Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Flatbed trucks delivered pallets to the forward fuselage hatchways, while the clamshell doors at the back hinged wide, and a ramp slid down. The biolabs were driven carefully up into the belly of the SuperRoc. Angela saw Elston standing at the bottom of the ramp, watching keenly as the vehicles went in. After the fourth one was secured he and another officer left and walked round to the airstair at the front, cutting into the queue so they could go straight up.

  Just as Angela finally got to the bottom of the airstair, one of the An-445s landed, to be greeted by a swarm of logistics corps personnel. They began their loading in tandem with their colleagues attending the SuperRoc. If this afternoon was standard, that made it a planeload of personnel or materiel flying out to Abellia every two or three hours. She whistled silently – the expedition must be costing billions. Somebody other than herself was very serious about finding the monster.

  Despite Angela’s misgivings, the SuperRoc’s seats weren’t too bad. The cushioning was firm, and there was a reasonable amount of leg room. They were arranged in rows five abreast. She let Leora Fawkes take the window seat; Paresh sat on her other side, with Josh Justic and Audrie Sleath filling the rest of the row.

  Her e-i quested a link to the plane’s smartnet, which offered her a limited connection to the transnet, warning her to download anything she needed for entertainment on the flight to a personal cache, as the connection would end as soon as they took off. She selected the files, most of which came from unlicensed sites, on recent Grande Europe history and Middle Eastern politics in the trans-stellar age, a collection she’d been skimming back in the HDA base, and settled down to read them on her grid, ignoring the plane’s safety briefing.

  She roused herself briefly as the SuperRoc accelerated down the runway, pushing her back in the cushioning as it reared up. The flight was due to last nine and a half hours thanks to their Fall Zone transit, which would see them flying low and slow for a thousand kilometres over the Marsden Sea. It would take them through the night to land at Abellia early morning local time, which was completely contrary to her body clock, which was telling her she was just coming up on lunchtime. At least it would give her time to read up on the files, though as always she told herself to pay equal attention to both topics, knowing Elston would be reviewing her access.

  As she expanded the files back into her grid, she wondered how much he’d managed to find out about her past now he suspected her Tramelo background was bogus. Not as much as he would’ve liked, she guessed; the database which held the most vital details of her origin and life was off-limits even to Elston’s beloved Alien Intelligence Agency. That would bother him, she knew, him with his desperate little-man superiority and right-to-know-job arrogance; though ironically that exclusive data didn’t have the slightest relevance to the expedition nor the alien monster. In fact, the only thing he might find, if he was super-efficient with DNA analysis, was her true mother. Angela smiled secretively at the prospect, now that would be an interesting meeting.

  The SuperRoc climbed steadily, banking gently to line up on a north-eastern course. Silver-grey ringlight shone in through the windows.

  ‘Oh wow, will you take a look at this,’ Leora gasped, pressing her face against the window.

  Angela craned her neck to look over the Legionnaire’s shoulder. The land below was perfectly illuminated by the bright ringlight, revealing the algaepaddies. Each one was a perfect circle a thousand metres in diameter, its rim made from a low earth bank bulldozed out from the centre to create a shallow crater. Once they were filled with water from the daily rains, the genetically modified algae were introduced, quickly blooming and multiplying in the planet’s ideal combination of warmth and moisture, turning the surface into a thick glistening sludge. It was harvested by a boom arm, which was fastened to a central pillar, and rotated round and round, taking two days to complete a full circuit, siphoning off a high percentage of the crud, yet leaving enough so that when the arm came round once more there was a full blanket of algae grown back over the surface again.

  The harvested sludge was pumped over to a refinery, where its water content was removed, leaving the raw algae to have their hydrocarbon-rich corpus processed into any of the half-dozen biopetroleum products utterly essential to the trans-stellar economy. Demand was massive, and expanding in line with the current steady economic growth of the human worlds. That was the reason why the glistening circles stretched out as far as Leora could see from the vantage point of a plane already four miles high. They were packed together in a precise lattice, which only surrendered to the rare small hills on the plain. The distance between them was calculated to allow narrow spine roads and the pipe network to co-exist. There were also the overspill channels, draining away the excess rainwater, a regimented tributary network that merged into larger waterways before combining into motorway-sized channels that finally disgorged into the region’s natural rivers, flushing surplus algae away to contaminate the native riverside ecology all the way down to the sea. Ringlight shone on them too, creating a herringbone array of steady silver lambency threading round the algaepaddies.

  ‘That is one hell of an impressive set-up,’ Paresh murmured behind Angela. ‘It’s like it goes on for ever.’

  She turned back to him. ‘Several hundred miles, yeah. But think how many people it supplies with bioil on how many worlds; how much of trans-stellar life as we know it is dependent on St Libra.’

  ‘Those Norths, huh, smart people.’

  ‘Ruthless people if you want to be honest and accurate.’

  ‘That sounds bitter.’

  ‘You know why I was there at Bartram’s mansion, right?’

  ‘Uh, sure.’

  Angela smiled to herself at how self-conscious he seemed to be about that. ‘The original three brothers; it’s like they had their brains scooped out and replaced by silicon. They don’t connect to anything human. They understand emotion and feelings, but only so they can manipulate it. Their freak kids, the 2s, they’re a little more human; I suppose it’s because they’re all flawed – at least in relation to the three bad dads. But they still contribute to the collective. In fact, the collective wouldn’t be possible without them.’

  ‘Collective?’

  ‘Northumberland Interstellar, which basically is St Libra.’

  ‘So it’s lucky for the human race we’ve actually got them?’

  ‘If it hadn’t been the Norths and St Libra, it would’ve been someone and something else. Like thousands before them, they saw an opportunity and they went for it. Smart, ambitious people have been doing that, bending the universe around them, for most of our history. The majority of them share the same characteristics as the Norths.’

  ‘You sound like you hate the rich because they are rich.’

  ‘Money buys you a decent life, I don’t begrudge anyone that. How they get it can be a problem, depending on your beliefs.’

  ‘What are yours?’

  ‘I believe in personal survival, and I’ll do whatever it takes to maintain that belief.’

  ‘That’s kind of bleak.’

  Angela grinned at him. ‘That doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun along the way. I just haven’t had much for . . . Oh yeah: twenty years.’

  ‘A genuine miscarriage of justice. That’s got to be the toughest break I ever heard of.’

  ‘Yeah. But when we all trip over the monster out there in the jungle and load its pic on the transnet, I’ll be in line for some serious financial compensation. Hopefully I’ll be able to trash some senior government careers as well. Nice bonus.’

  ‘So that’s what this is about, revenge?’

  ‘Look, right now I’m not locked in a prison cell, I get food given me every day – well, HDA rations, anyway – I have clothes, I’ve got you guys to talk to instead of the psychopaths I was banged up with and the sadists who guarded us, I have a view from my window, and I can access the transnet. And if I believed in Disney endings I’d even keep an eye open for Mr Right. My li
fe is on the up right now.’

  ‘Except you think we’re all going to die out in the jungle.’

  ‘You. I think you are all going to die. Because you don’t believe in what I’ve seen; to you this is just another deployment exercise.’

  ‘I believe.’

  ‘I hope you do, Paresh. Seriously.’

  ‘When the crunch comes, I’m going to prove to you that you’ve been underestimating us.’

  ‘Yeah. Look, sorry if I keep coming over like a bitch; it’s just that I’m used to taking care of myself.’

  ‘Not much rak, huh?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ She gave him a suspicious look, rather liking the playful mock-innocent expression she saw on his face, but then Paresh was still a kid in so many ways.

  ‘Random Acts of Kindness,’ he said. ‘You need some in your life. Everybody does.’

  ‘No, I don’t have much of a rak, but hey, this is the twenty-third century, you can get anything fixed if you have enough money.’

  They grinned at each other.

  ‘We’re back to money again,’ he said.

  ‘Always,’ Angela said. ‘So do you like a girl with lots of rak?’

  Paresh smirked. ‘I’m not fussy either way.’

  She smiled and went back to her files on the Blue Kama democracy rebellion which had swept through the Arab countries in the early twenty-second century.

  *

  People were just starting to doze off when the SuperRoc began its descent into the Fall Zone. They’d left the port town of Eastshields a thousand kilometres behind, and were now out over the Marsden Sea, five hundred kilometres short of the equator. Below them the sea came close to steaming. Evaporation was constant, producing a thick band of hot mist which circled the whole of St Libra’s oceanic equator, surging up to the very top of the troposphere to power the endless rainstorms which roiled through the planet’s atmosphere.

  The SuperRoc’s radar was on, scanning the unbroken fog and cloud it was slicing through at a cautious six hundred and fifty kph. Not that the pilots would have much warning if any rocks did plummet towards them. They were flying at seven hundred metres above the sea now, the lowest safe altitude at which the turbofans could maintain their efficiency in such humidity.

  ‘I don’t see why we need to be this low,’ Josh Justic complained.

  Angela glanced over, seeing the way his hands were gripping the end of the armrests. Josh wasn’t a good flyer, and this was about the worst flight on any of the trans-stellar worlds.

  ‘We’re a lot better off down here,’ she promised him. ‘We’re flying under the rings right now, and the A-ring grazes the top of the atmosphere. The drag aerobrakes a million particles a day below orbital velocity. It’s mostly just dust we’re talking about, specks not even as big as a grain of sand, but there’s a few bigger rocks jumbled up in there too. They generally disintegrate when they reach the mesosphere and plume like a cascade of shooting stars. So if any do survive their own shockwave and get down to the troposphere, the radar will pick up the ionization trail easily enough, and the pilots will have time to fly us away from the fallpath.’ In theory, she added silently. This low-and-safe manoeuvre was mainly for the benefit of the passengers. In the fifty-four years since Bartram established Abellia no plane had been hit by a ring particle – of course, there had been a lot of reports of engine failure due to excessive humidity in the combustion chamber.

  A bright flash outside illuminated the whole row of startled faces.

  ‘What was that?’ Josh demanded.

  ‘Ring particle disintegrating. Don’t worry, it’s twenty miles overhead, and smaller chunks are good news – they burn up a lot faster. Basically, if you see the flash it means you won’t get hit by the debris it exploded into. It’s the dark ones you have to fear.’

  Josh didn’t look convinced. Angela shrugged and went back to her reading. The flight crew started serving the ‘evening’ meal: a plastic box with a baked potato, cheese, and tuna. There was only water to drink, and pudding was a small Cadbury’s chocolate bar.

  Angela suspected the crew passed it out to distract everyone from the near-constant purple and scarlet flashes that burst through the darkness above them.

  *

  She dozed off about the time they cleared the thousand-kilometre-wide Fall Zone corridor, and the huge plane climbed back to its normal cruise altitude for the remaining fifteen hundred kilometres to Abellia. The cabin lights came back up to full intensity twenty minutes out from the airport.

  ‘Morning, sleepy,’ Paresh said.

  Angela grimaced at him, rubbing at her eyes and yawning widely. They were already descending, with the cabin crew walking down the aisles, making sure everyone was using their seatbelt. A gentle dawn light was shining through the windows.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she protested. ‘I hate transplanet timelag. It takes me days to adjust.’

  ‘The Legion always toughs it out,’ Audrie informed her.

  Angela gave her the finger and brought her chair upright for landing. The undercarriage lowered with a lot of clunks. Only now did Angela regret giving up the window seat to Leora. She peered intently at the vista beyond the window. They were just approaching the shoreline along the western side of Abellia.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Angela muttered.

  ‘What?’ Paresh asked. ‘I thought you knew this town.’

  ‘I used to,’ she said, staring down at the coastal city that Bartram North had so clearly modelled on Human Idyll 101.

  Abellia was built on a forty-kilometre-wide pear-shaped peninsula, an errant eruption of rock jutting out from Brogal’s rugged coastline. It was mountainous terrain, with the tight-packed slopes falling straight down into the water around the whole peninsula, and in doing so creating hundreds of coves with broad sandy beaches. Bartram had built the original cargo ship harbour at the southernmost point, allowing civil engineering plants to sprawl back into the two closest valleys. They’d long since been uprooted and booted out into the hinterlands, allowing the old town area around the expanded harbour to develop into a gleaming civic centre, with theatres and arenas and schools; even a college campus jostled for space with malls and galleries. Outside that central cluster of long public beaches and marinas, the coves had been claimed by individuals or belonged to the elaborate condos that ran along the back of the sands.

  White Californian-Spanish villa-mansions had colonized the mountains inland, where artificial terracing halted soil erosion and allowed terrestrial green to spread up the valleys, forming parks and golf courses that were irrigated from the white-water rivers which drained away the daily monsoons. Slim roads switch-backed up the rugged gradients and arched between hills on narrow, architecturally adventurous bridges. Highways cut rigid lines across the antagonistic topography, tunnelling through any inconvenient mountain to carry the traffic directly between districts with minimum fuss. Native vegetation with its darker colours still persisted on the steeper inclines, dominating the heights above the city. None of the peaks had snowcaps – that just didn’t happen on St Libra; instead the apex of most mountains had been claimed by clubs and spas, or really big private mansions. The blue blobs of infinity pools were everywhere.

  Yachts and smaller pleasure boats carved long white wakes through the clear sea. There were even some big pontoons anchored offshore, with stores and restaurants and bars, served by water taxis.

  ‘It’s grown,’ Angela said in a subdued voice. She should have expected it, but even so . . .

  ‘Five minutes to landing,’ the pilot announced.

  She took a deep breath as her heart began to race. An adrenalin tingle swept through her body, bringing a sudden chill. Everything came into hard focus as primeval instincts sharpened up protectively, alert for danger.

  ‘You okay?’ a concerned Paresh asked.

  ‘Sure.’ They were memories, that was all; triggered by the sight of the city they came slithering out of dark places. Too many of them.

&nb
sp; Friday 1st February 2143

  Most of the expedition pilots were toxed up with HiMod to keep them sharp and push them through their natural sleep cycle without the chem-buzz of a street stim. Ravi Hendrik didn’t bother with analeptics. No need, not even now he was pushing fifty. And as to why his fellow pilots had turned users he didn’t understand at all.

  How could you not stay fresh and focused on this world, with this mission? Ravi’s European Aircraft Corporation CT-606D Berlin heavylift helicopter was the latest model to roll off the production line; shiny-new and ridiculously expensive – like most of the expedition’s equipment. Even with such top-of-the-range systems, he didn’t bother with the autopilot, preferring to fly on manual, even during the refuelling, when they suckled up to the tanker-variant Daedalus, which they’d had to do twice on the two-thousand-kilometre trip. He preferred it because of the bright-yellow JCB compactor hanging on cables beneath the Berlin, looking utterly surreal as it zoomed over the St Libra jungle at close on two hundred and fifty kph. Loads like this did hellacious things to their flight stability.

  He lived for shit like this. A man in tune with his machine, flying with a purpose.

  After eight stressful hours the ferry flight of four Berlins was now only about fifty kilometres out from Edzell, the first advance base that was being carved out of the jungle two thousand and seventy kilometres straight north of Abellia. Another ten minutes would see Ravi lowering the compactor down into the clearing. An overnight stay and then tomorrow a fast flight back to Abellia to pick up more outsize equipment.

  First priority for the HDA engineering corps at Edzell was to use the dozers and compactors which the Berlins delivered to carve a runway out of the wild ground for the Daedalus planes, whose design allowed them to land on some pretty rough surfaces. Once that strip was established, the big planes would take over supplying the base and expanding it up to full operational status; but until then it was all dependent on the Berlins. Ravi and the helicopter pilots were the pioneers everyone else was depending on to pull off this truly wild schedule. The whole expedition, from Commissioner Passam down to the catering staff, was following this flight in real time, admiring their ballsy skill. Right now his neurones were pumping him a high no tox could match. Oh yes.