Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Reinert said, polite and respectful. ‘That’s how I know the call is genuine.’

  ‘That’s good e-craft,’ Sid said. ‘Elementary, but good. Three AIs tried to trace where the call originated from, but it was random dispersal routed, listed as interfaced with fifty-seven public cells around Newcastle. So your friend clearly knows his transnet security.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’d like to help you catch him, really I would.’

  ‘Thank you, Ernie. So there was never any address for you to call?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What happened if something went wrong, if you couldn’t do a job?’

  Ernie looked confused. ‘I could do all the jobs.’

  ‘Was anything ever said about what would happen to you if you couldn’t do one?’

  ‘No, sir. I just knew not to screw up. Old Kirk, he made that clear when he gave me the address code. Said if anyone used it to call me then there was no going back. I accepted that, sir, I know the score.’

  ‘So you never tried calling that address code yourself?’

  ‘No, sir, no point. Kirk said it was never interfaced until I was being called.’

  ‘Did Kirk ever indicate if it was a man or a woman on the other end?’

  ‘No, sir. I tried to remember those kind of details. I tried really hard for the others, but I couldn’t.’ He started shaking as a thin layer of sweat beads erupted from his brow. ‘Please don’t send me back there, sir, not to them. I’m trying to help, really I am. I’ll try so hard for you, sir.’

  Sid and Ian exchanged an awkward glance. ‘I know you’re trying, Ernie,’ Sid assured him. ‘So let’s try a different line, shall we? Can you tell me about the previous jobs you did for the untraceable address? How many have there been?’

  ‘Just the four, sir.’

  ‘Okay then, tell me about the first three.’

  By themselves they weren’t particularly remarkable. The first two, both in the first year after the arrangement began, were targeted muggings. Ernie had been given images of his victims, told what hotels they were staying in, and told what to retrieve from them. In both cases it was a personal transnet cell. Ernie had to leave the first gadget in a CoCoMore franchise café toilet, and the second in the gents at Newcastle Station. The third job had been last year, and was a whole different level. He’d organized a break-in team for the offices of D’Amato and Livie, a law firm specializing in corporate tax affairs. They had to gain entry without raising any alarm, and replace one of the network cores with an identical make and marque which Ernie collected from a waiter at the Olive Branch Bar on Grey Street, opposite the Theatre Royal. Ernie believed the man was wearing an identity mask, his face had that slightly too stiff look to it. After swapping the gadget, the team was to exit the office, also without incident. A feat they’d accomplished, much to Ernie’s satisfaction. He’d expected more jobs to come his way after proving himself like that. Then he got the St James disposal.

  Sid and Ian went into the observation office where Ralph had been watching. Lorelle Burdett joined them.

  ‘The mugging victims were easy to find,’ she told them. ‘Vladimar Orwell and Gus Malley.’

  ‘Who do they work for?’ Sid asked.

  ‘Orwell is employed by Longthorpe-AI – he’s a software expert.’

  ‘Okay, can you find out what contracts Longthorpe had at that time?’

  Lorelle gave him a smart grin. ‘That’ll be tough without a warrant, but they work just about exclusively for the bioil industry. Their AIs specialize in pipe-flow dynamics.’

  ‘And Burdett?’

  ‘Michtral Engineering.’

  ‘Ah.’ Even Sid had heard of them, a massive German heavy industry group that built bioil refineries. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll find out who D’Amato and Livie’s clients are.’

  ‘Again, we’ll need a warrant. But in this town, any law firm worth over a Eurofranc is going to have bioil companies on its client list.’

  ‘Thanks, Lorelle.’

  ‘So?’ Ralph asked as she left.

  ‘So,’ Sid said, ‘each of those jobs was bioil-industry related. Reinert’s controller is corporate.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s something we’re strongly considering. However, the reason we haven’t abandoned your investigation is because someone on the expedition has just been murdered by a five-blade claw.’

  ‘Aye, crap on it, man,’ Ian exclaimed. ‘You sure, like?’

  ‘Oh yes. Coombs was a xenobiology specialist. She was at Wukang, that’s Elston’s camp.’

  Sid didn’t know how to respond. He’d been so sure he’d just made his case perfectly. ‘There can’t be an alien,’ he said. ‘There just can’t. It’s North against North.’

  Ralph shrugged. ‘Sorry, but we’re not quite there yet. So where do you want to go next?’

  ‘Forensics,’ Sid said. ‘That’s all we’ve got left on the murder scene.’

  ‘Is that going to turn up anything?’ Ralph asked.

  It was Sid’s turn to shrug. ‘We’ll know when we know.’

  *

  Ralph Stevens left Market Street Station at six thirty that evening, walking towards Grey Street. Sid was standing on the corner, drinking a boXsnaX tea from a cardboard cup. ‘Nice evening. I’ll walk with you.’

  Ralph showed a brief flicker of surprise. ‘Sure.’

  They crossed Grey Street outside the theatre and turned up towards the Monument. Ralph stopped outside the Central Arcade’s big stone arch. Inside, the glass-roofed hallway was lined with small exclusive stores; while the upper levels had been refurbished as a boutique hotel just as its architects had originally envisaged over two centuries earlier.

  ‘You know this is me, right?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve never been inside the hotel. What’s it like?’

  ‘Nice. Why don’t you come up and take a look.’

  ‘That’d be grand, thanks, man.’

  Ralph’s room was decorated in lush brown, gold, and red colours, with a big bed and a small zone cubicle. The windows gave him a view down across Grey’s Monument. Sid looked at the pedestrians for a while, then the curtains swished shut.

  ‘I don’t often ask strange men back to my room,’ Ralph said.

  ‘The hotel doesn’t have meshes inside the rooms,’ Sid told him.

  ‘Lip-reading software, huh?’

  ‘It’s admissible in court.’

  ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘You want this solved, don’t you, one way or another, alien or corporate?’

  ‘HDA is focused entirely on proving or disproving the alien theory. That comes before anything, including court evidence and police log procedures.’

  ‘All right then. There’s a possibility we may have a lead that isn’t on the police logs.’

  ‘What?’ Ralph demanded. ‘Don’t fuck around with us on this, Sid. That’s a world you do not want to inhabit.’

  ‘There’s a hint from the gangs that something big is going down. I genuinely don’t know what, but you don’t get much bigger than murdering a North.’

  ‘Did this come from the Gang Task Force?’

  ‘No. This is a private non-police source, which is why it’s not on any log. Remember what happened to Jolwel Kavane?’

  It took a moment, but Ralph’s expression gave him away. ‘Ah. Fair enough. So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I can carry on chasing down the lead on my own, but I need some help.’

  ‘Sure. What sort of help?’

  ‘Surveillance. The best you can get for me. Keep it off-log so if it all goes arse over tit there’ll be no comeback for you. I want something I can tag three or four individuals with, something that they can’t detect or rip or burn, and they’ll never know about until we come crashing through the wall.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s the way you want to play it?’

  ‘It’s got me this far.’

  ‘All right, Sid, I’ll see what I can do for you.’


  Saturday 23rd March 2143

  It had rained overnight for the first time in a couple of days. Angela’s boots squelched on reassuringly familiar mud as she walked over to the long row of 350DL cargo pallets containing the camp’s stores. The jungle lapping against Wukang sparkled outlandishly in the borealis scintillations, with a billion droplets scattering the citron and cerise lightblooms in a prismatic miasma. Overhead, the ruby glare of their malaised star was hidden by thickening clouds that were powering in from the north, buffeted along by a fast wind. She wasn’t accustomed to so much background noise on St Libra; as well as the wind, she could often hear the crash of distant thunder rolling in across the hills.

  Those sharp cracks had become a constant reminder of the fragile relay of e-Rays that connected her to the greater civilization of the trans-space worlds. A reminder reinforced by one file in the camp’s net which everyone kept accessing, as if that would somehow lessen the blow. The e-Ray which had circled valiantly above the Eclipse Mountains for close on two months had been subject to the greatest barrage of lightning strikes. It had withstood them far beyond any redundancy measures its design anticipated, with component after component blowing. The AAV team had compensated with work-rounds and software patches until yesterday afternoon. The one remaining motor that drove the propeller had taken a direct hit, burning out. Without the stability it provided, the e-Ray began to pitch and yaw in the storm-accelerated jetstreams; gyrations which quickly sent it tumbling in a wild dive. Its weakened stress structure began to buckle, struts snapped puncturing the helium bubbles, and it began to long fall to the savage peaks below. A fall that was broadcast in hi-rez clarity from avionics that resolutely continued to function until the moment it struck naked rock.

  The gap it left in the relay chain was significant. The two e-Rays on either side of the Eclipse Mountains could just lock on to each other and maintain the relay; but that link had come at a massive cost in bandwidth, increasing the perception of isolation.

  It was stupid, she kept telling herself. After all, they were less than eight hours’ flying time from Abellia. If we had a plane.

  Angela reached the row of pallets, and told her e-i to ping the first. The smartdust tags on the boxes and packages stowed inside the casing responded, and content lists rolled down her grid. She and Forster Wardele had been reviewing the state of Wukang’s supplies ever since the night Coombs had been murdered. The attack on the camp’s net had done more damage than they realized at first, wiping or corrupting thousands of files. And the general inventory hadn’t been heavily protected.

  Paresh appeared at the end of the pallet row, leading Atyeo and Josh, all three of them in light body armour, grey carbon segments flexing as they moved. Their Heckler carbines were held with deceptive lightness, short barrels supporting several sighting sensors. Angela grinned and waved.

  ‘Hi,’ she said when they came over. She didn’t try to kiss Paresh. Not fair in front of the others when they were all on duty. Beside, his helmet would have made that difficult.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  Angela gestured at the long row of pallets. ‘I didn’t realize we had so much stuff. I suppose it’s lucky.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paresh spat. ‘Shit on Passam.’

  The real triumph of seclusion had come when they heard about the Daedalus at Sarvar evacuating seventy of the base’s eighty personnel first thing Friday morning. As soon as the small maintenance crew at Sarvar had finished their physical inspection for bombs, it had flown them all directly to Abellia.

  ‘A strategic withdrawal,’ Passam had told Elston. A Daedalus would return to Sarvar, refuel from the plentiful stocks there, and evacuate everyone from Wukang, Varese, and Omaru. When everyone from the three forward camps was back at Sarvar, they’d be brought home in a last evacuation flight by two Daedaluses.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Ravi Hendrik shouted in the mess tent Friday evening as the news filtered round. ‘Nobody is going to fly over the Eclipse range in these conditions. It’s practically suicide. The last flight was lucky to get through with the lightning only knocking one engine out. Eighteen times they got hit on the way back. Eighteen! One of the pilots at Abellia told me.’

  Angela had spent the time since telling herself she wasn’t bothered by the isolation, that it was temporary, that if they really needed help the HDA would order a Daedalus to fly in. ‘Once we find out what we’ve got stored here we’ll be better off,’ Angela said. ‘But there’s certainly enough food for a couple of months. Especially if you include nutrient jelly.’

  ‘Oh hell, girl,’ Atyeo pulled a face. ‘Have you ever eaten that crap?’

  ‘No. Is it bad?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what composition pack you mix it with, it still tastes like semolina that someone’s pissed in.’

  ‘Thanks for the image,’ Angela told him. ‘So, have you seen anything out there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Paresh said. ‘It’s not showing itself. But we’ll find the bastard eventually.’ He patted the carbine. ‘And when we do, it’ll be sorry.’

  What Angela wanted to tell him was how childish he was being, how stupid his reliance on having the biggest gun, but she held back. Wasn’t going to play the bitch token, there was too much resting on the Legionnaires being on her side. ‘You just be careful out there.’

  Something made a sharp click sound over by the pallets.

  The Legionnaires heard it too. Paresh glanced round. All of them lifted their carbines.

  Click. Click.

  ‘What the hell . . .’

  Something stung Angela’s cheek. ‘Ow!’ Her hand came up automatically, a wasp-swatting reflex. But St Libra didn’t have insects. Then something flickered across her vision before clicking off her armour vest. She cancelled her grid completely.

  The clicks were merging into a continuous clatter. Angela stared in amazement as a small white pellet bounced off Paresh’s armour right in front of her. Something pinched the back of her hand. Then her head was pricked again. She knew what the pellet was, just refused to acknowledge it. That can’t exist on St Libra. But there were dozens of them on the muddy ground around them, with more landing every second. As if to emphasize the portent, the wind started to gust harder.

  A mesmerized Josh was bending over, picking up one of the white pellets. ‘Hail?’ he said incredulously.

  Angela glanced up. Which was really stupid. She cried out as more hailstones smacked into her unprotected face. ‘Son of a bitch.’ The sky above was darkening further, a grey veil sliding across the borealis streamers, growing gloomier towards the horizon. Even as she hunched over for protection she could see the hailstones were getting bigger. Everything is larger on St Libra. One the size of a pebble struck her on the back of the neck. ‘Ouch.’ Her e-i was reporting a general alert. Angela looked round frantically for cover. The tents were a couple of hundred metres away. And she was suddenly suspicious about how much protection they’d offer in this. One of the self-loading trucks was parked at the end of the pallet row.

  ‘Come on!’ she yelled, and started sprinting for the machine. The Legionnaires ran after her, their armour making them slower. The sound of the hail hitting them turned them into clattering robot-like creatures. Then she was at the truck, diving underneath, scrabbling her legs round so they weren’t left exposed. Paresh and the other two arrived, and crawled in with her. The hailstones landing outside were as big as golf balls now, hitting hard, bouncing, shattering the ones already lying in the mud. They covered the ground as far as she could see, steaming lightly.

  ‘How the fuck could this happen?’ Josh yelled above the constant impact roar.

  ‘Sirius has redshifted,’ Angela shouted back. ‘That means it’s cooler. St Libra is starting to chill down.’

  ‘You’re shitting me, right?’

  ‘Does it fucking look like I’m joking?’

  Pressed up next to her, his arm over her shoulders (as if that would do any good), Paresh gave her a
worried glance. ‘What else is going to happen?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m not a goddamn climatologist.’ Anger was good. Anger stopped her being afraid.

  The deluge stopped after twenty minutes, when the clouds blew away to the south. Shifting variegated aurora light shone down once more, shimmering off the deep swathe of hailstones that smothered the ground.

  Angela and the Legionnaires crawled out from under the loader truck, and looked around at the ruined camp. Boots crunched on the uneven layer of ice. It was already starting to melt, vapour tendrils thickening around Angela’s legs and rising. People were emerging from wherever they’d found refuge from the despoiled sky’s fearsome hostility.

  ‘Wow, holy shit,’ an aghast Paresh muttered as he took in the damage. None of the tents was standing. The few that did still have a frame intact had shreds of photovoltaic sheets hanging from them, flapping weakly in the fading wind. Hailstones had shredded the glossy black fabric as if it was tissue. Even the big central mess tent had long tears across the roof, its posts leaning precariously. ‘This can’t go on,’ Paresh said loudly, close to panic. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Fuck the lightning, they’ve got to send a Daedalus for us. They’ve got to.’

  ‘They will,’ Angela said, knowing it was all a lie. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll come and get us.’

  Monday 25th March 2143

  Office3 was short on people when Sid arrived. Eva and Abner were sitting at their desks, immersed in their console zones, but they were alone. Last night had seen city police and agency constables deployed en masse to a holding yard in Last Mile. They were kept on standby through the night, ready to back up the GE Border Directorate troops.

  Highcastle residents had made an attempt to break through. The riot on the St Libra side had lasted for hours. The Directorate troops wound up using water cannon, heat-induction beams, and tangle bullets. Eventually the would-be returnees were repelled. But they were still there, thousands of them, camped out in their vehicles along Motorway A. The morning news was full of threats about turning off the bioil supplies to Earth unless they were allowed to come back. The GE energy commissioner was flying to Newcastle for talks with Augustine North. Markets were falling. And the HDA still refused to say if the sunspots were Zanth-related.