Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon

“What did he do? Take some kind of moral stand?”

Kawahara’s mouth twisted without humour. “You mock me? You, with the blood of dozens from the Wei Clinic fresh on your hands. A butcher for the Protectorate, an extinguisher of human life on every world where it has managed to find a foothold. You are, if I may say so, Takeshi, a little inconsistent.”

Secure in the cool wrap of the betathanatine, I could feel nothing beyond a mild irritation at Kawahara’s obtuseness. A need to clarify.

“The Wei Clinic was personal.”

“The Wei Clinic was business, Takeshi. They had no personal interest in you at all. Most of the people you wiped were merely doing their jobs.”

“Then they should have chosen another job.”

“And the people of Sharya. What choice should they have made? Not to be born on that particular world, at that particular time? Not to allow themselves to be conscripted, perhaps?”

“I was young and stupid,” I said simply. “I was used. I killed for people like you because I knew no better. Then I learnt better. What happened at Innenin taught me better. Now I don’t kill for anyone but myself, and every time that I take a life, I know the value of it.”

“The value of it. The value of a human life.” Kawahara shook her head like a teacher with an exasperating student. “You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven’t you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you’ve seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?” She made a tiny spitting sound. “You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant , Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It’s the axiomatic truth of our times.”

“Bancroft didn’t think so.”

“Bancroft?” Kawahara made a disgusted noise deep in her throat. “Bancroft is a cripple, limping along on his archaic notions. It’s a mystery to me how he’s survived this long.”

“So you programmed him to suicide? Gave him a little chemical push?”

“Programmed him to…” Kawahara’s eyes widened and a delighted chuckle that was just the right blend of husk and chime issued from her sculpted lips. “Kovacs, you can’t be that stupid. I told you he killed himself. It was his idea, not mine. There was a time when you trusted my word, even if you couldn’t stomach my company. Think about it. Why would I want him dead?”

“To erase what you told him about Hinchley. When he was re-sleeved, his last update would be minus that little indiscretion.”

Kawahara nodded sagely. “Yes, I can see how that would fit for you. A defensive move. You have, after all, existed on the defensive since you left the Envoys. And a creature that lives on the defensive sooner or later comes to think on the defensive. You are forgetting one thing, Takeshi.”

She paused dramatically, and even through the betathanatine, a vague ripple of mistrust tugged at me. Kawahara was overplaying it.

“And what’s that?”

“That I , Takeshi Kovacs, am not you. I do not play on the defensive.”

“Not even at tennis?”

She offered me a calibrated little smile. “Very witty. I did not need to erase Laurens Bancroft’s memory of our conversation, because by then he had slaughtered his own Catholic whore, and had as much to lose as I from Resolution 653.”

I blinked. I’d had a variety of theories circling around the central conviction that Kawahara was responsible for Bancroft’s death, but none quite this garish. But as Kawahara’s words sank in, so did a number of pieces from that jagged mirror I’d thought was already complete enough to see the truth in. I looked into a newly revealed corner and wished I had not seen the things that moved there.

Opposite me, Kawahara grinned at my silence. She knew she’d dented me, and it pleased her. Vanity, vanity. Kawahara’s only but enduring flaw. Like all Meths, she had grown very impressed with herself. The admission, the final piece to my jigsaw, had slipped out easily. She wanted me to have it, she wanted me to see how far ahead of me she was, how far behind her I was limping along.

That crack about the tennis must have touched a nerve.

“Another subtle echo of his wife’s face,” she said, “carefully selected and then amped up with a little cosmetic surgery. He choked the life out of her. As he was coming for the second time, I think. Married life, eh Kovacs? What it must do to you males.”

“You got it on tape?” My voice sounded stupid in my own ears.

Kawahara’s smile came back. “Come on, Kovacs. Ask me something that needs an answer.”

“Bancroft was chemically assisted?”

“Oh, but of course. You were right about that. Quite a nasty drug, but then I expect you know—”

It was the betathanatine. The heart-dragging slow chill of the drug, because without it I would have been moving with the breath of air as the door opened on my flank. The thought crossed my mind as rapidly as it was able, and even as it did I knew by its very presence that I was going to be too slow. This was no time for thinking. Thought in combat was a luxury about as appropriate as a hot bath and massage. It fogged the whiplash clarity of the Khumalo’s neurachem response system and I spun, just a couple of centuries too late, shard gun lifting.

Splat !

The stun bolt slammed through me like a train, and I seemed to see the brightly lit carriage windows ratcheting past behind my eyes. My vision was a frozen frame on Trepp, crouched in the doorway, stungun extended, face watchful in case she’d missed or I was wearing neural armour beneath the stealth suit. Some hope. My own weapon dropped from nerveless fingers as my hand spasmed open and I pitched forward beside it. The wooden floor came up and smashed me on the side of the head like one of my father’s cuffs.

“What kept you?” asked Kawahara’s voice from a great height, distorted to a bass growl by my fading consciousness. One slim hand reached into my field of vision and retrieved the shard gun. Numbly, I felt her other hand tug the stungun free of the other holster.

“Alarm only went off a couple of minutes ago.” Trepp stepped into view, stowing her stungun, and crouched to look at me curiously. “Took McCabe a while to cool off enough to trip the system. Most of your half-assed security is still up on the main deck, goggling at the corpse. Who’s this?”

“It’s Kovacs,” said Kawahara dismissively, tucking the shard gun and stunner into her belt on her way to the desk. To my paralysed gaze, she appeared to be retreating across a vast plain, hundreds of metres with every stride until she was tiny and distant. Doll-like, she leaned on the desk and punched at controls I could not see.

I wasn’t going under.

“Kovacs?” Trepp’s face went abruptly impassive. “I thought—”

“Yes, so did I.” The holographic data weave above the desk awoke and unwound. Kawahara put her face closer, colours swirling over her features. “He double-sleeved on us. Presumably with Ortega’s help. You should have stuck around the Panama Rose a little longer.”

My hearing was still mangled, my vision frozen in place, but I wasn’t going under. I wasn’t sure if it was some side-effect of the betathanatine, another bonus feature of the Khumalo system, or maybe both in some unintended conjunction, but something was keeping me conscious.

“Being around a crime scene with that many cops makes me nervous,” said Trepp and put out a hand to touch my face.