Free Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan Page B

cigarette. Ignoring the
ignition patch on the side of the packet, she searched her pockets, produced a
heavy petrol lighter and snapped it open. She seemed to be on autopilot, moving
aside almost without noticing to let a forensics team bring in new equipment,
then returning the lighter to a different pocket. Around us, the lobby seemed suddenly
crowded with efficient people doing their jobs.
    “So.”
She plumed smoke into the air above her head. “You know these
guys?”
    “Oh,
give me a fucking break!”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning,
I’ve been out of storage six hours, if that.” I could hear my voice
starting to rise. “Meaning, I’ve talked to precisely three people
since the last time we met. Meaning, I’ve never been on Earth in my life.
Meaning,
you know all this
. Now, are you going to ask me some
intelligent questions or am I going to bed?”
    “All
right, keep your skull on.” Ortega looked suddenly tired. She sank into
the lounger opposite mine. “You told my sergeant they were
professionals.”
    “They
were.” I’d decided it was the one piece of information I might as
well share with the police, since they’d probably find out anyway, as
soon as they ran the make on the two corpses through their files.
    “Did
they call you by name?”
    I furrowed
my brow with great care. “By name?”
    “Yeah.”
She made an impatient gesture. “Did they call you Kovacs?”
    “I
don’t think so.”
    “Any
other names?”
    I raised an
eyebrow. “Such as?”
    The
weariness that had clouded her face retreated abruptly, and she gave me a hard
look. “Forget it. We’ll run the hotel’s memory, and
see.”
    Oops.
    “On
Harlan’s World you’d have to get a warrant for that.” I made
it come out lazily.
    “We
do here.” Ortega knocked ash off her cigarette onto the carpet.
“But it won’t be a problem. Apparently this isn’t the first
time the Hendrix has been up on an organic damage charge. While ago, but the
archives go back.”
    “So how
come it wasn’t decommissioned?”
    “I
said up on charges, not convicted. Court threw it out. Demonstrable self
defence. Course,” she nodded over at the dormant gun turret, where two
members of the forensic team were running an emissions sweep,
“we’re talking about covert electrocution that time. Nothing like
this.”
    “Yeah,
I was meaning to ask. Who fits that kind of hardware in a hotel anyway?”
    “What
do you think I am, a search construct?” Ortega had started watching me
with a speculative hostility I didn’t much like. Then, abruptly, she
shrugged. “Archive précis I ran on the way over here says it got
done a couple of centuries back, when the corporate wars turned nasty. Makes
sense. With all that shit breaking loose, a lot of buildings were retooling to
cope. Course, most of the companies went under shortly afterwards with the
trading crash, so no one ever got around to passing a decommissioning bill. The
Hendrix graded to artificial intelligence status instead and bought itself
out.”
    “Smart.”
    “Yeah,
from what I hear the AIs were the only ones with any kind of real handle on
what was happening to the market anyway. Quite a few of them made the break
about then. Lot of the hotels on this strip are AI.” She grinned at me
through the smoke. “That’s why no one stays in them. Shame, really.
I read somewhere they’re hard-wired to want customers the way people want
sex. That’s got to be frustrating, right?”
    “Right.”
    One of the
mohicans came and hovered over us. Ortega glanced up at him with a look that
said she didn’t want to be disturbed.
    “We
got a make on the DNA samples,” the mohican said diffidently, and handed
her a videofax slate. Ortega scanned it and started.
    “Well,
well. You were in exalted company for a while, Kovacs.” She waved an arm
in the direction of the male corpse. “Sleeve last registered to Dimitri
Kadmin, otherwise known as Dimi the Twin. Professional assassin out