Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon

Beside me, Prescott was looking unbearably snug inside her coat. She paid off the cab with a swipe of her thumb and we both stood back as it rose. A welcome rush of warm air from the lift turbines washed over my hands and face. I blinked my eyes against the small storm of grit and dust and saw how Prescott raised one slender arm to do the same. Then the cab was gone, droning away to join the beehive activity in the sky above the mainland. Prescott turned to the building behind us and gestured with one laconic thumb.

“This way.”

I pushed my hands into the inadequate pockets of my suit and followed her lead. Bent slightly into the wind, we picked our way up the long, winding steps to PsychaSec Alcatraz.

I’d expected a high-security installation, and I wasn’t disappointed. PsychaSec was laid out in a series of long, low double-storey modules with deeply recessed windows reminiscent of a military command bunker. The only break in this pattern was a single dome at the western end which I guessed had to house the satellite uplink gear. The whole complex was a pale granite grey and the windows a smoky reflectant orange. There was no holodisplay, or broadcast publicity, in fact nothing to announce we’d got the right place except a sober plaque laser-engraved into the sloping stone wall of the entrance block:

PsychaSec S.A.

________________

D.H.F. Retrieval and Secure Holding

Clonic Re-sleeving

Above the plaque was a small black sentry eye flanked by heavily grilled speakers. Oumou Prescott raised her arm and waved at it.

“Welcome to PsychaSec Alcatraz,” said a construct voice briskly. “Please identify yourself within the fifteen-second security time limit.”

“Oumou Prescott and Takeshi Kovacs to see Director Nyman. We have an appointment.”

A thin, green scanning laser flickered over us both from head to foot and then a section of the wall hinged smoothly back and down forming a passage inside. Glad to get out of the wind, I stepped nimbly into the niche and followed orange runway lights down a short corridor into a reception area, leaving Prescott to bring up the rear. As soon as we stepped off the walkway and into reception, the massive door slab rumbled upright and closed again. Solid security.

Reception was a circular, warmly lit area with banks of seats and low tables set at the cardinal compass points. There were small groups of people seated north and east, conversing in low tones. In the centre was a circular desk where a receptionist sat behind a battery of secretarial equipment. No artificial constructs here; this was a real human being, a slim young man barely out of his teens who looked up with intelligent eyes as we approached.

“You can go right through, Ms. Prescott. The Director’s office is up the stairs and third door on your right.”

“Thank you.” Prescott took the lead again, turning back briefly to mutter as soon as we were out of earshot of the receptionist, “Nyman’s a bit impressed with himself since this place was built, but he’s basically a good person. Try not to let him irritate you.”

“Sure.”

We followed the receptionist’s instructions until, outside the aforementioned door I had to stop and suppress a snigger. Nyman’s door, no doubt in the best possible Earth taste, was pure mirrorwood from top to bottom. After the high-profile security system and flesh and blood reception, it seemed about as subtle as the vaginal spittoons at Madame Mi’s Wharfwhore Warehouse. My amusement must have been evident because Prescott gave me a frown as she knocked on the door.

“Come.”

Sleep had done wonders for the interface between my mind and my new sleeve. Composing my rented features, I followed Prescott into the room.

Nyman was at his desk, ostensibly working at a grey and green coloured holodisplay. He was a thin, serious-looking man who affected steel-rimmed external eyelenses to go with his expensively cut black suit and short, tidy hair. His expression, behind the lenses, was slightly resentful. He’d not been happy when Prescott phoned him from the cab to say we would be delayed, but Bancroft had obviously been in touch with him because he accepted the later appointment time with the stiff acquiescence of a disciplined child.

“Since you have requested a viewing of our facilities here, Mr. Kovacs, shall we start? I have cleared my agenda for the next couple of hours, but I do have clients waiting.”

Something about Nyman’s manner brought Warden Sullivan to mind, but it was an altogether smoother, less embittered Sullivan. I glanced over Nyman’s suit and face. Perhaps if the Warden had made his career in storage for the super rich instead of the criminal element he might have turned out like this.

“Fine.”

It got pretty dull after that. PsychaSec, like most d.h.f. depots, wasn’t much more than a gigantic set of air-conditioned warehouse shelves. We tramped through basement rooms cooled to the 7 to 11 degrees Celsius recommended by the makers of altered carbon, peered at racks of the big thirty-centimetre expanded format discs and admired the retrieval robots that ran on wide-gauge rails along the storage walls. “It’s a duplex system,” said Nyman proudly. “Every client is stored on two separate discs in different parts of the building. Random code distribution, only the central processor can find them both and there’s a lock on the system to prevent simultaneous access to both copies. To do any real damage, you’d have to break in and get past all the security systems twice.”

I made polite noises.

“Our satellite uplink operates through a network of no less than eighteen secure clearing orbital platforms, leased in random sequence.” Nyman was getting carried away with his own sales pitch. He seemed to have forgotten that neither Prescott nor myself were in the market for PsychaSec’s services. “No orbital is leased for more than twenty seconds at a time. Remote storage updates come in via needlecast, with no way to predict the transmission route.”

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true. Given an artificial intelligence of sufficient size and inclination, you’d get it right sooner or later, but this was clutching at straws. The kind of enemies who used AIs to get at you didn’t need to finish you off with a particle blaster to the head. I was looking in the wrong place.

“Can I get access to Bancroft’s clones?” I asked Prescott abruptly.

“From a legal point of view?” Prescott shrugged. “Mr. Bancroft’s instructions give you carte blanche as far as I know.”

Carte blanche ? Prescott had been springing these on me all morning. The words almost had the taste of the heavy parchment. It was like something an Alain Marriott character would say in a Settlement years flic.

Well, you’re on Earth now . I turned to Nyman, who nodded grudgingly.

“There are some procedures,” he said.

We went back up to ground level, along corridors that forcibly reminded me of the re-sleeving facility at Bay City Central by their very dissimilarity. No rubber gurney wheel tracks here—the sleeve transporters would be air cushion vehicles—and the corridor walls were decked out in pastel shades. The windows, bunker peepholes from the outside, were framed and corniched in Gaudí-style waves on the inside. At one corner we passed a woman cleaning them by hand. I raised an eyebrow. No end to the extravagance.

Nyman caught the look. “There are some jobs that robot labour just never gets quite right,” he said.

“I’m sure.”

The clone banks appeared on our left, heavy, sealed doors in beveled and sculpted steel counterpointing the ornate windows. We stopped at one and Nyman peered into the retina scan set beside it. The door hinged smoothly outwards, fully a metre thick in tungsten steel. Within was a four-metre long chamber with a similar door at the far end. We stepped inside, and the outer door swung shut with a soft thud that pushed the air into my ears.