In any given month, there would be between two and seven armada storms rampaging across Earth’s surface, a relentless assault they’d persevered with for over five hundred years. Like so many things, their name had become everyday currency. Few knew or cared about its origin.
It had begun with chaos theory: the soundbite assertion that one butterfly flapping its wings in a South American rain forest would start a hurricane in Hong Kong. Then in the Twenty-first Century came cheap fusion, and mass industrialisation; entire continents elevated themselves to Western-style levels of consumerism within two decades. Billions of people found themselves with the credit to buy a multitude of household appliances, cars, exotic holidays; they moved into new, better, bigger homes, adopting lifestyles which amplified their energy consumption by orders of magnitude. Hungry to service their purchasing power, companies built cities of new factories. Consumer and producer alike pumped out vast quantities of waste heat, agitating the atmosphere beyond the worst-case scenarios of most computer models.
It was after the then largest storm in history raged across the Eastern Pacific in early 2071 that a tabloid newscable presenter said it must have taken a whole armada of butterflies flapping their wings to start such a brute. The name stuck.
The storm which had swept up from mid-Atlantic to swamp New York was ferocious even by the standards of the Twenty-seventh Century. Its progress had been under observation for hours by the arcology’s anxious weather defence engineers. When it did arrive, their response systems were already on line. It looked as though a ragged smear of night was sliding across the sky. The clouds were so thick and dense no light could boil throughout to illuminate their underbelly—until the lightning began. Then the rotund tufts could sometimes be distinguished, streaked with leaden grey strata as they undulated overhead at menacing speed. The energy levels contained within would prove fatal for any unprotected building. Consequently, the ability to deflect or withstand the storms was the prime requirement of any design brought before the New York civil engineering review board for a building permit. It was the one criterion which could never be corroded by backhanders or political pressure.
The tip of every megatower was crowned with high-wattage lasers, whose beams were powerful enough to puncture the heart of the heavy clouds. They etched out straight channels of ionized air, cajoling the lightning to discharge directly into the superconductor grids masking the tower structure. Every tower blazed like a conical solar flare above the dome residents, spitting out residual globules of violet plasma.
Amid them fell the rain. Fist-sized drops hurled out by a furious wind to hammer against the domes. Molecular binding force generators were switched on to reinforce the transparent hexagons against a kinetic fusillade which had the force to abrade raw steel.
The noise from this barrage of elements drummed through the dome to shake the gridwork of carbotanium struts supporting the metro transit rails. Most above-ground traffic had shut down. Right across the arcology, emergency crews were on full standby. Even the shield of lasers and superconductors were no guarantee against power spikes in such conditions. In such times, sensible people went home or to bars, and waited until sharp slivers of pewter light started to carve up the clouds, signalling the end of the deluge. A time when fear was heightened. When more primitive thoughts were brought to the fore.
A good time. Useful.
Quinn looked up at the old building which was home to the High Magus of New York.
Under cover of the storm, sect members were piling out of the vans behind him. Only ten possessed so far: a manageable number for what he had in mind. The rest, the acolytes and initiates, followed obediently, in awe of the apostles of evil who now commanded them.
Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine, the notion that God’s Brother would never actually manifest himself. The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe.
Now the souls were returning, owning the power to commit dark miracles. The acolytes had fallen into stupefaction rather than terror, the last doubt vanquished. Condemned as the vilest outcasts, they now knew they’d been right all along. That they were going to win. Whatever they were ordered to do, they complied unquestioningly.
Quinn motioned the first team forward. Led by Wener, the three eager acolytes scampered down a set of steps at the base of the wall, and clustered round the disused basement door at the bottom. A codebuster block was applied, then a programmable silicon probe was worked expertly into the crack between the door and the frame. The silicon flexed its way under the ageing manual bolts, then began to reformat its shape, pushing them back. Within thirty seconds, the way in was open. No alarms, and no give away use of energistic power.
Quinn stepped through.
The difference between the headquarters and the dingy centre on Eighty-Thirty street surprised even Quinn. At first he even thought he might have the wrong place, but Dobbie, who now possessed magus Garth’s body, reassured him this was indeed where they should be. The corridors and chambers were an inverse mirror of the Vatican’s splendour. Rich fittings and extravagant artwork, but sybaritic rather than warmly exquisite, celebrating depravity and pain.
“Fuck, look at this place,” Wener muttered as they marched down one of the corridors. Sculptures took bestiality as their theme, featuring both mythical and xenoc creatures, while paintings showed the saintly and revered from history being violated and sacrificed on the altars of the Light Bringer.
“You should take a good look,” Quinn said. “It’s yours. Those hours ripping off citizens and pushing illegals on the street, that paid for all this. You live in shit, so the High Magus can live like a Christian bishop. Nice, isn’t it.”
Wener and the other acolytes glowered round at the perverse grandeur, envious and angry. They split up, as arranged. One of the possessed leading each group of acolytes, securing the exits and strategic areas, the weapons cache. Quinn went straight for the High Magus. Three times, he encountered acolytes and priests scurrying along the corridors. They were all given the same simple choice: Follow me, or be possessed.
They took one look at the black robe, listening to the voice whispering out of the seemingly empty hood, and capitulated. One of them even gave a mad little laugh of relief, a strong sense of vindication flooding his mind.
The High Magus was taking a bath when Quinn strode into his quarters. It could have been the penthouse of some multistellar corporation president, certainly there was little evidence of idolatrous worship amongst the opulence. Much to Wener’s disappointment he didn’t even have naked servant girls to wash him. Slimline domestic mechanoids stood quietly among the white and blue furnishings. His one concession to turpitude appeared to be the goblet he was drinking a seventeen-year-old red wine out of, its vulvic influences impossible to ignore. Islands of lime-green bubbles drifted round his round frame, giving off a scent of sweet pine.
He was already frowning as Quinn glided over the gold-flecked marble to the sunken bath, presumably forewarned by the failure of his neural nanonics. His eyes widened at the invasion, then narrowed as the eccentric delegation stared down at him.
“You’re a possessed,” he said directly to Quinn.
There was no panic in the mind of the High Magus, which surprised Quinn, if anything the old man appeared curious. “No, I am the Messiah of our Lord.”
“Really?”
The mocking irony of the tone caused the hem of Quinn’s robe to stir. “You will obey me, or I will have your fat shit body possessed by someone more worthy.”
“More compliant, you mean.”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I have no intention of fucking with you or anyone else.”
Quinn was puzzled by this whole exchange. The original calmness he could sense in the High Magus was slowly replaced by weariness. The High Magus took another sip of the wine.
“I’m here to bring Night to the Earth as Our Lord bids,” Quinn said.
“He bids nothing of the sort, you pathetic little prick.”
Quinn’s ashen face materialized to thrust out of his hood.
The High Magus laughed out loud at the shock and anger he saw there, and committed suicide. Without any noise or hysterics, his body froze, then slowly slithered down the side of the bath. It rolled to one side, and floated inertly on the surface, white bloated rims of fat bobbing among the green bubbles. The wine goblet sank, a red stain marking where it had vanished.
“What are you doing?” Quinn shouted at the departing soul. He sensed a final sneer as the retreating wisps of energy evaporated amid dimensional folds. His claw hands shot out of the voluminous sleeves, as if to pull the essence of the High Magus back to face judgement. “Shit!” he gasped. The magus must have been demented. Nobody. Nobody went into the beyond, not now they knew for sure what awaited them there.
“Asshole,” Wener grunted. Along with the other acolytes, he was perturbed by the death. Trying not to show it.
Quinn knelt down at the side of the bath, searching the corpse with eyes and eldritch senses for the mechanism of its demise. There were the usual weapons implants, he could perceive those all right, hard splinters among the softer grain of organic matter, even the neural nanonics were discernible. But Quinn’s energistic power had nullified them. What then? What instrument could effect an instantaneous and painless suicide? And more curiously, why was the High Magus equipped with it?
He straightened slowly, retracting his head and arms back within his cloak’s veil of night. “It doesn’t matter,” he told his agitated followers. “God’s Brother knows how to deal with traitors, the beyond is not a refuge for those who fail Him.”
A dozen heads nodded in eager acceptance before him. “Now go and bring them to me,” he said.
The acolytes scattered to do his bidding. They rounded up everyone in the headquarters, and herded them into the temple. It was a vaulting chamber nestled at the core of the Leicester, a baroque fabrication of gilded pillars and crude cut stone blocks. Six giant pentagons were etched on the curving ceiling, emitting a dull crimson glow. The grumble of the storm was just audible, a bass reverberation sneaking through the Leicester to give the floor a faint vibration.
Quinn stood beside the altar as the captives were ushered up to him one at a time. Every time, he repeated the simple choice of futures: follow me, or be possessed. Merely claiming you would submit was no use. Quinn interrogated their innermost beliefs and fears before passing his final decree. He wasn’t surprised by how many failed. Inevitably, this far up the sect hierarchy, they had grown soft. Still evil, still exploiting the soldiers below them, but not for the right reasons. Maintaining their own status and comforts had evolved into their dominant urge, not a willingness to further the cause of the Light Bringer. Traitors.
He made them suffer for their crime. Over thirty were chained to the altar and vanquished. By now he had become proficient in opening a fissure back into the beyond; but more importantly he’d learned how to impose his own presence around the opening, valiantly guarding the gateway from the unworthy. Even in their utter desperation for escape, many souls turned aside from such a custodian. Those who did emerge conformed to Quinn’s ideal. Nearly all of them had been sect members while they were alive.
He gathered them together after the ceremony, explaining what God’s Brother had decided for them. “We need more than one arcology to bring Night to this world,” he told them. “So I’m leaving you this one for yourselves. Don’t piss this opportunity away. I want you to take it over, but carefully, not like the way the possessed do on other planets, even Capone. Those dickheads just rush up and head butt every town they come across. And each time, the cops swoop down and pick them off. This time it’s gonna be different. You’ve got the acolytes worshipping the ground you shit on. Use them. Moving around is what lets those fucking AIs sniff you out. You mess with processors and power cables just by being near them. So don’t go near them. Stay in the sect centres and get the acolytes to bring people to you.”
“Which people?” Dobbie asked. “I understand how we don’t gotta move about. But, shit, Quinn, there’s over three hundred million people in New York. The acolytes can’t bring them all to us.”
“They can bring the ones that count, the police captains and technical guys, the ones gonna cause you grief. Or at least knock them out, stop them from reporting that you’ve arrived in town. That’s all I want from you right now. Get yourselves established. There’s a sect centre in every dome, take them over and hole up there for a while. Live like a fucking king, I’m not saying don’t enjoy yourself. But I want you ready, I want you to build up a coven of possessed in each dome. Loyal ones, you all know how fucking important discipline is. We’re going strategic. Learn where the major fusion generators are, hunt down the fresh water stations, and the sewage plants, see which intersections the transport system depends on, track down critical nodes in the communication net. The acolytes will know all this crap, or they can find out. Then when I give the word, you smash each of those sites into lava. You paralyse the whole fucking arcology with terrorism, bring it to its knees. That way the cops won’t be able to organize any resistance when we emerge to claim glory for Him. You come out into the open and start possessing others, and you turn them loose. Nobody can run, there’s nowhere to go, no outside. Possessed always win on asteroids, this is no different, just bigger, is all.”
“The new possessed, they won’t worship God’s Brother,” someone said. “We can choose a few who will to start with, but if we turn them loose, there’s no way millions of them is going to do like we say.”
“Of course not,” Quinn said. “Not at first, anyway. They have to be forced into this, like I did to Nyvan. Haven’t you worked it out yet? What’s going to happen to an arcology with three hundred million possessed living in it?”
“Nothing,” Dobbie said in puzzlement. “It won’t work.”
“Right,” Quinn purred. “Nothing’s going to work. I’m going to visit as many arcologies as I can, and I’m going to seed all of them with possessed. And they’re all going to collapse, because energistic power breaks the machinery. The domes won’t be able to hold off the weather any more, there isn’t going to be any food, or water. Nothing. Not even forty billion possessed wishing at once are going to be able to change that. They’ll shift Earth into another realm, but it still won’t make any difference. Just being somewhere else isn’t going to put food on the table, won’t restart the machines. That’s when it will happen. The revelation that they have nowhere else to turn. Our Lord will have won their minds.” He lifted his hands, and allowed a pallid smile to show from his hood. “Forty billion possessors, and the forty billion they possess. Eighty billion souls screaming into the Night for help. Don’t you see? It’s a cry so strong, so full of anguish and fear, that it will bring Him. Finally, He will emerge from the Night, bringing light to those who have come to love Him.” Quinn laughed at the astonishment on their faces, and dark delight in their minds.
“How long?” Dobbie asked avidly. “How long we gotta wait?”
“A month, maybe. It’ll take me a while to visit all the arcologies. But I’ll penetrate them all in the end. Wait for my word.” The silhouette of his robe began to fade. Outlines of the furniture behind him started to show through. Then he was gone. A cold breeze drifted across the chamber, perturbing the shallow gasps of consternation that echoed from the dismayed disciples.
The Mindori approached Monterey at a steady half gee acceleration. Two hundred kilometres ahead, the asteroid’s features were resolving, crumpled dust-grey rock speared by metallic spires and panels. It was surrounded by a swarm of pearl-white specks that flashed and glinted in the tenacious sunlight. The Organization fleet: over six hundred Adamist warships floating in attendance while small service craft flitted among them. Each one a unique knot in Rocio Condra’s distortion field.
Gliding among them were the more subtle interference patterns of other distortion fields. Valisk’s hellhawks were here. Rocio called out in welcome. Those who bothered to acknowledge his arrival were subdued. The emotional content simmering within most of his fellows was one of grudging acceptance. Rocio accepted it reluctantly. It was what he’d been expecting.
Glad to see you found your way back to us,hudson proctor said. What have you got?
The affinity link provided Rocio an opening to the man’s eyes. He was in one of the docking ledge lounges, overlooking the pedestals where several hellhawks were perched. The room had been altered into an executive-style office. Kiera Salter was sitting at a broad desk, her head coming up to give him a hard, enquiring stare.
Deadnight kids,rocio said. I haven’t told them Valisk has gone.
Good, good.
“The Organization hasn’t got any real use for that kind of waster trash,” Kiera said as Hudson repeated his silent conversation. “Dock here and disembark them. They’ll be dealt with appropriately.”
And what about us?rocio asked mildly. What do the hellhawks do now?
“I’ll have you assigned to fleet support duties,” Kiera said impassively. “Capone is preparing another invasion. The hellhawks are becoming essential to ensure viability.”
I don’t wish to fly combat duties any more, thank you. This starship is proving an excellent host for my soul, I have no intention of endangering it, especially now that you have no reserve body for me to inherit.
Kiera’s answering smile portrayed regret. It wasn’t an emotion Hudson relayed via affinity, keeping the exchange scrupulously neutral.
“I’m afraid we’re effectively on a war footing,” Kiera said. “Which means, that wasn’t a request.”
Are you trying to order me?
“I’m offering you one simple choice. You do as I tell you, or you fuck off back to the Edenists right now. You know why that is? Because we’re the only two who can feed you. I am now in full command of the only possessed-owned nutrient supply in this star system. Me, not Capone and the Organization, me. If you want to prevent that excellent host of yours from expiring from malnutrition, you do exactly what I ask, and in return you’ll be permitted to dock and ingest as much of that goo as you can hold. No one else can provide you with that, non-possessed asteroids will blow you away with their SD platforms before you get within a hundred kilometres. Only the Edenists can supply you. And they’ve got their price, too, as I’m sure they’ve told you. If you cooperate with them, it’ll be to help understand the nature of the interface with the beyond. They’ll find out how to banish us. You and I will both be zapped back into that infernal oblivion. So decide, Rocio; where your loyalty lies, who you’re going to fly for. I’m not asking for you and me to be friends, I want to know if you’ll obey, that’s all. And you will tell me now.”
Rocio opened his affinity to converse with the other hellhawks. Is this what she holds over us?
Yes,they answered. There is no third alternative that we can see.
This is monstrous. I’m happy with this form. I don’t want to risk it in Capone’s egotistical conquests.
Then protect it, you pitiful bastard,etchells said. Stop whining and fight for what you believe in. Some of you are so pathetic, you don’t deserve what you’ve got.
Rocio remembered Etchells, always eager to intercept the voidhawks observing Valisk. When Capone had first approached Kiera for help, he’d been excited and anxious to become involved in the conflict.
Piss off, you fascist bigot.
A coward, and a way with words,etchells retorted. No wonder you’re so insecure.
Rocio closed his affinity with the offensive hellhawk. I’ll dock at Monterey and offload the passengers,he told Hudson and Kiera. What kind of fleet support are you proposing?
Kiera’s smile lacked grace. “While the fleet is here, all hellhawks are on a rota to interdict the spy globes and stealthed bombs. The voidhawks have just about given up that nonsense, but they’re still probing our defences, so we have to remain vigilant. Apart from that, there’s also some communication duties, VIP flights and collecting cargo from asteroids. Nothing too demanding.”
And when Capone finds a new planet to invade?
“You fly escort for the fleet, and then you help them eliminate the target world’s Strategic Defence network.”
Very well. I will be docking in another eight minutes, please have a pedestal ready to receive me.rocio abandoned hudson proctor’s mind, and analysed what had been said. The situation was almost what he’d been expecting. Controlling the supply of nutrient fluid was the only practical way of binding the hellhawks to the Organization. What he hadn’t predicted was Kiera still being in charge. She’d obviously come to the same conclusion about coercion.
A few queries to a couple of friendlier hellhawks, and he found that Etchells had visited most of the asteroid settlements in the New California system, blasting their nutrient production machinery. Kiera had ordered the flight, and Hudson had been on board to make sure everything ran smoothly. Kiera and the Organization were still separate. She was using her control over the hellhawks to maintain her status as a power player. Scheming little bitch. And it would be the hellhawks who paid for that status.
Rocio’s ersatz beak parted slightly. Even though he couldn’t manage a modestly contented smile any more, the intent was there. Forced obedience always generated discontent. Allies wouldn’t be hard to find. He abandoned his favoured bird-image just as he slipped round Monterey’s counter-rotating spaceport. The Mindori settled its hull on one of the docking ledge pedestals, and gratefully received the hose nozzles probing its underbelly. Muscle membranes contracted round the seal rings, and the thick nutrient fluid pulsed its way up into the nearly-depleted reserve bladders. The whole process served to emphasise just how vulnerable the giant bitek starship was. After such a long flight, Rocio was enduring a strong subconscious pressure to ingest again, and he had absolutely no control over the substance pumped along the pipes. Kiera could be giving him anything, from water to an elaborate poison. It tasted fine, to his limited internal sense and filter glands, but he could never be quite sure. His plight was intolerable. So what? he asked himself, bitterly. Blackmail always was.
The rebellion began at once. Rocio ordered his bitek processor array to open a channel into the asteroid’s communication network. Access to any defence-critical system was denied; the Organization had protected its electronic architecture as thoroughly as the New California defence force it had usurped. However, that left a lot of civil memory cores and sensors to access. He began to analyse what information he was permitted, and hooked in to various cameras to look round.
A large bus trundled over the rock ledge, its flaccid elephant-trunk airlock tube snuggling up to the Mindori ’s life support section. Inside the hellhawk, the Deadnight kids raced through their cabins, snatching up their bags. A long, agitated queue formed outside the main airlock hatch. Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne stood at the end, smiling placidly.
When the hatch swung open amid a hiss of white vapour, the kids let out a collective gasp of delight. Kiera herself was waiting for them. Gorgeous body clad in a small scarlet dress, hair tumbling over her honey-coloured shoulders. And that mesmerising smile every bit as bright in real life as it was in the recording. They filed past her in a numb daze, eyes wide with awe as she said hello to each and every one of them. All she got was a few mumbled words in return.
“That was easy enough,” she said to Choi-Ho and Maxim at the end. “We had a couple of flights end in riots when they realized they weren’t at Valisk. For no-hopers, they can be vicious little shits. There was a lot of damage, and it’s hard getting replacement components for these life support modules.”
“So what do we do now?” Maxim asked.
“I always need good officers. Or you can join the Organization if you like. Capone is keen to recruit soldiers to enforce his rule down on the planet. You’ll be on the cutting edge of his empire,” she said sweetly.
“I’m good at what I do now,” Choi-Ho said levelly. Maxim quickly agreed.
Kiera observed their minds. There was a tang of resentment, of course, there always was. But they’d capitulated. “All right, you’re in. Now let’s get these loser brats into the asteroid. They won’t be suspicious if we stay with them.”
She was right. Her presence alone was enough to fool the besotted Deadnights, none of them ever questioning why the bus windows were blanked out. It wasn’t until they walked through the next set of airlocks that suspicions started to bubble up. They were all from asteroid settlements, and the equipment here was very similar to what they thought they’d left behind. Habitats were supposed to be different, devoid of this many mechanical contrivances. With the elder ones slightly puzzled now, they trooped into the main arrivals hall. The Organization gangsters were waiting. It only took two acts of violence against the bravest rebels to quell any further resistance. They were quickly segregated and classified according to the charts Leroy and Emmet had provided.
Amid a welter of tearful and frightened crying, individuals were hauled off into the corridors. As the Organization was still very male dominated, the older boys were all taken down to Patricia Mangano and imminent possession by new soldiers. With them went the less attractive girls. Prettier girls were dispatched to the brothel where they would service the Organization’s soldiers and non-possessed followers. The children (and definition was difficult, puberty plus a couple of years appeared to be the deciding factor) were flown down to the planet, where Leroy paraded them in front of the rover reporters, claiming their salvation from Deadnight as more humanitarian charity on Al’s behalf. The distorted image of a weeping seventeen-year-old girl being shoved along by a machine-gun toting gangster in a brown pinstripe suit vanished from the processor block’s screen in a hail of static.
“I can’t find any further working cameras in that section,” Rocio announced. “Would you like me to return to the arrivals hall?”
Jed had to work hard against his tightening throat muscles. “No. That’s enough.” When the hellhawk possessor had shown them the first pictures snatched from cameras, Jed had wanted to scramble out of their cramped refuge. Kiera was actually on board! A mere thirty metres away from him. He’d suddenly wondered what the hell he was doing, crouched painfully between cold, condensation-smeared tanks with loops of grimy cable wiping his forehead. The sight of her brought back all the old rapture. And she was smiling. Kiera would make the angels envious of her beauty and compassion.
Then he heard bonkers Gerald reciting: “Monster, monster, monster, monster,” like it was some kind of freaky spell.
Beth was rubbing the old fart’s arm, all full of sympathy, saying, “It’s okay, you’ll get her back, you will.”
Jed wanted to shout out how barmy the pair of them were. But by then the last of the Deadnights were in the bus, and Kiera’s smile was gone. In its place was a hideously alien expression of contempt verging on cruelty. The words which came from her lips were cold and harsh. Rocio had been telling the truth.
Despite the evidence, that lost part of Jed’s heart had wanted to believe in his divine saviour and her promises of a better world. Now he knew that was gone. Worse than that, it had never existed. Even Digger had been right. Bloody Digger, for Christ’s sake! He was just a dumb stupid waster kid trying to score the ultimate escape trip from Koblat. If Beth and the girls hadn’t been in there with him, he knew he would have burst into tears. For Jed, not even the scenes in the arrivals hall were as horrific as that final moment when Kiera’s smile vanished.
By the time Rocio Condra’s face reappeared on the block, the girls were sniffling quietly, arms around each other. Beth made no attempt to hide the tears meandering down her cheeks. Gerald had shrunk back into his usual uncommunicative self.
“I’m sorry,” Rocio said. “But I did suspect that something like this was going to happen. If it’s of any comfort, I am in a similar position.”
“Similar?” Beth grunted. “Comfort? I knew some of those girls, damn you. How can you compare what they’re going to go through with what you’ve got to do? That’s not patronising, that’s sickening.”
“They are being forced to prostitute themselves with men in order to survive. I have to risk my life and that of my host in hostile combat conditions if I wish to continue my existence in this universe. Yes, I have to say there is similarity, whether you see it or not.”
Beth glared at the processor block through her misery. She’d never felt so low before, not even when those men had grabbed her that time when she met Gerald.
“So now what?” Jed asked dolefully.
“I’m not certain,” Rocio answered. “Obviously, we must find a new source of nutrient fluid for myself and those hellhawks that share my beliefs. I shall have to gather a lot more information before that option opens itself.”
“Do we have to stay in here the whole time?”
“No, of course not. There is no one inside the life support section, you may come out now.”
It took a hot, aggravating five minutes to wriggle free from the confines of the cramped under-floor service ducts. Jed was the first to extricate himself from the hatch in the washroom floor. He quickly helped the others free. They wandered out into the central corridor, glancing about anxiously, not quite believing Rocio when he said they were alone.
They stood in the big forward lounge, looking out of the long window at the docking ledge. The row of pedestals stretched away, gradually curving above them, silver mushrooms sprouting from the grizzled rock, each one bathed in a pool of yellow light. But for three other docked hellhawks suckling their nutrient fluid from the hoses, it could have been a post-industrial wasteland. Some technicians were working on the cargo cradles of one craft, but apart from that, nothing moved.
“So we just wait,” Beth said, flopping down into a settee.
Jed pressed his nose to the transparency, trying to see the rock wall at the back of the ledge. “Guess so.”
“I’m hungry,” Gari complained.
“Then go eat,” Jed said. “I’m not going to stop you.”
“Come with us.”
He turned from the window, seeing his sister’s apprehensive expression, and smiled reassuringly. “Sure, kid, no problem.”
The galley was one compartment Rocio hadn’t tried to modify with his energistic imagination, leaving the contemporary metal and composite surfaces undisturbed. However, they’d plainly been pillaged by some passing barbarian army. A cascade of empty sachets were littering the floor, stuck in place by treacle-like liquids. Storage cabinet doors swung open, revealing empty spaces. The timer on an induction oven bleeped away relentlessly.
A ten minute search turned up five cans of drinking chocolate, a sachet of unhydrated oatmeal cakes, and a serve-3 pizza with extra anchovies.
Jed surveyed the cache with dismay. “Oh Jeeze, there’s nothing left to eat.” He knew what that meant, one of them would have to sneak into the asteroid to find some supplies. Zero guesses who’d get picked for that doozy.
Jay woke up in a wonderfully soft bed, wrapped inside a smooth cocoon of clean cotton sheets smelling faintly of lavender. It was that warm drowsy state which always followed a really long, deep sleep. She squirmed round a little, enjoying the contentment of being utterly at peace. Some small object had managed to wedge itself under her shoulder, harder than the luxurious pillow. Her hand closed round it, pulling it out. Coarse fur tickled her fingers. Frowning, squinting she held up the . . . doll. Tatty old thing. She smiled cosily, and put Prince Dell down beside her. Snuggling into the mattress.
Her eyes flipped wide open. A fog of hoary light was curving round a pair of plain navy-blue curtains. It illuminated a neat wooden room, with its sloping ceiling supported by a scaffold of naked A-frame beams. The tight-fitting wall boards had all been painted a silky green, bedecked with picture frames that were mainly landscape watercolours, though there were several sepia photos of people in history-text clothes. A glazed pedestal washbasin with brass taps stood in the corner, a towel hanging beside it. There was a wicker chair at the foot of the bed, with a pair of fat cushions crammed into it. The sound of waves rolling gently onto a beach could just be heard in the background.
Jay flung back the sheet and slithered down off the bed. Her feet touched a warm carpet, and she padded over to the window. She lifted a corner of the curtain, then pulled it wide open. The beach was outside; a fringe of grass blending into white sands, followed by gorgeous turquoise water stretching out to a mild horizon haze. A clear azure sky rose from the other side of the haze, cut in half by that incredible curving line of brilliant silver-white planets. She laughed in amazed delight. It was real, really real.
The bedroom’s door opened into the chalet’s hallway. Jay ran along it, out onto the veranda. The hem of her nightie flapped around bare feet, Prince Dell was clutched in one hand. Outside, the heat and salty humidity gusted over her along with the intense sunlight. She flew down the steps and onto the grass, dancing round and whooping. The sand was hot enough to make her jump up and down before retreating back onto the grass. She gave the glittering water an exasperated look. How lovely it would have been to dive right in. Haile was going to adore this place.
“Good morning to you, young Jay Hilton.”
Jay jumped, and turned round. One of the purple globes she remembered from last night was floating half a metre above her head. Her nose wrinkled up in bemusement. It seemed to be the victim of a talented graffiti artist who’d inflicted two black and white cartoon eyes rimmed with black-line eyebrows; more black lines defined a pug nose, while the mouth was a single curve sealed by smile commas. “What are you?” she asked.
“Well, wadda ya’know, my name’s Mickey. I’m a universal provider. But I’m a special one, coz I’m all yours.” The mouth jerked up and down in time with its voice.
“Oh yeah?” Jay asked suspiciously. That silly face was far too happy for her liking. “What does a universal provider do, then?”
“Why, I provide, of course.”
“You’re a machine.”
“Guess so,” it said with goofy pleasure.
“I see. So what do you provide?”
“Whatever you want. Any material object, including food.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re tiny, what if I wanted a . . . a vac-train carriage.”
“Why would you want one of those?”
Jay sneered at it smugly. “I just want one. I’m proving a point.”
The face lines squiggled their way into an expression of dozy obedience. “Oh. Okey-dokey, then. It’s going to take about quarter of an hour to put it together.”
“Sure,” Jay sneered.
“Hey! That’s got lots of complicated parts inside, you know.”
“Right.”
“If you’d asked for something simple, I could provide straight away.”
“All right. I want the Diana statue from the Paris arcology. That’s just a lump of carved rock.”
“Easy peasy.”
“Uh—” Jay managed to grunt.
Mickey zipped out over the beach, too fast for her to follow. She swivelled, just in time to see it inflating equally fast. At ten metres in diameter, its ridiculous face was suddenly not so pleasant and harmless as it loomed above her. A pair of shoes began to ooze through the bottom. They were as long as Jay was tall. Mickey started to rise up, exposing legs, waist, torso . . .
The full fifteen metre height of the granite statue gazed out serenely across the Kiint ocean. Pigeon droppings scarred its shoulders. Above Diana’s head, Mickey shrank back to its usual size and floated back down to Jay. Its mouth line shifted up into feline gratification.
“What have you done?” Jay yelled.
“Provided the statue. Wossamatter, wrong one?”
“No! Yes!” She glanced frantically along the beach. There were figures moving round outside the other chalets and big white clubhouse, but fortunately none of them seemed to have noticed. Yet. “Get rid of it!”
“Oh. Charming.” Mickey inflated out again. Its hurt pout ominous on such a scale. The statue was swallowed whole. The only memorial: a pair of giant footprints in the sand.
“You’re mad,” Jay accused as it shrank once again. “Utterly mad. They should switch you off.”
“For what?” it wailed.
“For doing that.”
“Just doing what I’m told,” it grumbled. “I suppose you want to cancel the vac-train as well, now?”
“Yes!”
“You should make up your mind. No wonder they won’t hand over my kind of technology to the Confederation. Think of all the statues you’d leave lying round the place.”
“How do you do it,” she asked sharply. “How do you work? I bet you’ve never even been to Earth, how do you know what Diana’s statue looked like?”
Mickey’s voice dropped back down to normal. “The Kiint have this whopping great central library, see. There’s no end of stuff stored in there, including your art encyclopaedias. All I’ve gotta do is find the template memory.”
“And you make it inside you?”
“Small things, no problem. I’m your man, just shout. The bigger stuff, that’s gotta be put together in a place like a high-speed factory. Then when it’s done and polished they just ship it in through me. Simplisimo.”
“All right. Next question, who decided to give you that silly voice?”
“Whaddya mean, silly? It’s magnifico.”
“Well, you don’t talk like an adult, do you?”
“Ha, hark who’s talking. I’ll have you know, I’m an appropriate companion personality for a girl your age, young missy. We spent all night ransacking that library to see what I should be like. You got any idea what it’s like watching eight million hours of Disney AVs?”
“Thank you for being so considerate, I’m sure.”
“What I’m here for. We’re partners, you and me.” Mickey’s smile perked up again.
Jay folded her arms and fixed it with a stare. “Okay, partner ; I want you to provide me with a starship.”
“Is this another of those point thingies?”
“Could be. I don’t care what type of starship it is; but I want it to be one I can pilot by myself, and it has to have the range to get me back to the Confederation galaxy.”
Mickey’s eyes blinked slowly, as if lethargic shutters were coming down. “Sorry, Jay,” it said quietly. “No can do. I would if I could, honest, but the boss says no.”
“Not much of a companion, are you.”
“How about a chocolate and almond ice cream instead? Big yummie time!”
“Instead of a starship. I don’t think so.”
“Aww, go on. You know you want to.”
“Not before breakfast, thank you.” She turned her back on it.
“Okay. I know, how about a megalithic strawberry milkshake, with oodles and oodles of . . .”
“Shut up. And you’re not called Mickey, either. So don’t pretend you are.” Jay smiled at the silence; imagining it must be contorting its sketched face into hurt dismay. Her name was being called from the chalet.
Tracy Dean stood on the veranda, waving hopefully. She was dressed in a pale lemon dress with a lace collar, its design obsolete but still stylish. Jay walked back, aware that the provider machine was following. “The face wasn’t a good idea, was it?” Tracy said with dry amusement after Jay climbed the steps to the veranda. “Didn’t think so. Not for someone who’s seen all you have. But it was worth a try.” She sighed. “Program discontinued. There, it’s just an ordinary provider, now. And it won’t talk stupid anymore, either.”
Jay glanced up at the purple sphere, which was now completely featureless. “I don’t mean to be awkward.”
“I know, sweetie. Now come and sit down. I’ve got some breakfast for you.”
A white linen tablecloth had been spread over a small table beside the weather-worn railings. It had Spanish pottery bowls with cereal and fruit, one jug of milk, and another of orange juice. There was also a teapot with a battered old strainer.
“Twinings Ceylon tea,” Tracy said happily as they sat down. “Best you can have for breakfast in my opinion. I became completely addicted to it in the late Nineteenth Century, so I brought some back with me once. Now the providers can synthesise the leaves for me. I’d like to be all snobbish and say that I can tell it’s not the same, but I can’t. We’ll let it brew for a while, shall we?”
“Yes,” Jay said earnestly. “If you like.” There was something deliciously fascinating about this old woman who had Father Horst’s compassion and Powel Manani’s determination.
“Have you never brewed tea in a pot before, young Jay?”
“No. Mummy always bought it in sachets.”
“Oh dear me. There are some things which the march of progress doesn’t improve, you know.”
Jay poured some milk over the cereal bowl, deciding not to ask about the strange-shaped flakes. One thing at a time. “Do the Kiint live on all these planets?”
“Ah, yes. I did promise I’d explain things today, didn’t I, sweetie?”
“Yes!”
“Such impatience. Where to start, though?” Tracy sprinkled some sugar onto her grapefruit, and sank a silver spoon into the soft fruit. “Yes, the Kiint live on all these planets. They built them, you know. Not all at once, but they have been civilized for a very long time. One planet couldn’t possibly accommodate them all any more, just like there are too many humans to live on Earth nowadays. So they learned how to extract matter from their sun and condense it. Quite an achievement, actually, even with their technology. The arc is one of the wonders of this galaxy. Not just physically, culturally, too. All the species who’ve achieved FTL starflight visit here eventually. Some that haven’t, too. It’s the greatest information exchange centre we know of. And the Kiint know of a few, believe me.”
“The provider said there was a big library here.”
“It was being modest. You see, when you’ve got the technology to take care of your every physical requirement, there’s not much else you can do but develop your knowledge base. So that’s what they do. And it’s a big universe to get to know. It keeps them occupied, and fulfils life’s basic requirement.”
“What’s that?”
“To live is to experience, and experience is living. I had a lovely little chuckle when the first Kiint ambassador from Jobis told the Confederation they had no interest in starflight. Travel broadens the mind, and heavens do they travel. They have this quite magical society, you see, they spend their whole time developing their intellects. The best way I can put it for you, is that wisdom is their equivalent of money, that’s what they pursue and hoard. I’m generalising, of course. A population as large as theirs is bound to have dissidents. Nothing like our Edenist Serpents, of course; their disagreements are mostly philosophical. But there are a few Kiint who turn their backs on their own kind. There’s even a couple of planets in the arc they can go to where they’re free of the central society.
“Whatever faction they come from, they’re all very noble by our standards. And I’ll admit it leaves them superbly prepared to face transcendence when their bodies die. But to be honest, that kind of existence is rather boring for humans. I don’t think we’ll ever go quite so far down that road. Different mental wiring, thankfully. We’re too impatient and quarrelsome. Bless us.”
“So you are really human then?”
“Oh yes, sweetie. I’m human. All of us living here are.”
“But why are you here?”
“We work for the Kiint, helping them to record human history. All of us take little unobtrusive jobs where we can get a good view of events. In the old days it was as servants of lords and kings, or joining up with nomads. Then when the industrial age started up we moved into the media companies. We weren’t front line investigative reporters, we were the office mundanes; but it meant we had access to an avalanche of information most of which never made it into the official history books. It was perfect for us; and we still mostly work in the information industries today. I’ll show you how to use the AV projector later if you want, every broadcast humans make goes into the arc’s library. That always tickled me, if those desperate marketing departments only knew just how wide an audience they really have.”
“Are the Kiint really that interested in us?”
“Us, the Tyrathca, the Laymil, xenocs you’ve never heard of. They’re fascinated by sentience, you see. They’ve witnessed so many self-aware races dwindle away to nothing, or self-destruct. That kind of loss is tragic for the races which succeed and prosper. Everybody’s different, you see, sweetie. Life alone is precious, but conscious thought is the greatest gift the universe offers. So they try and study any entities they find; that way if they don’t survive their knowledge won’t be entirely lost to the rest of us.”
“How did you end up working for them?”
“The Kiint found Earth when they were exploring that galaxy about two and a half thousand years ago. They took DNA specimens from a few people. We were cloned from that base, with a few alterations.”
“Like what?” Jay asked eagerly. This was a wonderful story, so many secrets.
“We don’t age so quickly, obviously; and we’ve got a version of affinity; little things like that.”
“Gosh. And you’ve been on Earth since you were born?”
“Since I grew up, yes. We had to be educated the Kiint way first. Their prime rule in dealing with other species, especially primitive ones, is zero intervention. They were worried that we might become too sympathetic and go native. If we did that, we’d introduce ideas that were wrong for that era; I mean, think what would have happened if the Spanish Armada was equipped with anti-ship missiles. That’s why they made us sterile, too; it should help us remain impartial.”
“That’s horrid!”
Tracy smiled blankly at the horizon. “There are compensations. Oh sweetie, if you’d seen a fraction of what I have. The Imperial Chinese dynasties at their height. Easter Islanders carving their statues. Knights of armour battling for their tiny kingdoms. The Inca cities rising out of jungles. I was a servant girl at Runnymede when King John signed the Magna Carta. Then lived as a grandee noblewoman while Europe was invigorated by the Renaissance. I waved from the harbour when Columbus set sail across the Atlantic; and spat as Nazi tanks rolled into Europe. Then thirty years later I stood on Cocoa Beach and cried when Apollo 11 took off for the moon, I was so proud of what we’d achieved. And there I was in the spaceplane which brought Richard Saldana down to Kulu. You have no idea how blessed my life has been. I know everything, everything, humans are capable of. We are a good species. Not the best, not by Kiint standards, but so much better than most. And wonderfully unique.” She sniffed loudly, and dabbed a handkerchief on her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” Jay said quietly. “Please.”
“I’m sorry. Just having you here, knowing what you could accomplish if you have the chance, makes this hurt so much harder. It’s so bloody unfair. ”
“What do you mean?” Jay asked. Seeing the old woman so upset was making her nervous. “Aren’t the Kiint going to let me go home?”
“It’s not that.” Tracy smiled bravely, and patted Jay’s hand. “It’s what kind of home that’ll be left for you. This shouldn’t have happened, you see. Discovering energistic states and what they mean normally comes a lot later in a society’s development. It’s a huge adjustment for anybody to make. Human-type psychologies need a lot of preparation for that kind of truth, a generation at least. And that’s when they’re more sociologically advanced than the Confederation. This breakthrough was a complete accident. I’m terrified the human race won’t get through this, not intact. We all are, all the Kiint observers want to help, to point the researchers in the right direction if nothing else. Our original conditioning isn’t strong enough to restrict those sort of feelings.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Even if they allowed us, I’d be no use. I’ve been part of all our history, Jay. I’ve seen us evolve from dirty savages into a civilization that has spread among the stars. More than anybody I know what we could grow into if we just had the chance. And I have the experience to intervene without anyone ever knowing they’d been guided. But at the most crucial time of our social evolution, when that experience is utterly vital , I’ve got to stay here.”
“Why?” Jay pleaded.
Tracy’s frail shoulders trembled from repressed emotion. “Oh sweetie, haven’t you worked out what this dreadful place is yet? It’s a bloody retirement home.”
The view arrived suddenly. For over twenty minutes Louise had been sitting in one of the lounge’s big chairs, its webbing holding her in the deep hollow of cushioning. Her belly muscles were beginning to strain as they were obliged to hold her in a curving posture. Then she felt a slight trembling in the decking as the lift capsule was shunted onto the tower rail. A tone sounded. Thirty seconds later they flashed out of the Skyhigh Kijabe asteroid. There was a quick impression of soured-white metal mountains, but they quickly shrank from sight overhead. Gentle gravity relieved her muscles, and the webbing slackened.
Earth shone with a mild opalescent light below her. It was midday in Africa, at the base of the tower, and the clouds were charging in from the oceans on either side. There seemed to be a lot more of them than there had been on Norfolk, although the Far Realm had been orbiting at a much lower altitude. That might account for it. Louise couldn’t be bothered to find the correct meteorology files in her processor block, and run a comparison program. The sight was there to enjoy not analyse. She could actually see the giant white spirals spinning slowly as they battered against each other. It must be a pretty impressive speed for the movement to be visible from such a height.
Genevieve switched her webbing off, and glided over to the lounge window, pressing herself against it. “It’s beautiful,” she said. Her face was flushed as she smiled back at Louise. “I thought Earth was all rotten.”
Louise glanced about, slightly worried by what the other passengers would think of the little girl’s remark. With the quarantine, most of them must be from Earth or the Halo. But nobody was even looking at her. In fact, it seemed as though they were deliberately not looking. She went over to stand beside Gen. “I guess that’s as wrong as everything else in the school books.”
The Halo was visible against the stars, a huge slender thread of stippled light curving behind the planet, like the most tenuous of a gas-giant’s rings. For five hundred and sixty-five years, companies and finance consortiums had been knocking asteroids into Earth orbit. The process was standardized now; first the large-scale mining of mineral resources, hollowing out the habitation caverns, then the gradual build up of industrial manufacturing stations as the initial resources were depleted and the population switched to a more sophisticated economy. There were nearly fifteen thousand inhabited asteroids already drifting along in their common cislunar orbit, and new rocks were arriving at the rate of thirty-five a year. Tens of thousands of inter-orbit craft swooped between the spinning rocks, fusion exhausts tangling together in a single scintilating nimbus. Every asteroid formed a tiny bulge in the loop, wrapped behind a delicate haze of industrial stations.
Louise gazed at the ephemeral testament to astroengineering commerce. More fragile than the bridge of heaven in Norfolk’s midsummer sky, but at the same time, more imposing. The vista inspired a great deal of confidence. Earth was strong, much stronger than she’d realized; it sprang from a wealth which she knew she would never truly comprehend.
If we’re safe anywhere, we’re safe here. She put her arm round Genevieve. For once, contented.
Below the majesty of the Halo, Earth was almost quiescent by comparison. Only the coastlines of North and South America hinted at the equal amount of human activity and industry on the ancient planet. They remained in darkness, awaiting the dawn terminator sliding over the Atlantic; but the night didn’t prevent her from seeing where people were. Arcologies blazed across the land like volcanoes of sunlight.
“Are they the cities?” Genevieve asked excitedly.
“I think so, yes.”
“Gosh! Why is the water that colour?”
Louise switched her attention away from the massive patches of illumination. The ocean was a peculiar shade of grey green, not at all like the balmy turquoise of Norfolk’s seas when they were under Duke’s stringent white glare.
“I’m not sure. It doesn’t look very clean, does it? I suppose that must be the pollution we hear about.”
A small contrite cough just behind them made both girls start. It was the first time anyone apart from the stewards had even acknowledged they existed. When they turned round they found themselves facing a small man in a dark purple business suit. He’d already got some thin wrinkles on his cheeks, though he didn’t seem particularly old. Louise was surprised by his height, she was actually an inch taller than him, and he had a very broad forehead, as if his hair wouldn’t grow properly along the top of it.
“I know this is rude,” he said quietly. “But I believe you’re from outsystem?”
Louise wondered what had given them away. She’d bought the pair of them new clothes in Skyhigh Kijabe, one-piece garments like shipsuits but more elaborate, with pronounced pockets and cuffs. Other women were wearing the fashion; so she’d hoped they would blend in.
“Yes,” Louise said. “From Norfolk, actually.”
“Ah. I’m afraid I’ve never tasted Norfolk Tears. Too expensive, even with my salary. I was most sorry to hear about its loss.”
“Thank you.” Louise kept her face blank, the way she’d learned to do whenever Daddy started shouting.
The man introduced himself as Aubry Earle. “So this is your first visit to Earth?” he asked.
“Yes,” Genevieve said. “We want to go to Tranquillity, but we can’t find a flight.”
“I see. Then this is all new to you?”
“Some of it,” Louise said. She wasn’t quite sure what Aubry wanted. He didn’t seem the type to befriend a pair of young girls. Not from altruism, anyway.
“Then allow me to explain what you are seeing. The oceans aren’t polluted, at least not seriously; there was an extensive effort to clean them up at the end of the Twenty-first Century. Their present colouring comes from algae blooms. It’s a geneered variety that floats on the top. I think it looks awful, myself.”
“But it’s everywhere,” Genevieve said.
“Alas, yes. That’s our carbon sink these days. Earth’s lungs, if you like. It performs the job once done by forests and grasslands. The surface vegetation is not what it used to be, so Govcentral introduced the algae to prevent us from suffocating ourselves. Actually, it’s a far more successful example of terraforming than Mars. Though I would never be so undiplomatic as to say that to a Lunar citizen. We now have less carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at any time in the last eight hundred years. You’ll be breathing remarkably clean air when you arrive.”
“So why do you all live in the arcologies?” Louise asked.
“Heat,” Aubry said sadly. “Do you know how much heat a modern industrial civilization of over forty billion people generates?” He gestured down at the globe. “That much. Enough to melt the polar ice and quicken the clouds. We’ve taken all the preventative measures we can, of course. That was the original spur to build the orbital towers, to prevent spaceplanes aerobraking and shedding even more heat into the air. But however economic we are, we can’t dissipate it at a rate that’ll turn the clock back. The old ocean currents have shut down, there’s no ozone layer at all. And that kind of ecological retro-engineering is beyond even our ability. We’re stuck with the current environment, unfortunately.”
“Is it very bad?” Genevieve asked. What he’d described sounded worse than the beyond, though she thought the man didn’t sound terribly upset by the cataclysm.
He smiled fondly at the planet. “Best damn world in the Confederation. Though I expect everyone says that about their homeworld. Am I right?”
“I like Norfolk,” Louise said.
“Of course you do. But if I might make an observation, this is going to be noisier than anything you’ve experienced before.”
“I know that.”
“Good. Take care down there. People aren’t likely to help you. That’s our culture, you see.”
Louise gave him a sideways look. “Do you mean they don’t like foreigners?”
“Oh no. Nothing like that. It’s not racism. Not overtly, anyway. On Earth everybody is a foreigner to their neighbour. It’s because we’re all squashed up so tight. Privacy is a cherished commodity. In public places, people don’t chat to strangers, they avoid eye contact. It’s because that’s the way they want to be treated. I’m really breaking taboos by talking to you. I doubt any of the other passengers will. But I’ve been outsystem myself, I know how strange it all is for you.”
“Nobody’s going to talk to us?” Genevieve asked apprehensively.
“Not as readily as I.”
“That’s fine with me,” Louise said. She couldn’t quite bring herself to trust Aubry Earle. At the back of her mind was the worry that he would volunteer to become their guide. It had been bad enough in Norwich when she’d depended on Aunt Celina; Roberto was family. Earle was a stranger, one prepared to drop Earth’s customs in public when it suited him. She gave him a detached smile, and led an unprotesting Gen away from the window. The lift capsule had ten decks, and her standard-class ticket allowed her into four of them. They managed to avoid Earle for the rest of the flight. Though she realized he was telling the truth about privacy. Nobody else talked to them.
The isolation might have been safer, but it made the ten hour trip incredibly boring. They spent a long time watching the view through the window as Earth grew larger, and talking idly. Louise even managed to sleep for the last three hours, curling up in one of the big chairs.
She woke to Gen shaking her shoulder. “They just announced we’re about to reach the atmosphere,” her sister said.
Louise combed some strands of hair from her face, and sat up. Other passengers who’d been dozing were now stirring themselves. She took the hair clip off as she reorganized her mane, then fastened it up again. First priority when they were down must be to get it washed. The last time she’d managed properly was back on Phobos. Maybe it was time for a cut, a short style that was more manageable. Though the usual arguments still applied: she’d invested so much time keeping it in condition, cutting it was almost a confession of defeat. Of course, back at Cricklade she’d had the time to groom herself every day, and had a maid to help.
Whatever did I do all day back then?
“Louise?” Genevieve asked cautiously.
She raised an eyebrow at the girl’s tone. “What?”
“Promise you won’t get mad if I ask?”
“I won’t get mad.”
“It’s just that you haven’t said yet.”
“Said what?”
“Where we’re going after we touch down.”
“Oh.” Louise was completely stumped. She hadn’t even thought about their destination. Getting away from High York and Brent Roi had been her absolute priority. What she needed to do was find somewhere to stay so she could think about what to do next. And without consulting her block there was really only one city name from her ethnic history classes which she was certain would still exist. “London,” she told Genevieve. “We’re going to London.”
The African orbital tower had been the first to be built, a technological achievement declared the equal of the FTL drive by the Govcentral committees and politicians who’d authorized it. Typical self-aggrandising hyperbole, but acknowledged to be a reasonable comparison none the less. As Aubry Earle had said, it was intended to replace spaceplanes and the enormously detrimental effect they were having on Earth’s distressed atmosphere. By 2180 when the tower was finally commissioned (eight years late), the Great Dispersal was in full swing, and the volume of spaceplane traffic had become so injurious to the atmosphere that meteorologists were worrying about elevating the armada storms to an even greater level of ferocity.
The question became academic. Once the tower was on line, its cargo capacity exceeded thirty per cent of the world’s spaceplane fleet. Upgrades were being planned before the first lift capsule ran all the way up to Skyhigh Kijabe. Four hundred and thirty years later, the original slender tower of monocarbon fibre was now nothing more than a support element threading up the centre of the African Tower. A thick grey pillar dwindling off up to infinity, immune to the most punishing winds the armada storms could fling at it. The outer surface was lined with forty-seven magnetic rails, the structure’s maximum. It was now cheaper to build new towers than expand it any further.
The lower five kilometres were the fattest section, providing an outer sheath of tunnels to protect the lift capsules from the winds, enabling the tower to remain operational in all but the absolutely worst weather conditions. Exactly where the tower ended and the Mount Kenya station started was no longer certain. With a daily cargo throughput potential of two hundred thousand tonnes, and up to seventy-five thousand passengers, the capsule handling infrastructure had moulded itself tumescently around the base, a mountain in its own right. Eighty vac-train tunnels intersected in the bedrock underneath it, making it the most important transport nucleus on the continent.
To keep the passengers flowing smoothly, there were eighteen separate arrival Halls. All of them followed the same basic layout, a long marble-floored concourse with the exit doors from customs and immigration rooms on one side, and lifts on the other, leading to the subterranean vac-train platforms. Even if an arriving passenger knew exactly which lift cluster they wanted, they first had to negotiate a formidable barricade of retail stalls selling everything from socks to luxury apartments. Keeping track of one individual (or a pair) amid the perpetual scrum occupying the floor wasn’t easy, not even with modern equipment.
B7 left nothing to chance. A hundred and twenty GSDI field operatives had been pulled off their current assignments to provide saturation coverage. Fifty were allocated to Hall Nine, where the Kavanagh sisters were due to disembark, their movements coordinated by an AI that was hooked into every security sensor in the building. Another fifty were already on their way to London within minutes of Louise saying that was her intended goal. Twenty had been held in reserve in case of cockups, misdirection, or good old fashioned acts of God.
The arrangements had caused more arguments among B7; all of the supervisors remained extremely proprietorial when it came to their respective territories. Southern Africa, in whose domain the Mount Kenya station fell, disputed Western Europe’s claim that he should take personal command of the surveillance. Western Europe counterclaimed that as the tower station was just a brief stopover for the sisters, and the whole operation was his anyway, he should have the necessary authority. The other B7 supervisors knew Southern Africa, renowned for the tedious minutiae of procedure worship, was just going through the motions.
Western Europe was given his way over the tower station, as well as gaining concessions to steer the operation through whichever territory the Kavanaghs roamed in their search for Banneth.
Southern Africa acceded to the decision, and withdrew testily from the sensenviron conference. Smiling quietly at his inevitable victory, Western Europe datavised the AI for a full linkage. With the station layout unfolding in his mind, he began to designate positions to the agents. Tied in with that was the lift capsule’s arrival time, and the departure times of each scheduled vac-train. The AI computed every possible travel permutation, plotting the routes which the sisters would have to walk across the concourse. It even took into account the types of stalls which might catch their eye. Satisfied the agents were placed to cover every contingency, Western Europe stoked the logs on his fire, and settled back into a leather armchair with a brandy to wait.
It was probably the ultimate tribute to the fieldcraft of the GSDI agents that after all fifty of them took up position in Hall Nine, Simon Bradshaw didn’t notice them, not even with his hyper instinct for the way of things on the concourse. Simon was twenty-three years old, though he could easily pass for fifteen. Selected hormone courses kept him short and skinny, with soft ebony skin. His large eyes were moist brown, which people mistook for mournful. Their endearing appeal had salvaged him from trouble countless times in the twelve years he’d been strutting the concourses of the Mount Kenya station. Local floor patrol cops had his profile loaded in their neural nanonics, along with hundreds of other regular sneak opportunists. Simon used cosmetic packages every fortnight or so, altering his peripheral features, though his size remained constant. It was the act you had to vary to prevent the cops from putting a comparison program into primary mode. Some days dress smart and act little boy lost, dress casual and act street tough, dress neutral act neutral, pay a cousin to lend you their five-year-old daughter and come over as a protective big brother. But never ever dress poor. Poor people had no business in the station, even the stall vendors had neat franchise uniforms below their shiny franchise smiles.
Today Simon was actually in a franchise uniform himself: the scarlet and sapphire tunic of Cuppamaica, the coffee cafй. Being unobtrusive by being mundane. Nobody was suspicious of station workers. He saw the two girls as soon as they emerged through the customs and immigration archway. It was like they had a hologram advert flashing over their heads saying: EASY. He couldn’t ever remember seeing such obvious offworlders before. Both of them gawping round at the cavernous Hall, delighted and amazed by the place. The little one giggled, pointing up at the transit informatives, baubles of light charging about overhead like insane dragonflies, shepherding passengers towards the right channels.
Simon was off immediately, coming away from the noodle stall he’d been slouching against as if powered by a nuclear pulse. Moving at a fast walk, the luggage cab buzzing incessantly at his heels as its small motors strained to keep up. He was desperately trying not to run, the urgency was so hot. His principal worry now was if the others of his profession saw them. It would be like a feeding frenzy.
Louise couldn’t bring her legs to move. Her fellow passengers had swept her and Genevieve out of customs, carrying her along for a few yards before her surroundings exerted a grip on her nerves. The arrivals Hall was awesome, a stadium of coloured crystal and marble, saturated with noise and light. There must surely have been more people thronging across its floor than lived in the whole of Kesteven island. Like her, they all had luggage cabs chasing after them, adding to the bedlam. The squat oblong box had been supplied by the line company operating the lift capsule. Her bags had been dumped inside by the retrieval clerk, who’d promptly handed her a circular card. The cab, he promised, would follow her everywhere as long as she kept the card with her. It was also the key to open it again when they got down to their vac-train platform. “After that you’re on your own,” he said. “Don’t try and take it on the carriage. That’s MKS property, that is.”
Louise swore she wouldn’t. “How do we get to London?” Gen asked in a daunted tone. Louise glanced up at the mad swarms of photons above them. They were balls of tightly packed writing, or numbers. Logically, it must be travel information of some kind. She just didn’t know how to read it.
“Ticket office,” she gulped. “They’ll tell us. We’ll have to buy a ticket for London anyway.”
Genevieve turned a complete circle, trying to scan the Hall through the melee of bodies and luggage cabs. “Where’s the ticket office?”
Louise pulled the processor block out of her shoulder purse. “I’ll find it,” she said with determination. It was just a question of accessing a local net processor and loading a search program. An operation she’d practised a hundred times with the tutorial. Watching the graphics assemble themselves in the display as she conjured up a welcome feeling of satisfaction.
I’ve got a problem and I’m solving it. By myself, and for myself. I’m not dependent.
She grinned happily at Gen as the search program interrogated the station information processors. “We’re actually on Earth.” She said it as though she’d only just realized. Which, in a strange way, she had.
“Yes,” Genevieve grinned back. Then she scowled as a scrawny youth in a red and blue uniform barged into her. “Hey!”
He mumbled a grudging apology, side-stepped round the luggage cab and walked away.
The block bleeped to announce it had located the vac-train ticket dispensers for Hall Nine. There were seventy-eight of them. Without showing any ire, Louise started to redefine the search parameters.
Easy, easy, easy . Simon wanted to yell it out. That jostle with the little kid was the modern equivalent of the shell game. Visually confusing as their respective luggage cabs crossed paths, and allowing his grabber to intercept their tag card code at the same time. He fought the impulse to turn round and check the new luggage cab at his feet. Those girls were in for a hell of a shock when they got to their platform and found only a pile of beefbap wrappers inside it.
Simon headed for the stalls at a brisk pace. There was a staff lift at the middle. Route down to a quieter level, where he could examine his prize. He was ten metres from the front line of stalls when he was aware of two people closing on him. It wasn’t an accidental path, either, they were coming at him with all the purpose of combat wasps. Running wasn’t going to do any good, he knew that. He pressed the release button on the grabber hidden in his palm. The girls’ luggage cab swerved away, no longer following him. Now, if he could just dump the grabber in a waste bin. No proof.
Shit. How could his luck turn like this?
One of the cops (or whoever) went after the luggage cab. Simon hunted round for a bin. Anywhere there was a fast food bar. He ducked round the first stall, making one last check on his pursuers. That was why he never saw the third (or fourth and fifth, for that matter) GISD agent until the woman bumped right into him. He did feel, briefly, a small sting on his chest. Exactly the same place she was now taking her hand away from. His guts suddenly turned very cold, then that sensation faded to nothing.
Simon looked down at his chest in puzzlement just as his legs faltered, dropping him to his knees. He’d heard of weapons like this, so slim they never left a mark as they punctured your skin; but inside it was like an EE grenade going off. The world was going quiet and dim around him. High above, the woman watched him with a faint sneer of satisfaction on her lips.
“For a couple of bags?” Simon coughed incredulously. But she’d already turned, walking away with a calm he could almost respect. A real pro. Then he was somehow aware of himself finishing the fall to the floor. Blood rushed out of his gaping mouth. After that, the darkness rushed up to drown him. Darkness, but not total night. The world was only the slightest of distances away. And he wasn’t alone in observing it from outside. The lost souls converged upon him to devour the font of keen anguish that was his mind.
“That way,” Louise said brightly. The block’s little screen was showing a floor layout, which she thought she’d aligned right.
With Genevieve skipping along at her side she negotiated the obstacle course of stalls. They slowed down to window shop the things on display, not really understanding half of them. She also thought there must be a subtle trick to negotiating the crowd which was eluding her. Twice on the way to the dispenser, people banged into her. It wasn’t as though she didn’t look where she was going.
The block had told her there was neither a ticket office, nor an information desk. A result which made her acknowledge she was still thinking along Norfolk lines. All the information she needed was in the station electronics, it just needed the right questions to extract it.
A vac-train journey to London cost twenty-five fuseodollars (fifteen for Gen); a train left every twelve minutes from platform thirty-two; lifts G to J served that level. Once she knew that, even the transit informatives whirling past overhead began to make a kind of sense.
Western Europe accessed an agent’s sensevise to watch the sisters puzzle out the ticket dispenser. Enhanced retinas zoomed in on Genevieve, who had started clapping excitedly when a ticket dropped out of the slot.
“Don’t they have ticket dispensers on Norfolk, for heaven’s sake?” the Halo supervisor asked querulously. He had maintained executive control over the observation team during the Kavanaghs’ trip from High York down to the Mount Kenya station, anxious that nothing should mar the hand over. Now, curiosity had impelled him to tarry. Having initiated a few unorthodox missions in his time, he was nevertheless impressed with Western Europe’s chutzpa in dealing with Dexter.
Western Europe smiled at the sensevise overlay of Halo, who appeared to be leaning against the marble fireplace, sipping a brandy. “I doubt it. Some cheery-faced old man in a glass booth would be more their style. Haven’t you accessed any recent sensevises of Norfolk? Actually, just any sensevises of the place would do. It hasn’t changed much since the founding.”
“Damn backward planet. It’s like the medieval section of a themepark. Those English-ethnic morons abused the whole Great Dispersal ethos with that folly.”
“Not really. The ruling Landowner class introduced a stability we’re still striving for, and without one per cent of the bloodshed we employ to keep a lid on things down here. In a way, I envy all those pastoral planets.”
“But not enough to emigrate.”
“That’s a very cheap shot. Quite beneath you. We’re as much products of our environment as the Kavanaghs are of theirs. And at least they’re free to leave.”
“Leave yes. Survive in the real world, no.” He indicated the observation operation’s status display. It wasn’t a pleasing tally. Five people had been eliminated by the guardian blanket of GISD agents—pickpockets, sneak thieves, a scam jockey—as the sisters made their way across the concourse. Extermination was the quick, no arguments, solution. It was also going to cause an uproar with the local police when the bodies were discovered. “At this rate, you’re going to wind up slaughtering more people than Dexter has to protect them.”
“I always thought station security should be sharper,” Western Europe said casually. “What kind of advert is it for Govcentral when visitors get ripped off within ten minutes of their arrival on the good old homeworld?”
“Most don’t.”
“Those girls aren’t most. Don’t worry, they’ll be safer when they reach London and book into a hotel.”
Halo studied Western Europe’s handsome young face, amused by the mild expression of preoccupation to be found there. “You fancy Louise.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I know your taste in women as well as you know my preferences. She’s exactly your type.”
Western Europe swirled the brandy round his three-hundred-year-old snifter, not looking up at the smug overlay image. “I admit there’s something really rather appealing about Louise. Naivetй, one supposes. It does always attract, especially when coupled with youthful physical beauty. Earth girls are so . . . in your face. She has breeding, manners, and dignity. Also something the natives here lack.”
“That’s not naivetй, it’s pure ignorance.”
“Don’t be so uncharitable. You’d be equally adrift on Norfolk. I doubt you could ride to the hunt in pursuit of the cunning hax.”
“Why would anybody, let alone me, want to go to Norfolk?”
Western Europe tilted the snifter back and swallowed the last of the brandy. “Exactly the answer one expects from someone as jaded and decadent as you. I worry that one day this whole planet will think like us. Why do we bother protecting them?”
“We don’t,” Halo chuckled. “Your memory transfer must have glitched. We protect ourselves. Earth merely is our citadel.”