Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Someone sat at the table behind Angela. She paid them no attention.

  Olivia-Jay leaned forward. ‘Lady E is leaving next week,’ she confided.

  ‘What? How do you know?’ Angela was certain Evangeline had another month to go on her contract. Four months was standard.

  ‘I overheard Marc-Anthony and Loanna talking about it yesterday.’

  ‘I see.’ Loanna was the wardrobe mistress, who before she worked at the mansion used to glam up celebrities for a Hollywood zone production company. Hating herself for asking, for being part of it all, Angela said: ‘Why?’

  Olivia-Jay rolled her eyes. ‘One too many ideological rants to Brinkelle.’

  ‘I thought that’s why she was here, to give Bartram something to shoot down.’

  ‘They weren’t expecting someone quite so committed to the socialist cause. Brinkelle is worried she gets Bartram a little too worked up.’

  Angela shook her head in disbelief. Bartram always started the politics argument at their evening meals. It was his preferred topic, animating him more than the other discussions. The more heated the ideological argument, the longer he kept Evangeline in his bed afterwards. Angela suspected revenge sex was his favourite. Which made Brinkelle’s motivation highly questionable. ‘It’s just jealousy. She has a lot of daddy issues.’

  Olivia-Jay giggled wildly. ‘I always think you’d be better off talking politics with him rather than Lady E.’

  ‘Really? And can you imagine Evangeline telling him how Gilmer should play fullback, and Dewey ought to be on the other wing?’

  ‘Got a point, there. See, you’re the smart one, Angela.’

  She just smiled airily. Don’t even get started on that discussion, however light-hearted. ‘Come on, time to go.’ She picked up her beachbag.

  ‘No rush,’ Olivia-Jay grumbled. ‘He’s having treatment today. He never wants us around after that.’

  Angela had reluctantly come to admire Bartram for his dedication to the treatment. The biomedical Institute which he’d founded was devoted to one thing, developing a human rejuvenation process. Like every branch of science, genetics had suffered a major slowdown when trans-spacial connections had unlocked the new worlds for settlement. In the new era, money did what money always did, and went for the fastest payoff. With the gateways opening, that was investment in entire planetary economies; familiar corporate growth patterns and government bond schemes but in markets that didn’t suffer from Earth’s heavy regulation and harsh taxes. It wasn’t cutting-edge tech companies which brought the quick big profits any more, but the old staples of utilities and farming and distribution networks, and of course the algaepaddies. The money loved that. It was familiar and low risk with margins greater than gleaming short-lived technological breakthroughs. All the science-rooted consumerism corporates had suffered in the decades that followed publication of Wan Hi Chan’s theory; the money didn’t want maybes when it could have certainties.

  That was why the three North brothers had eventually split, they had the money and the drive to break the stagnation, each pursuing their individual vision of the future. For Augustine it was the straight corporate route, continuing to grow the bioil giant that had the fiscal and political clout to shape destiny. His greatest accomplishment to date was the cartel which had broken the futures market, and brought some much-needed stability to the trans-stellar economy. Constantine chose isolation supported by self-sustaining high-tech replication technology, hoping to achieve a human–machine synergy, elevating himself to the singularity. No one knew what kind of progress he’d made, but no new cyborg deities had yet materialized in Jupiter orbit. While Bartram lusted for the oldest human dream: eternal life.

  Out of the three, it was looking like Bartram would be the first to fully succeed. To begin with, the Institute had given him a genuine daughter, the first and only genuine offspring to be born to the three brothers. She was the family and future they had been denied before; supplanting all the 2s. And now, by painful increments, his body was being returned to its youthful ideal. Even better, this time round his reconstituted genes would have the one-in-ten sequence factored in.

  The process was phenomenally expensive. Some organs could be regrown for him; the heart, lungs, kidney, liver, spleen, bladder, muscles – a long useful list that modified stem cells could shape themselves into around pre-moulded scaffolds of tissue, producing a viable body part ready for transplanting. But that still left the remainder of the human body: the all-important skin, and bone, and blood vessels and nerves, all of which had to be rejuvenated in situ with gene-replacement therapy. Then there was the brain, for which Bartram’s Institute had pushed neuro-genesis techniques to astonishing new heights. It wasn’t just the cost which was staggering; the combined procedures took time. A lot of it. Rumour around the mansion was that Bartram had begun that stage twelve years ago.

  Angela didn’t know, and didn’t really care how long or how much it cost. The results were clear enough. Today, Bartram, at a hundred and nine years old, was more like a spry fifty-year-old unexpectedly struck with arthritis. He resented the painful stiffness, but was resolute in his determination to overcome it.

  ‘So we can spend even longer in town, then,’ Angela said.

  Olivia-Jay gave her a sly look. ‘Are you seeing someone?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t get anything if I did that, exclusivity is clause one in the contract. It’s the only one that ever matters.’

  ‘You are, aren’t you?’ Olivia-Jay was almost bouncing with excitement.

  ‘No! I just want a bit of time to myself. That’s not unreasonable, is it? Now come on.’

  They went to Birk-Unwin first, much to Olivia-Jay’s obvious disapproval. It was trying to push itself as a quality department store, but its pedigree showed in its accommodation: a revamped single-storey food-processing factory with awkward stanchions running the length inside that couldn’t quite be disguised by fanciful marketing displays. Nor did the location help, halfway down Marbeuf Avenue, several blocks from where Abellia’s real glitz and glamour began. For all its aspirations, Birk-Unwin was always going to be reasonably priced, last-year’s-model merchandise for the middle-income patron. So Olivia-Jay sighed theatrically as Angela dragged her between counters. Eventually she found what she was looking for.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Olivia-Jay said as Angela got an assistant to unlock the jewellery cabinet.

  ‘No.’ Angela held up the gold banana-shaped cufflinks, turning them in the light. They were the kind of deliberately gaudy trinket a low-rank manager would wear to demonstrate independence from the corporate machine – maybe something his fiancée had bought him. ‘I’ll take them,’ she told the assistant.

  ‘Angela!’ Olivia-Jay protested.

  ‘I know what I’m doing, thanks.’

  ‘Clearly, you don’t. Because if you did . . . Come on, let’s go to Tiffany’s, or Jerrards, or anywhere. If you really loved him, you would.’

  ‘I don’t, so flip it to zero.’ She told her e-i to pay Birk-Unwin’s account, using her own money, not the mansion’s tab. ‘Gift-wrapped, please,’ she asked the assistant.

  Tying a purple ribbon round the box took an extra three minutes. Longer than it should, but then the man was sneaking glances at the pair of them while he wrapped and tied.

  ‘I’ll catch you back at the Jag later,’ she told a mildly pouty Olivia-Jay once they were outside.

  ‘Suppose so.’

  Angela let the girl take the first taxi. She wouldn’t put it past Olivia-Jay to try and follow her. Once she’d seen the cab turn off at the end of Marbeuf Avenue her e-i called another one for her.

  ‘Monturiol Beach,’ she told the auto. They pulled away from the kerb emitting microwave and laser pulses which the road-guide cables and other autos deciphered; vehicles the length of the avenue adjusted their speed and positioning, allowing her cab into the modest flow. Angela peered down into her bag. She took o
ut the gift box, unwrapped it carefully on her lap, and removed the gaudy cufflinks. Then she reached into the beachbag and found the palm-sized black cardboard box that had been dropped in while she was sitting in the café.

  It contained a pair of cufflinks identical to the ones she’d just bought, as well as a pair of gossamer-thin grabber gloves. She took the gloves out carefully, remembering to hold them by the blue tag on the rim. They were so thin it was like holding mist. When she held them up they swayed about in the air-con streams with all the sluggish inertia of seaweed. As they moved, their refraction shimmer painted a phantom outline in the air – it was about the only way she could tell they existed.

  Frightened they would tear, she carefully slid her hand up into the first one. She needn’t have worried, their molecular structure had been carefully designed. When it was on correctly, she peeled the blue tag off, activating the adhesion process. The grabber glove melded to her skin. Even when she held her hand ten centimetres from her eyes, there was no way she could tell the glove was on. She rubbed her cheek. It felt like skin. Satisfied there was no way anyone could detect the grabber glove outside of a spectroscopic analysis, Angela pulled the second glove on. After that she opened the gift box from Birk-Unwin, and swapped the cufflinks round.

  Monturiol Beach was a small cove with deep rocky headlands on either side. The land at the back was taken up by the Ibanez condominium, a sweeping white concrete and dark glass structure with eight tiered balconies along the front, and living walls at both ends, producing elaborate vertical gardens. Apartments inside started at eight million Eurofrancs, with full valet services on tap, making it the nesting place of hard-edged bachelor types, the kind of executive who provided all the management and financial service support which the true corporate overlord didn’t like to be separated from.

  The cab stopped by the main gate, the auto lacking authorization to proceed. Angela’s e-i gave the gate manager her identity certificate, and the cab rolled forwards again. It stopped thirty seconds later under the eagle-wings portico, and Angela climbed out. Behind her, the Birk-Unwin cufflinks were wedged down the side of the seat cushions, unlikely to be found for months, if then. She’d swallowed the blue tags.

  Angela took the lift to the eighth floor. There were only four apartments at that level, all penthouses. The door of number three recognized her, and opened.

  Barclay North was waiting in the big open-plan lounge, with its balcony overlooking the deserted beach. Angela gave him a coy grin. ‘Hi,’ she said, all husky voiced.

  ‘Hi yourself. You look great.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She did a little twirl, which sent the short flimsy skirt fabric rising up. That morning she’d dressed specifically for Barclay, not that it required much thought or effort – short skirt, tight white T-shirt without a bra, simple pumps; hair tied back, moisturized skin but no make-up. A slightly cheaper version of the clothing Marc-Anthony and Loanna made her wear at the mansion. They knew what Bartram liked, she’d been chosen for her toned-up athletic looks, and their clothes emphasized that. And, of course, what one North liked all the others did, too. It wasn’t exactly trans-spacial connection science.

  The twirl finished up with her in front of Barclay. She dropped her bag and wrapped her arms around him, kissing hungrily. Barclay was thirty-one, and already appointed as Abellia’s Civic Administration’s comptroller; the kind of position Bartram insisted remain within the family domain. His age meant he was almost the last 2North to be born before Brinkelle. There would be no more of his kind – Bartram was expecting to walk away from his treatment with fully functional gonads. All future offspring would be like Brinkelle – a concept which made Angela shudder. It also made Barclay not a little jealous and resentful of his little sister, which made things easy for Angela from the first moment she started flirting with him.

  The kiss finished. Still grinning, Angela pulled her T-shirt off, warming her face into a sultry I-can’t-wait expression. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she purred.

  Barclay could barely look away from her naked torso. ‘Yeah?’

  She took the ribbon-tied box from her bag and offered it to him. He opened it up, mildly curious. When the lid came off there was a flash of puzzlement, quickly and professionally hidden. ‘Thank you, Angela.’ His lips twitched in genuine appreciation.

  ‘I know it’s not much,’ she said, her face tilted up, all youthfully serious now. ‘But I wanted to give you something. I want you to know how much you mean to me.’

  His smile was proud. As expected. He was the one who bought trinkets for girls, not the other way round. Like all men, especially ones as powerful as the Norths, he liked to believe a beautiful girl would fall head over heels for him. And that’s what must be happening, because she had so much to lose personally if Bartram ever found out about their affair, so she must like him for him, not just his money and position.

  ‘They’re quirky,’ he said. ‘I like that. I’ll put them on right away.’

  ‘No, don’t.’ She slipped the skirt down her legs, then wiggled out of her thong. ‘At least, not right away.’

  They did it in the Jacuzzi first, which he always liked. Then they took a break in the sauna, followed by more thrashing about on the lounge’s big cream-leather couch. One time, she let him have her up against a wall, legs and arms spread wide, all nicely submissive, the way a North enjoyed. Her hands were open, with his pressing up against her, pushing her hard against the wall, fingers to fingers, palm to palm. She triggered the grab, allowing the glove circuits and receptors to record his complete biometric pattern.

  After the wall, he collected a bottle of champagne from the kitchen, and they finished up in the bedroom with him licking the icy fizzing drink off her abdomen and thighs – just like his brother–father.

  Monday 11th February 2143

  The zone theatre’s city virtual showed the citycab taxi pulling in to the kerb outside the Suffren club on Carliol Street, just a few hundred metres from the Market Street Station. A man walked backwards out of the club and got into the taxi with a weird gravity-defying hop.

  ‘Get me his ID,’ Sid told Lorelle Burdette in the control room.

  ‘Running a recognition routine now,’ she assured him.

  The taxi pulled away from the club and manoeuvred backwards onto Worswick Street, moving in the half-time which the detectives had found was the easiest way to follow vehicles reversing along Newcastle’s ancient tangle of streets and through the dead coverage areas of ripped meshes and pulsed smartdust. This was the seventy-fourth they’d backtracked, and Sid was starting to worry about human error creeping in. It was tedious work that had so far produced nothing except for short tempers and growing resentment. Probability alone meant that they’d find the right taxi soon enough, and discover where it had picked up the unknown North’s body.

  Twenty minutes later the taxi was driving backwards along George Street towards the vast Fortin singletown, a carbon-black macrobuilding built in 2105, that had evicted the college and all the commercial units between Scotswood Road on the south up to Elwick Road, with George Street making its eastern wall and Maple Terrace its western. At thirty storeys high, it dominated the surrounding districts, looking like a nest of manufactured coral, soaking up the sunlight as part of its low-energy commitment, inset with ten thousand blind silver windows. A self-contained community with housing, shops, offices, schools, theatres, and fully protected by agency police. Connected to the Metro network, and with a recognized civil council that made sure local taxes were low, it was both inclusive with and separate from the rest of the metropolis. Singletowns were the best possible way forward for Earth’s cities, its developers championed back then; projects that would eat up GSW areas, banishing urban blight, providing homes and jobs for everyone. Indeed, three other singletowns had been built in Newcastle around the turn of the century. With low property taxes and a screening policy to keep out undesirable residents they became havens for the corporate middle classes; the ul
timate gated communities, shutting out the rest of the world’s problems.

  Sid watched the taxi back its way down George Street, getting ever closer to the ramp junction which led to one of the Fortin’s underground road access ramps. ‘Come on, down you go,’ he murmured. If the taxi had come out of there, picked up the passenger from inside the Fortin, that would effectively eliminate the vehicle. The surveillance systems in the singletown worked; privately funded, any rip, glitch or damage was repaired immediately. They could grab a full history of the man.

  Once again, the investigation had no luck. He watched the taxi roll past the ramp junction, and into Blandford Street. From there, of course, it wound up in the dead gap of the junction with St James’s Boulevard.

  ‘Why did it take that route?’ Lorelle asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Sid replied, and told her to centre the junction. Sometimes they got lucky, and a mesh further down the road would give them a bad visual angle on the blanked-out section. Not this time. Naturally. So Sid had to study the busy junction for several minutes, working out which of the taxis that drove through it was the one he was following.

  And that was why this was getting dangerous. They’d decided that each investigator was limited to a two-hour shift; the level of frustration combined with the finicky detail required meant that short-cuts and assumptions were too tempting. Sid wanted to backtrack every taxi himself, to be absolutely sure. But that was a physical impossibility, so he had to trust his colleagues. The nightmare scenario was they finished all two hundred and seven only to find somewhere down the line they’d made a mistake, that someone had overlooked a gap because the route appeared obvious, or they were tired, or they’d been distracted for a couple of seconds. If they didn’t find which taxi it was they’d have to start over.

  Actually, that wouldn’t happen; O’Rouke would make very sure of that.

  Sid confirmed the taxi travelled all the way along the Boulevard to the junction with the A186, and handed over to Eva at eleven o’clock. His two hours were up, and the relief was as strong as the guilt as he walked out of the theatre.