Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘So how busy are you on the fourth floor?’ Eva asked as they read the menus.

  ‘It’s eased off a bit now the GE is talking to Highcastle Council about letting people back through. The HDA Legionnaires have stood down, anyway; it’s just the GE Boarder Directorate troops guarding the gateway, with the agency constables on reserve. And I know for a fact that NI personnel are being allowed back. I was down on Last Mile this Saturday afternoon. There must have been fifty buses coming through the gateway in the hour I was there.’

  ‘Because they’ve shut down bioil production,’ Eva said. ‘There’s no reason for them to be there, any more.’

  ‘They have to keep them sweet,’ Ian said. ‘Northumberland Interstellar and the other Great Eight will need engineers to start the algaepaddies back up once the sunspots have gone and St Libra’s back to normal again.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  The waitress brought their drinks over. Eva ordered a salad with sautéed duck liver, walnuts, apple, and grape; Ian had the salmon fillet with new potatoes.

  ‘Did you hear what the actual percentage of GE bioil is that comes from St Libra?’ Eva asked in a low voice. ‘My husband says that the cut-off is going to—’

  Tallulah and two of her female office colleagues walked in. They were chattering happily as they came through the door, already taking their raincoats off. She stopped and gave Ian a surprised look. But not an unhappy one.

  He’d got the timing about right, then.

  ‘Hello,’ he said as he got to his feet. ‘I didn’t know you used this place.’

  ‘Um, yeah, sometimes,’ she admitted, warding off curious glances from her friends.

  Eva’s freckled forehead had creased into a mild frown of suspicion.

  ‘How are you coping?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Oh, better now, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He made a show of coming to a reckless decision. ‘Look, it’s fate I guess that we both wound up here. See, as it’s my lunch break, I’m technically off duty, so I’m in the clear to ask you if you’d like to go for a drink tonight, and maybe see Bloxo at the Sage.’ He waved a hand at the window, where the huge bulbous semi-silver curves of the giant Sage building dominated the other side of the river.

  ‘Bloxo?’ Tallulah’s surprise overrode her caution. ‘They’ve been sold out for weeks. How did you get tickets? Even Boris couldn’t—’ Her lips pressed together in annoyance.

  ‘Aye, well, man, being in the police does have some advantages. I have a friend who has a friend, so down the line my question goes, and back up comes a pair of tickets. But I’m a sad singleton again. So . . . yours if you’d like.’

  It took her a moment, spent not consulting with her friends. ‘Okay, that would be nice, thank you. But I’ll pay for it, of course.’

  ‘Aye, not going to argue with that, then.’

  They smiled sheepishly at each other, the way it always was between people who’d just shared a moment. Both submitting to fickle impulse that might, just might, lead to something altogether more promising.

  Ian’s smile had grown wider by the time he sat down; and Tallulah was walking off to a spare table on the other side of the room, friends gaggling in hushed, excited voices.

  ‘I don’t appreciate being used like that,’ Eva said, her tone and expression unforgiving.

  ‘Aye, man, it was just chance she came in here.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Ian, this trick you pull harvesting them, it’s not nice. Actually, it verges on creepy.’

  ‘Not with her,’ he said, defensively.

  ‘Yes, with her,’ Eva insisted. ‘This is just the same thing you pull with all the others.’

  ‘How then?’ Ian hissed in exasperation. ‘How else does someone like me ever get to meet a girl like that? I don’t know any other way. Okay, so I might have known she was coming here. But after that, everything that happens is just natural. You heard her, she said yes.’

  ‘All right, so she said yes. But Ian, she’s a witness in the biggest case you’ll ever work on. The murder was committed in her apartment.’

  ‘Away wi’ you, man, that’s just coincidence.’

  Eva shook her head before taking a sip of the wine. ‘Not with this case. I’ve seen how smart it was put together. There’ll be a reason, a connection. Her apartment was chosen for a purpose. I never fell for her innocent beauty bollocks. I don’t care how pretty she is, she knows something. She has to.’

  ‘Come on! What? We harvested everything there is to harvest on her. She’s a victim. They chose her at random to shunt us into another dead end. That’s the smart of it.’

  ‘You’re being crapped on. They should ban men from interviewing girls like that. Especially men like you. So you “just happen to have Bloxo tickets” is a coincidence, is it? They’re piling up in her life, aren’t they? Or maybe that is her life, a coincidence that there’s always a coincidence?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. You saw how she was with me. She never considered saying no. It’s going to work, her and me, you see.’

  ‘Until she finds you hitting on her best friend, or her little sister, or her mother if you’re really bored.’

  ‘No,’ Ian said firmly. ‘Not this time. This time, man, I knew as soon as I saw her.’

  ‘Oh dear God.’ Eva took a bigger drink of the wine. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, because crap knows you deserve to be hurt for once, but be careful. A girl like that . . .’

  ‘Aye, what, man? She’s too good for me? Is that what you think of me?’

  ‘She’s an eight and a half, maybe a full nine. You’re what? A four?’

  ‘Bollocks to you, pet.’

  ‘Just do yourself a favour, ease up until we download from Sherman’s crew.’

  ‘There is no connection!’

  ‘Fine. Good. Prove me wrong. If she is genuinely innocent, that’s going to force you into making some serious choices for once. It’s about bloody time you started to grow up, because – and trust me on this – Tallulah won’t put up with the usual shitty way you treat women. If you are even approaching serious, you’re going to have to get your act together big-time.’

  ‘Aye, thanks for that, Mum.’

  Eva couldn’t keep her face stern. ‘You and her? Really. I’ve got to admire that level of ambition.’

  ‘Hey, she’s not that far out of my league.’

  ‘Dream on, Romeo.’

  Tuesday 9th April 2143

  The ten weeks since he’d landed on Newcastle’s Town Moor in his lightwave spaceship had been difficult for Clayton 2North. That first night, when he and Ivan’s team had abducted his brother-cousin Abner, had probably been the worst. But Abner’s age matched his own rejuvenated appearance the best, making him the inevitable choice. It had been a long time since he’d done any active field work. He had to steel himself against Abner’s fear and confusion when they broke into his flat and surrounded him in his own bedroom. Fortunately, such aloofness came easily to a North.

  The bargain helped. Abner’s cooperation in exchange for a full rejuvenation treatment at the Jupiter habitat, something he would probably never receive on Earth. To sweeten the deal, Clayton even offered a one-in-ten genetic resequence at the same time. Abner seethed and shouted and cursed, but after that show of defiance to prove he wasn’t someone you could just push around, he agreed to being given a thousand years of extra life with phenomenal bad grace.

  So it was that Clayton had gone to work on the morning of Tuesday the fifteenth of January masquerading as Abner. He had some leeway settling in; with a brother 2North just murdered it was reasonable to expect him to be shocked, not quite his usual self. With the codes and personal information Abner had grudgingly donated in a fast debrief, he had quickly grown into his adopted identity. From that moment the only other victim of the swap had been poor Melissa Stosnoski, Abner’s girlfriend, who had been unceremoniously dumped – again, a well-refined North trait.

  For all his achievem
ent in fitting his new role, those ten weeks had been deeply frustrating. He had to admit, Detective Sid Hurst ran a good investigation, especially under the duress of HDA supervision and interference. The determination all of the team showed in the nightmare monotony of backtracking the taxi was admirable.

  But for all the investigation’s achievements, the only substantial result those ten weeks had actually delivered was Ernie Reinert, the expendable clean-up guy who didn’t know anything. Hardly a stunning success.

  Something on St Libra which had killed several Norths had returned, and was still walking round Newcastle with impunity. Given how thorough and dedicated Sid had been, that was actually quite troublesome to Clayton. It was Constantine’s unshakable belief that there was no conflict between Augustine and Bartram setting the agenda, this wasn’t a corporate conflict gone bad. This was something altogether stranger. Ever since Bartram’s murder, Jupiter had been playing the long game, waiting for the alien to emerge again.

  Constantine’s first decision following Angela Tramelo’s near-farcical trial was to appoint Clayton to head up a detailed private enquiry into the whole horrendous event. He’d spent eighteen months on a painstaking review, unencumbered by political jurisdiction turf wars between Abellia and the GE, but aided by specialist and expensive byteheads who could pull information from places they shouldn’t even know existed. He even visited New Washington and personally talked to Marlak; an altogether more pleasant experience than his fast, short, expletive-filled meeting with Shasta Nolif. When he’d finished he was able to present a revelatory file to Constantine concerning the utterly fascinating life of Ms Angela DeVoyal/Matthews/Howard/Tramelo.

  She was innocent of the murders he had no doubt, her brutal HDA interrogation clinched that. Which meant there really was an unknown entity targeting the North family. As a precaution they brought Rebka to Jupiter, a covert operation Clayton still regarded as his finest hour. Having her living in the habitat and part of their community gave Constantine an extra move to play should they need it. After that, there was little else to do but watch and wait. No one had expected the wait to be quite so long.

  But now, despite everything, Newcastle was proving to be a dead end. The only unnerving thing to emerge was the existence of at least one unknown 2North. And nobody at Jupiter had any idea about that. Whatever or whoever it was that had taken to murdering Norths, it had moved back to St Libra. Rebka’s last call had been very clear on that point. Now she along with the rest of Wukang was cut off, and being stalked. He was reasonably confident she could survive any attack from the creature whose image had been extracted from Angela’s memory. Rebka had the same advanced combat equipment he did, and she was trained for the encounter.

  What Clayton didn’t understand, and it was his biggest worry, was why the alien had singled out camp Wukang.

  So while the Newcastle police had finished investigating the murder, and sent their files up to the Prosecution Bureau, Clayton certainly hadn’t given up his analysis. Which was why he was in Market Street at nine pm, sitting in an unused second-floor office, with the room’s security mesh neutralized, accessing supposedly inactive network files. He’d always been curious about the firebombing at Reinert’s garage while forensics were still going over the place. It implied there was something in the garage that the murderer didn’t want the police to find; which in turn implied that the murderer was in contact with a local criminal crew capable of organizing a successful attack.

  He told his e-i to access the investigation logs using infiltrators he’d planted in the Office3 network that day he arrived. His grid filled with the case’s network architecture, and he noticed that eighteen observation routines were still active, using Market Street’s visual recognition and AI tracking systems. He got the e-i to hack their management sub-routines easily enough, finding they’d been authorized by Vance Elston back in late February. Which was interesting, given that Elston was at camp Edzell on St Libra at the time.

  Clayton immediately loaded some monitors of his own to check his unauthorized access hadn’t been spotted. But the network wasn’t issuing any alerts. He started digging deeper. Whoever had set up the observation routines knew what they were doing, employing a route with multiple random switching and cut-offs with self-erasing logs. He had to access the secure AI the Newcastle team used to run the trackback.

  Data gleaned from the observation was flowing to an address he was familiar with: Detective Ian Lanagin’s bachelor flat. But who Ian was gathering information on was more interesting: Marcus Sherman, Ruckby, Jede, Boz. The last three all had entries in the police network, petty criminal offences from years back, with the Gang Task Force noting that Boz might be a possible Red Shield member – no proof. Marcus Sherman had no record of any kind loaded into the Market Street network.

  It took the Newcastle team’s AI four minutes to find the name. Fifteen years ago, Sherman used to work for Northumberland Interstellar’s security division. He left the company, and fell off-net. Judging from a quick harvest of the data the observation routines were pulling in, Mr Sherman was maintaining his über-low profile to this day.

  Clayton sat back in his chair, and gave the console a serene smile. Ian Lanagin wouldn’t waste his free time chasing corporate ghost operatives. He had a total of two non-work activities, his fitness kick and hitting on girls. This was something else, something a lot more important, and he wouldn’t be doing it on his own.

  ‘Sid,’ Clayton murmured admiringly to the empty office. ‘What have you been up to?’

  *

  The flat in Falconar Street was easy enough to break in to. Clayton took Ivan with him, leaving Sophia and Holdroyd, the other members of the Newcastle team, in the car parked three houses down.

  It was quarter to ten, and the clouds were building in the sky, blocking the crescent moon. All of which left the street dark and devoid of pedestrians. Sophia and the AI quickly ripped the civic meshes smeared across the brickwork of the terrace houses, and Ivan decoded the lock. They went in calmly, knowing they had plenty of time.

  Ian wasn’t the only one who monitored people for personal gain. The team was checking his transnet access constantly: he was at the Stravoss restaurant in The Gate, good food but the service was notoriously slow, he’d be there for another hour at least.

  Once they were inside the three-room flat Clayton and Ivan looked round in confusion.

  ‘Where’s the furniture?’ Ivan asked.

  Clayton shrugged and glanced into the bedroom. ‘He’s got a bed. And look at that Apple console, it’s practically got the capacity to run an AI.’

  Ivan applied an interceptor patch to the back of the sleek rectangle with its tiny green and purple LEDs. Clayton sprayed a patch of smartmicrobes onto the ceiling, then went into the front lounge and kitchen, repeating the procedure.

  ‘We’re done,’ Ivan announced. ‘I’ve loaded mirror relays inside the Apple. What he knows, we know. I’ll get our AI to run an analysis.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  *

  Back in Abner’s cosy flat in the Fortin singletown, Clayton settled down to wait. Ivan and the rest of the team kept shooting updates to his e-i on their progress with the data from Ian’s Apple. Call records showed Sherman and his associates were involved in some kind of handover. So far they hadn’t found anything which connected them to Reinert, except for them all dropping from sight the day the garage was firebombed.

  It was a simple coincidence that no policeman would ever send on to legal, never mind the Prosecution Bureau. Clayton knew what it meant: Sherman and Reinert knew the same people further up the food chain. Sid would understand that, too.

  So why hadn’t he included Sherman in the official investigation?

  Clayton’s second surprise of the night was when Ian returned home. The monitor program tagging his transnet interface showed him taking a taxi from the Gate centre back to Falconar Street. Then the meshes in the flat gave Clayton a bird’s-eye view of the lounge as Ian
and his date walked in.

  It was Tallulah Packer. Clayton viewed the image for a moment in complete disbelief. He thought the angle might have thrown off his recognition. But then they started talking in that easy casual way that eager lovers have, and there was no mistake. She was teasing him about the lack of furniture. He took it with good grace, and offered her a wine, a Semillon Verdelho. Apparently it was her favourite. They kissed. Fumbled at each other’s clothes. Ian led her into the bedroom, the wine glass forgotten on the kitchenette counter.

  Clayton cancelled the feed from the mesh in the bedroom. He wasn’t a voyeur.

  Ten weeks working in the same office as Ian made him sure of one thing: this wasn’t a cover-up. Ian kept his brain in his dick, and Tallulah was astonishingly pretty. He was guilty of being terminally stupid by dating a potential witness from the case, but nothing more sinister.

  Clayton checked the time: eleven twenty-three. The traffic from Ian’s surreptitious observation routines was slow and steady as they followed Sherman around the city wherever they could gain digital traction. Nothing big was happening tonight. He got into bed and promised himself he’d review the forensics team’s visual logs from Reinert’s garage tomorrow.

  Wednesday 10th April 2143

  Clayton’s e-i woke him up at two ten am with a major alert, triggered by the call monitor he’d put on Ian’s transnet interface. He shook himself awake and put the team on standby. His e-i pulled real-time imagery from the smartmicrobe meshes at Ian’s apartment.

  *

  Sid drove the Toyota Dayon into a space practically outside Ian’s flat, too quick and braking too hard. The auto flashed up an amber caution in his grid as the car detected other vehicles front and back. He ignored it. Temper had powered him out of his own house and got him here at just after half past two in the morning following Ian’s cryptic call. But fatigue was creeping back. He was tired, irritated to be woken, and just wanted to be home in bed.