“Sharyan Right Hand of God martyr,” said Carnage beamingly. “Not really, of course, but the race type’s accurate and it’s got an authentic Will of God enhanced response system.” He nodded at the other tank. “The marines on Sharya were multi-racial, but there were enough Jap-types there to make it believable.”
“Not much of a contest, is it?” I said. “State-of-the-art neurachem against century-old Sharyan biomech.”
Carnage grinned with his slack silicoflesh face. “Well, that will depend on the fighters. I’m told the Khumalo system takes a bit of getting used to, and to be honest it isn’t always the best sleeve that wins. It’s more about psychology. Endurance, pain tolerance…”
“Savagery,” added Ortega. “Lack of empathy.”
“Things like that,” agreed the synthetic. “That’s what makes it exciting, of course. If you’d care to come tonight, lieutenant, detective, I’m sure I can find you a couple of remaindered seats near the back.”
“You’ll be commentating,” I surmised, already hearing the specs-rich vocabulary that Carnage used come tumbling out over the tannoy, the killing ring drenched in focused white light, the roaring, surging crowd in the darkened seating, the smell of sweat and bloodlust.
“Of course I will.” Carnage’s logo’d eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been away so long, you know.”
“Are we going to look for these bombs?” said Ortega loudly.
It took us over an hour to go over the hold, looking for imaginary bombs, while Carnage looked on with poorly veiled amusement. Up above, the two sleeves destined for slaughter in the arena looked clown on us from their green-lit glass-sided wombs, their presences weighing no less heavily for their closed eyes and dreaming visages.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ortega dropped me on Mission Street as evening was falling over the city. She’d been withdrawn and monosyllabic on the flight back from the fightdrome, and I guessed the strain of reminding herself I was not Ryker was beginning to take a toll. But when I made a production of brushing off my shoulders as I got out of the cruiser, she laughed impulsively.
“Stick around the Hendrix tomorrow,” she said. “There’s someone I want you to talk to, but it’ll take a while to set up.”
“Fair enough.” I turned to go.
“Kovacs.”
I turned back. She was leaning across to look up and out of the open door at me. I put an arm on the uplifted door wing of the cruiser and looked down. There was a longish pause during which I could feel my blood beginning to adrenalise gently.
“Yes?”
She hesitated a moment longer, then said, “Carnage was hiding something back there, right?”
“From the amount he talked, I’d say yes.”
“That’s what I thought.” She prodded hurriedly at the control console and the door began to slide back down. “See you tomorrow.”
I watched the cruiser into the sky and sighed. I was reasonably sure that going to Ortega openly had been a good move, but I hadn’t expected it to be so messy. However long she and Ryker had been together, the chemistry must have been devastating. I remembered reading somewhere how the initial pheromones of attraction between bodies appeared to undergo a form of encoding the longer said bodies were in proximity, binding them increasingly close. None of the biochemists interviewed appeared to really understand the process, but there had been some attempts to play with it in labs. Speeding up or interrupting the effect had met with mixed results, one of which was empathin and its derivatives.
Chemicals. I was still reeling from the cocktail of Miriam Bancroft and I didn’t need this. I told myself, in no uncertain terms, I didn’t need this.
Up ahead, over the heads of the evening’s scattered pedestrians, I saw the holographic bulk of the left-handed guitar player outside the Hendrix. I sighed again and started walking.
Halfway up the block, a bulky automated vehicle rolled past me, hugging the kerb. It looked pretty much like the robocrawlers that cleaned the streets of Millsport, so I paid no attention to it as it drew level. Seconds later, I was drenched in the machine’s image cast.
…from the houses from the houses from the houses from the houses from the houses from the houses …
The voices groaned and murmured, male, female, overlaid. It was like a choir in the throes of orgasm. The images were inescapable, varying across a broad spectrum of sexual preference. A whirlwind of fleeting sensory impressions.
Genuine …
Uncut …
Full sense repro …
Tailored …
As if to prove this last, the random images thinned out into a stream of heterosex combinations. They must have scanned my response to the blur of options and fed directly back to the broadcast unit. Very high-tech.
Theflowendedwithaphone numberinglowing numerals and an erect penis in the hands of a woman with long dark hair and a crimson-lipped smile. She looked into the lens. I could feel her fingers.
Head in the Clouds, she breathed. This is what it’s like. Maybe you can’t afford to come up here, but you can certainly afford this.
Her head dipped, her lips slid down over the penis. Like it was happening to me. Then the long black hair curtained in from either side and inked the image out. I was back on the street, swaying, coated in a thin sheen of sweat. The autocaster grumbled away down the street behind me, some of the more streetwise pedestrians skipping sharply sideways out of its cast radius.
I found I could recall the phone number with gleaming clarity.
The sweat cooled rapidly to a shiver. I flexed my shoulders and started walking, trying not to notice the knowing looks of the people around me. I was almost into a full stride again when a gap opened in the strollers ahead and I saw the long, low limousine parked outside the Hendrix’s front doors.
Jangling nerves sent my hand leaping towards the holstered Nemex before I recognised the vehicle as Bancroft’s. Forcing out a deep breath, I circled the limousine and ascertained that the driver’s compartment was empty. I was still wondering what to do when the rear compartment hatch cracked open and Curtis unfolded himself from the seating inside.
“We need to talk, Kovacs,” he said in a man-to-man sort of voice that put me on the edge of a slightly hysterical giggle. “Decision time.”
I looked him up and down, reckoned from the tiny eddies in his stance and demeanour that he was chemically augmented at the moment, and decided to humour him.
“Sure. In the limo?”
“S cramped in there. How about you ask me up to your room?”
My eyes narrowed. There was an unmistakable hostility in the chauffeur’s voice, and a just as unmistakable hard-on pressing at the front of his immaculate chinos. Granted, I had a similar, if detumescing, lump of my own, but I remembered distinctly that Bancroft’s limo had shielding against the street ‘casts. This was something else.
I nodded at the hotel entrance.
“OK, let’s go.”
The doors parted to let us in and the Hendrix came to life.
“Good evening, sir. You have no visitors this evening—”
Curtis snorted. “Disappointed, hah, Kovacs?”
“—nor any calls since you left.” The hotel continued smoothly. “Do you wish this person admitted as a guest.”
“Yeah, sure. You got a bar we can go to?”
“I said your room,” growled Curtis, behind me, then yelped as he barked his shin on one of the lobby’s low metal-edged tables.