Where?

I looked up. Harsh neon tubes set in a concrete roof. I was sitting in the opened hatch of a dull metal cylinder, looking for all the world like an ancient aviator who’d forgotten to dress before climbing aboard his biplane. The cylinder was one of a row of about twenty backed up against the wall, opposite a heavy steel door which was closed. The air was chilly and the walls unpainted. Give them their due, on Harlan’s World at least the re-sleeving rooms are decked out in pastel colours and the attendants are pretty. After all, you’re supposed to have paid your debt to society. The least they can do is give you a sunny start to your new life.

Sunny wasn’t in the vocabulary of the figure before me. About two metres tall, he looked as if he’d made his living wrestling swamp panthers before the present career opportunity presented itself. Musculature bulged on his chest and arms like body armour and the head above it was cropped close to the skull, revealing a long scar like a lightning strike down to the left ear. He was dressed in a loose black garment with epaulettes and a diskette logo on the breast. His eyes matched the garment and watched me with hardened calm. Having helped me sit up, he had stepped back out of arm’s reach, as per the manual. He’d been doing this a long time.

I pressed one nostril closed and snorted tank gel out of the other.

“Want to tell me where I am? Itemise my rights, something like that?”

“Kovacs, right now you don’t have any rights.”

I looked up and saw that a grim smile had stitched itself across his face. I shrugged and snorted the other nostril clean.

“Want to tell me where I am?”

He hesitated a moment, glanced up at the neon-barred roof as if to ascertain the information for himself before he passed it on, and then mirrored my shrug.

“Sure. Why not? You’re in Bay City, pal. Bay City, Earth.” The grimace of a smile came back. “Home of the Human Race. Please enjoy your stay on this most ancient of civilised worlds. Ta-dada-DAH.”