Authors: Richard Morgan
I found a
battered-looking currency dispenser and replenished my thinning sheaf of
plastified notes from it. Then I backed up two blocks and went east until I
found a public callbox. I searched through my pockets, came up with a card,
settled the call trades on my head and dialled.
There was
no image. No sound of connection. This was an internal chip. The voice spoke
brusquely out of a blank screen.
“Who
is this?”
“You
gave me your card,” I said, “in case of anything major. Well, now
it seems there’s something pretty fucking major we need to talk about,
doctor.”
There was
an audible click as she swallowed, just once, and then her voice was there
again, level and cool. “We should meet. I assume you don’t want to
come to the facility.”
“You
assume right. You know the red bridge?”
“The
Golden Gate, it’s called,” she said dryly. “Yes, I’m
familiar with it.”
“Be
there at eleven. Northbound carriageway. Come alone.”
I cut the
connection. Dialled again.
“Bancroft
residence, with whom do you wish to speak?” A severely-suited woman with
a hairstyle reminiscent of Angin Chandra’s pilot cuts arrived on the
screen a fraction after she started speaking.
“Laurens
Bancroft, please.”
“Mr.Bancroft
is in conference at present.”
That made
it even easier. “Fine. When he’s available, can you tell him
Takeshi Kovacs called.”
“Would
you like to speak to Mrs.Bancroft? She has left instructions that—”
“No,”
I said rapidly. “That won’t be necessary. Please tell Mr.Bancroft
that I shall be out of contact for a few days, but that I will call him from
Seattle. That’s all.”
I cut the
connection, and checked my watch. There was about an hour and forty minutes
left of the time I’d given myself to be on the bridge. I went looking for
a bar.
I’m
stacked, backed up and I’m fifth dan
And I’m
not afraid of the Patchwork Man
The small
coin of urchin rhyme gleamed up at me from the silted bed of my childhood.
But I was
afraid.
The rain
still hadn’t set in when we got onto the approach road to the bridge, but
the clouds were massing sullenly above and the windscreen was splattered with
heavy droplets too few to trigger the truck’s wipers. I watched the
rust-coloured structure looming up ahead through the distortion of the exploded
raindrops and knew I was going to get soaked.
There was
no traffic on the bridge. The suspension towers rose like the bones of some
incalculably huge dinosaur above deserted asphalt lanes and side gantries lined
with unidentifiable detritus.
“Slow
down,” I told my companion as we passed under the first tower, and the heavy
vehicle braked with uncalled for force. I glanced sideways. “Take it
easy. I told you, this is a no-risk gig. I’m just meeting someone.”
Graft
Nicholson gave me a bleary look from the driver’s seat, and a breath of
stale alcohol came with it.
“Yeah,
sure. You hand out this much plastique on drivers every week, right? Just pick
them out of Licktown bars for charity?”
I shrugged.
“Believe what you want. Just keep your speed down. You can drive as fast
as you like after you let me out.”
Nicholson
shook his tangled head. “This is fucked, man—”
“There.
Standing on the walkway. Drop me there.” There was a solitary figure
leaning on the rail up ahead, apparently contemplating the view of the bay.
Nicholson frowned with concentration and hunched the vastly out-sized shoulders
for which, presumably, he was named. The battered truck drifted sedately but
not quite smoothly across two lanes and came to a bumpy halt beside the
right-hand barrier.
I jumped
down, glanced around for bystanders, saw none and pulled myself back up on the
open door.
“All
right now, listen. It’s going to be at least two days till I get to
Seattle, maybe three, so you just hole up in the first hotel the city limits
datastack has to offer, and you wait for me there. Pay cash, but book in under
my name. I’ll contact you between ten and eleven in the morning, so be in
the hotel at those times. The rest of the time, you can do what you like. I
figure I gave you enough cash not to get bored.”
Graft
Nicholson bared his teeth in a knowing leer that made me feel slightly sorry
for anyone working in the Seattle leisure industry that week.
“Don’t worry ‘bout me, man. Old Graft knows how to grab a
good time by the titties.”
“I’m
glad. Just don’t get too comfortable. We may need to move it in a
hurry.”
“Yeah,
yeah. What about the rest of the plastique, man?”
“I
told you. You’ll get paid when we’re done.”
“And
what about if you don’t show up in three days?”
“In
that case,” I said pleasantly, “I’ll be dead. That happens,
it’d be better to drop out of sight for a few weeks. They’re not
going to waste time looking for you. They find me, they’ll be
happy.”
“Man,
I don’t think I’m—”
“You’ll
be fine. See you in three days.” I dropped back to the ground, slammed
the truck door and banged on it twice. The engine rumbled into drive and
Nicholson pulled the truck back out into the middle of the carriageway.
Watching
him go, I wondered briefly if he’d actually go to Seattle at all.
I’d given him a sizable chunk of credit, after all, and even with the
promise of a second down payment if he followed instructions, the temptation
would still be to double back somewhere up the coast and head straight back to
the bar I’d picked him out of. Or he might get jumpy, sitting in the
hotel waiting for a knock on the door, and skip before the three days were up.
I couldn’t really blame him for these potential betrayals, since I had no
intention of turning up myself. Whatever he did was fine by me.
In
systems evasion, you must scramble the enemy’s assumptions
, said Virginia in my ear.
Run as much
interference as you can without breaking pace
.
“A
friend of yours, Mr.Kovacs?” The doctor had come to the barrier and was
watching the car recede.
“Met
him in a bar,” I said truthfully, climbing over to her side, and making
for the rail. It was the same view I’d seen when Curtis brought me back
from Suntouch House the day of my arrival. In the gloomy, pre-rain light the
aerial traffic glimmered above the buildings across the Bay like a swarm of
fireflies. Narrowing my eyes, I could make out detail on the island of
Alcatraz, the grey-walled and orange-windowed bunker of PsychaSec SA. Beyond
lay Oakland. At my back, the open sea and to north and south a solid kilometre
of empty bridge. Reasonably sure that nothing short of tactical artillery could
surprise me here, I turned back to look at the doctor.
She seemed
to flinch as my gaze fell on her.
“What’s
the matter?” I asked softly. “Medical ethics pinching a
little?”
“It
was not my idea—”
“I
know that. You just signed the releases, turned a blind eye, that kind of
thing. So who was it?”
“I
don’t know,” she said not quite steadily. “Someone came to
see Sullivan. An artificial sleeve. Asian, I think.”
I nodded.
Trepp.
“What
were Sullivan’s instructions?”
“Virtual
net locater, fitted between the cortical stack and neural interface.” The
clinical details seemed to give her strength. Her voice firmed up. “We
did the surgery two days before you were freighted. Microscalpelled into the
vertebrae along the line of the original stack incision, and plugged it with
graft tissue. No show under any kind of sweep outside virtual. You’d have
to run a full neuro-electrical to find it. How did you guess?”
“I
didn’t have to guess. Someone used it to locate and lever a contract
killer out of the Bay City police holding stack. That’s Aiding and
Abetting. You and Sullivan are both going down for a couple of decades
minimum.”
She looked
pointedly up and down the empty bridge. “In that case, why aren’t
the police here, Mr.Kovacs?”
I thought
about the rap sheet and military records that must have come to earth with me,
and what it must feel like standing here alone with someone who had done all
those things. What it must have taken to come out here alone. Slowly, a
reluctant smile crept out of one corner of my mouth.
“All right,
I’m impressed,” I said. “Now tell me how to neutralise the
damn thing.”
She looked
at me seriously, and the rain began to fall. Heavy drops, dampening the
shoulders of her coat. I felt it in my hair. We both glanced up and I cursed. A
moment later she stepped closer to me and touched a heavy brooch on one wing of
her coat. The air above us shimmered and the rain stopped falling on me.
Looking up again, I saw it exploding off the dome of the repulsion field over
our heads. Around our feet, the paving darkened in splotches and then
uniformly, but a magic circle around our feet stayed dry.
“To
actually remove the locater will require microsurgery similar to its placement.
It can be done, but not without a full micro-op theatre. Anything less, and you
run the risk of damaging the neural interface, or even the spinal nerve
canals.”
I shifted a
little, uncomfortable at our proximity. “Yeah, I figured.”
“Well,
then you’ve probably also
figured
,” she said, burlesquing
my accent, “that you can enter either a scrambling signal or a mirror
code into the stack receiver to neutralise the broadcast signature.”
“If
you’ve got the original signature.”
“If,
as you say, you have the original signature.” She reached into her pocket
and produced a small, plastic-sheathed disc, weighed it in her palm for a
moment and then held it out to me. “Well, now you have.”
I took the
disc and looked at it speculatively.
“It’s
genuine. Any neuro-electrical clinic will confirm that for you. If you have
doubts, I can recommend—”
“Why
are you doing this for me?”
She met my
eye, without flinching this time. “I’m not doing it for you,
Mr.Kovacs. I am doing this for myself.”
I waited.
She looked away for a moment, across the Bay. “I am not a stranger to
corruption, Mr.Kovacs. No one can work for long in a justice facility and fail
to recognise a gangster. The synthetic was one of a type. Warden Sullivan has
had dealings with these people as long as I have had tenure at Bay City. Police
jurisdiction ends outside our doors, and Administration salaries are not
high.”
She looked
back at me. “I have never taken payment from these people, nor, until
now, had I acted on their behalf. But equally, I have never stood against them.
It has been very easy to bury myself in my work and pretend not to see what
goes on.”
“
‘The human eye is a wonderful device,’ ” I quoted from
Poems
and Other Prevarications
absently. “ ‘With a little effort, it
can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.’ ”
“Very
aptly put.”
“It’s
not mine. So how come you did the surgery?”
She nodded.
“As I said, until now I had managed to avoid actual contact with these
people. Sullivan had me assigned to Offworld Sleeving because there
wasn’t much of it, and the favours he did were all local. It made it
easier for both of us. He’s a good manager in that respect.”
“Shame
I came along then.”
“Yes,
it presented a problem. He knew it’d look odd if I was taken off the
procedure for one of his more compliant medics, and he didn’t want any
waves. Apparently this was
something big
.” She placed the same
derisive stress on the words as she had on my
figured
earlier.
“These people were jacked in at high level, and everything had to be
smooth. But he wasn’t stupid, he had a rationale all ready for me.”
“Which
was?”
She gave me
another candid look. “That you were a dangerous psychopath. A killing
machine turned rabid. And that, whatever the reasons, it wouldn’t be a
good idea to have you swimming the dataflows untagged. No telling where you
could needlecast to once you’re out of the real world. And I bought it.
He showed me the files they have on you. Oh, he wasn’t stupid. No.
I
was.”
I thought
of Leila Begin and our talk of psychopaths on the virtual beach. Of my own
flippant responses.
“Sullivan
wouldn’t be the first person to call me a psychopath. And you
wouldn’t be the first person to buy it either. The Envoys, well,
it’s…” I shrugged and looked away. “It’s a label.
Simplification for public consumption.”
“They
say a lot of you turned. That twenty per cent of the serious crime in the Protectorate
is caused by renegade Envoys. Is it true?”
“The
percentage?” I stared away through the rain. “I wouldn’t
know. There are a lot of us out there, yes. There’s not much else to do
once you’ve been discharged from the Corps. They won’t let you into
anything that might lead to a position of power or influence. On most worlds
you’re barred from holding public office. Nobody trusts Envoys, and that
means no promotion. No prospects. No loans, no credit.”