by Gary Gibson
‘Nope.’ Murakami shook his head. ‘I know it looks empty around here, but there’s still a hell of a lot of traffic heading for Luna. Hopper-loads of people have been flying in here twenty-four hours a day for the past couple of days and being sent straight through with no delay.’
Saul frowned. ‘Who?’
Murakami shrugged. ‘Again, sir, I was hoping you could tell me. Civilians mostly, from what I’ve seen.’
‘It’s the government,’ said Hall, with an expression of disgust on his face, ‘They’re getting their own people out and leaving the rest of us here to rot.’
Saul looked over at him. ‘You know that for a fact?’
‘All I can tell you is there are whole families arriving here, and they’re all being escorted by Special Ops types using heavy gear like Fido here.’ He nodded towards the Black Dog. ‘It’s like the lieutenant says. They’ve been bringing them in to the Florida Array day and night and shipping them through the gates to Copernicus as fast as they can.’
‘Special Ops, you said?’
‘Hundreds of them,’ said the soldier. ‘Look to me like they’re armed heavily enough to start a war somewhere. And here’s the other thing,’ he stabbed the air with one finger. ‘Nobody, but nobody, is coming back through, the other way. What the hell’s that about?’
After he left them, Saul signed into the main security database, downloading anything he could on Farad Maalouf that he hadn’t discovered already. At the same time, he continued making his way across one of the huge concourses.
The concourse was eerily silent. Enormous animated advertisements hung in the air, while an electronic display above the immigration checkpoints indicated a variety of off-world destinations. None of the usual civilian staff was visible, and so Saul passed unchallenged through a security gate and entered a transfer station that on any normal day would be processing a couple of hundred passengers at a time on to the shuttle-cars. During peak hours, each transfer station could handle close on three hundred people every seven minutes, both coming and going.
There were further squads of troopers guarding the transfer station, their Black Dogs pounding up and down across the concourse on sturdy steel legs. One swivelled its head towards Saul as he moved towards a shuttle-car, turning away again as soon as its onboard AI registered the newcomer’s clearance.
‘Hey!’
Saul turned to see a man wearing the uniform of a security commander hurrying towards him. ‘Your clearance doesn’t allow you through here,’ the man told him.
‘If it doesn’t,’ Saul replied, ‘that’s a first.’
The commander studied Saul’s UP clearance for a moment, then rolled his eyes in evident irritation. ‘Great, more screw-ups,’ he muttered. ‘Where exactly are you headed?’
‘Newton.’
‘Why?’
Saul forced a laugh, deciding the commander didn’t really need to know. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’m really not at liberty to discuss that.’
He watched the other man consider this for a moment, before shaking his head slowly. ‘That’s not good enough. So long as we’re under a state of emergency, you’re going to need to get fresh authorization. Maybe—’
‘Sir!’ A trooper came running up to them just then. ‘We’ve got sixty or more people just broke through a cordon near the secure runway, where we’re expecting another hopper to arrive in the next ten minutes. Johnson wants to know what his orders are.’
‘Shit,’ the commander swore under his breath. ‘All right,’ he instructed the trooper, ‘tell him to use any force necessary to clear the intruders away from the runway. Any force, is that understood?’
‘Sir.’ The trooper nodded, before jogging back the way he’d come.
‘As for you,’ the commander turned back to Saul, ‘I don’t have the time for this. Get into a shuttle-car right now before I change my mind.’
Saul stared after the retreating trooper. ‘Did I really hear you give that order? You’re firing on civilians now?’
The commander’s face reddened. ‘I already told you I don’t have time for this.’
Saul raised both hands in mock surrender, before quickly boarding the nearest shuttle-car. It shuddered as the hydraulic clamps released it and it began to move forward, gradually picking up speed. Saul took a window-seat and watched as the concourse slid out of sight and the shuttle-car was carried into one of several tunnels running parallel to each other, the walls crammed with coolant pipes, radiation feedback buffers and shielding.
Before long he was being transported across the dozen metres of the wormhole itself, as four-fifths of his weight dropped away.
<"Times New Roman">The Lunar Array proved to be just as eerily quiet as its earthbound counterpart, which struck Saul as remarkable, given it was several times larger. Where the Florida Array existed primarily to shuttle people backwards and forwards between Earth and the Moon, its lunar equivalent also provided access to a dozen interstellar destinations. The entire facility sprawled over nearly fifteen square kilometres, challenging even the nearby city in terms of sheer scale.
Saul made it through a series of impromptu checkpoints, with the help of some constructive lying, and soon learned that he was right in guessing that all incoming traffic from the colonies had been suspended, for the duration of an as yet unspecified emergency. But while he waited at one checkpoint in particular, a group of tired and harried-looking travellers were guided past by a phalanx of the Special Ops soldiers Murakami had mentioned earlier. Those they were escorting were clearly civilians, yet no one at the checkpoint attempted to confirm their credentials, or even find out by what authority they were being allowed to pass into areas that even Saul struggled to reach. As they passed close enough, he could see from their tags that every one of them had all-areas clearance. Even the troopers questioning him didn’t possess that level of clearance.
Somehow, he got through. Saul jumped on a robot bus empty of passengers, which carried him all the rest of the way to the Copernicus–Newton gate. There he once again found himself forced to do some fast talking in order to continue on his way. His weight increased again, once he had passed through the wormhole, but not to Earth-normal, for Newton was slightly smaller, and less dense. Finally, after yet more clearance checks and terse questioning upon his arrival, Saul looked around to find himself riding on a train passing through the shrouded city of Sophia, beneath an alien sky.
Dense, greenish-black vegetation smothered the valley walls that rose above the tented fabric containing the city’s human-breathable atmosphere. As Saul disembarked at the central rail terminus, the air was alive with the scents of sweet tea and roasting chestnuts, and Al-Khiba floated far above, with bands of dark orange and brown girdling its equator. One of the gas giant’s other moons was moving with stately grace across the sky, appearing tiny through distance, yet so clear and sharp that Saul almost imagined he could reach up and pluck it out of the air like some fulvous jewel.
It rapidly became clear that many of Newton’s public information services had either been reduced in operation or shut down altogether. Saul jumped on to an open-topped maglev bus that smelled of apples and rotting fish, closer to the centre of town, and gazed around as it carried him through the narrow, winding streets. Most of the people he saw wore business suits, or else the same casual clothing people tended to wear almost everywhere throughout the colonies. But the farther out he travelled, the more frequently he saw men wearing keffiyahs or taqiyah caps, some of them accompanied by women in chadors.
According to the scant information he’d been able to scrape out of the ASI’s databases, Farad’s brother lived in the north-eastern section of Sophia, not too far from where the city’s all-covering roof met the upper slopes of the valley. Saul had a distinct feeling, however, that actually finding Farad was going to prove to be a bitch.
It was already getting late Alcal businesses were starting to wind down for the night. Saul yawned involuntarily, and realized just how much this long and t
errible day had taken out of him. He let his eyelids droop for a moment, but all he saw behind them were scared and hungry people struggling along under a noonday sun, or those echoing concourses populated by nervous troopers following orders they didn’t understand.
Disembarking eventually in a part of town where he knew he could find a family-run hotel that he’d used before, he headed past a variety of small coffee shops clustered around one of the massive pillars that supported the city’s roof. Choosing a café, he ordered coffee and sweet pastries, and when the coffee arrived it proved so thick and bitter as to be almost undrinkable. But he persevered, and before long the caffeine began to work its magic, filling him with a temporary but nonetheless welcome sense of well-being. By the time he moved on, brushing through softly glowing adverts for baklava or Turkish tea, he was feeling a little more alert.
It didn’t take long for Saul to realize he was being followed, even though the streets were still busy with both pedestrians and road traffic. He stopped from time to time, as if to watch the sun slipping behind the gas-giant, and when he glanced back the way he’d come he spotted a couple of faces familiar from the café, but now mingling in with the crowds. He kept his eyes fixed on them, until it became clear they were trying just a bit too hard not to look his way.
Saul started to walk more quickly, while trying to figure out his next move. But before he reached a decision, someone approaching him lunged sideways, propelling him through a dark shop doorway.
He felt hands reach out for him, noticed faces barely distinguishable in the gloom. As he lashed out with his fist, he felt it make satisfying contact with yielding flesh. Someone groaned, but more bodies piled on top of him before he could take another swing.
They were yelling in what might have been Turkish, his contacts struggling to run a translation, but there were too many talking all at once for the software to come up with anything meaningful.
He kicked and struggled, but they had him down, with his face against the floor. One yanked his head back while another thrust a wad of cloth between his jaws, before pulling a bag over his head and securing it tight around his face.
Hands grabbed the back of his coat and dragged him further into the interior of the shop. A boot struck him hard in the ribs and Saul groaned in pain, just before he felt the prick of a needle in his neck. Immediately, dark tendrils of fatigue spread all the way through him, utterly irresistible, dragging him down into a warm and comforting darkness devoid of dreams.
TWENTY
Florida Keys, 5 February 2235
Disappearing turned out to be even easier than either of them might have hoped.
A few days before, Thomas Fowler had procured a set of contacts reple with fake UPs, for both himself and Amanda, from the ASI’s own evidence lockers, along with a substantial amount of black-market cash. They took off together one morning for his beach house down in the Keys, the ocean stretching out on either side of the highway, throughout the whole drive down from the airport at Marathon.
They had spent the next few days making love to the sound of the ocean crashing against the wharf near the house, often waking in the early hours when minor tremors sent plates crashing to the kitchen floor. Ashes from the recent eruptions of Soufrière and Mombacho were carried north on the wind, plastering rooftops and lawns, and turning them all a dull, leaden grey.
They often heard cars whipping by on the highway, as local residents fled, and one morning just before dawn they also heard gunshots, followed by the screech of rubber on tarmac. Fowler had got up and walked out on to the veranda, without turning the lights on, peering either way down the long road that ran parallel to the shore, but he saw nothing.
He dreamed of a faceless figure hunting him through the darkened rooms of the beach house, and when he woke knew he wouldn’t need a psychiatrist to figure out that he feared Donohue being sent after them. But Fowler had gambled that, with the end so very close, they would be safe – or as safe as it was possible to be, given the end of the world was approaching – so long as they didn’t make any attempt to pass through the Array.
The worst of the tremors occurred on their last night in the Keys. The house rocked on its foundations, as if a giant had lifted it up and was shaking it to see if anything might fall out. In the morning they found that dozens of roof shingles had come crashing down on to the patio. Also one of the exterior walls had buckled, sending plaster raining down, while the wind had whipped ashes mixed with salt water through the shattered windows and across the furniture.
They picked their way across broken glass as they packed the few belongings they needed, and climbed into Amanda’s car. Fowler didn’t look back as they drove away, even though he was leaving the beach house for ever.
There were few signs of life as they drove the short distance north to Key Largo. Palm trees and royal poinciana, whose branches had once blazed red, now bowed under the accumulated weight of volcanic ash. The streets were deserted, making Fowler wonder where his neighbours could possibly have fled. It wasn’t like there was anywhere they could possibly go that was safer.
He thought about it a while longer, then decided that the impulse driving the two of them to fly to the Far East wasn’t really so very different.
They had barely started out on their journey before they came across a van lying on its side, so that it straddled the divider. An open-topped sports car was parked haphazardly nearby, one of its doors left wide open as if its owner might return at any moment. A recorded voice emerged faintly from the dashboard, warning that the vehicle was low on power.
Amanda guided their own car around and past the second obstruction. Only once they were past did they see the bodies of a young woman and a man lying side by side, darkening pools of blood stthe tarmac around what was left of their heads.
After that encounter, they drove the rest of the way in silence. The Keys had become suddenly menacing in a way they hadn’t been before, even with the constant tremors and volcanic ashes.
In lieu of conversation, Thomas brought a news feed up on the dashboard. There were now up to half a dozen volcanoes reactivated along the spine of South America, all the way from Chile to Nicaragua. Yellowstone, too, was showing ominous signs of seismic activity, while yet more growths had been sighted emerging from the waters off the coast of Ecuador. Thermal-imaging satellites had verified several others, blossoming all along the mid-Atlantic ridge, like a cancer metastasizing throughout a living body.
They dodged several more abandoned cars, and at one point two men stepped out into the middle of the road and tried to flag them down. Having chosen to keep the car on manual, Amanda hit the accelerator and drove straight towards them, until they were finally forced to jump out of the way. Shouted invectives trailed in their wake as they sped on along the highway connecting the chain of islands.
By the time they reached Key Largo, it was clear that plenty of other people had fled north, yet there were still some signs of life continuing the same as ever. Dozens of businesses were tightly shuttered, while others were cheerfully open for business.
Somehow, thought Fowler, this was the strangest thing of all. But, then, there were few people privileged to know just how little time was left to them all.
They drove along the south road, following the natural curve of the key, until they reached the first of several artificial islands floating on platforms just above the waves and supported by spar buoys, each such island linked to the land by a pontoon bridge that extended out into the ocean. The platforms themselves were built from some kind of extremely flexible but tough polymer composite that could survive the worst of the local hurricanes.
The car bumped and juddered as it rolled on to the pontoon bridge leading to Alex Trouillot’s flight and fishing business, which extended across an entire platform of its own. Most of the available space was in fact taken up by a landing pad, on which sat two sub-orbital VTOLs that Fowler knew from prior experience could get them to Hong Kong in less than four hours. Next
to the platform were moored two antique twin prop float-planes, which Trouillot used for ferrying retired business executives out to sea for deep-water fishing.
They parked alongside a shop front with a grinning plastic swordfish suspended overhead. Fowler hesitated for a moment before getting out. He’d called ahead a few days earlier, explaining what he wanted to do, but, after everything he’d seen in the last few days, there was no reason to assume Alex hadn’t fled along with the rest of them. Just then he sighted Trouillot through a window, his feet propped up on a desk as he sat watching a TriView hanging from a nail. Fowler closed his eyes in silent relief and gratitude.
He noted a box of cartridges sitting on Trouillot’s desk as they entered, also a shotgun leaning against the wall and within easy reach. The TriView flickered between images of alien growths and volcaoes vomiting ash and smoke high into the stratosphere.
‘Mr Fowler,’ said Trouillot, rolling easily to his feet, with a glance at Amanda. ‘And this must be—’
‘Amanda,’ Fowler replied, as he shook hands with Trouillot. ‘She’ll be joining us.’
Amanda’s eyes slid towards the shotgun, and then back to Trouillot himself. ‘We saw some signs of trouble on the way here. Had any cause to use that thing yet?’
Trouillot shook his head. ‘Fortunately, no. But I’ve seen an awful lot of people heading north up the highway, and I’ve also heard word of a lot of looters coming the other way.’ His gaze flicked over to the TriView, and back. ‘I’ll have to admit, when you called, Mr Fowler, I got to wondering if you’d found some place safe from all this crap.’
‘None that I know of.’ Fowler shrugged apologetically. ‘I just have some unfinished business out in the Far East, that’s all. I’d . . . prefer to pay with paper, if I may.’
Fowler hoped he’d judged Trouillot right. It would be a mistake to automatically assume everyone operating a plane in Florida was involved in smuggling, but that didn’t mean a substantial number of them weren’t.
