Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The Prince greeted them, standing in a line with his eight wives, all selected from good Arab families from Riyadh and New Persia, who knew their place and performed their duties correctly. ‘I hope you’re going to come to bed with me before this is over,’ he purred in Angela’s ear as she was announced to the vaulting gold and marble ballroom by the scarlet-uniformed Officer of the House. As a direct descendant of Arabian Royalty, Matiff affected head-of-state rituals complete with ornate military-style guards as if he were still ruling a desert kingdom back on Earth.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Angela murmured back with a demure smile that gave nothing away. There’d been parties where they’d both retired to a private suite, enjoying each other’s uninhibited sexuality. Sometimes it was just the two of them; sometimes Shasta or another girlfriend joined them; sometimes Matiff enlisted his male relatives to carousel her. The wickedness and pleasure was always excellent.

  ‘Please,’ Matiff said. ‘There’s plenty of time. You know how much I appreciate you physically.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart,’ she said. It was the same for most men. The one-in-ten modification to her DNA had become active when she reached her full height and the initial onrush of puberty hormones had subsided. Right now she still looked a perky seventeen; a faux adolescence it might have been, but the sexual lure was still very real.

  ‘Housden will be here,’ Angela said. ‘He’s arriving this evening.’

  ‘Are you two serious?’

  ‘Might be,’ she said enigmatically.

  ‘Ah, he is so lucky. Once again, I beg you to marry me.’

  ‘One day, maybe, Matiff. But not right now.’

  ‘Until that day.’ He bowed, holding her hand a little too tight as he kissed it.

  The ballroom had an orchestra up on the balcony, playing stately dance music. A dozen couples were already on the floor, twirling elegantly. Waiters in white tailcoats offered flutes of champagne on silver trays as the girls walked the length of the room, towards the Orchard Hall where there was a rock band playing. Together they quietly scanned the dresses on show; fabulous, elaborate couture from across the trans-stellar worlds; with every designer trying to attract attention and gain more commissions from the ludicrous wealth of New Monaco. Angela was surprised at the number of prosthetics, especially wings and peacock-style tails – that fad had surely passed? In turn, rival female eyes performed radar-efficient scans of their own garments, intuitively comparing cost and aesthetics. Through it all, the smiles were unbroken, air-kiss swarms flying free.

  ‘Housden?’ Shasta asked. ‘Really, sweets?’

  ‘Cute, big dick, sense of humour, right age. Kind of rare to have all those in combination, don’t you think?’

  ‘And one of us.’

  ‘And one of us,’ Angela conceded. Housden was from a Chinese family whose mining conglomerate had made it big in Africa before trans-spacial connection technology opened up the stars, and rare earth minerals stopped being so quite rare. As with a lot of similar corporations, they successfully shifted their core business from mining to refining raw and continued to flourish.

  ‘There’s always the Prince.’

  Angela frowned. ‘That’s not an option.’ For all his charm, Prince Matiff was a little too old-school for Angela; his wives were required to be obedient. Then there was the business rivalry.

  The final decades of indigenous Gulf oil wealth had seen tens of billions of petrodollars channelled into bioil refineries and vast tracts of land on new worlds for algaepaddies. Those new refineries had kept the original families of Gulf princes at the forefront of trans-stellar energy production. They didn’t appreciate the kind of manipulation of the bioil futures market led by the DeVoyal house, and always made life difficult for traders by refusing to cooperate on production figures and market shares and investment leverage.

  Consequently, sleeping with the enemy, in a very literal sense, was a dark pleasure for Angela (and, she suspected, for the Prince, too) but that was all.

  Angela and Shasta started dancing amid the dry ice waterfalls and rippling lasers. They split up when Shasta found herself dancing suggestively with a group she knew vaguely. Angela went on to the dining hall, where tables were laid with an extraordinary variety of food. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave a panoramic view out across the grounds. At the bottom of the slope at the front of the mansion was the mile-wide fountain lake. Huge geysers of water sprayed their way high into the twilight sky: straight power columns, twirling arcs, splayed spumes, airborne wave curls; all of them illuminated from below, changing colour as they gyrated.

  On her way outside into the twilight, Angela passed a group of S&M fiends in their tailored leather costumes adorned with gold chains and diamond-tipped spikes. They were on their way down to the Roman Slave Dungeon where Matiff had hired a dozen of California’s finest porn stars to man the manacles. Their excitement at their prisoner was palpable. They’d captured an angel, a beautiful adolescent male with a perfectly muscled torso who had wings of snow-white feathers surgically grafted onto his back. He was being tugged along by a dwarf who was dressed in bandoliers of tox sacs. Angela couldn’t help grinning at the outrageous sight as they went past.

  There was camel racing in the grass-walled amphitheatre Matiff had dug in one of his gardens; an amusing homage to his cultural roots. Housden arrived in time for the second race, all tall and hunky-looking, his shaved head decorated with silver tattoos, looking very dashing in his Nanru suit. They joined a group of friends in one of the stadium suites to watch and cheer on their chosen steeds. Placing quarter-million-dollar bets on each race, Angela lost two and a half million in total; Housden did better, coming out half a million in profit.

  A chauffeured buggy took them down to the secluded pavilions, nestling in their individual clearings of blossom trees along the shore of the fountain lake. Angela had to send for the Italian seamstresses to undress her. The erotic masseuse in their pavilion was a giant of a woman, so much so that Angela felt a little thrill of nerves as the white dress was removed in front of her. Housden stood beside the padded bench where she lay down, watching in delight as she was slowly covered in oil that reflected the undulating colours of the offshore fountains. Amid the soft drizzle of pink petals, the powerful masseuse began kneading flesh in a diabolically skilful shiatsu that was soon producing helpless shudders along Angela’s thighs. After a while, Housden joined in; fucking her while the masseuse continued her exquisite torment. Angela was sure the whole estate could hear her cries at the end.

  For her second dress Angela wore a sleek scarlet silk number, while her stylist arranged her mass of hair into a deceptively plain peasant wave that flowed down her back. Once the entourage put the finishing touches to her appearance, Angela and Housden joined the big gathering on the lawns for the pre-breakfast banquet.

  Dawn came, pushing a chill breeze with it. Housden escorted her indoors, and they agreed to separate for a while. She knew what he’d be doing – she’d seen him looking round the female guests several times. Fair enough – her own e-i had been receiving Matiff’s calls for two hours now.

  One of the mansion’s footmen was waiting for her, and it was with an amused sense of inevitability she allowed him to escort her to the bedroom where the Prince and five of his wives were waiting.

  Fatigue was starting to set in, but Matiff was a host prepared for every eventuality, and wasn’t going to let her lassitude spoil his morning. One of the wives bumped a tox for Angela which sent her into a daze, hands fumbling at the furniture to stay upright. Recovery was fast, delivering her directly to a state of fresh and healthy mid-morning wakefulness. She stood in front of Matiff, while he watched with a cold anticipatory smile as his wives plucked the scarlet dress from her skin. Then they made her kneel before him.

  *

  Angela woke in a guest suite bedroom by herself. It wasn’t something she enjoyed – this was a party, she shouldn’t be alone. She was angry with herself for the resentment and self-pity. Though
, if she was honest, she was also reacting to the Prince’s surprisingly disturbing behaviour. He’d taken things a lot further than she’d been prepared to go, relishing her outrage and dismay.

  Her entourage were waiting in the suite’s lounge outside. She vaguely recalled them being summoned to collect her once Matiff and his wives had satiated themselves. Now, their presence and attention were an immediate comfort. There was a tox which banished the hangover. A bath was run containing scented ointments which her body therapist and a maid helped gently rub in, reviving her. Her haematologist ran a quick scan on her blood to make sure none of the stimulants Matiff had bumped her with were harmful. Angela’s enhanced liver and kidney functions could handle a large range of pollutants in her bloodstream, which was why she always had to drink twice as much as ordinary people just to get tipsy, but who knew what the Prince had used. The hair stylist worked her usual miracles and tamed the dishevelled tangle, weaving in some fresh flowers and slender platinum threads, which was when Angela asked: ‘What time is it?’

  She wasn’t entirely surprised when they told her it was one in the afternoon. Matiff had certainly taken his time enjoying her discomfort. Long enough that there could be no mistake; she knew now that he didn’t consider her an equal, which was extraordinarily offensive.

  As the entourage helped her into a new dress, she activated her transnet interface, and her e-i told her she’d had three calls from her father which she’d missed. It wasn’t like him to call when she was at a party. She told the e-i to call him back, but he wasn’t interfaced. ‘Let me know when he is,’ she told it.

  Determined not to let Matiff spoil the party, for that would be another victory, she flung herself back into it.

  Down in the Orchard Hall a seven-piece band called Pink Isn’t Well were grinding out their prog-emo tracks. Angela wasn’t fond of that style anyway, and in her current mood it left her cold. She went out and took a chauffeured buggy down to the amphitheatre where the afternoon no-rules cage fight tournament was playing out; with the last man standing claiming a five-million-dollar purse. Angela watched in wide-eyed illicit thrall as limbs were deliberately broken, faces pulped to bloody meat, and below-the-belt blows commonplace. She imagined it was the Prince getting pounded down there in the ring, which made her feel a lot better.

  *

  There was another costume change before attending the evening races. To accommodate it Angela had a proper massage, and a skin cleanse with irrigation, and the haematologist formulated a scrubtox to take down the alcohol high. When she was clean fresh and ready, her dermatologist sprayed platinum fleck scales to every square centimetre of skin, turning her a glossy, buffed silver. With true artistry, the dermatologist shaded the coating to emphasize cleavage and lines of musculature. Then the couturiers brought out a mauve ballgown that was mostly broad straps; complementing the platinum sheen to emphasize her figure’s femininity and strength.

  When the entourage had finished performing their ritual, Housden joined her and Shasta for the evening hog-roast picnic.

  ‘Wow,’ he said with a greedy smile that wouldn’t stop. ‘Wow, wow, and wow again. Can I kiss you? I don’t want to muss the platinum, you look too fantastic for that.’

  ‘You may kiss me. It won’t muss.’ Angela forced a giggle. She couldn’t decide if she should mention Matiff’s behaviour to her friends. After all, what could they do? And it might upset Housden, he was that sweet. So she said nothing as they all got into a buggy for the ride down to the sloping field above the fountain lake. Torches that sent out flames of green and blue scintillations illuminated the pathways snaking through hundreds of tables that lay in grottos of arched sweet-scented rose and clematis vines. Five roasting pits ringed the kitchen area, each one with a different animal on a spit above the radiant coals, a bull, pig, reindeer, buffalo . . . ‘It’s not really a panda, is it?’ Housden asked, frowning at the last pit.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past Matiff,’ Angela conceded. ‘It’s the kind of shock-value he enjoys.’

  They settled at a cast-iron table under a cluster of hand-painted Japanese parasols suspended from a wistaria loop and told the catering crew what they wanted. Angela didn’t quite have the nerve to ask for panda, but Housden did. ‘I’ve got to call his bluff,’ he claimed.

  ‘Men!’ Angela and Shasta clinked their glasses.

  The slope gave them a grand view of the two big scarlet hot-air balloons that had risen up, a mile apart, their tether ropes turning them into a pair of captured moons floating fifteen hundred feet above the ground. Five surprisingly small Cessna rocketplanes thundered over the mansion between the twin spires, and curved round sharply, heading for the first balloon. Angela clapped in admiration as the dark needle-delta shapes twisted round each other, scarring grubby contrails behind them that twined in the balmy evening air like rampant DNA strands. The rocketplanes soared round the balloon in tight acrobatic curves that drew another wave of applause from the picnickers.

  Angela gasped when two of the planes came perilously close, wingtip almost touching wingtip as they manoeuvred for best position to curve around the balloon. Always the thrill came from anticipating a mid-air collision, the bright orange flower bloom of flame, of smoking wreckage spinning out of the explosion. Of life in danger of extinction.

  Somewhere, so deep down it was almost in her subconscious, she wondered if she was becoming desensitized to life’s experiences. She’d tried so many pleasures at the never-ending procession of New Monaco’s parties that only the increasing extreme excited her now. She almost envied Shasta with her business trips, and slow ascension to the control of an engineering empire spread over ten worlds. Her family legacy was tangible, where the DeVoyal empire was nothing but digits.

  They were in the middle of the second rocketplane race, for which Angela had put a quarter million dollars on the emerald craft piloted by Duke Douglas, because she liked the name, when Housden gave Shasta a little nod.

  ‘I’ve just seen someone I need to say hello to,’ Shasta announced, and walked off.

  ‘That was subtle,’ Angela chided him.

  ‘I know, sorry, babe.’

  Angela’s e-i informed her the market alert over bioil production had changed to level one amber; St Libra was still increasing its flow through the Newcastle gateway. She dismissed it, her heart suddenly lifting, because she’d guessed what this was. And yes, she was a proper New Monaco woman, and experienced in just about every aspect of an astonishing life, and professionally blasé, but it would seem there were still some things that were just naturally exciting . . .

  Housden cleared his throat. ‘Angela, I think what we have is pretty good, and I’d like to make it permanent.’

  She smiled at the expectant look on his broad face. And it was sincere. She knew him well enough to determine that. ‘Yes, of course I’ll go permanent with you.’

  He leaned forward and gave her a tender kiss. ‘Thank you.’

  Angela was suddenly looking at a small box he was holding out to her. She grinned and opened it. Inside was a ring of clear crystal. In fact, very clear, and sparkling. Her hands went to her cheeks in genuine surprise, and delight. ‘Oh Housden, is that . . . ?’

  ‘Yeah. I got you a diamond engagement ring. Just call me Mr Classic.’

  She giggled as she took it out and held it up to admire it. And Lo! it fitted her finger perfectly. ‘How in all the trans-space worlds do they do that? It’s spectacular. I love it.’ And a small wicked part of her mind couldn’t wait to show it off to Shasta – who would be so jealous.

  ‘One of our family mines on Mosselbaai turned up a huge uncut. I took it to a company in Amsterdam who’ve developed this new cutting technique. Something to do with precision neutron beams. Anyhoo . . . they cut a circle out of it. That’s the very first – and only, as far as I know.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Another kiss, more urgent this time. ‘Thank you very much.’ Angela fed him shrimp dipped in garlic, he proffered a flute of champagne dosed w
ith JK raspberry vodka. They kissed again.

  ‘And thank you for asking, as well,’ she told him. ‘You’re quite a catch, you know.’

  ‘I might say the same.’

  ‘So are we having children?’

  ‘I’d like them. I’m sure the lawyers can agree on a formula.’

  ‘That’s what we pay them for,’ she agreed. There would be no announcement, of course, not until both teams of lawyers had hammered out the basic deal – that was the New Monaco way. It would doubtless take a couple of months negotiating and finalizing the contract, detailing everything, including the number of children they could afford, and the percentage of wealth they’d receive from both sides. After all, who wanted children that fell below New Monaco’s citizenship requirement of fifty billion in assets? Not her, that was for sure.

  ‘You know, if we do have a child, I’d like them to have a mixed company, not just straight money like us, and your raw refineries.’

  ‘A diversification?’ he mused. ‘That’s nice, but you still need a core strategy.’

  ‘I know. I was just thinking aloud.’ Dealing with money in isolation was a topic which had begun to trouble her as she slowly started to work with her father in the market. For the DeVoyals it wasn’t even money any more, not really, not as billions of ordinary trans-stellar citizens who had bank accounts and secondaries understood – not coins and credit accounts. With her father guiding strategy, their AI manipulated pure binary digits, breeding numbers with other people’s numbers. The markets they dealt in were utterly beautiful in their complexity, but at the end of the day they were only left with more numbers. Cause and effect was becoming harder to locate and, with it, relevance.

  ‘That’s very sweet,’ Housden said. ‘You’ll make a wonderfully protective mother.’

  ‘Ha! That’s just me being practical – I’m not quite at that stage yet. On which topic, I’ll tell you now we’re having a surrogate for the gestation. Ranietha might think it’s romantic and retro-chic carrying a baby round inside her for nine months. But I spend too much money, time, and effort keeping this body on top form to throw all that away.’