Ortega did not come back, but the aroma of what she had cooked curled through the apartment and my stomach flexed in sympathy. I waited some more, still trying to assemble all the jagged edges of the puzzle in my mind, but either my heart was not in it or there was still something major missing. Finally, I forced down the coppery taste of the hate and frustration, and went to eat.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kawahara’s groundwork was flawless.

An automated limo with JacSol insignia lightning-flashed onto its flanks turned up outside the Hendrix at eight the next morning. I went down to meet it and found the rear cabin stacked with Chinese designer-label boxes.

Opened back in my room, the boxes yielded a line of high quality corporate props that Serenity Carlyle would have gone wild for: two blocky, sand-coloured suits, cut to Ryker’s size, a half dozen handmade shirts with the JacSol logo embroidered on each wing collar, formal shoes in real leather, a midnight blue raincoat, a JacSol dedicated mobile phone and a small black disc with a thumbprint DNA encoding pad.

I showered and shaved, dressed and ran the disc. Kawahara blinked up on the screen, construct-perfect.

“Good morning, Takeshi-san, and welcome to JacSol Communications. The DNA coding on this disc is now webbed into a line of credit in the name Martin James Anderson. As I mentioned earlier, the punch-in corporate prefix for JacSol will negate any clash with Ryker’s genetic records or the account set up for you by Bancroft. Please note the coding below.”

I read off the string of digits in a single sweep, and went back to watching Kawahara’s face.

“The JacSol account will bear all reasonable expenses and is programmed to expire at the end of our ten-day agreement. Should you wish to dissolve the account earlier than this, double punch the code, apply the gene trace and double punch again.

“Trepp will contact you via the corporate mobile some time today, so keep the unit with you at all times. Irene Elliott will be downloaded at 21.45 West Coast time. Processing should take about forty-five minutes. And by the time you receive this message, SilSet Holdings will have your package. After consultation with my own experts, I have appended a list of the likely hardware Elliott will need, and a number of suppliers who can be trusted to acquire it discreetly. Charge everything through the JacSol account. The list will print out in hardcopy momentarily.

“Should you need any repetition of these details, the disc will remain playable for the next eighteen minutes, at which point it will self wipe. You are now on your own.”

Kawahara’s features arranged themselves in a PR smile and the image faded as the printer chittered out the hardware list. I scanned it briefly on my way down to the limo.

Ortega had not come back.

At SilSet Holdings I was treated like a Harlan Family heir. Polished human receptionists busied themselves with my comfort while a technician brought out a metal cylinder roughly the dimensions of a hallucinogen grenade.

Trepp was less impressed. I met her early that evening, as per her phoned instructions, in a bar in Oakland, and when she saw the JacSol image she laughed sourly.

“You look like a fucking programmer, Kovacs. Where’d you get that suit?”

“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.”