Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

‘With you?’

  ‘Uh . . . well . . .’

  ‘A prospective client?’

  ‘. . . you see . . .’

  ‘Not only is that completely unprofessional, it is also incredibly presumptuous.’

  ‘. . . I didn’t . . .’

  ‘Exactly how is that level of discourtesy supposed to impress me?’

  ‘Oh,’ a crestfallen Saul murmured. ‘Look, I’m really sorry. I just . . . you’re so. Oh hell.’ He’d gone crimson again, he knew he had. The heat blooming in his cheeks must surely be triggering the office’s air-con. Noah and Brando Castellano were giving each other a mortified look, both calculating how much the blown contract was going to cost them.

  Saul’s hand waved pathetically at the door. ‘Sorry. Sorry. We’ll go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Did I say no?’ Angela asked acerbically.

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘One drink. Tonight. Seven o’clock. Which bar?’

  Saul’s mouth wouldn’t respond to his desperate brain.

  ‘Darryl’s Bar over on Union Wharf is good,’ Noah said. ‘So I hear.’

  ‘Fine,’ Angela said. ‘Darryl’s Bar. Don’t be late.’

  Saul wasn’t really conscious of leaving the office. He blinked, seeing the traffic of Purchase Street sliding by in front of him as he swayed on the sidewalk. ‘Noah? What just happened?’

  ‘You got yourself a date, chief, is what happened.’

  Saul started to smile, one that grew and grew. ‘I did, didn’t I?’

  ‘I hope you’ve got a certified will. You’re going to need it with that one.’

  ‘Isn’t she amazing?’ All he could see was that gorgeous face with its beguiling smile saying: yes.

  ‘She’s . . . something, all right.’ Noah was laughing now. ‘Jeeze, I’ve never seen anything so brave. Or so utterly dumb. The way you asked her! I’d sooner stick my dick in a food blender.’

  ‘Hey, that’s the woman I’m going to marry.’

  ‘That one? Just remember what female spiders do after they mate.’

  ‘Damn, you’re jealous. You are.’

  ‘Chief, I can honestly say: no, I’m not.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Hey what’s this Darryl’s place like? What do I wear there? What sort of drink do you think she likes?’

  ‘Not sure it matters. You know they still don’t serve liquor to anyone under twenty-one in this state, don’t you?’

  ‘She has to be . . . Oh, maybe not. What do you think? She’s twenty?’

  ‘Chief, you’ve got to focus. We’ve got a meeting with the seed merchants in forty minutes. We need something for all that shiny new machinery to plant.’

  ‘Right. Forty minutes. Plenty of time. I’ll be okay. What about that green jacket? Have you seen me in that? Would that be all right? Not too urban professional?’

  ‘Oh holy crap.’

  *

  As it happened, Darryl’s Bar had a reasonable degree of class. Booths with comfortably low lighting. A long polished counter with stools, and an impressive array of bottles on the glowing shelves behind. Two slick barmen who relished a cocktail mix challenge. Even a private terrace with a view out across the water, with citrus candles to hold off the evening’s insects.

  Saul wasn’t late. Six o’clock was a perfectly reasonable time to arrive, he felt. Courteously early in case she showed up a little beforehand, too. And it gave him a chance to check things out in case Noah had screwed up and it was a dive. It also gave him time to have a beer to calm his frankly terrified nerves. Two beers calmed them more. Three left him chilled and suave. Oh yeah. After all, he was something of a catch himself. An offworld landowner, a future empire-maker. Dressed accordingly. Not the green jacket. It was the kind of thing he’d wear to take his mother out. Instead, a simple purple shirt with white check, light fawn jacket with slim lapels, black jeans, and the expensive Douton boots. Yeah, looking good is you, as the frat boys used to say. And it had been a welcome long time since he’d sought their approval. Lost contact with most of them. Deliberately. He grinned into his beer. Looked up as the conversation in the bar drained out of the air.

  She was standing in the doorway. Scarlet summer dress that seemed to shine with its own light, complementing her perfect complexion. Skirt shorter than the one in the office, allowing powerful legs to take long strides, low-cut top showing a modest cleavage that needed no support. Lustrous waved hair flowing round her shoulders.

  Everyone watched as he got off the stool and walked the length of the bar to greet her. That walk was bathed in the green light of envy radiating out of every man there. Probably half the women, too, he thought smugly.

  Saul stopped with a pace left between them. Any closer and he wouldn’t be able to admire the whole vision.

  Don’t blow this. Nothing as good will ever happen to you again no matter how long you live. Don’t blow it. Please. Don’t—

  ‘Hi. One drink waiting for you.’

  Angela licked her lips, keeping down a smile. ‘What did you choose?’

  ‘A Sancerre, a one-eleven. White isn’t like red, it doesn’t improve with age. But the eleven was a good year.’

  ‘Only for some. But I’d like to try that, thank you.’

  So there was another walk the length of the bar. This time a victory procession.

  The barman almost ruined it. ‘Gonna need some ID,’ he said apologetically as Angela reached for the chilled wine glass. She said nothing, her face unreadable. Which even the barman found intimidating. Saul didn’t know what kind of certificate her e-i sent, but the barman backed off like there was a wild tiger in the room. Angela picked up her wine.

  ‘Booth or counter?’ Saul asked. ‘Your call.’

  ‘Terrace. It’s a warm evening. Let’s enjoy it.’

  ‘Terrace it is.’

  They sat at a small table, with a candle and sprig of scented freesias between them. A view out over the water where pleasure craft flitted about.

  ‘I have a confession to start with,’ he said.

  ‘Go for it.’

  ‘I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m currently living with my mom and dad.’

  Angela giggled. ‘Where do Mom and Dad live?’

  ‘Chestnut Street. Other side of the Common.’

  ‘I know Chestnut Street. Nice part of town. It’s comfortable for old money.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess we’re that.’

  ‘You said, currently?’

  ‘Yeah, well you know what I’ve bought myself; I’m going to be living on the farm in a Qwik-Kabin until I can afford to build a house. I’m just back in Boston for the last time while I buy the equipment and seed I need to make it a success, then it’ll be back to the good old Qwik-Kabin permanently. I’m the younger son, you see. I’m cutting loose from the family to make it on my own. Blown every dime in my trust fund on the farm, much to everyone’s horror. But it’ll be worth it. Honestly, Angela, you should see where I’m setting up. Five thousand acres of the greatest soil, with an option loaded in the Oakland Governor’s office network to buy another eight once I’ve shown viability. Not that land costs much on the new worlds, but Washington doesn’t want people claiming whole continents for themselves as an investment.’

  ‘Well done, you.’ And she actually looked impressed. ‘I admire someone who follows their dream. Not many people ever really do that when they finally come down to it. Too many choose the blind discomfort of security. Trouble is, there’s no such thing, not really.’

  ‘Wow, a cynic.’ She didn’t talk like a teenager, which just made her all the more intriguing.

  ‘A realist.’ Angela twirled the stem of her glass between thumb and forefinger. ‘Want my confession now?’

  ‘You’re seeing someone?’

  ‘Nothing so bland. My mom doesn’t own the Massachusetts Agrimech office. She left Dad the week I was born.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Who does, then?’

  ‘I do. Brando is an actor
between gigs. It’s a question of expectation, you see. For all his quirky little problems he has the gravitas to be the front man. You saw what went on this morning, your friend Noah considered me to be office decoration. Brando was the man, the contact, the guy other guys can do business with.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said in astonishment. ‘You own Massachusetts Agri-mech?’

  ‘It’s a local commission franchise for Ravenshall. I buy and badge the hardware, and have the backing of their product service network, which is massive. Good money in it. Your order is for one point three million. That’s kind of like the minimum for someone setting up in the new US Territories.’ Green eyes narrowed, waiting for the reaction, judging.

  ‘I knew there was something amazing about you. I just couldn’t figure out what. Guess that makes me the dumb one.’

  ‘No. It’s a polished set-up. I trained the team myself. So . . . Now you know, going to take your business elsewhere?’

  ‘No. Truthfully, I feel even safer dealing with you now. I thought I was ambitious, but you just blew that conceit out of the water. How did you ever get into this business?’

  ‘Dad taught me a lot about finance before he died. I understand how to leverage funds, and agricultural machinery is all about the kind of high-value items that are in demand now we’re in post-recession growth. You just have to put yourself at the centre of the deal, and let the banks and supplier do the hard work. It was kind of obvious.’

  ‘To you, maybe. Remind me never to introduce you to my brother.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He’d divorce his wife and marry you in a second. He lives for finance deals.’

  ‘Nah, I bet he’s not as cute as you.’

  Once more, the cheeks betrayed him with their heat. ‘So where do you come from? I can’t quite place the accent. And how did you wind up in Boston?’

  ‘We travelled a lot while I was growing up, so I got me a lot of influences. And Boston: because it’s not New York. I had something go bad on me there. Don’t ask.’

  ‘Okay. Different question.’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘Would you like a second drink?’

  *

  Angela lived in North Quincy. ‘It’s a nice area now they’ve thinned out the number of houses,’ she explained. Rent was cheap, so she could afford a big place with a view of the beach which was less than a minute’s walk from the local Metro station. And the train took her straight into South Station for work, so she didn’t need a car.

  A lot of her conversation featured money, he found; how she made it, or the cost of things.

  ‘I’m like you,’ she said over dinner that night. After Darryl’s they’d moved on to The Luciano restaurant. ‘I want to make a fresh start. If you’re going to do that properly, you need money.’

  ‘Fresh start?’ He laughed. ‘Don’t you just mean: start? You only make a fresh start once you’ve messed up for a few years.’

  ‘I’m twenty-one,’ she said. ‘And I’ve done enough to want to start over.’

  ‘Okay, so what sort of beginning have you got planned for yourself?’

  ‘I haven’t decided. But you’re right to move off Earth. Too much is established here, all people care about is the status quo and playing safe. Taxes are an anti-business joke. The amount of regulation is offensive; it only exists to maintain bureaucrat job security. Real growth is difficult under those circumstances, especially for a modest start-up; you have to look to the frontiers. That’s where people are truly free again. The lands where anything is possible.’

  ‘I think you’re doing pretty well for yourself.’

  ‘Relative to who?’

  That was the thing, she was smart as well as beautiful. In fact he worried that she was a lot smarter than him. Halfway into the date, and he was scared she would see he wasn’t good enough. He’d already accepted that she was way tougher.

  ‘Want to come back to my place?’ she asked over coffee. ‘I don’t really want to meet your parents tonight.’

  Saul thought he might start crying. The evening had been exhilarating, she was a girl walked out of fantasy. He’d thought if he could survive it and get a second date he would have done better than he deserved.

  ‘I would like that very much,’ he said simply.

  They caught a Metro train out of South Station, riding it down to North Quincy. Then it was a short cab ride to her apartment on Apthorp Street. North Quincy was a big residential suburb that had been gentrified over the last fifty years, with its original sprawl of relatively cheap houses being developed and restyled to favour the younger generation of city workers who couldn’t afford the kind of prices burdening the inner districts. When Saul climbed out he could hear the waves rolling in on the beach. ‘That’s something I’m going to miss,’ he said. ‘My farm is three hundred miles inland.’

  Angela reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘Wrong thinking,’ she said. ‘Your first farm is three hundred miles from the beach.’

  She was renting a big clapboard bungalow with a veranda running its length outside. ‘I don’t need this many rooms,’ she said as the door unlocked itself for her. ‘But the living room sold it for me.’

  He could understand why. It was large, taking up half the floorspace, with wide doors opening onto the veranda outside, and a big stone fireplace at one end. She’d decorated it in pastel blues and white; furniture was simple wooden frames with lots of cushions. Saul liked the summer feel of the place, but he imagined winter would be a bit bleak. A real bachelor pad, he admired ruefully as Angela walked around, lighting candles. The kitchen was spotless from lack of use. Jacuzzi out on the veranda, with yellow underwater lights illuminating the bubbles. Bedroom dominated by a king-size bed with an antique brass rail headboard. He glimpsed that as she opened the door to it and said, ‘I’m going to change. Back in a minute.’

  Saul, man of many worlds, nearly thirty years old, decently well off, reasonably experienced with women – didn’t have a clue what to do. He looked at the couches and cushion pile, at the fizzing Jacuzzi. Looked down at his clothes. Take them off? Maybe just the boots.

  There he was, sitting on a big floor cushion, tugging off his farmer-in-the-city boots as devoid of suave as you could get when she came back in. He’d worried he might be nervous, that he’d had too much to drink, that he wouldn’t live up to her expectations and requirements. That the night would be a wash out like . . . Well not that many, but it had happened. But when he scrambled back up on his feet that whole plague of doubts vanished. Just looking at her in the provocative negligee she’d slipped into with its black silk straps and lacy panels that hinted at so much incredible flesh gave him the hardest erection of his life. Angela saw it, and smiled haughtily. She made him stand there while she stripped his clothes off, which in itself was an amatory torment.

  When she was finished, and he was naked in the middle of the room, she paused; a manicured nail tapped against her teeth in theatrical indecision as she looked round the living room. ‘Where first?’ she mused. ‘Rug in front of the fire? Jacuzzi?’

  Saul couldn’t take any more. He roared as he leapt at her. Angela shrieked and giggled as they collapsed onto the cushions.

  They spent five days in her house. Five days naked. Five days ignoring work except for authorizing payment to Massachusetts Agrimech. Five days talking and laughing (a lifelong Democrat, he was mildly shocked anyone so gorgeous had such Republican tendencies). Five days having every meal delivered. Five days of the hottest sex Saul had ever had. This was grown-up sex, he decided, and it was a wonderful revelation, they were adults doing as they pleased without consequences. This more than anything, more than the rows with his parents, finding the farm, blowing his entire inheritance on his dream, this was what marked being truly liberated. He was complete for the first time in his life.

  ‘Why me?’ he whispered into her ear some time during the third night. They were lying on some cushions they’d taken out to the veranda, letting the warm night-time
sea air dry the sweat from their bodies. Making love outside with the possibility someone might see, even if it was the middle of the night, had excited him in a way that was surprising. So much youthful repression bursting like a dam that for once he’d impressed Angela with his enthusiasm. Now he held her close, relishing the touch of her skin down his chest and all the way along his leg. ‘You could have anyone you wanted, you know you could. Why me?’

  She stretched out an arm and reached for the wine glass, taking a long sip before answering. ‘You’re me,’ she said.

  ‘Hardly. I don’t get it.’

  ‘Me without the baggage. Me how I want to be. This farm you’ve got, that’s taking the leap I’ve been telling myself I’m going to take. You believe in yourself, you’re willing to take the risk. It’s been a long time since I believed in myself.’

  He kissed her to stop her saying anything so sacrilegious, wanting to own her, wanting to belong to her. ‘I know what love is,’ he told her. ‘It’s you.’

  That enigmatic expression took over her face again. He never knew what kind of judgement she was passing, all he could ever do was hope it was a favourable verdict.

  ‘You’re a good man, Saul Howard,’ she said eventually. ‘I didn’t think there were any left.’

  On the fifth day, when dawn’s sunlight was flooding through the open veranda doors, Saul got down on both knees and gazed up worshipfully at his angel with the wild hair. With every ounce of courage, he made himself say: ‘Please marry me, Angela.’

  ‘That’s very sweet—’

  ‘Don’t!’ He pulled her down so their faces were level, and he could see the consternation in her green eyes. ‘Don’t do the sweet routine, nor the we-don’t-know-each-other one. I have never been more serious. Marry me, come with me to the farm, help me make it the start of something fabulous. I’ll screw it up without you, without someone who can see all my mistakes. Damnit, Angela, I don’t even want to leave this house. I just want to be with you. Please?’

  For a long moment she stared at him, and he finally understood that enigmatic expression was really just a mask over sorrow and fright.

  Then she smiled cautiously. ‘Yes.’