“Tell me that when you’ve checked the stack,” I said, and started walking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I walked south.
Over my head, autocabs wove in and out of the traffic with programmed hyper-efficiency and swooped occasionally to ground level in attempts to stimulate custom. The weather above the traffic flow was on the change, grey cloud cover racing in from the west and occasional spots of rain hitting my cheek when I looked up. I left the cabs alone. Go primitive, Virginia Vidaura would have said. With an AI gunning for you, your only hope is to drop out of the electronic plane. Of course, on a battlefield that’s a lot more easily done. Plenty of mud and chaos to hide in. A modern city — unbombed — is a logistical nightmare for this kind of evasion. Every building, every vehicle, every street is jacked into the web, and every transaction you make tags you for the datahounds.
I found a battered-looking currency dispenser and replenished my thinning sheaf of plastified notes from it. Then I backed up two blocks and went east until I found a public callbox. I searched through my pockets, came up with a card, settled the call trodes on my head and dialled.
There was no image. No sound of connection. This was an internal chip. The voice spoke brusquely out of a blank screen.
“Who is this?”
“You gave me your card,” I said, “in case of anything major. Well, now it seems there’s something pretty fucking major we need to talk about, doctor.”
There was an audible click as she swallowed, just once, and then her voice was there again, level and cool. “We should meet. I assume you don’t want to come to the facility.”
“You assume right. You know the red bridge?”
“The Golden Gate, it’s called,” she said dryly. “Yes, I’m familiar with it.”
“Be there at eleven. Northbound carriageway. Come alone.”
I cut the connection. Dialled again.
“Bancroft residence, with whom do you wish to speak?” A severely-suited woman with a hairstyle reminiscent of Angin Chandra’s pilot cuts arrived on the screen a fraction after she started speaking.
“Laurens Bancroft, please.”
“Mr Bancroft is in conference at present.”
That made it even easier. “Fine. When he’s available, can you tell him Takeshi Kovacs called.”
“Would you like to speak to Mrs Bancroft? She has left instructions that—”
“No,” I said rapidly. “That won’t be necessary. Please tell Mr Bancroft that I shall be out of contact for a few days, but that I will call him from Seattle. That’s all.”
I cut the connection, and checked my watch. There was about an hour and forty minutes left of the time I’d given myself to be on the bridge. I went looking for a bar.
The small coin of urchin rhyme gleamed up at me from the silted bed of my childhood.
But I was afraid.
The rain still hadn’t set in when we got onto the approach road to the bridge, but the clouds were massing sullenly above and the windscreen was splattered with heavy droplets too few to trigger the truck’s wipers. I watched the rust-coloured structure looming up ahead through the distortion of the exploded raindrops and knew I was going to get soaked.
There was no traffic on the bridge. The suspension towers rose like the bones of some incalculably huge dinosaur above deserted asphalt lanes and side gantries lined with unidentifiable detritus.
“Slow down,” I told my companion as we passed under the first tower, and the heavy vehicle braked with uncalled for force. I glanced sideways. “Take it easy. I told you, this is a no-risk gig. I’m just meeting someone.”
Graft Nicholson gave me a bleary look from the driver’s seat, and a breath of stale alcohol came with it.
“Yeah, sure. You hand out this much plastique on drivers every week, right? Just pick them out of Licktown bars for charity?”
I shrugged. “Believe what you want. Just keep your speed down. You can drive as fast as you like after you let me out.”
Nicholson shook his tangled head. “This is fucked, man—”
“There. Standing on the walkway. Drop me there.” There was a solitary figure leaning on the rail up ahead, apparently contemplating the view of the bay. Nicholson frowned with concentration and hunched the vastly outsized shoulders for which, presumably, he was named. The battered truck drifted sedately but not quite smoothly across two lanes and came to a bumpy halt beside the right-hand barrier.
I jumped down, glanced around for bystanders, saw none and pulled myself back up on the open door.
“All right now, listen. It’s going to be at least two days till I get to Seattle, maybe three, so you just hole up in the first hotel the city limits datastack has to offer, and you wait for me there. Pay cash, but book in under my name. I’ll contact you between ten and eleven in the morning, so be in the hotel at those times. The rest of the time, you can do what you like. I figure I gave you enough cash not to get bored.”
Graft Nicholson bared his teeth in a knowing leer that made me feel slightly sorry for anyone working in the Seattle leisure industry that week. “Don’t worry ’bout me, man. Old Graft knows how to grab a good time by the titties.”
“I’m glad. Just don’t get too comfortable. We may need to move it in a hurry.”
“Yeah, yeah. What about the rest of the plastique, man?”
“I told you. You’ll get paid when we’re done.”
“And what about if you don’t show up in three days?”
“In that case,” I said pleasantly, “I’ll be dead. That happens, it’d be better to drop out of sight for a few weeks. They’re not going to waste time looking for you. They find me, they’ll be happy.”
“Man, I don’t think I’m—”
“You’ll be fine. See you in three days.” I dropped back to the ground, slammed the truck door and banged on it twice. The engine rumbled into drive and Nicholson pulled the truck back out into the middle of the carriageway.
Watching him go, I wondered briefly if he’d actually go to Seattle at all. I’d given him a sizable chunk of credit, after all, and even with the promise of a second down payment if he followed instructions, the temptation would still be to double back somewhere up the coast and head straight back to the bar I’d picked him out of. Or he might get jumpy, sitting in the hotel waiting for a knock on the door, and skip before the three days were up. I couldn’t really blame him for these potential betrayals, since I had no intention of turning up myself. Whatever he did was fine by me.
In systems evasion, you must scramble the enemy’s assumptions, said Virginia in my ear. Run as much interference as you can without breaking pace.
“A friend of yours, Mr Kovacs?” The doctor had come to the barrier and was watching the car recede.
“Met him in a bar,” I said truthfully, climbing over to her side, and making for the rail. It was the same view I’d seen when Curtis brought me back from Suntouch House the day of my arrival. In the gloomy, pre-rain light the aerial traffic glimmered above the buildings across the Bay like a swarm of fireflies. Narrowing my eyes, I could make out detail on the island of Alcatraz, the grey-walled and orange-windowed bunker of PsychaSec SA. Beyond lay Oakland. At my back, the open sea and to north and south a solid kilometre of empty bridge. Reasonably sure that nothing short of tactical artillery could surprise me here, I turned back to look at the doctor.