Woken Furies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THIS IS WHO YOU ARE
THIS IS SOMEONE ELSE
THAT WAS A WHILE AGO
THIS IS ALL THAT MATTERS
THIS IS THE STORM TO COME
This book is for my wife,
Virginia Cottinelli,
who knows of impediment
Fury (n):
1a
intense, disordered and often destructive rage . . .
2
wild, disordered force or activity
3a
any of the three avenging deities who in
Greek mythology punished crimes
3b
an angry or vengeful woman
The New Penguin English Dictionary,
2001
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Most of this book I just went ahead and made up. In the few places where that wasn’t possible, I’m indebted to the following people for their help:
Dave Clare provided invaluable climbing advice and expertise, both on the page and on the rock. Kem Nunn’s excellent novel
Tapping the Source
and Jay Caselberg’s e-mails both offered valuable insight into the world of surfing. And Bernard at Diving Fornells taught me to exist safely underwater. Anything I got wrong was me, not them.
Special thanks also to Simon Spanton and Carolyn Whitaker, who waited with endless patience, and never even hinted at deadlines.
PROLOGUE
The place they woke me in would have been carefully prepared.
The same for the reception chamber where they laid out the deal. The Harlan family don’t do anything by halves and, as anyone who’s been Received can tell you, they like to make a good impression. Gold-flecked black décor to match the family crests on the walls, ambient subsonics to engender a tear-jerking sense that you’re in the presence of nobility. Some Martian artifact in a corner, quietly implying the transition of global custody from our long-vanished unhuman benefactors to the firmly modern hand of the First Families oligarchy. The inevitable holosculpture of old Konrad Harlan himself in triumphal “planetary discoverer” mode. One hand raised high, the other shading his face against the glare of an alien sun. Stuff like that.
So here comes Takeshi Kovacs, surfacing from a sunken bath full of tank gel, sleeved into who knows what new flesh, spluttering into the soft pastel light, and helped upright by demure court attendants in cutaway swimming costumes. Towels of immense fluffiness to clean off the worst of the gel and a robe of similar material for the short walk to the next room. A shower, a mirror—
better get used to that face, soldier
—a new set of clothes to go with the new sleeve, and then on to the audience chamber for an interview with a member of the family. A woman, of course. There was no way they’d use a man, knowing what they did about my background. Abandoned by an alcoholic father at age ten, raised alongside two younger sisters, a lifetime of sporadically psychotic reaction when presented with patriarchal authority figures. No, it was a woman. Some urbane executive aunt, a secret-service caretaker for the Harlan family’s less public affairs. An understated beauty in a custom-grown clone sleeve, probably in its early forties, Standard Reckoning.
“Welcome back to Harlan’s World, Kovacs-san. Are you comfortable?”
“Yeah. You?”
Smug insolence. Envoy training conditions you to absorb and process environmental detail at speeds normal humans can only dream about. Looking around, the Envoy Takeshi Kovacs knows in split seconds, has known since the sunken bath awakening, that he’s in demand.
“I? You may call me Aiura.” The language is Amanglic, not Japanese, but the beautifully constructed misunderstanding of the question, the elegant evasion of offense without resorting to outrage, traces a clean line back to the First Families’ cultural roots. The woman gestures, equally elegantly. “Though who I am isn’t very important in this matter. I think it’s clear to you whom I represent.”
“Yes, it’s clear.” Perhaps it’s subsonics, perhaps just the woman’s sober response to my levity that dampens the arrogance in my tone. Envoys soak up what’s around them, and to some extent that’s a contaminative process. You often find yourself taking to observed behavior instinctively, especially if your Envoy intuition grasps that behavior as advantageous in the current surroundings. “So I’m on secondment.”
Aiura coughs, delicately.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Solo deployment?” Not unusual in itself, but not much fun, either. Being part of an Envoy team gives you a sense of confidence you can’t get from working with ordinary human beings.
“Yes. That is to say, you will be the only Envoy involved. More conventional resources are at your disposal in great number.”
“That sounds good.”
“Let us hope so.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
Another delicate throat-clearing. “In due course. May I ask, once again, if the sleeve is comfortable?”
“It seems very.” Sudden realization.
Very
smooth, response at impressive levels even for someone used to Corps combat custom. A beautiful body, on the inside at least. “Is this something new from Nakamura?”
“No.” Does the woman’s gaze slant upward and left? She’s a security exec, she’s probably wired with retinal datadisplay. “Harkany Neurosystems, grown under offworld license for Khumalo-Cape.”
Envoys aren’t supposed to suffer from surprise. Any frowning I did would have to be on the inside. “Khumalo? Never heard of them.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“Excuse me?”
“Suffice it to say we have equipped you with the very best biotech available. I doubt I need to enumerate the sleeve’s capacities to someone of your background. Should you wish detail, there is a basic manual accessible through the datadisplay in your left field of vision.” A faint smile, maybe the hint of weariness. “Harkany were not culturing specifically for Envoy use, and there has not been time to arrange anything customized.”
“You’ve got a crisis on your hands?”
“Very astute, Kovacs-san. Yes, the situation might fairly be described as critical. We would like you to go to work immediately.”
“Well, that’s what they pay me for.”
“Yes.” Will she broach the matter of exactly who is paying at this point? Probably not. “As you’ve no doubt already guessed, this will be a covert deployment. Very different from Sharya. Though you did have some experience of dealing with terrorists toward the end of that campaign, I believe.”
“Yeah.” After we smashed their IP fleet, jammed their data transmission systems, blew apart their economy, and generally killed their capacity for global defiance, there were still a few diehards who didn’t get the Protectorate message. So we hunted them down. Infiltrate, befriend, subvert, betray. Murder in back alleys. “I did that for a while.”
“Good. This work is not dissimilar.”
“You’ve got terrorist problems? Are the Quellists acting up again?”
She makes a dismissive gesture. No one takes Quellism seriously anymore. Not for a couple of centuries now. The few genuine Quellists still around on the World have traded in their revolutionary principles for high-yield crime. Same risks, better paid. They’re no threat to this woman, or the oligarchy she represents. It’s the first hint that things are not as they seem.
“This is more in the nature of a manhunt, Kovacs-san. An individual, not a political issue.”
“And you’re calling in Envoy support.” Even through the mask of control, this has to rate a raised eyebrow. My voice has probably gone up a little as well. “Must be a remarkable individual.”
“Yes. He is. An ex-Envoy, in fact. Kovacs-san, before we proceed any farther, I think something needs to be made clear to you, a matter that—”
“Something certainly needs to be made clear to my commanding officer. Because to me this sounds suspiciously like you’re wasting Envoy Corps time. We don’t do this kind of work.”
“—may come as something of a shock to you. You, ah, no doubt believe that you have been resleeved shortly after the Sharya campaign. Perhaps even only a few days after your needlecast out.”
A shrug. Envoy cool. “Days or months—it doesn’t make much difference to m—”
“Two centuries.”
“What?”
“As I said. You have been in storage for a little under two hundred years. In real terms—”
Envoy cool goes out the window, rapidly. “What the
fuck
happened to—”
“Please, Kovacs-san. Hear me out.” A sharp note of command. And then, as the conditioning shuts me down again, pared back to listen and learn, more quietly: “Later I will give you as much detail as you like. For now, let it suffice that you are no longer part of the Envoy Corps as such. You can consider yourself privately retained by the Harlan family.”
Marooned centuries from the last moments of living experience you recall. Sleeved out of time. A lifetime away from everyone and everything you knew. Like some fucking
criminal.
Well, Envoy assimilation technique will by now have some of this locked down, but still—
“How did you—”
“Your digitized personality file was acquired for the family some time ago. As I said, I can give you more detail later. You need not concern yourself too much with this. The contract I am here to offer you is lucrative and, we feel, ultimately rewarding. What’s important is for you to understand the extent to which your Envoy skills will be put to the test. This is not the Harlan’s World you know.”
“I can deal with that.” Impatiently. “It’s what I do.”
“Good. Now, you will of course want to know—”
“Yeah.” Shut down the shock, like a tourniquet on a bleeding limb. Drag up competence and a drawled lack of concern once more. Grab on to the obvious, the salient point in all of this. “Just who the fuck is this ex-Envoy you so badly want me to catch?”
Maybe it went something like that.
Then again, maybe not. I’m inferring from suspicion and fragmented knowledge after the event. Building it up from what I can guess, using Envoy intuition to fill in the gaps. But I could be completely wrong.
I wouldn’t know.
I wasn’t there.
And I never saw his face when they told him where I was. Told him
that
I was, and what he’d have to do about it.