I grimaced. Compared to Kawahara, Death was a three-bout pushover.
I stopped at the prow and picked a point on the horizon to watch until Ortega made up her mind.
Suppose you know someone, a long time ago. You share things, drink deeply of each other. Then you drift apart, life takes you in different directions, the bonds are not strong enough. Or maybe you get torn apart by external circumstance. Years later, you meet that person again, in the same sleeve, and you go through it all over again. What’s the attraction? Is this the same person? They probably have the same name, the same approximate physical appearance, but does that make them the same? And if not, does that make the things that have changed unimportant or peripheral? People change, but how much? As a child I’d believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change. The only way to beat that was to go on stack forever.
Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done.
Virginia Vidaura, pacing the seminar room, lost in lecture mode.
But the fact that a sextant will let you navigate accurately across an ocean does not mean that the sun and stars do rotate around us. For all that we have done, as a civilisation, as individuals, the universe is not stable, and nor is any single thing within it. Stars consume themselves, the universe itself rushes apart, and we ourselves are composed of matter in constant flux. Colonies of cells in temporary alliance, replicating and decaying and housed within, an incandescent cloud of electrical impulse and precariously stacked carbon code memory. This is reality, this is self knowledge, and the perception of it will, of course, make you dizzy. Some of you have served in Vacuum Command, and will no doubt think that out there you have confronted existence vertigo.
A thin smile.
I promise you that the Zen moments you may have enjoyed in hard space are not much more than the beginning of what you must learn here. All and anything you achieve as Envoys must be based on the understanding that there is nothing but flux. Anything you wish to even perceive as an Envoy, let alone create or achieve, must be carved out of that flux.
I wish you all luck.
If you couldn’t even meet the same person twice in one lifetime, in one sleeve, what did that say about all the families and friends waiting in Download Central for someone they once knew to peer out through the eyes of a stranger. How could that even be close to the same person?
And where did that leave a woman consumed with passion for a stranger wearing a body she once loved. Was that closer, or further away?
Where, for that matter, did it leave the stranger who responded?
I heard her coming along the rail towards me. She stopped a couple of paces away and cleared her throat quietly. I quelled a smile, and turned round.
‘I didn’t tell you how Ryker came to have all this, did I?’
‘It didn’t seem the time to ask.’
‘No.’ A grin that faded as if swept away by the breeze. ‘He stole it. A few years back, while he was still working Sleeve Theft. Belonged to some big-time clone marketeer from Sydney. Ryker caught the case because this guy was moving broken-down merchandise through the West Coast clinics. He got co-opted into a local taskforce and they tried to take the guy down at his marina. Big firefight, lots of dead people.’
‘And lots of spoils.’
She nodded. ‘They do things differently down there. Most of the police work gets picked up by private contractors. The local government handle it by tying payment to the assets of the criminals you bring down.’
‘Interesting incentive,’ I said reflectively. ‘Ought to make for a lot of rich people getting busted.’
‘Yeah, they say it works that way. The yacht was Ryker’s piece. He did a lot of the groundwork on the case, and he was wounded in the firefight.’ Her voice was curiously undefensive as she related these details, and for once I felt that Ryker was a long way away. ‘That’s where he got the scar under the eye, that stuff on his arm. Cable gun.’
‘Nasty.’ Despite myself, I felt a slight twinge in the scarred arm. I’d been up against cable fire before, and not enjoyed the encounter very much.
‘Right. Most people reckoned Ryker earned every rivet of this boat. The point is, policy here in Bay City is that officers may not keep gifts, bonuses or anything else awarded for line-of-duty actions.’
‘I can see the rationale for that.’
‘Yeah, so can I. But Ryker couldn’t. He paid some cut-rate Dipper to lose the ship’s records and reregister her through discreet holding. Claimed he needed a safe house, if he ever had to stash someone.’
I grinned a little. ‘Thin. But I like his style. Would that be the same Dipper who ratted him out in Seattle?’
‘Good memory you’ve got. Yeah, the very same. Nacho the Needle. Bautista tells a well-balanced story, doesn’t he?’
‘Saw that too, huh?’
‘Yeah. Ordinarily, I’d have ripped Bautista’s fucking head off for that paternal uncle shit. Like I need emotional sheltering. He’s been through two fucking divorces and he’s not even forty yet.’ She stared reflectively out to sea. ‘I haven’t had the time to confront him yet. Too busy being fucked off with you. Look, Kovacs, reason I’m telling you all this is, Ryker stole the boat, he broke West Coast law. I knew.’
‘And you didn’t do anything,’ I guessed.
‘Nothing.’ She looked at her hands, palms upturned. ‘Oh, shit, Kovacs, who are we kidding? I’m no angel myself. I kicked the shit out of Kadmin in police custody. You saw me. I should have busted you for that fight outside Jerry’s and I let you walk.’
‘You were too tired for the paperwork, as I recall.’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ She grimaced, then turned to look me in the eyes, searching Ryker’s face for a sign that she could trust me. ‘You say you’re going to break the law, but no one gets hurt. That’s right?’
‘No one who matters,’ I corrected gently.
She nodded slowly to herself, like someone weighing up a convincing argument that may just change their mind for good.
‘So what do you need?’
I levered myself off the rail. ‘A list of whorehouses in the Bay City area, to start with. Places that run virtual stuff. After that, we’d better get back to town. I don’t want to call Kawahara from out here.’
She blinked. ‘Virtual whorehouses?’
‘Yeah. And the mixed ones as well. In fact, make it every place on the West Coast that runs virtual porn. The lower grade the better. I’m going to sell Bancroft a package so filthy he won’t want to look at it close enough to check for cracks. So bad he won’t even want to think about it.’