The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “What’s the matter?” Sinon asked.

  Elana’s claw sliced through the man’s raggedy shirt, exposing his chest. There were strange ridges swelling out of his skin, mimicking the lines of muscle a healthy twenty-year-old mesomorph might have. When she prodded one with the tip of a claw, it sagged like a sack of jelly.

  “They always go for perfection,” she explained to Sinon and Choma. “Assholes. I don’t know what that energistic power is, but it screws up their flesh real bad under the illusion. Sometimes you get fat deposits building up, that’s pretty harmless; but nine times out of ten, it’s tumours.”

  “All of them?” Sinon asked.

  “Yep. Never satisfied with what they’ve got. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something, but I’m buggered if I can figure out what. We’re having to ship everyone who gets de-possessed back to Xingu and into one of the major hospitals. They’re overflowing already, and they don’t have enough nanonic packages to go around. Another week of this, and the entire Ombey system is going to go into medical meltdown. And that’s not taking you guys into account; you’re not exactly emerging unscathed from the Liberation.”

  “Can we help?”

  “Not a thing you can do, sorry. Now if you could clear out . . . I’ve got to try and organize some sort of transport for this batch. Hell, I wish we had hovercraft, they’re the only things that can travel properly over this swamp. That dickhead Hiltch won’t allow any planes in under the cloud yet.”

  Sinon and Choma left her and another couple of mercenaries running medical scanners over the unconscious man.

  All of them?sinon repeated gloomily. the prospect kindled a sensation of alarm, in itself a worrying development. He hadn’t configured himself to be waylaid by impulsive emotions. Do you know what that means?

  Trouble,choma declared. Real bad trouble.

  Chapter 08

  The vac-trains were an excellent solution to Earth’s transport problem in the age of the arcologies. There were no aircraft any more. The armada storms had finished off air travel in the same way they made people abandon their cars. One of the late Twenty-first Century’s most enduring newscable images was of a farmer’s pick-up truck rammed through the nineteenth-floor window of the Sears Tower in the wake of a storm. As the planet’s population flowed into cities and began strengthening them against the weather, so they turned to trains as the only practical method of transport between urban conglomerations. Heavy and stolid, tornadoes couldn’t fling them about so easily. Of course, they still took a battering from the wind if they were caught out in the open. So the next logical stage was to protect the tracks in the same way the domes were going up to shield the city centres. The first real example was the channel tunnel, which was extended to cover the whole journey between London and Paris. Once that proved viable, the global rail network was rapidly expanded. As with any macro-infrastructure project awash with government money, the technology advanced swiftly.

  By the time Louise and Genevieve arrived on Earth, the vac-trains were a highly mature system, travelling at considerable speed between stations. Common wisdom had the tunnels drilled kilometres deep in the safety of the bedrock. Not so; a lot of the time they didn’t even qualify as tunnels. Giant tubes were laid over the abandoned land, and buried just below the surface. It was much easier to maintain the vacuum inside that kind of factory-manufactured subway than in a rock tunnel. Tectonics played havoc with rigid lava walls that had been melted by a flame of fusion plasma; experience showed they fractured easily, and on a couple of occasions actually sheered. So tunnels were only used to thread the tubes through mountains and plunge deep under arcologies. Even trans-oceanic routes were laid in trenches and anchored in place.

  With no air to create friction, the trains were free to accelerate hard; on the longer trans-Pacific runs they touched Mach fifteen. Powered by linear motors, they were quick, smooth, silent, and efficient. The trip from Mount Kenya station to London’s Kings Cross took Louise and Genevieve forty-five minutes, with one stop at Gibraltar. Airlocks at both ends of their carriage matched up with platform hatches, and popped open.

  “All passengers for London please disembark,” the sparkling AV pillars on the carriage ceiling announced. “This train will depart for Oslo in four minutes.”

  The girls collected their big shoulder bags and hurried out onto the platform. They emerged into a long rectangular chamber, its ornately sculpted walls harking back to long-distant imperial grandeur. The line of twenty hatches connecting to the train appeared to be made of black wrought iron, Victorian-era space technology. On the opposite side, three large archways led to broad wave escalators that spiralled upwards with impressive curves.

  Genevieve stayed close behind her big sister as she negotiated their way across the platform. At least this time they managed to avoid barging in to people. Excitement was powering a smile that would not fade.

  An Earth arcology. London! Where we all came from originally. Home—sort of. How utterly utterly stupendous. It was the complete opposite of the nightmare that had been Norfolk by the time they left. This world had massive defences, and its people could do whatever they wanted with lots of fabulous machines to help them. She held Louise’s hand tightly as they stepped onto the wave elevator. “Where next?”

  “Don’t know,” Louise said. For some reason she was completely calm. “Let’s see what’s up there, shall we?”

  The wave escalator brought them onto the floor of a huge hemispherical cavern. It was like the arrivals hall of Mount Kenya station, only larger. The base of the wall was pierced by tunnel entrances radiating out to lift shafts and platforms for the local train network, while the floor was broken by concentric rows of wave elevators to the vac-trains. Bright informational spheres formed tightly packed streamers five metres above the heads of the thronging passengers, weaving around each other with serpentine grace. Right in the centre was a single flared spire of rock that rose up to eventually merge into the roof’s apex.

  “It’s just another station,” Genevieve said in mild disappointment. “We’re still underground.”

  “Looks like it.” Louise squinted up. Black flecks were zipping through the strata of informationals, as if they were suffering from static. She smiled, pointing. “Birds, look.”

  Genevieve twirled round, following their erratic flight. There were all sorts, from pert brown sparrows to emerald and turquoise parrots.

  “We’d better find a hotel, I suppose,” Louise said. She pulled her shoulder bag round to take the processor block out.

  Genevieve tugged at her arm. “Oh please, Louise. Can’t we go up to the surface first? I just want to look. I’ll be good, I promise. Please?”

  Louise tucked the shoulder bag back. “I wouldn’t mind a peek myself.” She studied the informationals, catching sight of one that seemed promising. “Come on.” She caught Gen’s hand. “This way.”

  They took a lift up to the surface. It brought them out in a mock-Hellenic temple at the middle of a wide plaza full of statues and fenced in by huge oaks. A small commemorative plaque on a worn pillar marked the passing of the station’s old surface structures and iron rail tracks. Louise walked out from the shade of the temple, wandering aimlessly for a few yards until she simply stopped. It was as if the arcology was appearing in segments before her. Slowly. As soon as her mind acknowledged one part, another would flip up behind that, demanding recognition.

  Though she didn’t know it, Kings Cross was the geographical heart of the tremendous Westminster Dome, which at thirty kilometres in diameter enclosed most of the original city, from Ealing in the west to Woolwich in the east. Ever since the first small protective domes went up over London (a meagre four km wide to start with—the best Twenty-first Century materials technology could manage), preservation orders had been slapped on every building of historical or architectural significance, which the conservationists basically defined as anything not built from concrete. By the time the Westminster Dome was constructed over t
hat initial cluster of ageing weather shields, the outlying districts had undergone significant changes, but any Londoner from the mid Nineteenth Century onwards would have been able to find their way around the central portion without too much trouble. It was essentially one of the largest lived-in museums on the planet.

  The nine smaller domes circling round outside the Westminster, however, were a different matter. London didn’t have the megatowers of New York, but the arcology still housed a quarter of a billion people beneath its geodesic crystal roofs. The outer domes were purpose built, four hundred square kilometres apiece of thoroughly modern arcology, with only tiny little zones of original buildings left as curios amid the gleaming condos, skyscrapers, and malls.

  Louise wasn’t aware of them at all. She could see on the other side of the oaks that the plaza was encircled by a wide road jammed with sleek vehicles, all driving so close together you couldn’t walk between them. The vehicles merged in and out of the giant roundabout from wide streets that radiated away between the beautiful ancient grey-stone buildings surrounding the plaza. When she raised her gaze above the blue-slate roofs and their elaborate chimney stacks, she could see even grander and taller buildings behind them. Then beyond those . . . It was as though she was standing at the bottom of a mighty crater whose walls were made entirely from buildings. Around the plaza they were elegant and unique, with each one somehow merging cleanly into its neighbours to form compact refined streets; but they grew from that to plainer, larger skyscrapers, spaced further apart. The towers’ artistry came from the overall shape rather than detailed embellishments, moulded to suggest Gothic, Roman, Art Deco, and Alpine Bavarian influences among others.

  And gathering all those disparate architectural siblings within its sheltering embrace was the external wall. A single redoubtable cliff of windows, a mosaic of panes so dense it blended into a seamless band of glass, blazing gold under the noonday sun. Out of that, rose the dome itself, an artificial sky of crystal.

  Louise sat down heavily on the plaza’s stone slabs, and let out a whoosh of breath. Gen sat beside her, arms folded protectively round her shoulder bag. London’s pedestrians flowed round them, eyes consummately averted.

  “It’s very big, isn’t it?” Gen said quietly.

  “Certainly is.” All those buildings, so many people. Despite feeling light headed, a weight of worry was threatening to sink her again. How in heaven’s name am I going to find a single person amid this multitude? Especially when they probably don’t want to be found.

  “Fletcher would really love this.”

  Louise looked at her sister. “Yes. I think he would.”

  “Do you suppose he’d recognize any of it?”

  “There may be bits left over from his time. Some of these buildings look quite old. We’ll have to look it up in the local library memory.” She broke off and smiled. That’s it, everything you ever need to know is in the processor memories. Banneth will be listed somewhere, I just have to program in the right search. “Come on. Hotel first. Then we’ll get something to eat. How does that sound?”

  “Jolly nice. What hotel are we going to?”

  “Give me a moment.” She took her processor block out, and started querying the arcology’s general information centre. Category visitors, subsection residential. Central, and civilized. They’d wind up paying more for a classy hotel, but at least they’d be safe. Louise knew there were parts of Earth’s arcologies that were terribly crime-ridden. And besides, “Kavanaghs never stay anywhere that doesn’t have a four-star rating,” Daddy had said once.

  Information slid down the screen. They didn’t seem to have star ratings here, so she just went by price. Central London hotels, apparently, cost as much to run as starships. At least the beds will be a lot more comfortable.

  “The Ritz,” she said finally.

  That just left getting there. With Genevieve getting progressively more impatient, as evidenced by overloud sighs and shuffling feet, Louise requested surface transport options from Kings Cross to the Ritz. After ten minutes struggling with horribly complicated maps and London Metro timetables that kept flashing up she realized she wasn’t quite as adept at operating the block as she thought she was. However, the screen did tell her there were taxis available.

  “We’ll take a cab.”

  Under Gen’s ungenerously sceptical look, she picked her shoulder bag up, and started off towards the oaks at the rim of the plaza. Flocks of parakeets and budgerigars pecking at the stone slabs stampeded out of her way. Most of the subway entrances had the name of the streets they led to, but a few had the London Transport symbol on top: blue circle cut by a red line, with a crown in the middle. Louise went down one to find herself in a short passage that opened out into a narrow parking bay. Five identical silver-blue taxi cars were waiting silently, streamlined bubbles with very fat tyres.

  “Now what?” Genevieve said.

  Louise consulted the block. She walked up to the first taxi, and keyed the Commence Journey icon on the block’s screen. The door hissed out five centimetres, then slid back along the body. “We get in,” she told her sister smugly.

  “Oh very clever. What happens if you don’t have a block to do that for you?”

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t see a handle anywhere. “I suppose everyone on this world is taught how to use things like this. Most of them have neural nanonics, after all.”

  There wasn’t much room inside, enough for four seats with deep curving backs. Louise shoved her bag in the storage bin underneath, and studied the screen again. The block was interfacing with the taxi’s control processor, which made life a lot simpler for her. The whole activation procedure was presented to her as a simple, easy-to-understand-menu. She fed in their destination, and the door slid shut. The taxi told the block what their fee was (as much as the vac-train fare from Mount Kenya), and explained how to use the seat straps.

  “Ready?” she asked Gen, when they’d fastened themselves in.

  “Yes.” The little girl couldn’t hide her enthusiasm.

  Louise held her Jovian Bank disk up to the small panel on the taxi’s central column, and transferred the money over. They started to roll forward. The taxi took them up a steep ramp, accelerating fast enough to press the sisters back into their seat cushioning. The reason was simple enough, they emerged right in the middle of the traffic racing round the Kings Cross plaza, slotting in without the slightest fuss.

  Genevieve laughed excitedly as they zipped across several lanes, then slowed slightly to turn off down one of the broad streets. “Golly, this is better than the aeroambulance.” The little girl grinned.

  Louise rolled her eyes. Though once she accepted the fact that the control processor did know how to drive, she began to breathe normally again. The buildings rushing past were old and sombre, which gave them a dignity all of their own. On the other side of the pavement barrier, pedestrians jostled their way along in a permanent scrum.

  “I never knew there were so many people,” Gen said. “London must have more than live on the whole of Norfolk.”

  “Probably,” Louise agreed.

  The taxi took them a third of the way round the expressway, then turned off, heading back down to ground level. There were parks on both sides of the road when they started their descent, then buildings rose up to their left, and they were back on one of the ancient streets again. The pavements here didn’t seem so crowded. They slowed drastically, pulling over to the right alongside a large cube of white-grey stone with tall windows lined by iron railings and a steep state roof. An open arcade ran along the front, supported by wide arches. The taxi stopped level with a gate in the roadside barrier, which a doorman opened smartly. He was dressed in a dark blue coat and top hat, a double row of brass buttons gleamed down his chest. At last, Louise felt at home. This was something she could deal with.

  If the doorman was surprised at who climbed out of the taxi he never showed it. “Are you staying here, miss?” he asked.

 
; “I hope so, yes.”

  He nodded politely, and ushered them under the arcade towards the main entrance.

  Genevieve eyed the front of the stolid building sceptically. “It looks dreadfully gloomy.”

  The lobby inside was white and gold, with chandeliers resembling frost-encrusted branches that had dazzling stars at the tip of each twig. Arches along the long central aisle opened into big rooms that were full of prim white tables where people were sitting having tea. Waiters in long black tailcoats bustled about, carrying trays with silver teapots and very tempting cakes.

  Louise marched confidently over to the gleaming oak reception desk. “A twin room, please.”

  The young woman standing behind smiled professionally. “Yes, madam. How long for?”

  “Um. A week to start with.”

  “Of course. I’ll need your ident flek, please, to register. And there is a deposit.”

  “Oh, we haven’t got an ident flek.”

  “We’re from Norfolk,” Gen said eagerly.

  The receptionist’s composure flickered. “Really?” She cleared her throat. “If you’re from offworld, your passports will be satisfactory.”

  Louise handed the passports over, thinking briefly of Endron again, and wondering how much trouble the Martian was in right now. The receptionist scanned the passports in a block and took the deposit from Louise. A bellboy came forward and relieved the sisters of their bags before showing them into a lift.

  Their room was on the fourth floor, with a large window overlooking the park. The decor was so reminiscent of the kind Norfolk landowners worshiped it gave Louise a sense of dйjа vu; regal-purple wallpaper and furniture so old the wood was virtually black beneath the polish. Her feet sank into a carpet well over an inch thick.

  “Where are we?” Gen asked the bellboy. She was pressed up against the window, staring out. “I mean, what’s that park called?”

  “That’s Green Park, miss.”