Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Angela was getting fed up with it. So far the mud hadn’t got inside the garters she wore, but that additional layer of protection was hot in this weather, making her legs sweat. And she walked about the airport a lot.

  ‘I need some time alone,’ she told Elston. ‘I’ve been locked up for twenty years, and crammed into the Newcastle base for another fortnight. Just be a decent human for once. It’s not like I can escape to anywhere from here.’

  So he’d reluctantly agreed to let her have an hour a day to herself without Paresh or any of the squad beside her.

  ‘But you’re not to leave the airport perimeter,’ he warned, and had her clothes smart-tagged to emphasize the lack of trust.

  Angela walked away from the tent streets, making a complete circuit of the airport. There were few buildings: the main terminal, a cargo terminal, the engineering hangars, fuel depot. She walked round the tarmac aprons and taxi lanes and connecting roads, watching vehicles drive past at ridiculous speeds. Stood and stared at each plane landing and taking off. Talked to logistics corps personnel as they shuttled pallets and tanks about.

  Each day she either waited until it had rained, or scoured the sky to make sure it would be clear of clouds for a while. On the third day she set out in the middle of the morning, taking her solid memory cache with her. It was half the size of her palm, and slipped into her pocket easily. She didn’t need it for the memory capacity; it had its own cell built in, with a much greater range than her own bodymesh.

  When she was walking down the side of a taxiway it detected the airport’s net, and connected her via a cell in the main terminal. She might not have had transnet access for twenty years, but there were certain aspects of digital security she’d learned in Holloway – and it hadn’t been from the official educational sessions, either. It was a simple fact of life that her fellow inmates had a knowledge of criminality that was at least equal to any law-enforcement specialist.

  Angela’s hands started flicking icons around, navigating away from Abellia, then St Libra itself, out into the true transnet. The dark cache was there, just as Zarleene Autrass (found guilty of killing two people – unfortunately for her, they were undercover cops) had confessed, shifting between transnet trunks, a purely random pattern unless you knew the key. Once opened, it contained a repository of many powerful hacking tools and secure link systems. But then Zarleene had been a top-flight AI creative until she fell for the wrong man, one who was charmingly persuasive, attentive, devoted, and excitingly wicked in bed. Zarleene: a petite twenty-five-year-old with poor social skills, who wouldn’t have lasted a week in Holloway’s brutal environment. Sweet hopeless Zarleene, who’d been all teary grateful for the protection Angela offered against more predatory inmates, and even more thankful for the snatched moments of passion, the vital human contact.

  Angela immediately upgraded her e-i, equipping it with high-grade quantum encryption. Once the key had been sent back to her via multiple random routes, she incorporated layers of AI-level predictive behaviourals, constructing a real personality within the transnet which she designated the authority to handle her credit account and monitor her in real time in case she ever needed help fast – a big sister e-i. Content she was now reasonably secure, she had a nose around the rest of the cache’s menu to see what else Zarleene had left behind. Mostly it was software for route ghosting, key grabs, and firewall crash and snatch; everything you needed for the kind of financial raids her suave man had groomed her for. But there were other software packages as well. Angela started familiarizing herself with their functions. Before long searchbots with registry immunity dispersed into the transnet, heavy with the requests Angela had loaded in. She withdrew from the dark cache, using the stealth access routines she’d found inside to cover her tracks. ‘Thanks Zarleene,’ she said silently. It wasn’t even betrayal, not really – they’d both come away with what they wanted. Besides, there had been a lot worse things in Holloway over the years.

  She joined Paresh’s squad for lunch as they walked over to the big mess tent on the side of the squishy temporary city, watching out for the bigger puddles. Half of the squad didn’t bother with trousers any more, they just wore boots and shorts. Angela wasn’t so keen, she’d seen what some types of St Libra spores could do to human skin if they weren’t cleaned off right away. They were relatively clear here as the hinterlands behind Abellia were mostly farmland and meadows. But you never knew what could blow in from the wildlands to the north.

  ‘Here they go,’ Marty O’Riley called.

  Angela raised her sunglasses to gaze at the three Daedalus planes rolling along the taxiway to the runway. An hour before, she’d quested the camp’s glitch-prone net to watch the feed from the first one landing at Edzell. The HDA was keen to build up the forward staging post camp quickly, keeping up the tremendous momentum they’d achieved to date. She knew the next batch of e-Rays was scheduled to be flown out tomorrow, so the observation crews could start to find a site another two thousand kilometres further north from Edzell; countryside which no one had ever seen other than through fuzzy images taken from space during the Sirius preliminary assessment probe ninety-three years ago. Once that second camp was up and running, the true exploration phase of the expedition would begin.

  The first Daedalus roared along the runway before tipping up into the clear sky, climbing swiftly.

  Several squad members whistled and cheered it on its way. Angela watched it with a great deal more ambiguity. Paresh’s squad still didn’t have the right attitude to the mission, they were far too complacent.

  ‘Football game this afternoon,’ DiRito said as they carried on to the big mess tent. ‘Plenty of squads are putting a team together. We’re going to make up a league.’

  ‘Football or soccer?’ Angela asked, which earned a huge groan from everyone.

  ‘Soccer. The one and only proper football!’ Omar Mihambo said in disgust.

  ‘You GEs,’ she countered. ‘So small-minded.’

  ‘We gave it freely to the trans-stellar worlds.’

  ‘Feel free to take it back any time.’

  ‘At least the rest of the worlds understand it.’

  ‘Yeah, because they’re too dumb to understand real football rules.’

  ‘Did you play soccer in prison?’ Leora asked.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘What position? Were you any good?’

  ‘I was okay, I guess. I could run fast with the ball.’ Though she couldn’t imagine playing in her new hiking boots.

  DiRito and Josh Justic looked at each other. ‘Midfield,’ they announced together.

  ‘Do I get a choice?’

  ‘Do you want to let us down?’

  ‘It’s only seven a side,’ Leora said. ‘Easy and fun.’

  ‘At least come along to the practice,’ DiRito pleaded.

  ‘I’ll check my schedule.’

  The mess tent was marquee-size, with open sides all round. A canteen counter had been set up at one end, with bored, tired NECatering Services staff handing out meals on a permanent basis to cope not just with the expedition ground personnel but also the constant airlift flights. Angela and the squad joined the end of a long queue just as Passam arrived for her lunch. As befitted her status in life, the Commissioner was wearing an expensive royal-blue European-tailored business suit with a silk blouse and black shoes that were splattered in mud, as were her tights. Despite the heat, her rigid hairstyle was locked into place, and her make-up a total mask through which beads of perspiration were oozing. Several PA drones hovered round their queen, smiling nervously as she walked to the head of the queue.

  Service in the canteen might be a good-for-morale, first-come-first-served basis, but Passam was clearly a devout believer in herself being more equal than others.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, addressing the queue members about to scoop up their dishes from the counter. ‘I do have a most important i-conference call scheduled in a little while. It’s with the GE Finance Bureau y
ou know. Got to keep them happy.’ Without actually making eye contact with the people she’d pushed in front of, she stood at the counter and engaged in more simply delightful chit-chat with the girls serving up the meal packets. Her PAs closed protectively around her, grabbing their own trays.

  Angela stared at the scene. Her muscles had locked up with shock. She felt the flush rising up her face. Something was muting the sounds of the mess tent as a weird sharp tingling spread savagely across her skin.

  Without warning her legs gave way, pitching her onto the floor of pulped grass.

  ‘Angela?’ Paresh asked from what must have been miles away. From being exhaustingly hot she was now icy. Her limbs were shaking uncontrollably. ‘No,’ she whimpered. ‘No no.’

  ‘Hey, what’s happened?’ Paresh and Omar were reaching for her, turning her onto her back. Alarmed faces loomed over her, blurred by tears.

  ‘No! It can’t be. It can’t be! No!’ Her voice was rising as the hysteria swept her along. She couldn’t breathe. She tried jerking down some air, body juddering as muscles spasmed wrongly.

  ‘Angela.’

  ‘Medic! Call a medic.’

  ‘What the fuck happened to her?’

  ‘Angela,’ an alarmed Paresh shouted. ‘Angela listen to me: you have to breathe.’

  She was arching her back, gulping air down against the contractions in her throat. There was no pain, just a body in chaos, reacting as if someone was pumping an electric shock through her. The wild thought made her want to laugh. She couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything but thrash about as if gripped by a seizure.

  Paresh and Omar were pushed aside. A couple of people with Red Cross eagle armbands were abruptly kneeling beside her. She could only see them down a long grey tunnel now. There was a lot of shouting that was very faint.

  Something was clamped over her nose and mouth. She tasted dry air with a weird metal tang. Her heart was pounding madly as she finally subsided flat onto her back, sobbing uncontrollably.

  *

  The field hospital was made up from ten Qwik-Kabins locked together, forming a generously equipped emergency centre with five small operating suites, along with a full body diagnostics chamber. Its main purpose was triage, delivering quality patch-’em-up treatment before shipping the injured out to a proper hospital. Anyone with bad physical damage to their body who came through the door and was still breathing was almost guaranteed to survive. Something that looked like a psychological breakdown wasn’t a syndrome they were geared up to handle, though.

  Bland composite walls shone an uncompromising beige from the glaring monochrome ceilings. The light hadn’t even been dimmed in the curtained-off assessment cubicle where Angela lay on a narrow gurney. Whatever sedative the paramedics had pumped into her worked a treat. Her thoughts were perfectly calm, disconnected even. Certainly her body was at rest, breathing calm, muscles quiescent. She didn’t feel the need to move as she stared at that perfect expanse of lit-up ceiling. Even the air-con buzz was mildly therapeutic – she could hear subtle harmonies buried within its harshness.

  Eventually, though, the monotonous light and sound grew boring. She had no idea how long she’d been lying there. She suspected a couple of hours at least. The drugs had wound her down from what she knew had been the mother of all panic attacks, which allowed her to think about what she’d seen. That didn’t mean she’d come to terms with it, but sure as the devil shits on human life she knew it wasn’t coincidence. It couldn’t be. That knowledge alone made it bearable.

  Angela took a proper interest in the cubicle. There was a diagnostic panel on a swing arm above the gurney, three screens alive with information about her body. She could see glistening patches on her hands where smartdust had been smeared on with some kind of gloop. There would be other patches on her chest, her neck, limbs . . .

  ‘Loop the data,’ she told her augmented e-i. ‘Don’t let them know I’m awake.’

  ‘The smartdust embedded in the walls and ceiling is providing a visual image of you, which the medical staff is observing,’ the e-i told her.

  Angela closed her eyes and feigned sleep again. ‘Loop that as well.’

  ‘Completed.’

  ‘Warn me if anyone comes.’ She swung her bare feet off the thin mattress, grabbed her glasses from the bedside locker, and peered round the end of the curtain. The emergency centre had five identical cubicles, and hers was the only one occupied. She saw a medicine cabinet down the other end of the room.

  Benefits of a prison education: it took less than thirty seconds for her augmented e-i to crack the authorization code, and the narrow blade from the multifunction penknife in her camping utility belt was already inside the physical lock. Take the box from the back of the stack so nobody notices one has gone missing. Five seconds for the blade to lock the cabinet again, and the digital authorization system automatically resets . . .

  Dr Tamika Coniff pulled back the curtain to see her patient propped up on her elbows. Such a fast return to consciousness was slightly surprising, given how much sedative the paramedics had pumped her with. But as the doctor had learned during her internship, every human body is troublingly unique.

  ‘What happened?’ Angela asked in a thick voice as the doctor’s penlight was shone into her eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure, exactly,’ Tamika Coniff admitted as she noted the normal pupil reaction. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Bit groggy, like I’ve been stoned.’

  ‘Accurate enough description. Physically, there’s nothing wrong with you now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘As best I can determine, yes. The smartdust monitoring your vitals is certainly telling me your body functions have returned to normal. However, I’d advise you to implant a suite of medical monitor smartcells. Every HDA member has them, and it allows your bodymesh to monitor you on a permanent basis. If any abnormality begins, your e-i can shout for help. Proactive monitoring increases survival chances.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll remember that.’

  ‘We have spare suites of medical smartcells here in the hospital. I can apply them now, if you’ll just add your certificate to the release.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Dr Tamika Coniff gave her a disapproving look. ‘I see. They are excellent suites, if that’s what you’re worried about. I have one myself.’

  ‘I’m sure they are. Just let me get used to the idea.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Thanks, Doc.’

  ‘Can you tell me, is there any family history of epilepsy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I read your file. Twenty years in jail?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Did you have access to narcotic drugs while you were incarcerated?’

  ‘It was a jail, Doc. If we got candy bars once a month we were lucky.’

  ‘So that would be a yes, then.’

  Angela grinned weakly. ‘Actually, no. I didn’t bump any tox in jail. I’m not screwed up that way.’

  ‘And judging by your appearance, you’re a one-in-ten.’

  ‘No fooling you.’

  ‘That can produce some physiological quirks that we’re only just discovering. But I’d say you suffered some kind of neural overload episode, probably trauma induced. I can’t imagine what it must be like getting your freedom back after so long. Then returning directly to Abellia would act as an inordinately strong emotional trigger. Psychologically you’re swinging from one extreme to another. That is very hard for a mind to process, hence the physical reaction.’

  Angela did her best not to sneer at the doctor’s solemn analysis. It was so far from what had actually happened, the real trigger, as to be laughable. But she couldn’t say that, so instead she nodded wisely and said: ‘Yeah, coming back here isn’t exactly my idea of funtime, either.’

  ‘That’s good. Acknowledging you have a problem is the first step in surmounting it.’

  ‘Right.’ Angela was rather liking the doctor. She was probably
a head shorter than Angela, and in her mid-thirties. A little too heavyset to be a beauty, though her clear Indian heritage gave her auburn skin a healthy lustre. But it was the brisk attitude which truly appealed – the doc saw a problem and tried to slice right to the core. Under different circumstances they might have got along.

  ‘Then to be honest there’s not a lot more I can do for you,’ Coniff said. ‘The expedition doesn’t have a professional counsellor. If it happens again, I could officially recommend you are taken back to Earth.’

  Angela grinned at Dr Tamika’s earnest face. ‘It won’t happen again. Fool me once, never fool me again. I was caught off guard, is all. Besides, I won’t be sent home. I’m too essential.’

  Dr Tamika frowned. ‘You sound like you know what caused this.’

  ‘Thankfully, not the smell of mint.’

  ‘Ah yes, that was in our briefing. You said the monster smells of it.’

  ‘Yeah. So be careful.’

  ‘You know you can speak to me in confidence.’

  ‘I look forward to it.’

  ‘If you feel the symptoms emerging again, come and see me before it builds back up to today’s level. I can prescribe anti-depressants. There’s no shame in it, you know, especially after everything you’ve been through.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll be good.’

  ‘All right, I’ll get the datawork finished and discharge you. And please consider that suite of smartcells.’

  ‘Thanks. I will.’ Angela laced up her boots, then Velcroed the gaiters in place. There was no sign of her sunhat, which annoyed her. She pushed the curtain aside.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ She took a half-step back from Elston, who was standing directly outside the assessment cubicle. ‘Jesus wept, you’re getting even creepier, you know that?’