Altered Carbon Read Free Page B

the
letter. I was turning to leave when the doctor stood up and held out a small
white card to me.
    “Mr.Kovacs.”
    I paused.
    “There
shouldn’t be any major problems with adjusting,” she said.
“This is a healthy body, and you are used to this. If there
is
anything major. Call this number.”
    I put out
an arm and lifted the little rectangle of card with a machined precision that I
hadn’t noticed before. The neurachem was kicking in. My hand delivered
the card to the same pocket as the rest of the paperwork and I was gone,
crossing the reception and pushing open the door without a word. Ungracious
maybe, but I didn’t think anyone in that building had earnt my gratitude
yet.
    You’re a lucky
man, Kovacs
. Sure. A hundred and eighty
light years from home, wearing another man’s body on a six-week rental
agreement. Freighted in to do a job that the local police wouldn’t touch
with a riot prod. Fail and go back into storage. I felt so lucky I could have
burst into song as I walked out the door.
     

CHAPTER TWO
    The hall outside was huge, and all but
deserted. It looked like nothing so much as the Millsport rail terminal back
home. Beneath a tilted roof of long transparent panels, the fused glass paving
of the floor shone amber in the afternoon sun. A couple of children were
playing with the automatic doors at the exit, and there was a solitary cleaning
robot sniffing along in the shade at one wall. Nothing else moved. Marooned in
the glow on benches of old wood, a scattering of humanity waited in silence for
friends or family to ride in from their altered carbon exiles.
    Download
Central.
    These
people wouldn’t recognise their loved ones in their new sleeves;
recognition would be left to the home-comers, and for those who awaited them
the anticipation of reunion would be tempered with a cool dread at what face
and body they might have to learn to love. Or maybe they were a couple of
generations down the line, waiting for relatives who were no more to them now
than a vague childhood memory or a family legend. I knew one guy in the Corps,
Murakami, who was waiting on the release of a great-grandfather put away over a
century back. Was going up to Newpest with a litre of whisky and a pool cue for
homecoming gifts. He’d been brought up on stories of his
great-grandfather in the Kanagawa pool halls. The guy had been put away before
Murakami was even born.
    I spotted
my reception committee as I went down the steps into the body of the hall.
Three tall silhouettes were gathered around one of the benches, shifting
restlessly in the slanting rays of sunlight and creating eddies in the dust
motes that floated there. A fourth figure sat on the bench, arms folded and
legs stretched out. All four of them were wearing reflective sunglasses that at
a distance turned their faces into identical masks.
    Already on
course for the door, I made no attempt to detour in their direction and this
must have occurred to them only when I was halfway across the hall. Two of them
drifted over to intercept me with the easy calm of big cats that had been fed
recently. Bulky and tough-looking with neatly groomed crimson mohicans, they
arrived in my path a couple of metres ahead, forcing me either to stop in turn
or cut an abrupt circle around them. I stopped. Newly arrived and newly sleeved
is the wrong state to be in if you plan to piss off the local militia. I tried
on my second smile of the day.
    “Something
I can do for you?”
    The older of
the two waved a badge negligently in my direction, then put it away as if it
might tarnish in the open air.
    “Bay
City police. The lieutenant wants to talk to you.” The sentence sounded
bitten off, as if he was resisting the urge to add some epithet to the end of
it. I made an attempt to look as if I was seriously considering whether or not
to go along with them, but they had me and they knew it. An hour out of the
tank, you don’t know enough about your new body to be getting into brawls
with