Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘I’m concerned about you, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t be, I’m fine.’

  ‘You were carried out of the mess tent having a fit. You even scared Commissioner Passam. She wants to know you’re all right.’

  ‘Tell her I’m flattered by her interest. You can do that, you’re good at lying.’

  ‘What happened? Seriously, I’d like to know.’

  Angela walked away, heading for the entrance. ‘Shock. Seriously. Didn’t you overhear that bit? I’ve been locked up for twenty years on a false charge. Getting out is a humongous deal for a lifer. Then you considerately dragged me back here where it all happened, and will probably happen again.’ Angela raised her voice as she passed the ward station where Dr Tamika Coniff and a couple of nurses were huddled round a desk with three small screens and a zone console. ‘The doc asked if I’d been screwed up by illegal tox when I was in jail. Don’t worry, I didn’t rat you out, didn’t tell her how you tortured me for weeks and shot me full of shit that scrambled my brain.’ She watched the anger rise across Elston’s face. A cheap thrill, but it was enjoyable knowing she could still get to him.

  ‘Get out of here.’

  She blew him a kiss. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We’re on the same side, you know,’ he called out as she sauntered away. ‘We’re both human. It isn’t. You might want to think about that.’

  Angela opened the door, giving him a backwards finger as she stepped outside into the sunlight and warmth.

  Paresh and DiRito and Leora and Gillian and Josh and Audrie and Omar were standing outside the field hospital. They looked around as she appeared. Smiles appeared on their faces.

  ‘Fuck, she made it.’

  ‘Hey, you don’t look too bad.’

  ‘What did the doc say?’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Paresh asked, full of real concern.

  It was so unexpected. People cared. About her. An astonished Angela stared at them, lost for words. For an awful second, she thought another panic wave was about to crash over her. But it didn’t, because she knew how to control herself, how not to let the slightest weakness show. Focus.

  Angela grinned, which was an easy thing to allow. ‘I panicked. I saw the food again, and just . . .’ She shrugged.

  They laughed as they gathered round. She was hugged; Leora and Audrie kissed her. Paresh sheepishly handed her the sunhat she thought she’d lost.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, and gave him a long look as she pulled it down on her head. Again, the delightful puppy boy rolled over, tail wagging.

  ‘Seriously, girl, what happened back there?’ Omar asked.

  ‘Sorry I scared you guys. The doc said I’m still screwed up over prison and getting released, all that shit. Coming straight back here wasn’t the smartest thing I could have done. It just got to me, is all.’

  ‘Are they shipping you back?’ DiRito asked.

  ‘Oh fuck no. I’ve still got to watch out for you guys. Nobody else is.’

  ‘Hey!’ They started joshing her back, protesting. They teased her about missing the seven-a-side football, bragging about how well Atyeo’s team had done before getting knocked out by Corporal Hiron’s squad.

  Good people, she admitted reluctantly as they walked back to the main camp.

  Overhead, a silver-white V-shaped HyperLear curved sharply across the sky as it came in to land with a guttural roar from its turborams. The sight brought on a nostalgia burn stronger than Angela expected, but then she was vulnerable today. It had been a long time since she’d flown in anything like the supersonic executive jet.

  *

  April 2121 had been unusually cold, even for a London struggling out of another miserable winter where the Thames had yet again frozen over. Late snowfalls were still clogging the streets and slowing the traffic when Angela Tramelo arrived on the trans-Europe express at St Pancras station, direct from Nantes where she lived with her mother. She registered at the Imperial College for her first year of sport physiotherapy studies, with football treatment as her speciality class; no different to all the other middle-class eighteen-year-old girls away from home for the first time who thronged the college buildings. Her GE citizen files and certificates were all accepted by the college AI, and the freshman year’s fees paid from her account with the Paris First Trans-stellar bank.

  With her accreditation confirmed, she went to the flat her mother had arranged; two rooms on the second floor in a nice house just off Draycott Avenue, sharing the communal kitchen with three other students. Youngsters from similar backgrounds living together in a respectable part of town, and within easy walking distance of the university. Just the kind of place a decent mother would choose. It was also conveniently close to Chelsea’s King’s Road, with all its wondrous bars and restaurants.

  So it was that Angela Tramelo began her studies, spending hours in the gym each week, and not so many hours in the lecture theatre learning about the mechanics of the human muscular structure and how it connected to the skeleton; most importantly for a fresher, she made friends and hit the hectic party circuit. The right friends were essential. Imperial College was as cliquey as any other university, and Angela swiftly learned who were the genuine children of the wealthy as opposed to her peers from a comfortable middle-class background. She began hanging out with the richer types, accepting dates from boys with social connections who promised exciting, roguish times for a girl from the rural provinces. More significantly, who hung out at London’s more exclusive clubs, including the Gusto on Park Lane.

  That was where Melyne Aslo first saw Angela Tramelo. There were a lot of extremely beautiful young girls in Gusto – they were practically a required accessory for older men. Models, zone starlets, society daughters, they all dressed in couture and partied the night away. That’s what made Angela stand out, she was fresh-faced pretty but lacking the poise most of the club’s beauty clique possessed, and her clothes, while chic and sexy, were hardly high-label. It clearly didn’t matter to the third-year Libyan business student who’d brought her; he was busy showing off to her and his gaggle of university chums, buying the most expensive drinks and toxes, downing them so fast that he’d soon be losing consciousness, but not before making a complete arse of himself.

  Aslo watched the girl discreetly. The thick white-blonde hair was long, hanging down almost to her hips – Aslo suspected extensions, but given the girl’s pale complexion it was probably her true colour. Tall enough, she didn’t like them too short. Athletic – check. Great smile. And most intriguingly: bored. Oh, she was hiding it from her mealticket oaf of a boyfriend. But Aslo was experienced enough to see how his ridiculous antics were turning her off; she’d have been promised a decent night on the town only to be a part of the same stupid old student excess, just in a plusher building. Even so, she wasn’t walking. The attraction of the Gusto lifestyle was countering her aversion.

  Gusto’s network was wide open to Aslo’s e-i, which quickly located Angela Tramelo on tonight’s guest list. Fifty seconds later she’d harvested a complete profile. A football physio! Angela was perfect.

  The first time Angela went to the ladies’ room, Aslo moved in. She’d done it so many times before, a casual encounter, friendly talk offered. The girl was delighted someone else showed an interest. Quelle surprise: Nantes was Melyne’s favourite French city, she adored the huge ancient chateau right in the centre, the narrow old streets, the opera house – visions of which she was accessing through her contact netlens as she babbled about them. They exchanged e-i codes, and Aslo went home.

  Next afternoon Angela met her new Best Friend for tea in a café in Thurloe Street, outside the South Kensington Underground station. Angela had just finished another arduous gym session, her tutor taking the class through a series of warm-up routines while explaining their proper application, so she was dressed in her sports kit with her big hair all wrapped up and trailing loose ends. A complete ingénue, Aslo decided as she appraised the girl in daylight. When Angela sat down she unzi
pped the fleece tracksuit top; underneath her tight sprinter vest showed off a lot of taut midriff. Apparently, she didn’t even notice the way Aslo’s gaze lingered on her exposed flesh.

  Melyne Aslo explained she was an events organizer working out of an office in Fulham, helping with corporate, government, and private functions. She didn’t need to work now that her divorce was final, but it kept her busy and in contact with the right people. She said she remembered how difficult money had been when she was at university fifteen years ago, so if Angela ever needed some additional income, stewardessing at events paid well and it could all go to a secondary.

  Angela was grateful for the offer, agreeing enthusiastically.

  Aslo spent a month grooming her. It was her one major talent, and it began with the strengthening of friendship into trust. First came the allure of premier parties and charity balls, ‘Tiffany has let me down badly, I need someone to go with, darling, would you mind . . .’ new clothes, ‘my treat, you deserve it for helping me out’; meeting important people straight off the transnet news and gossip shows: CEOs, GE Commissioners, financiers, designers, zone celebrities – all of whom were delighted to be introduced. Then there were the football matches – Angela visited all the major London clubs, watching games from the executive boxes lining the top of the stadiums, making her enthusiasm for the game very apparent. Aslo was especially pleased about that. So it was that Angela inevitably spent less and less time at Imperial College as Aslo systematically corrupted her existing lifestyle, making her question and reject her formal upbringing. ‘Well, you are a little bourgeoise, my dear, but not to worry, it’s hardly shameful. Shame is only for the truly repressed.’ Encouraging her to accept gifts and promises. ‘Say yes, free yourself, there’s no obligation.’ Congratulating her on taking long breaks with new friends in their palatial holiday chalets. ‘See the way life is truly lived, how rewarding liberation is.’ Aslo was the gatekeeper to a parallel life lived in the same city as the university students who slogged through courses and lived off fast food and toxed out at night, but this life was one of carefree luxury and laughter that lacked for nothing material. A seductive life which Angela lived more and more. Nobody wanted to retreat from that.

  Aslo finally made the grand suggestion towards the end of May. After weeks of revelling in the high life during which her world view was subtly yet comprehensively adjusted, Angela was quick to agree. Kabale was promptly summoned to join them. Another of Aslo’s stable of escorts, he was almost as pretty as Angela and, with his shirt off, implausibly hunky. He stayed in the Mayfair apartment with them for a week, during which Aslo supervised Angela’s introduction to a variety of sexual practices she had never encountered before, coxing her until she was proficient in all of them.

  At the end of May, Aslo kissed Angela goodbye at London’s King’s Cross station, leaving her on the platform with a suitcase of excellent new clothing and a one-way, first-class ticket to Newcastle. For this Melyne Aslo received payment of one million Eurofrancs to her secondary, believing right from the start that she had chosen Angela.

  *

  Marc-Anthony collected Angela at Newcastle station. A flamboyantly effete sixty-year-old, he made up in personality what he lacked in stature, introducing himself, without any trace of irony, as Bartram North’s girlfriend wrangler. He had an outrageous sense of humour, which Angela immediately warmed to.

  First stop was Northumberland Interstellar’s security division, a thirty-storey tower of darkened glass in the city’s Manors district.

  ‘Why are we here?’ Angela asked as their uniformed escort took them across the lobby to the lifts.

  ‘Final check-up, sweetie,’ Marc-Anthony said as the lift doors slid shut.

  ‘But I thought Bartram and Augustine had split,’ she said.

  ‘They have, but it was an amicable split.’

  The security building had a small clinic on the tenth floor. An efficient nurse took a blood sample, then Angela had to put on a robe and lie still in a complex scanner mechanism.

  ‘Why?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘It’s okay, I’ve taken dozens of girls through this process before,’ Marc-Anthony said. ‘The blood was to check for any problems.’

  ‘You mean diseases.’

  ‘Sweetie, people get about a lot these days. It’s wonderful that we can, but Bartram has to be careful. He can’t afford to catch anything right now.’

  ‘And this?’ Angela gestured round at the scanner.

  ‘Keep still,’ the nurse told her.

  ‘The Norths have a lot of enemies,’ Marc-Anthony explained. ‘We’re just checking that all your cy-chips really are just for netting up.’

  ‘I haven’t got any cyborg implants yet,’ Angela said. ‘I can’t afford them. I use interface sets.’ She pointed to the black earring that linked her to the transnet.

  ‘Good for you. Your body is a temple, especially one as gorgeous as yours. Don’t junk-jam it with crap. And it’s not just communication cy-chips we’re checking for.’

  ‘Why, what else can cy-chips be?’

  ‘Nasty, sweetie. I’ve seen the list they keep around here. Arms companies are frightfully inventive when it comes to being downright diabolical. Trust me.’

  They waited in a small ante-room for the results to come through. Angela was confident there wouldn’t be a problem, the microscopic nuclei threads embedded along both ulnas were organic-based and currently inert – effectively undetectable. They ought to be, they’d cost enough from the dark cy-tech specialist on New Tokyo.

  ‘What’s he like?’ she asked.

  ‘Who, Bartram? A pussycat.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  Marc-Anthony gave her an expressive shrug. ‘Okay, he’s a hundred and nine years old, and a multi-trillionaire in any currency you care to name. There’s nothing he hasn’t seen or done. Happy now?’

  ‘A hundred and nine, really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. Look, I’m not sure I can . . .’

  He giggled. ‘Your face, sweetie. Listen, don’t worry, he’s halfway through his rejuvenation. It’s not too unsightly.’ He looked from side to side, then beckoned Angela close. ‘Between you and me, he’s not up to much, if you get my drift. He mostly likes to watch right now. You’ve got an easy gig, just play nice with the other girls and suck a little dick occasionally. We all have to do that in this life.’

  ‘Right. I still don’t get it. If he’s so rich, how come there aren’t girls who’ll just be with him anyway? I saw enough of them in the clubs in London, and those guys didn’t have anything like this money.’

  Marc-Anthony sat back in the chair, suddenly looking very prim. ‘And that’s exactly why.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s not paying you for the sex, sweetie, he’s paying you to shut up and leave afterwards. Men, they’re all the same. Especially the Norths. They don’t want to engage with you, to talk about feelings and other people’s lives – to them that crap is a waste of time and energy. Girlfriends and wives are a drag. Norths get on and achieve things, that’s what their family is all about.’

  ‘That sounds . . . lonely.’

  ‘Oh no, sweetie, they’re not lonely, they’ve got you. That’s all they need to get by. Trust me, I’ve seen them up close and nasty personal for twenty-five years now.’

  ‘Why do you do this?’

  Marc-Anthony put on a mischievous smile. ‘I’m basically unemployable otherwise. A disgraceful incident in my long shady past involving some illegal tox and an indecent vegetable. In public!’

  Angela laughed. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, maybe I was exaggerating the vegetable’s importance. But this isn’t such a bad job. I get to meet lovely people like you. You know, you have quite the most beautiful green eyes.’

  She reached over and squeezed his hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh don’t, you’ll get me all soppy.’

  The nurse came in. ‘All clear,’
she told them.

  ‘Right then,’ Marc-Anthony said cheerfully. ‘Let’s get out of this truly dismal weather, and into some real sunshine.’

  A black Mercedes executive saloon drove them straight to the gateway. There was a GE Border Directorate office at the end of Last Mile. Angela was surprised that all she had to do was put her hand on a biometric scanner and have her e-i certify her citizen status to the Directorate’s AI. It cleared her for transit immediately, and issued her with a small GE visa chip with a return authorization.

  ‘Don’t lose it,’ Marc-Anthony warned as the Mercedes slid smoothly up the metal ramp that led into the gateway. ‘It’s not so easy coming through the other way.’

  The Mercedes drove smoothly along Motorway A to the airport. Marc-Anthony enjoyed her delight at St Libra’s rings, even stopping the car so she could get out and have a proper look. She breathed in the exotic air just like everyone visiting a new world for the first time, not complaining about the pervasive bioil smell, barely able to contain her excitement at being on St Libra.

  It was a HyperLear LV-700 which was waiting for them at the airport. A neat delta-wing, fifteen-seat executive jet whose P&W Excelsior turborams were capable of pushing up to a cruising speed of Mach 3.8.

  ‘What about everyone else?’ Angela asked as a stewardess took her bag at the bottom of the airstairs.

  ‘Just us,’ Marc-Anthony said.

  They didn’t fly low and slow through the fall zone. It was probability, Marc-Anthony explained. A quick dash through at high altitude had the same chance of impact as the commercial flights lumbering along in the murky fog fifteen miles below. Low and slow was all down to psychology, keeping the passengers content.

  It was raining when they arrived at Abellia, thick dark clouds shielding the coastal town from view as the HyperLear descended towards the airport. A Jaguar JX-7 convertible, with the roof up, drove them along the Rue de Provence which took them out to Gironella Beach where Bartram’s mansion sat on the narrow shelf of land between the deep sands and the steep plateau slope behind. The clouds drifted away north and the dazzling Sirius sunlight played across the sparkling turquoise sea as the Jag emerged from the tunnel, showcasing the tremendous vista ahead of them. Even knowing Bartram had chosen the Abellia peninsula out of a whole world didn’t quite prepare Angela for the sight. The rumpled slopes at the back of the two-mile-wide cove were huge and almost vertical, smeared with jade and aquamarine vegetation that clung to the narrow fissures in the rock for the first third before losing traction, leaving dark moss and spore-bloom to thrive on the naked rock above. At the far end of the curving wall, a vast waterfall thundered down for over two hundred metres, producing a continual explosion cloud of spray that swirled with rainbow diffraction waves in the brilliant sunlight. The grounds around the mansion were neatly maintained, a perfect compromise between formal and natural; planted with carefully chosen luxuriant native trees, providing a colourful arborious parkland that gave off a musky sweet-pine scent in the humid sea air.