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Altered Carbon(168)

By:Richard Morgan


“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?”