“Takeshi Lev Kovacs,” he said, mispronouncing my name with the same skill as his minion in the tank room. “By the powers vested in me by the UN Justice Accord, I discharge you on lease to Laurens J. Bancroft, for a period not to exceed six weeks, at the end of which time your parole status will be reconsidered. Please sign here.”

I took the pen and wrote my name in someone else’s handwriting next to the warden’s finger. Sullivan separated the top and bottom copies, and handed me the pink one. The doctor held up a second sheet and Sullivan took it.

“This is a doctor’s statement certifying that Takeshi Kovacs (d.h.) was received intact from the Harlan’s World Justice Administration, and subsequently sleeved in this body. Witnessed by myself, and closed circuit monitor. A disc copy of the transmission details and tank data are enclosed. Please sign the declaration.”

I glanced up and searched in vain for any sign of the cameras. Not worth fighting about. I scribbled my new signature a second time.

“This is a copy of the leasing agreement by which you are bound. Please read it carefully. Failure to comply with any of its articles may result in you being returned to storage immediately to complete the full term of your sentence either here, or at another facility of the Administration’s choice. Do you understand these terms and agree to be bound by them?”

I took the paperwork and scanned rapidly through it. It was standard stuff. A modified version of the parole agreement I’d signed half a dozen times before on Harlan’s World. The language was a bit stiffer, but the content was the same. Bullshit by any other name. I signed it without a blink.

“Well then.” Sullivan seemed to have lost a bit of his iron. “You’re a lucky man, Kovacs. Don’t waste the opportunity.”

Don’t they ever get tired of saying it?

I folded up my bits of paper without speaking and stuffed them into my pocket next to the letter. I was turning to leave when the doctor stood up and held out a small white card to me.

“Mr. Kovacs.”

I paused.

“There shouldn’t be any major problems with adjusting,” she said. “This is a healthy body, and you are used to this. If there is anything major. Call this number.”

I put out an arm and lifted the little rectangle of card with a machined precision that I hadn’t noticed before. The neurachem was kicking in. My hand delivered the card to the same pocket as the rest of the paperwork and I was gone, crossing the reception and pushing open the door without a word. Ungracious maybe, but I didn’t think anyone in that building had earnt my gratitude yet.

You’re a lucky man, Kovacs. Sure. A hundred and eighty light years from home, wearing another man’s body on a six-week rental agreement. Freighted in to do a job that the local police wouldn’t touch with a riot prod. Fail and go back into storage. I felt so lucky I could have burst into song as I walked out the door.

The hall outside was huge, and all but deserted. It looked like nothing so much as the Millsport rail terminal back home. Beneath a tilted roof of long transparent panels, the fused glass paving of the floor shone amber in the afternoon sun. A couple of children were playing with the automatic doors at the exit, and there was a solitary cleaning robot sniffing along in the shade at one wall. Nothing else moved. Marooned in the glow on benches of old wood, a scattering of humanity waited in silence for friends or family to ride in from their altered carbon exiles.

Download Central.

These people wouldn’t recognise their loved ones in their new sleeves; recognition would be left to the home-comers, and for those who awaited them the anticipation of reunion would be tempered with a cool dread at what face and body they might have to learn to love. Or maybe they were a couple of generations down the line, waiting for relatives who were no more to them now than a vague childhood memory or a family legend. I knew one guy in the Corps, Murakami, who was waiting on the release of a great-grandfather put away over a century back. Was going up to Newpest with a litre of whisky and a pool cue for homecoming gifts. He’d been brought up on stories of his great-grandfather in the Kanagawa pool halls. The guy had been put away before Murakami was even born.

I spotted my reception committee as I went down the steps into the body of the hall. Three tall silhouettes were gathered around one of the benches, shifting restlessly in the slanting rays of sunlight and creating eddies in the dust motes that floated there. A fourth figure sat on the bench, arms folded and legs stretched out. All four of them were wearing reflective sunglasses that at a distance turned their faces into identical masks.

Already on course for the door, I made no attempt to detour in their direction and this must have occurred to them only when I was halfway across the hall. Two of them drifted over to intercept me with the easy calm of big cats that had been fed recently. Bulky and tough-looking with neatly groomed crimson mohicans, they arrived in my path a couple of metres ahead, forcing me either to stop in turn or cut an abrupt circle around them. I stopped. Newly arrived and newly sleeved is the wrong state to be in if you plan to piss off the local militia. I tried on my second smile of the day.

“Something I can do for you?”

The older of the two waved a badge negligently in my direction, then put it away as if it might tarnish in the open air.

“Bay City police. The lieutenant wants to talk to you.” The sentence sounded bitten off, as if he was resisting the urge to add some epithet to the end of it. I made an attempt to look as if I was seriously considering whether or not to go along with them, but they had me and they knew it. An hour out of the tank, you don’t know enough about your new body to be getting into brawls with it. I shut down my images of Sarah’s death and let myself be shepherded back to the seated cop.

The lieutenant was a woman in her thirties. Under the golden discs of her shades, she wore cheekbones from some Amerindian ancestor and a wide slash of a mouth that was currently set in a sardonic line. The sunglasses were jammed on a nose you could have opened cans on. Short, untidy hair framed the whole face, stuck up in spikes at the front. She had wrapped herself in an outsize combat jacket but the long, black-encased legs that protruded from its lower edge were a clear hint of the lithe body within. She looked up at me with her arms folded on her chest for nearly a minute before anyone spoke.

“It’s Kovacs, right?”

“Yes.”

“Takeshi Kovacs?” Her pronunciation was perfect. “Out of Harlan’s World? Millsport via the Kanagawa storage facility?”

“Tell you what, I’ll just stop you when you get one wrong.”

There was a long, mirror-lensed pause. The lieutenant unfolded fractionally and examined the blade of one hand.

“You got a licence for that sense of humour, Kovacs?”

“Sorry. Left it at home.”

“And what brings you to Earth?”

I gestured impatiently. “You know all this already, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Have you got something to say to me, or did you just bring these kids along for educational purposes?”

I felt a hand fasten on my upper arm and tensed. The lieutenant made a barely perceptible motion with her head and the cop behind me let go again.

“Cool down, Kovacs. I’m just making conversation here. Yeah, I know Laurens Bancroft sprung you. Matter of fact, I’m here to offer you a lift up to the Bancroft residence.” She sat forward suddenly, and stood up. On her feet she was almost as tall as my new sleeve. “I’m Kristin Ortega, Organic Damage Division. Bancroft was my case.”

“Was?”

She nodded. “Case is closed, Kovacs.”

“Is that a warning?”