‘My name’s Anderson,’ I reminded her. ‘And the suit goes with the name.’
She pulled a face.
‘Well next time you go shopping, Anderson, take me with you. I’ll save you a lot of money, and you won’t come out looking like a guy takes the kids to Honolulu at weekends.’
I leaned across the tiny table. ‘You know Trepp, last time you gave me a hard time about my dress sense, I killed you.’
She shrugged. ‘Goes to show. Some people just can’t take the truth.’
‘Did you bring the stuff?’
Trepp put her hand flat on the table, and when she removed it there was a nondescript grey disc sealed in impact plastic between us.
‘There you go. As requested. Now I know you’re crazy.’ There might have been something like admiration in her voice. ‘You know what they do to you on Earth for playing with this stuff?’
I covered the disc with my own hand and pocketed it. ‘Same as anywhere else, I guess. Federal offence, down the double barrel. You forget, I don’t have any choice.’
Trepp scratched an ear. ‘Double barrel, or the Big Wipe. I haven’t enjoyed carrying this around all day. You got the rest of it there?’
‘Why? Worried about being seen in public with me?’
She smiled. ‘A bit. I hope you know what you’re doing.’
I hoped so too. The bulky, grenade-sized package I’d collected from SilSet had been burning a hole in my expensive coat pocket all day.
I went back to the Hendrix and checked for messages. Ortega had not called. I killed time in the hotel room, thinking through the line I was going to feed Elliott. At nine I got back in the limo and took it down to Bay City Central.
I sat in a reception room while a young doctor completed the necessary paperwork and I initialled the forms where he indicated. There was an eerie familiarity to the process. Most of the clauses in the parole were on behalf of stipulations, which effectively made me responsible for Irene Elliott’s conduct during the release period. She had even less say in the matter than I’d had when I arrived the week before.
When Elliott finally emerged from the RESTRICTED ZONE doors beyond the reception rooms, it was with the halting step of someone recovering from a debilitating illness. The shock of the mirror was written into her new face. When you don’t do it for a living, it’s no easy thing to face the stranger for the first time and the face that Elliott now wore was almost as far from the big-boned blonde I remembered from her husband’s photocube as Ryker was from my own previous sleeve. Kawahara had described the new sleeve as compatible, and it fitted that bleak description perfectly. It was a female body, about the same age as Elliott’s original body had been, but there the resemblance ended. Where Irene Elliott had been big and fair-skinned, this sleeve had the sheen of a narrow vein of copper seen through falling water. Thick black hair framed a face with eyes like hot coals and lips the colour of plums, and the body was slim and delicate.
‘Irene Elliott?’
She leaned unsteadily on the reception counter as she turned to look at me. ‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘My name is Martin Anderson. I represent JacSol Division West. We arranged for your parole.’
Her eyes narrowed a little, scanning me from head to foot and back again. ‘You don’t look like a programmer. Apart from the suit, I mean.’
‘I’m a security consultant, attached to JacSol for certain projects. There is some work we would like you to do for us.’
‘Yeah? Couldn’t get anyone else to do it cheaper than this?’ She gestured around her. ‘What happened, did I get famous while I was in the store?’
‘In a sense,’ I said carefully. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we dealt with the formalities here and moved on. There is a limousine waiting.’
‘A limo?’ The incredulity in her voice put a genuine smile on my face for the first time that day. She signed the final release as if in a dream.
‘Who are you really?’ she asked when the limousine was in the air. It felt like a lot of people had been asking me that over the past few days. I was almost beginning to wonder myself.
I stared ahead over the navigation block of the limo. ‘A friend,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s all you need to know for now.’
‘Before we start anything, I want—’
‘I know.’ The limousine was banking in the sky as I said it. ‘We’ll be in Ember in about half an hour.’
I hadn’t turned but I could feel the heat of her stare on the side of my face.
‘You’re not corporate,’ she said definitely. ‘Corporates don’t do this stuff. Not like this.’
‘The corporates do whatever turns a profit. Don’t let your prejudices blind you. Sure, they’ll burn down entire villages if it pays. But if having a human face is what cuts it, they’ll whip out a human face and put it on.’
‘And you’re the human face?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What’s the work you want me to do? Something illegal?’
I pulled the cylindrical virus loader out of my pocket and passed it across to her. She took it in both hands and examined the decals with professional interest. As far as I was concerned, this was the first test. I’d pulled Elliott out of the store because that way she would be mine in a way no one supplied by Kawahara or skimmed off the street would ever be. But beyond that I had nothing to go on but instinct and Victor Elliott’s word that his wife was good, and I was feeling slightly queasy about the direction I’d let things go. Kawahara was right. Good Samaritan gestures can be expensive.
‘So let’s see. You’ve got a first-generation Simultec virus here.’ Scorn made her enunciate each syllable slowly. ‘Collector’s item, practically a relic. And you’ve got it in a state-of-the-art rapid deployment jacket with anti-locational casing. Why don’t you just cut the crap and tell me what’s really in here? You’re planning a run, aren’t you?’
I nodded.
‘What’s the target?’
‘Virtual whorehouse. AI-managed.’
Elliott’s new lips parted in a soundless whistle. ‘Liberation run?’ ‘No. We’re installing.’
‘Installing this?’ She hefted the cylinder. ‘So what is it?’
‘Rawling 4851.’
Elliott stopped hefting abruptly. ‘That’s not funny.’
‘Wasn’t intended to be. That’s a dormant Rawling variant. Set for rapid deployment, as you so rightly observed. The activation codes are in my pocket. We are going to plant Rawling inside an AI whorehouse database, inject the codes and then weld the lid shut on it. There’s some peripheral stuff with monitoring systems, and some tidying up, but basically that’s the run.’
She gave me a curious look. ‘Are you some kind of religious nut?’
‘No.’ I smiled faintly. ‘It’s nothing like that. Can you do it?’
‘Depends on the AI. Do you have the specs?’
‘Not here.’
Elliott handed me back the deployment jacket. ‘I can’t tell you, then, can I?’
‘That was what I was hoping you’d say.’ I stowed the cylinder, satisfied. ‘How’s the new sleeve?’
‘It’s OK. Any reason why I couldn’t have my own body back? I’ll be a lot faster in my own—’
‘I know. Unfortunately it’s out of my hands. Did they tell you how long you’ve been in the store?’
‘Four years, someone said.’
‘Four and a half,’ I said, glancing at the release forms I’d signed. ‘I’m afraid, in the meantime, someone took a shine to your sleeve and bought it.’
‘Oh.’ She was silent then. The shock of waking up inside someone else’s body for the first time is nothing compared to the sense of rage and betrayal you feel knowing that someone, somewhere, is walking around inside you. It’s like the discovery of infidelity, but at the intimacy range of rape. And like both those violations, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just get used to it.