'How much you want, man?'
'All of it,' I said cheerfully. 'Everything you've got.'
He read me, but by then it was too late. I had the lock on two of his fingers as they stabbed at the horrorbox controls.
'Ah-ah.'
He took a swipe at me with the other arm. I broke the fingers. He howled and collapsed around the pain. I lacked him in the stomach and took the horrorbox away from him. Behind me, Ortega arrived and flashed her badge in his sweat-beaded face.
'Bay City police,' she said laconically. 'You're busted. Let's see what you've got, shall we.'
The betathanatine was in a series of dermal pads with tiny glass decanters folded in cotton. I held one of the vials up to the light and shook it. The liquid within was a pale red.
'What do you reckon?' I asked Ortega. 'About eight per cent?'
'Looks like. Maybe less.' Ortega put a knee into the dealer's neck, grinding his face into the pavement. 'Where do you cut this stuff, pal?'
'This is good merchandise,' the dealer squealed. 'I buy direct. This is — '
Ortega rapped hard on his skull with her knuckles and he shut up.
'This is shit,' she said patiently. 'This has been stepped on so hard it wouldn't give you a cold. We don't want it. So you can have your whole stash back and walk, if you like. All we want to know is where you cut it. An address.'
'I don't know any — '
'Do you want to be shot while escaping?' Ortega asked him pleasantly, and he grew suddenly very quiet.
'Place in Oakland,' he said sullenly.
Ortega gave him a pencil and paper. 'Write it down. No names, just the address. And so help me, if you're tinselling me I'll come back here with fifty ccs of real Stiff and feed you the lot, unstepped.'
She took back the scrawled paper and glanced at it, removed her knee from the dealer's neck and patted him on the shoulder.
'Good. Now get up and get the fuck off the street. You can go back to work tomorrow, if this is the right place. And if it's not, remember, I know your patch.'
We watched him lurch off and Ortega tapped the paper.
'I know this place. Controlled Substances busted them a couple of times last year, but some slick lawyer gets the important guys off every time. We'll make a lot of noise, let them think they're buying us off with a bag of uncut.'
'Fair enough.' I looked after the retreating figure of the dealer. 'Would you really have shot him?'
'Nah.' Ortega grinned. 'But he doesn't know that. ConSub do it sometimes, just to get major dealers off the street when there's something big going down. Official reprimand for the officer involved and compensation pays out for a new sleeve, but it takes time, and the scumbag does that time in the store. Plus it hurts to get shot. I was convincing, huh?'
'Convinced the fuck out of me.'
'Maybe I should have been an Envoy.'
I shook my head. 'Maybe you should spend less time around me.'
I stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the hypnophone sonocodes to lull me away from reality. On either side of me, Davidson, the Organic Damage datarat, and Ortega had settled into their racks and even through the hypnophones I could hear their breathing, slow and regular, at the limits of my neurachem perception. I tried to relax more, to let the hypnosystem press me down through levels of softly decreasing consciousness, but instead my mind was whirring through the details of the set-up like a program check scanning for error. It was like the insomnia I'd suffered after Innenin, an infuriating synaptic itch that refused to go away. When my peripheral vision time display told me that at least a full minute had gone by, I propped myself up on one elbow and looked around at the figures dreaming in the other racks.
'Is there a problem?' I asked loudly.
'The tracking of Sheryl Bostock is complete,' said the hotel. 'I assumed you would prefer to be alone when I informed you.'
I sat upright and started picking the trodes off my body. 'You assumed right. You sure everyone else is under?'
'Lieutenant Ortega and her colleagues were installed in the virtuality approximately two minutes ago. Irene Elliott has been established there since earlier this afternoon. She asked not to be disturbed.'
'What ratio are you running at the moment?' 'Eleven point fifteen. Irene Elliott requested it.' I nodded to myself as I climbed out of the rack. Eleven point one five was a standard working ratio for datarats. It was also the title of a particularly bloody but otherwise unmemorable Micky Nozawa experia flic. The only clear detail I could recall was that, unexpectedly, Micky's character got killed at the end. I hoped it wasn't an omen.
'All right,' I said. 'Let's see what you've got.'
Between the dimly seen heave and swell of the sea and the lights of the cabin, there was a lemon grove. I went along a dirt track between the trees and the citrus fragrance felt like cleansing. From the long grass on either side, cicadas whirred reassuringly. In a velvet sky above were stars like fixed gems and behind the cabin the land rose into gentle hills and rocky outcroppings. The vague white forms of sheep moved in the darkness on the slopes, and from somewhere I heard a dog bark. The lights of a fishing village glimmered off to one side, less bright than the stars.
There were hurricane lamps slung from the upper rail of the cabin's front porch, but no one was seated at the wooden tables there. The front wall bore a riotous abstract mural curling around and out from the luminous lettering of a sign that read Pension Flower of '68. Windchimes dangled along the railing, winking and turning in the faint breeze that blew in from the sea. They made a variety of gentle sounds from glassy belling to hollow wooden percussion.
On the unkempt sloping lawn in front of the porch someone had set out an incongruous collection of sofas and armchairs in a rough circle, so it looked as if the cabin had been lifted bodily off its furnished interior and set down again further up the slope. From the gathered seats came the soft sound of voices and the red embers of lit cigarettes. I reached for my own supply, realised I had neither the packet nor the need any more and grimaced wryly to myself in the dark.
Bautista's voice rose above the murmur of conversation.
'Kovacs? That you?'
'Who else is it going to be?' I heard Ortega ask him impatiently. 'This is a goddamn virtuality.'
'Yeah, but . . . ' Bautista shrugged and gestured to the empty seats. 'Welcome to the party.'
There were five figures seated in the circle of lounge furniture. Irene Elliott and Davidson were seated at opposite ends of a sofa beside Bautista's chair. On the other side of Bautista, Ortega had sprawled her long-limbed body along the full length of a second sofa.
The fifth figure was relaxed deep into another armchair, legs stretched out in front of him, face sunk in shadows. Wiry black hair stuck up in silhouette above a multicoloured bandanna. Lying across his lap was a white guitar. I stopped in front of him.
'The Hendrix, right?'
'That's correct.' There was a depth and timbre to the voice that had been absent before. The big hands moved across frets and dislodged a tumble of chords onto the darkened lawn. 'Base entity projection. Hardwired in by the original designers. If you strip down the client-mirroring systems, this is what you get.'
'Good.' I took an armchair opposite Irene Elliott. 'You happy with the working environment?'
She nodded. 'Yeah, it's fine.'
'How long've you been here?'
'Me?' She shrugged. 'A day or so. Your friends got here a couple of hours ago.'
'Two and a half,' said Ortega sourly. 'What kept you?'
'Neurachem glitch.' I nodded at the Hendrix figure. 'Didn't he tell you?'
'That's exactly what he told us.' Ortega's gaze was wholly cop. 'I'd just like to know what it means.'
I made a helpless gesture. 'So would I. The Khumalo system kept kicking me out of the pipe, and it took us a while to get compatibility. Maybe I'll mail the manufacturers.' I turned back to Irene Elliott. 'I take it you're going to want the format run up to maximum for the Dip.'
'You take it right.' Elliott jerked her thumb at the Hendrix figure. 'Man says the place runs to three twenty-three max, and we are going to need every scrap of that to pull it off.'
'You cased the run yet?'
Elliott nodded glumly. 'It's locked up tighter than an orbital bank. But I can tell you a couple of interesting things. One, your friend Sarah Sachilowska was freighted off Head in the Clouds two days ago, relayed off the Gateway comsat out to Harlan's World. So she's out of the firing line.'
'I'm impressed. How long did it take you to dig that up.'
'A while.' Elliott inclined her head in the Hendrix's direction. 'I had some help.'
'And the second interesting thing?'
'Yeah. Covert needlecast to a receiver in Europe every eighteen hours. Can't tell you much more than that without Dipping it, and I figured you wouldn't want that just yet. But it looks like what we're after.'
I remembered the spider-like automatic guns and leathery impact-resistant womb sacs, the sombre stone guardians that supported the roof of Kawahara's basilica, and I found myself once more smiling in response to those contemptuous hooded smiles.
'Well, then.' I looked around at the assembled team. 'Let's get this gig off the ground.'
CHAPTER FORTY
It was Sharya, all over again.
We dusted off from the tower of the Hendrix an hour after dark and swung away into the traffic-speckled night. Ortega had pulled the same Lock-Mit transport I'd ridden out to Suntouch House, but when I looked around the dimly lit interior of the ship's belly, it was the Envoy Command attack on Zihicce that I remembered. The scene was the same; Davidson playing the role of datacom officer, face washed pale blue by the light from his screen; Ortega as medic, unpacking the dermals and charging kit from a sealwrap bag. Up ahead in the hatchway to the cockpit, Bautista stood and looked worried, while another mohican I didn't know did the flying. Something must have shown on my face, because Ortega leaned in abruptly to study my face.
'Problem?'
I shook my head. 'Just a little nostalgia.'
'Well, I just hope you got these measures right.' She braced herself against the hull. In her hand, the first dermal looked like a petal torn from some iridescent green plant. I grinned up at her and rolled my head to one side to expose my jugular.
'This is the fourteen per cent,' she said and applied the cool green petal to my neck. I felt the fractional grip, like gentle sandpaper, as it took, and then a long cold finger leapt down past my collar bone and deep into my chest.
'Smooth.'
'Fucking ought to be. You know how much that stuff would go for on the street?'
'The perks of law enforcement, huh?'
Bautista turned round. 'That ain't funny, Kovacs.'
'Leave him alone, Rod,' said Ortega lazily. 'Man's entitled to a bad joke, under the circumstances. It's just nerves.'
I raised one finger to my temple in acknowledgment of the point. Ortega peeled back the dermal gingerly and stood back.
'Three minutes till the next,' she said. 'Right?'
I nodded complacently and opened my mind to the effects of the Reaper.
At first it was uncomfortable. As my body temperature started to fall, the air in the transport grew hot and oppressive. It sank humidly into my lungs and lay there, so that every breath became an effort. My vision smeared and my mouth turned uncomfortably dry as the fluid balance of my body seesawed. Movement, however small, began to seem like an imposition. Thought itself turned ponderous with effort.
Then the control stimulants kicked in and in seconds my head cleared from foggy to the unbearable brightness of sunlight on a knife. The soupy warmth of the air receded as neural governors retuned my system to cope with the body temperature shift. Inhaling became a languid pleasure, like drinking hot rum on a cold night. The cabin of the transport and the people in it were suddenly like a coded puzzle that I had the solution for if I could just . . .
I felt an inane grin eating its way across my features.
'Whoooh, Kristin, this is . . . good stuff. This is better than Sharya.'
'Glad you like it.' Ortega glanced at her watch. 'Two more minutes. You up to it?'
'I'm up to.' I pursed my lips and blew through them. 'Anything. Anything at all.'
Ortega tipped her head back towards Bautista, who could presumably see the instrumentation in the cockpit. 'Rod. How long have we got?'
'Be there in less than forty minutes.'
'Better get him the suit.'
While Bautista busied himself with an overhead locker, Ortega delved in her pocket and produced a hypospray tipped with an unpleasant-looking needle.
'I want you to wear this,' she said. 'Little bit of Organic Damage insurance for you.'
'A needle?' I shook my head with what felt like machined precision. 'Uh-uh. You're not sticking that fucking thing in me.'
'It's a tracer filament,' she said patiently. 'And you're not leaving this ship without it.'
I looked at the gleam on the needle, mind slicing the facts like vegetables for a bowl of ramen. In the tactical marines we'd used subcutaneous filament to keep track of operatives on covert operations. In the event that something went wrong, it gave us a clear fix to pull our people out. In the event that nothing went wrong, the molecules of the filament broke down into organic residues, usually in under forty-eight hours.
I glanced across at Davidson.
'What's the range?'
'Hundred klicks.' The young mohican seemed suddenly very competent in the glow from his screen. 'Search-triggered signal only. It doesn't radiate unless we call you. Quite safe.'
I shrugged. 'OK. Where do you want to put it?'
Ortega stood up, needle in hand. 'Neck muscles. Nice and close to your stack, case they chop your head off.'
'Charming.' I got to my feet and turned my back so that she could put the needle in. There was a brief spike of pain in the cords of muscle at the base of my skull and then it faded. Ortega patted me on the shoulder.
'You're done. Is he on screen?'
Davidson punched a couple of buttons and nodded in satisfaction. In front of me, Bautista dumped the grav harness tackle on a seat. Ortega glanced at her watch and reached for the second dermal.
'Thirty-seven per cent,' she said. 'Ready for the Big Chill?'
It was like being submerged in diamonds.
By the time we hit Head in the Clouds the drug had already eliminated most of my emotional responses and everything had the sharp and shiny edges of raw data. Clarity became a substance, a film of understanding that coated all I saw and heard around me. The stealth suit and the grav harness felt like samurai armour and when I drew the stungun from its sheath to check the settings, I could feel the charge coiled in it like a tangible thing.
It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death.
The shard pistol, spider venom loaded, snugged across my lower ribs opposite the stunner. I dialled the muzzle aperture to wide. At five metres, it would take down a roomful of opponents with a single shot, with no recoil and in complete silence. Sarah Sachilowska says Hi.
The dispenser clip of termite microgrenades, each one not much larger or thicker than a data diskette, secured in a pouch on my left hip. In memoriam Iphigenia Deme.
The Tebbit knife on my forearm in its neural spring sheath beneath the stealth suit like a final word.
I reached for the cold feeling that had filled me up outside Jerry's Closed Quarters and, in the crystalline depths of the Reaper, did not need it.
Mission time.
'Target visual,' called the pilot. 'You want to come up and have a look at this baby?'
I glanced at Ortega, who shrugged, and the two of us went forward. Ortega seated herself beside the mohican and slipped on the co-pilot's headset. I contented myself with standing next to Bautista in the access hatch. The view was just as good from there.
Most of the L
ock-Mit's cockpit was transparent alloy with instrumentation projected up onto it, permitting the pilot an uninterrupted view of the surrounding airspace; I remembered the feeling from Sharya, like riding a slightly concave tray, a tongue of steel or maybe a magic carpet, across the cloudscape below. A feeling that had been at once dizzying and godlike. I glanced at the mohican's profile and wondered if he was as detached from that feeling as I was under the influence of the Reaper.
There were no clouds tonight. Head in the Clouds hung off to the left like a mountain village seen from afar. A cluster of tiny blue lights singing gently of homecoming and warmth in the icy black immensity. Kawahara seemed to have chosen the edge of the world for the whorehouse.
As we banked towards the lights, a squiggle of electronic sound filled the cockpit and the projected instrumentation dimmed briefly.
'That's it, we're acquired,' said Ortega sharply. 'Here we go. I want a flyby under the belly. Let them get a good look.'
The mohican said nothing, but the nose of the transport dipped. Ortega reached up to an instrument panel projected onto the transparency above her head and touched a button. A hard, male voice crashed into the cabin.
' . . . that you are in restricted airspace. We are under licence to destroy intruding aircraft. Identify yourself immediately.'
'This is the Bay City police department,' said Ortega laconically. 'Look out your window and you'll see the stripes. We're up here on official police business, pal, so if you so much as twitch a launcher in this direction I'll have you blown out of the sky.'
There was a hissing silence. Ortega turned to look at me and grinned. Ahead of us, Head in the Clouds swelled like the target in a missile scope and then lifted abruptly over our heads as the pilot dipped us below the bulk of its hull and banked about. I saw lights gathered like icy fruit on gantries and the undersides of landing pads, the distended belly of the vessel curving up on either side and then we were past.
'State the nature of your business,' snapped the voice nastily.
Altered Carbon Page 44
