The nine smaller domes circling round outside the Westminster, however, were a different matter. London didn’t have the megatowers of New York, but the arcology still housed a quarter of a billion people beneath its geodesic crystal roofs. The outer domes were purpose built, four hundred square kilometres apiece of thoroughly modern arcology, with only tiny little zones of original buildings left as curios amid the gleaming condos, skyscrapers, and malls.
Louise wasn’t aware of them at all. She could see on the other side of the oaks that the plaza was encircled by a wide road jammed with sleek vehicles, all driving so close together you couldn’t walk between them. The vehicles merged in and out of the giant roundabout from wide streets that radiated away between the beautiful ancient grey-stone buildings surrounding the plaza. When she raised her gaze above the blue-slate roofs and their elaborate chimney stacks, she could see even grander and taller buildings behind them. Then beyond those . . . It was as though she was standing at the bottom of a mighty crater whose walls were made entirely from buildings. Around the plaza they were elegant and unique, with each one somehow merging cleanly into its neighbours to form compact refined streets; but they grew from that to plainer, larger skyscrapers, spaced further apart. The towers’ artistry came from the overall shape rather than detailed embellishments, moulded to suggest Gothic, Roman, Art Deco, and Alpine Bavarian influences among others.
And gathering all those disparate architectural siblings within its sheltering embrace was the external wall. A single redoubtable cliff of windows, a mosaic of panes so dense it blended into a seamless band of glass, blazing gold under the noonday sun. Out of that, rose the dome itself, an artificial sky of crystal.
Louise sat down heavily on the plaza’s stone slabs, and let out a whoosh of breath. Gen sat beside her, arms folded protectively round her shoulder bag. London’s pedestrians flowed round them, eyes consummately averted.
“It’s very big, isn’t it?” Gen said quietly.
“Certainly is.” All those buildings, so many people. Despite feeling light headed, a weight of worry was threatening to sink her again. How in heaven’s name am I going to find a single person amid this multitude? Especially when they probably don’t want to be found.
“Fletcher would really love this.”
Louise looked at her sister. “Yes. I think he would.”
“Do you suppose he’d recognize any of it?”
“There may be bits left over from his time. Some of these buildings look quite old. We’ll have to look it up in the local library memory.” She broke off and smiled. That’s it, everything you ever need to know is in the processor memories. Banneth will be listed somewhere, I just have to program in the right search. “Come on. Hotel first. Then we’ll get something to eat. How does that sound?”
“Jolly nice. What hotel are we going to?”
“Give me a moment.” She took her processor block out, and started querying the arcology’s general information centre. Category visitors, subsection residential. Central, and civilized. They’d wind up paying more for a classy hotel, but at least they’d be safe. Louise knew there were parts of Earth’s arcologies that were terribly crime-ridden. And besides, “Kavanaghs never stay anywhere that doesn’t have a four-star rating,” Daddy had said once.
Information slid down the screen. They didn’t seem to have star ratings here, so she just went by price. Central London hotels, apparently, cost as much to run as starships. At least the beds will be a lot more comfortable.
“The Ritz,” she said finally.
That just left getting there. With Genevieve getting progressively more impatient, as evidenced by overloud sighs and shuffling feet, Louise requested surface transport options from Kings Cross to the Ritz. After ten minutes struggling with horribly complicated maps and London Metro timetables that kept flashing up she realized she wasn’t quite as adept at operating the block as she thought she was. However, the screen did tell her there were taxis available.
“We’ll take a cab.”
Under Gen’s ungenerously sceptical look, she picked her shoulder bag up, and started off towards the oaks at the rim of the plaza. Flocks of parakeets and budgerigars pecking at the stone slabs stampeded out of her way. Most of the subway entrances had the name of the streets they led to, but a few had the London Transport symbol on top: blue circle cut by a red line, with a crown in the middle. Louise went down one to find herself in a short passage that opened out into a narrow parking bay. Five identical silver-blue taxi cars were waiting silently, streamlined bubbles with very fat tyres.
“Now what?” Genevieve said.
Louise consulted the block. She walked up to the first taxi, and keyed the Commence Journey icon on the block’s screen. The door hissed out five centimetres, then slid back along the body. “We get in,” she told her sister smugly.
“Oh very clever. What happens if you don’t have a block to do that for you?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t see a handle anywhere. “I suppose everyone on this world is taught how to use things like this. Most of them have neural nanonics, after all.”
There wasn’t much room inside, enough for four seats with deep curving backs. Louise shoved her bag in the storage bin underneath, and studied the screen again. The block was interfacing with the taxi’s control processor, which made life a lot simpler for her. The whole activation procedure was presented to her as a simple, easy-to-understand-menu. She fed in their destination, and the door slid shut. The taxi told the block what their fee was (as much as the vac-train fare from Mount Kenya), and explained how to use the seat straps.
“Ready?” she asked Gen, when they’d fastened themselves in.
“Yes.” The little girl couldn’t hide her enthusiasm.
Louise held her Jovian Bank disk up to the small panel on the taxi’s central column, and transferred the money over. They started to roll forward. The taxi took them up a steep ramp, accelerating fast enough to press the sisters back into their seat cushioning. The reason was simple enough, they emerged right in the middle of the traffic racing round the Kings Cross plaza, slotting in without the slightest fuss.
Genevieve laughed excitedly as they zipped across several lanes, then slowed slightly to turn off down one of the broad streets. “Golly, this is better than the aeroambulance.” The little girl grinned.
Louise rolled her eyes. Though once she accepted the fact that the control processor did know how to drive, she began to breathe normally again. The buildings rushing past were old and sombre, which gave them a dignity all of their own. On the other side of the pavement barrier, pedestrians jostled their way along in a permanent scrum.
“I never knew there were so many people,” Gen said. “London must have more than live on the whole of Norfolk.”
“Probably,” Louise agreed.
The taxi took them a third of the way round the expressway, then turned off, heading back down to ground level. There were parks on both sides of the road when they started their descent, then buildings rose up to their left, and they were back on one of the ancient streets again. The pavements here didn’t seem so crowded. They slowed drastically, pulling over to the right alongside a large cube of white-grey stone with tall windows lined by iron railings and a steep state roof. An open arcade ran along the front, supported by wide arches. The taxi stopped level with a gate in the roadside barrier, which a doorman opened smartly. He was dressed in a dark blue coat and top hat, a double row of brass buttons gleamed down his chest. At last, Louise felt at home. This was something she could deal with.
If the doorman was surprised at who climbed out of the taxi he never showed it. “Are you staying here, miss?” he asked.
“I hope so, yes.”
He nodded politely, and ushered them under the arcade towards the main entrance.
Genevieve eyed the front of the stolid building sceptically. “It looks dreadfully gloomy.”
The lobby inside was white and gold, with chandeliers resembling f
rost-encrusted branches that had dazzling stars at the tip of each twig. Arches along the long central aisle opened into big rooms that were full of prim white tables where people were sitting having tea. Waiters in long black tailcoats bustled about, carrying trays with silver teapots and very tempting cakes.
Louise marched confidently over to the gleaming oak reception desk. “A twin room, please.”
The young woman standing behind smiled professionally. “Yes, madam. How long for?”
“Um. A week to start with.”
“Of course. I’ll need your ident flek, please, to register. And there is a deposit.”
“Oh, we haven’t got an ident flek.”
“We’re from Norfolk,” Gen said eagerly.
The receptionist’s composure flickered. “Really?” She cleared her throat. “If you’re from offworld, your passports will be satisfactory.”
Louise handed the passports over, thinking briefly of Endron again, and wondering how much trouble the Martian was in right now. The receptionist scanned the passports in a block and took the deposit from Louise. A bellboy came forward and relieved the sisters of their bags before showing them into a lift.
Their room was on the fourth floor, with a large window overlooking the park. The decor was so reminiscent of the kind Norfolk landowners worshiped it gave Louise a sense of déjà vu; regal-purple wallpaper and furniture so old the wood was virtually black beneath the polish. Her feet sank into a carpet well over an inch thick.
“Where are we?” Gen asked the bellboy. She was pressed up against the window, staring out. “I mean, what’s that park called?”
“That’s Green Park, miss.”
“So are we near anywhere famous?”
“Buckingham Palace is on the other side of the park.”
“Gosh.”
He showed Louise the room’s processor block, which was built in to the dresser. “Any information you need on the city for your stay should be in here; it has a comprehensive tourist section,” he said. She tipped him a couple of fuseodollars when he left. He’d been holding his own credit disk, casually visible through fingers splayed wide.
Genevieve waited until the door shut. “What’s Buckingham Palace?”
* * *
The AI was alert to the glitch within a hundredth of a second. Two ticket dispenser processors and an informational projector. It brought additional analysis programs on line, and ran an immediate verification sweep of every electronic circuit in Grand Central Station.
Half a second. The response to a general acknowledgement datavise from five sets of neural nanonics was incorrect. All of them were within a seven metre zone, which also incorporated the failing ticket dispensers.
Two seconds. Security sensors in Grand Central’s concourse focused on the suspect area. The AI datavised to B7’s North American supervisor the fact it had located a possessed-type glitch in New York. He had just framed his query in reply when the sensors observed Bud Johnson go cartwheeling over someone in a black robe crouched on the floor.
Three and a half seconds. There was a visual discontinuity. None of the sensor short-term memory buffers had registered the black clad figure before. It was as if he’d just materialized out of nowhere. If he had neural nanonics, then they were not responding to the ident request datavise.
Four seconds. The North American supervisor took direct control of the situation in conjunction with the AI. A datavised warning went out to the rest of the supervisors.
Six seconds. The full B7 complement of supervisors was on line, observing. The AI’s visual characteristics program locked on to the shadowed face inside the black robe’s hood. Quinn Dexter rose to his feet.
South Pacific: “Nuke him. Now!”
Western Europe: “Don’t be absurd.”
Halo: “SD platforms armed; do you want groundstrike?”
North America: “No. It’s completely impractical. Grand Central Station’s concourse is a hundred and fifty metres below ground, and that’s spread out below three skyscrapers. There isn’t an X-ray laser built that could reach it.”
South Pacific: “Then use a real nuke. A combat wasp can be down there in two minutes.”
Asian Pacific: “I second that.”
Western Europe: “No! Damn it. Will you morons control yourselves.”
North America: “Thank you. I’m not going to blast Dome One into oblivion. There are twenty million people living in there. Even Laton didn’t kill that many.”
North Europe: “You can’t let him go. We have to exterminate him.”
Western Europe: “How?”
North Europe: “South Pacific’s right. Nuke the shit. I’m sorry about the other inhabitants, but it’s the only way we can resolve the situation.”
Western Europe: “Observe, please.”
Eleven seconds. Bud Johnson’s face had turned purple. He scrabbled feebly at his chest, then pitched over onto the floor. People clustered round him. Quinn Dexter became translucent and quickly faded from view. The AI reported all the processors had come back on line.
Military Intelligence: “Oh shit.”
Western Europe: “Will a nuke kill him now do you think? Wherever he is.”
South Pacific: “One way to find out.”
Western Europe: “I cannot permit that. We exist primarily to protect Earth. Even with our prerogatives, you cannot exterminate twenty million people in the hope that you kill one terrorist.”
Halo: “The boy’s right, I’m afraid. I’m standing down the SD platforms.”
South Pacific: “Terrorist demon, more like.”
Western Europe: “I’m not arguing definitions. All this does is confirm I was right the first time. We have got to be extremely careful how we deal with Dexter.”
North Pacific: “Well at least shut down New York’s vac-trains.”
Central America: “Yes. Isolate him in New York. You can creep up on him there.”
Western Europe: “I’m going to have to say no again.”
North Pacific: “In Allah’s name, why? We know where he is, that gives us a tremendous advantage.”
Western Europe: “It’s psychology. He knows we know he’s here. He’s not stupid, he’ll realize we’ll find out about him appearing in Grand Central station. The question is, how long does it take us to find out? If we stop the vac-trains now, it shows him we are right up to speed and deeply worried by him, and also that we’ll go all out to stop him. That’s not good, that puts him on guard.”
Central America: “So, he’s on guard? If he’s trapped in one place, it won’t do him any good. He’ll still be on death row. He knows it’s coming, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
Western Europe: “First thing he’ll do is mobilise New York to defend himself. And we’ll be back to one option of having to nuke the place. Don’t you see? Our arcologies are even more vulnerable than asteroid settlements. They are utterly dependent on technology, not just to protect us from the weather, but to feed us and condition our air. If you confine three hundred million possessed inside one, every single chunk of machinery will break down. The domes will shatter in the first storm that comes along, and the population will either starve or turn cannibal.”
Central America: “I’m prepared to sacrifice one arcology to save the rest. If that’s what it takes.”
Western Europe: “But we don’t have to sacrifice one. Certainly not yet. You’re being abysmally premature. Right now, Dexter will be skipping round arcologies, establishing small groups of possessed who’ll keep their heads down until he gives the word. While he’s doing that, we’ve got a chance. There will only be small groups in each arcology, which we really ought to be able to find. If other worlds can track them, so can we. Dexter is our problem, not the ordinary possessed.”
Asian Pacific: “Put it to the vote.”
Western Europe: “How wonderfully democratic. Very well.”
Six supervisors voted for closing down New York’s vac-trains right away. Ten voted t
o keep them open.
Western Europe: “Thank you so much for your confidence.”
Southern Africa: “You have the ball for now. But if you haven’t dealt with Dexter in another ten days, I shall be voting to isolate him wherever he is. And then we’ll see if he can hide from a nuke as well as he can from a sensor.”
* * *
The conference dissolved. Western Europe asked North America, Military Intelligence, and Halo to remain on line. Natural allies in the eternal warzone of B7’s internal politics, they obliged. His sensevise overlay program positioning and dressing them around his drawing room as though they were weekend guests just come in from a stroll round the grounds.
“It’ll go against you eventually,” Halo warned. “They’re happy for you to take responsibility for the chase as long as Dexter hasn’t caused any noticeable damage. But the minute he gets noisy, they’ll revert.”
“That little crap artist, South Pacific,” North America complained. “Telling me to nuke New York! Who the hell does she think she is?”
“She always favours the blunt approach,” Western Europe said. “We all know that. That’s why I like her so much, makes one feel constantly superior.”
“Inferior or not, she’ll carry the day eventually,” Military Intelligence said.
Western Europe walked over to the tall glass-panelled door, and let his two Labradors in. “I know. That’s why I found today encouraging.”
“Encouraging?” North America asked, astonished. “Are you kidding? I’ve got that Dexter bastard running round loose in New York.”
“Yes, exactly. Something went wrong for him. He was on his knees when he appeared, and he vanished within seconds. He was glitched. Another factor in our favour.”
“Maybe,” Halo said. He sounded very dubious.
“All right,” North America said. “So what now?”
“You need to do two things. In forty minutes, I want you to close down all New York’s vac-trains.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 284