Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Wednesday 20th March 2143

  It wasn’t the peculiar light which woke Saul Howard, but the sound. The sea was wrong. Living at Camilo Beach for so long, the sound of the waves sloshing across the sands was ingrained. This morning the sound, the rhythm, of the waves, was different somehow. Saul lay in bed for several minutes trying to figure out what exactly had changed. It was subdued, he decided, as if the tide had taken the water out like it did back on Earth rather than St Libra’s gentle ebbing.

  Sunspots can’t do that, he thought, can they?

  He realized Emily was awake beside him. Turned his head to see her looking at him. Hazy light that shimmered slowly between pink and nankeen was stealing past the shutters, dappling the bed. It wasn’t a light that he’d ever seen before, so he didn’t know if it was morning or the middle of the night.

  Emily smiled gently; though the strange shifting light allowed him to see the uncertainty haunting her. Yesterday, with the news of the sunspot outbreak dominating the transnet, had proved unsettling, and additional reports were coming in that the expedition was in some kind of trouble, that people were dying out in the jungle. The news sites didn’t have names, so he didn’t know who, which troubled him deeply. This wasn’t life as it should be in Abellia.

  He watched in silence as she moved the thin duvet aside. Her hands slid the PJs over her hips and down her legs. Then his beautiful young wife slipped sinuously on top of him, naked and hungry, soft hair swishing across his chest, reaching for him, effortlessly coaxing him erect. A long involuntary sigh of delight escaped her mouth as she slowly impaled herself. Hands entwined, gripping hard. Neither of them said a word as they began to move together. There was an urgency to her he hadn’t known for a long time, perhaps not even since the first few months after they became lovers. Now, she wanted the physical contact, needed the comfort and reassurance it bestowed. So did he.

  There was a long time afterwards when they held each other close, still silent. Kissing and smiling, hands stroking, exploring as if they’d never known each other before. An intimacy which held the world at arm’s length.

  Eventually he glanced at the clock. Frowned. It was stuck on 23:17. Yet he knew it was close to morning. The aurora borealis which the solar flares had brought to St Libra’s atmosphere must be affecting the house’s electrical systems.

  ‘I need to find out what’s happened to the sea,’ he told her.

  ‘I know. I hear it, too.’

  They put on towelling robes, and went out through the kitchen’s patio doors. When he asked his e-i to show him the time, it flashed up 5:57 in his grid. The fact that the sophisticated program was unaffected by the solar flare was good news. At least part of the house’s net was still functioning.

  Outside, the sky was alive with the fluorescence of the aurora, sending tremendous rivers of pale colour undulating through the upper atmosphere. They were considerably brighter than the ringlight. Despite himself, Saul had to marvel at the naked display of energy.

  Still holding hands they made their way over the sheltered patio and onto the familiarity of dry warm sands. He was mildly relieved to see the waterline was in the right place. Not that he’d really believed the sea was in retreat, but . . .

  When they got to the line of damp sand, Saul’s first thought was that there’d been some kind of bioil spill. In the electron-kindled light from above the water was dark, slick, its viscosity altered by some unknown alchemy. Mysterious and threatening, it sucked and gurgled aggressively on the sand. There was no surf any more, waves had become smooth elongated ripples, their power dampened as they slid ashore. And worse, the water was lumpy.

  ‘What is that?’ Emily asked in a disconcerted murmur. Her hand tightened its grip on Saul.

  He looked from the ripples that strained to reach his bare feet, across the mild swell all the way to a horizon where the rings and borealis streamers struggled for supremacy. The entire sea had the same syrupy constituency. He drew down a breath, tasting air full of tangy sulphur brine. And he finally knew what he was seeing.

  ‘They’re jelly bubbles,’ he said incredulously. ‘Millions of them.’

  As with the land on St Libra, so with the water. The planet’s seas had no fish, no shells nor plankton. Not even coral. There was only seaweed; and the dominant plant, certainly around the coastlines, was the ubiquitous jelly bubble. A glutinous, almost translucent ovoid as wide as a human hand, suffused with seed like a limpid pomegranate. It grew on a simple ribbon rooted in sand. When ripe, the ribbon would moult away releasing the jelly bubble, which would then float up to the surface and be carried on the fate of wind and tide as it too slowly began to decay, shedding seeds as it went.

  The sea before Saul had been smothered in a carpet of jelly bubbles, millions of them jostling together in a squishy coagulating mess. Somehow they had all broken free of their anchor ribbons simultaneously overnight, ripe or not. Now they were decomposing in turn, saturating the water with a slushy avalanche of seed.

  ‘This is crazy,’ Emily said. ‘How could they know? They said on the transnet news all the plants released their spores because their leaves sensed the sun changing. But how would the jelly bubbles know to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Saul replied, mesmerized and alarmed by the transformed sea. Occasionally, when out surfing, he’d wound up with an acrid mouthful of jelly bubble shards as the swell dunked him under. It was a vile taste, and if you swallowed the stuff then you had to get ashore quickly, because it invariably acted as an emetic in a human stomach. But it wasn’t lethal, at least not in the usual small doses surfers suffered. But this . . . Happy, friendly Camilo Beach was now besieged by a sea of mushy poison.

  ‘We need to warn the neighbours,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Maybe fence it off, make sure the kids stay out.’

  ‘They’re good kids,’ Emily said automatically. ‘They won’t go into this.’

  ‘Yeah. I certainly wouldn’t.’

  ‘What’s happening, Saul? It’s not the Zanth, is it?’

  He knew that apprehension only too well. If it was Zanth, they’d never make it to the Highcastle gateway. His eyes closed against a dark fear stirring, one he never thought he’d feel again. As if to emphasize the worry, he heard a distant sonic boom as some plutocrat’s private jet streaked south to safety. ‘This isn’t the Zanth,’ he said with as much confidence as he could gather. ‘The plants here have clearly evolved to cope with the sunspot outbreaks. This is what they do when it redshifts. They survive. And we will too.’ He eyed the silent majestic rivers of light cavorting across the sky, disturbed by their size and intensity. This was only the first day of the flares, and the sunspots had still been multiplying when he went to bed last night.

  ‘Survive what?’ Emily asked. ‘How badly do the sunspots affect St Libra?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. It wasn’t a question he was comfortable thinking about. But you’re going to have to, he told himself sternly. You have a family to consider. To protect. Like before. ‘Let’s get back inside. I’ll call Otto and Kelly for starters. We should maybe think of teaming up, pooling resources. The village is reasonably isolated.’

  ‘Just what are you expecting?’

  Saul gave the auroras a suspicious stare. ‘I’m just trying to think ahead a bit, that’s all. And face it, Abellia isn’t exactly self-sufficient at the best of times.’

  ‘If it’s not the Zanth, then we can go through the gateway. It would be hard, but we could start over on another planet.’

  ‘Maybe. If the GE lets us back. They weren’t allowing any travel yesterday, remember. And there aren’t that many planes available.’

  ‘I thought I married an optimist?’

  ‘Don’t worry, you did.’

  Saul started calling the neighbours as Emily busied herself making breakfast. The children were all subdued as they came into the kitchen. They too were in tune with the rhythm of life in Camilo Beach; the changes manifesting outside were unsettling. They didn�
�t understand what was happening. Emily made them eat, making fresh waffle mix and allowing then to pour their own maple syrup as a treat.

  Otto, Kelly, and five other neighbours answered Saul’s call. They were all equally perturbed by the turn of events, and started calling their neighbours in turn – a chain reaction resulting in a meeting of Camilo residents arranged for ten o’clock that morning.

  Duren called Saul just after seven. ‘Disturbing times, my friend. I hope you’re all right.’

  ‘Not really. The sea is full of jelly bubbles.’

  ‘Yes. That aspect of the uprising is just starting to feature on the news. Most odd. The planet is clearly making it known we are not welcome, just as brother Zebediah predicted.’

  ‘Really? I thought it was the star that was the problem.’

  On the other side of the kitchen, Emily asked: ‘Who?’

  ‘Duren,’ he said quietly, which produced an instant scowl.

  ‘The star and its planets are parent and child,’ Duren said. ‘You cannot be surprised at their anger, they are simply responding to our violation of their sanctity.’

  Saul was starting to miss the old Duren, the one to whom any argument was settled by smashing someone through the nearest wall. ‘Sure. I’m kind of busy today. What did you want?’

  ‘It is time.’

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘For the end of our occupation to begin. The planet is driving us off into the great blackness from which we came.’

  ‘Seriously, I’m busy.’

  ‘I know. I will only take a brief moment of your time. We’d like you to bring us the items we requested earlier.’

  ‘Oh, come on! Today?’

  ‘Especially today, Saul. You have got them, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got them.’ Once he had the raw, Zulah had given him some simple microfacturing details which the 3D systems at the back of the Hawaiian Moon had no trouble in producing. When he told Emily about the request, they’d talked about whether he should do it or not. In the end, as the cylinders didn’t seem to have any dangerous function, he’d gone ahead and produced them. Pressure vessels with internal bladders weren’t anything he could go to the Abellia police with. They had to know what Zebediah was going to use them for before that particular anonymous call was placed. Saul had even set up an untraceable address to make the call – just like the old days.

  ‘Then please bring them to us,’ Duren said. ‘This is our address.’

  An icon popped up into Saul’s grid, unfurling to reveal a location off Rue Turbigo on the outskirts of town. ‘I’m not sure I can do that today.’

  ‘I understand. I see you’re at home right now, aren’t you?’

  A simple question which sent a cold flush along Saul’s spine. Duren’s e-i must be more advanced than he suspected. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Shall I send Zulah to come and collect our items?’ Duren enquired.

  Saul nearly shuddered. ‘No. I’ll bring it all to you.’

  ‘This morning, please.’ The call ended.

  ‘You can’t go today,’ Emily said.

  ‘I’m not having that woman here at the house. You haven’t met her, you don’t understand what she’s like.’

  ‘She doesn’t know what I’m like.’

  ‘No, please, Emily. I have to go. This ends today. Whatever they’re doing, I’m going to tell them this is the last time I help them.’

  ‘I think we should call the police now.’

  ‘And tell them what? Come on, darling, we’ve been over this a hundred times. We can’t even figure out what those cylinders are for.’

  She gave him a reluctant pout. ‘Well, okay. But I want some safeguards. I’m going to ride your bodymesh.’

  Instinctively he didn’t want it. Not to be dependent on her for help. Not to involve her. But there was also a guilty relief from knowing that she’d be with him, that she’d be able to call the police if things went bad, if they started pushing him around, demanding he give more. ‘Okay,’ he said.

  He drove the Rohan out of Camilo Village and onto the Rue du Ranelagh. That was when the first glitch of the day hit him. The car’s auto flashed a warning in his grid that its link to the road’s macromesh was intermittent. Saul switched the auto off and took full manual control. Up above, Sirius was burning brightly in the sky, its intensity not noticeably different from any other day. But the borealis strands were visible even in the star’s full glare, winding with serpentine agility through the air high above. With the car’s top down, he could feel the static in the atmosphere making his hair crawl.

  There was little traffic on the roads. Even the centre of town was practically deserted. He pulled up into the reserved parking slot behind the Hawaiian Moon, and climbed out. Both Rico’s bar and the Cornish ice cream shop were shut, along with most of the stores along the promenade.

  The three cylinders were in the back room, resting in full view on the shelves that lined one wall. The two smaller ones had a two-litre capacity, and contained the bladders. Valves were fitted at both ends, which made the principle easy enough to understand. Fill the bladder with some fluid, then push air into the cylinder at the other end, which would squeeze the bladder, emptying it. Saul didn’t get why you couldn’t use a pump, but then he didn’t know what the overall operating requirements were. The third cylinder had a four-litre capacity and two inlet valves, so no prizes for guessing what that would be filled from.

  He hadn’t known what to expect when Zulah gave him the specifications. And he still didn’t understand them. They weren’t even designed to take much pressure. The valves, though, were high-precision, providing very accurate flow regulation. He suspected that was the real reason they’d come to him, there weren’t that many microfacturing systems around that could build the valves. Not with owners they could push around.

  The cylinders went into an old canvas backpack, and he returned to the car, half expecting the police to come crashing out of the shadows to arrest him. But nothing happened, no cars screeching out of side alleys to block the Rohan, no armoured team yelling at him to surrender. So the backpack sat on the passenger seat as he drove through the streets of the old town, hitting the on ramp at the big Osorio Plaza junction. And for the first time that morning he was moving through normal traffic, having to concentrate on steering and keeping his distance from the others. All the other vehicles had their green tail lights on, warning they were being driven manually. After decades of relying on auto it was a nervy few minutes until he got used to it again. He gave the cars around him a bemused look, wondering where they’d suddenly appeared from. Then he remembered Rue Turbigo was the road to Abellia’s airport. The city’s residents weren’t waiting to see the outcome of the sunspots and the HDA’s investigation into possible Zanth activity. They were heading for the gateway as fast as their credit rating would get them there.

  Duren’s address turned out to be a whitewashed villa in a small development halfway up the side of Huerta valley. The grass peeking out of the slope’s reddish flinty soil was wispy and dry as Saul drove up the switchback. This far from the coast the hot air lacked the humidity he was used to. There were about twenty villas packed together on the terrace carved into the mountainside, giving their occupants a fantastic view of the landscape falling away below them. He couldn’t see anybody moving round as he pulled in. Only Duren’s villa had a vehicle parked in front of it, an Alpha Romeo eight-door Tuzan limousine with deep chrome-blue paintwork and black alloy wheel hubs.

  ‘The whole place is deserted,’ Emily said.

  Saul looked round slowly for her, gazing at the neat little development with its irrigated shrubs and trees. The only sound was the wind gusting along the valley. ‘Okay, let’s get this over with.’ He walked across the baking asphalt to the villa. Before he got there, the middle door of the limousine slid upwards.

  Duren was sitting inside. ‘Man, good to see you again.’ He held out a big hand in welcome, fang teeth overhanging his l
ower lip. ‘You, too, Emily, even though we’ve never actually met.’

  ‘Shit,’ Emily said in Saul’s ear. ‘They’ve found the link.’

  Saul held up the backpack. ‘I brought your stuff.’

  ‘Thank you. Come on in.’

  It took a nerve he didn’t know he had to climb into the limousine. The door swung down smoothly behind him, and he found himself sitting on a curving seat next to Duren. The interior was decorated in tasteless purple and gold fabric with black furniture, including a bed which took up the rear quarter. He was facing a young woman in her mid-twenties, wearing grey-green overalls with a small topaz-yellow hoop and triangle corporate logo on the arm. She had the kind of perpetually serious expression that belonged to a sixty-year-old, betraying her as another of Zebediah’s devout disciples.

  ‘Saul, this is Catrice,’ Duren said. ‘She believes as we do.’

  And I don’t. ‘Where’s Zebediah?’ Saul asked, while what he was really pleased about was the absence of Zulah.

  ‘Did you wish to speak with him?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ He held up the backpack. ‘Look, I made what you wanted. I’m out of here.’

  ‘Does it fit?’ Duren blinked, and for an instant his demon-eye tattoos glimmered at Saul.

  ‘Fit?’

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ Duren took the backpack from him and handed it to Catrice. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered, and removed one of the two-litre cylinders, placing it on the bench seat beside her. A slim black case was opened.

  Saul watched with interest as she carefully threaded a section of pipe to the cylinder valve, nodding in satisfaction. ‘I have to tell you something,’ he said.

  ‘And what’s that?’ Duren said in his annoyingly equitable tone, the one that said whatever Saul thought was completely irrelevant.

  ‘I won’t be seeing you, any of you, again. I don’t care about what you’re doing, or your beliefs. You should look up at the sky some time. Sirius is going crazy. You might want to think about that.’