The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  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 righ
t 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.”

  Chapter 06

  It was as if space had succumbed to a bleak midwinter. Monterey was moving into conjunction with New California, sinking deeper through the penumbra towards the eclipse. Looking through the Nixon suite’s big windows, Al could see the shadows above him expanding into black pools of nothingness. The asteroid’s crumpled rock surface was slowly melting from view. Only the small lights decorating the thermal exchange panels and communication rigs gave him any indication that it hadn’t been removed from the universe entirely. Equally, the Organization fleet gathered outside was now invisible save for navigation strobes and the occasional spectral gust of blue ions fired from a thruster.

  Beneath his feet, New California slid across the brilliant starscape, a gold-green corona crowning an empty circle. From this altitude, there were no city lights, no delicate web of lustrous freeways gripping the continents. Nothing, in fact, to show that the Organization existed at all.

  Jezzibella’s arms crept round his chest, while her chin came to rest on his shoulder. A mild forest-morning perfume seeped into the air. “No sign of red clouds,” she said encouragingly.

  He lifted one hand to his lips, and kissed the knuckles. “No. I guess that means I’m still numero uno about here.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “You wouldn’t fucking think so the beefs everyone’s got. Not just what they say, either. What they think counts for a whole lot.”

  “They’ll be all right once the fleet’s in action again.”

  “Sure,” he snorted. “And when’s that gonna be, huh? Fucking Luigi, I shoulda popped him properly, screwing up like that. It’s gonna take another twenty—thirty days to build up our antimatter stocks to anything like a load we can risk another invasion with. So Emmet says. That means six weeks minimum I know. Goddamn! I’m losing it, Jez. I’m fucking losing it.”

  Her grip tightened. “Don’t be silly. You were bound to have setbacks.”

  “I can’t afford one. Not now. Morale’s going to shit out there. You’ve heard what Leroy said. Possessed crew are going down to the surface for funtime and ain’t coming back. They think I’m gonna lose control of the planet and t
hey’ll be better off down there when it happens.”

  “So get Silvano to tighten up.”

  “Maybe. You can only be so tough, you know?”

  “You sure you can’t bring the next invasion forward?”

  “No.”

  “Then we need something else to keep the soldiers and lieutenants occupied and committed.”

  He turned to face her. She was wearing one of those whore’s dresses again, just tiny little strips of pale yellow fabric up the front (he had ties wider than that), and a teensy skirt. So much skin tantalisingly revealed; it made him want to tug it off. As if he’d never seen her in the buff before. But then she was always alluring in some new fashion, a mirror hall chameleon.

  A sensational piece of ass, no doubt about it. But the way she kept on coming up with ideas for him (just like her never-ending mystique) had become vaguely unnerving of late. It was like he’d become dependent, or something.

  “Like what?” he asked flatly.

  Jezzibella pouted. “I don’t know. Something which doesn’t need the whole fleet, but’ll still be effective. Not a propaganda exercise like Kursk; we need to hurt the Confederation.”

  “Kingsley Pryor’s gonna do that.”

  “He might. Although that’s a very long shot, remember?”

  “Okay, okay.” Al wished up one of his prime Havanas, and took a drag. Even they seemed to have lost some of their bite recently. “So how do we use some itsy piece of the fleet to piss the Feds?”

  “Dunno. Guess you’d better go call Emmet in; see what he can come up with. That’s strictly his field.” She gave him a slow wink and sauntered off to the bedroom.