Altered Carbon(7)

“Forgetting what?”

Another pause, but this time Kristin Ortega seemed to be off balance for the first time in our brief acquaintance. There was hesitancy blurring her tone when she spoke again. “You’re not from here.”

“So?”

“So anyone from here would know what kind of man Laurens Bancroft is. That’s all.”

Fascinated at why someone would lie so ineptly to a total stranger, I tried to put her back at her ease. “A rich man,” I hazarded. “A powerful man.”

She smiled thinly. “You’ll see. Now do you want this lift or not?”

The letter in my pocket said a chauffeur would be outside the terminal to pick me up. Bancroft had made no mention of the police. I shrugged.

“I’ve never turned down a free ride yet.”

“Good. Then shall we go?”

They flanked me to the door and stepped out ahead like bodyguards, heads tilted back and lensed eyes scanning. Ortega and I stepped through the gap together and the warmth of the sunlight hit me in the face. I screwed up my new eyes against the glare and made out angular buildings behind real wire fences on the other side of a badly-kept landing lot. Sterile, and off-white, quite possibly original pre-millennial structures. Between the oddly monochrome walls, I could see sections of a grey iron bridge that came vaulting in to land somewhere hidden from view. A similarly drab collection of sky and ground cruisers sat about in not particularly neat lines. The wind gusted abruptly and I caught the faint odour of some flowering weed growing along the cracks in the landing lot. In the distance was the familiar hum of traffic, but everything else felt like a period drama set piece.

“…and I tell you there is only one judge! Do not believe the men of science when they tell you…”

The squawk of the poorly operated ampbox hit us as we went down the steps from the exit. I glanced across the landing area and saw a crowd assembled around a black-clad man on a packing crate. Holographic placards wove erratically in the air above the heads of the listeners. NO TO RESOLUTION 653!! ONLY GOD CAN RESURRECT!! D.H.F. = D.E.A.T.H. Cheers drowned out the speaker.

“What’s this?”

“Catholics,” said Ortega, lip curling. “Old-time religious sect.”

“Yeah? Never heard of them.”

“No. You wouldn’t have. They don’t believe you can digitise a human being without losing the soul.”

“Not a widespread faith then.”

“Just on Earth,” she said sourly. “I think the Vatican—that’s their central church—financed a couple of cryoships to Starfall and Latimer—”

“I’ve been to Latimer, I never ran into anything like this.”

“The ships only left at the turn of the century, Kovacs. They won’t get there for a couple more decades yet.”

We skirted the gathering, and a young woman with her hair pulled severely back thrust a leaflet at me. The gesture was so abrupt that it tripped my sleeve’s unsettled reflexes and I made a blocking motion before I got it under control. Hard-eyed, the woman stood with the leaflet out and I took it with a placating smile.

“They have no right,” the woman said.

“Oh, I agree…”

“Only the Lord our God can save your soul.”

“I—” But by this time Kristin Ortega was steering me firmly away, one hand on my arm, in a manner that suggested a lot of practice. I shook her off politely but equally firmly.

“Are we in some kind of hurry?”

“I think we both have better things to do, yes,” she said, tight lipped, looking back to where her colleagues were engaged in fending off leaflets of their own.

“I might have wanted to talk to her.”

“Yeah? Looked to me like you wanted to throat-chop her.”

“That’s just the sleeve. I think it had some neurachem conditioning way back when, and she tripped it. You know, most people lie down for a few hours after downloading. I’m a little on edge.”

I stared at the leaflet in my hands. CAN A MACHINE SAVE YOUR SOUL? it demanded of me rhetorically. The word ‘machine’ had been printed in script designed to resemble an archaic computer display. ‘Soul’ was in flowing stereographic letters that danced all over the page. I turned over for the answer.

NO!!!!!

“So cryogenic suspension is okay, but digitised human freight isn’t. Interesting.” I looked back at the glowing placards, musing. “What’s Resolution 653?”

“It’s a test case going through the UN Court,” said Ortega shortly. “Bay City public prosecutor’s office want to subpoena a Catholic who’s in storage. Pivotal witness. The Vatican say she’s already dead and in the hands of God. They’re calling it blasphemy.”