilling smile broke cover on her face.

  The dealer was in the same place he had been when I walked into his 'cast radius two weeks ago. This time I saw him twenty metres away, skulking in an alcove with the bat-eyed broadcast unit on his shoulder like a familiar. There were very few people on the street in any direction. I nodded to Ortega who was stationed across the street and walked on. The sales 'cast had not changed, the street of ridiculously ferocious women and the sudden cool of the betathanatine hit, but this time I was expecting it and in any case the Khumalo neurachem had a definite damping effect on the intrusion. I stepped up to the dealer with an eager smile.

  'Got Stiff, man.'

  'Good, that's what I'm looking for. How much have you got?'

  He started a little, expression coiling between greed and suspicion. His hand slipped down towards the horrorbox at his belt just in case.

 

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