Altered Carbon(167)

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.”