Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Send me your visual memory,’ Elston said.

  It was like he’d slapped Olrg. For a moment the man was in as much pain as Luther. ‘Sir, I didn’t have my cache running, sir.’

  ‘Oh for—’ Elston glared. ‘I thought I made protocol quite clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir, you did sir. It’s just that the grid makes it difficult to see in snow. And . . .’ He gestured round at the big flakes that filled the air.

  ‘Then just cancel the grid. You don’t close down your whole iris smartcells function. Come on! This isn’t gateway science.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Get back to the mess tent. I’ll deal with you later.’

  Angela watched Olrg walk off into the swirling of snow, shoulders hunched, head down. The wind was picking up, she saw, the snow getting thicker. Her own grid showed her the Legionnaires’ tags as they spiralled out across the camp. They wouldn’t find anything, she knew, they hadn’t before in clear weather with Wukang’s sensors fully operational. ‘Did you catch anything?’ she asked Marvin.

  ‘Inconclusive,’ he said. ‘I’m picking up micro-quantities of St Libra’s usual atmospheric contaminants, but no specific molecular signature stands out. It’s just the residuals of the jungle spores.’

  ‘Angela was right,’ Elston said. ‘I smelt it, too. That thing was here.’

  They all looked down at Luther. Chitty had managed to cover the damaged hip and thigh with some kind of thick sleeve, while the doc had got an IV collar attached to his neck.

  ‘He was lucky Olrg is actually quite a good driver,’ Marvin said. ‘It could have been a lot worse.’

  Angela took one corner of the stretcher, with Elston, Marvin and Chitty taking the others. Lieutenant Botin himself provided their escort, while the doc fussed over Luther the whole time. It was only a couple of hundred metres to the clinic, but every step twisted up her alarm. The gloomy pink light filled the camp with desultory shadows. It could be lurking in any one of them. And the snow was getting worse. There could be an army of them out there, obscured by the chill dark silence. Waiting. Her mind had no trouble filling the dim void around her with the monsters, all of them flexing their blade fingers, ready to resume the battle she’d fled from twenty years ago.

  A rectangle of white light spilled out from the clinic’s open door. The other paramedic, Juanitar Sakur, hurried down the Qwik-Kabin’s steps to help them carry Luther into the assessment centre. Angela stood back once they’d got the sedated catering supervisor on the gurney, and Coniff started working on him. She found it strange being in the clinic with its warm air and bright white light. It was an enclave of real life. Her fear of what lurked outside its thin composite walls abated. Which was foolish, she knew.

  ‘Now what?’ Angela said. ‘You can’t keep the Legionnaires out there. The network’s failing, we don’t have a sensor mesh working that’s worth a damn. If that thing can walk into the camp in what’s left of our daylight and push one of us under a Land Rover, then it can leap out on them without any trouble.’

  ‘I am aware of our tactical situation,’ Elston said calmly. ‘Lieutenant, the AAV team report that this snowstorm is going to be the worst yet. The e-Ray weather radar is showing some bad cloud and wind approaching us. We have about an hour and a half to get everyone inside and batten down the hatches.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Botin said.

  ‘How bad?’ Angela asked.

  ‘We’re facing blizzard conditions,’ Elston said. ‘So each dome will have to become self-sufficient for the duration. Angela, I want you to organize food allocation for everyone. We’ll ride this out in the clinic and the domes. Marvin, get the biolabs driven over to the domes, and park them close; the xenobiology team can live in them for the time being. It’ll free up a little space inside the domes, too, which will be more pleasant for everybody. Everything else, we’ll shut down.’

  ‘A blizzard?’ Angela said. ‘Son-of-a-bitch, we’re already half a metre deep in snow.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  *

  It was a frantic hour. Elston wouldn’t let anyone outside without a Legionnaire escort, which restricted the amount of preparation they were able to make. Even so they managed to kit out the domes for a couple of days’ independence. Food packages were doled out. Power cables from the main fuel cells checked. Heaters the microfacture team had printed out were powered-up. Chemical toilets were taken from the latrines and installed in the domes. Data cables were unspooled and plugged into the biolabs, giving the network cells a hardline link.

  In the end, Elston ordered all the ground vehicles to be driven over to the domes, and parked them in a picket ring with the two biolabs. The pilots protested that nothing was being done to protect the helicopters, but there wasn’t time to rig any kind of canopy over them.

  With the xenobiology teams moving out of the domes to bunk in the biolabs, Angela had the opportunity to rearrange the dome accommodation. Even it up, Elston had told her, and give everyone a Legionnaire for protection.

  ‘If you want me to switch domes, Lulu and I come as a pair,’ Madeleine Hoque said through a link to Angela as her e-i started sending out the new lists. ‘Not negotiable. The poor thing is terrified.’

  ‘All right, I’ll shift people round to make that happen.’ Angela had to take a moment. It was the first time Madeleine had ever acknowledged her.

  The two girls arrived at Angela’s dome carrying their kitbags, escorted by Omar. They’d just finished shutting down the kitchen equipment. Snow was dripping off their parkas and trousers, forming little puddles on the panel floor.

  ‘Jesus, that’s bad weather,’ Paresh said as he sealed up the inner and outer entrance curtains.

  ‘I don’t think the mess tent is going to last,’ Lulu announced as she unzipped her parka. ‘The snow is already making the roof sag. It’s going to rip again.’

  ‘This kind of weather, we can live without it,’ Paresh said.

  ‘As long as the fuel cells keep working,’ Omar said, helping Madeleine hang her kitbag on a ceiling hook.

  ‘Will they?’ a nervous Lulu asked.

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ Angela said. ‘Olrg told me they’re designed to keep operating in conditions a lot more hostile than this. I’m more worried about the e-Rays. If you check the telemetry, the closest one is showing some flight system problems. Hardly surprising, there’s a lot of electrical activity in these clouds.’

  Lulu sank down on a cot and put her head in her hands. ‘Why don’t they just come and take us out of here?’ she asked in a high, miserable voice.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Madeleine said, sitting beside her. ‘We get a break from cooking and cleaning for a day in here.’ She nudged the girl. ‘With two Legionnaires to protect us. Isn’t that right, Omar?’

  Omar gave Lulu a friendly smile. ‘Nothing bad going to get in here past me and Paresh. Depend on us, we won’t let you down. Know why?’

  Lulu looked up at him, and sniffed loudly. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re not officers.’

  She managed a weak grin.

  With only five cots occupying the floor, they started organizing their expanded living space, using a couple of cots as couches, putting the circular radiant heater in the middle where they could gather round to enjoy the warmth it gave off. The air temperature lifted to the point where they could strip off their outer layers, though everyone kept their armour vest on. A curtain was rigged round the chemical toilet. Angela kept herself permanently linked to the smartdust on the entrance curtains. The meshes would warn them of anything large coming through.

  Elston linked to everyone individually, checking they were okay and inside as the winds began to build. ‘No one is to go outside until the blizzard is over,’ he ordered. ‘If you have a medical emergency, you must be accompanied by a Legionnaire to go to the clinic.’

  ‘He’s too paranoid,’ Madeleine announced as she closed her microlink with Elston. ‘He should ease up and let people think for themselves.�
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  ‘There’s something dangerous out there,’ Paresh said. ‘He’s worried about our safety.’

  It was only the middle of the afternoon, but as she sealed up the entrance Angela had seen the last of the pink daylight abandoning the sky, so thick and oppressive were the snowclouds. They could hear the wind streaking past through the dome’s thin panels, a constant background snarl, interrupted occasionally by a thump as some piece of camp equipment broke loose or toppled over. The heavy plastic sheets used to cover the entrance thrummed steadily as the wind shook them, but the seals held. Both bright-white lanterns hanging amid the bags swung in slow arcs, sending shadows swaying across the curving walls. Right in the middle of the dome, the circular radiant heater glowed a cosy orange.

  The panels were a problem, Angela soon found. The way they were printed, with fibre chains woven to give multidirectional strength, meant they were tough enough to withstand the wind and another hailstone barrage. But Karizma’s team had been in a hurry, concerned with maintaining structural integrity. Not much thought had been given to thermal loading. The radiant heater set up a good convection current in the middle of the dome, but the panels were chilling down rapidly in the blizzard. Condensation began to build up, trickling down the sides to form thin slicks on the floor. After a while the droplets began to glint as ice crystals solidified. Before long, they were sitting in the middle of a diamond glitter cave as the hoar frost consolidated its grip.

  Angela got out the ball of blue and green wool she’d asked Ophelia Troy to print for her, and began knitting. The fuzzy fibre was wholly synthetic, of course, but it had most of the properties of real wool. More important, when it was knitted into a hat with long earflaps like she was doing, it could breathe through the weave. The parkas and winter trousers that had quickly been printed weren’t the most porous, and sweat built up in the layers underneath, which grew cold and unpleasant very quickly. It was something Karizma’s people promised to review during the blizzard downtime.

  ‘I remember my gran used to do that,’ a fascinated Lulu said. ‘What are you making?’

  ‘A hat.’ Angela grinned at Paresh. ‘One that can fit under a helmet.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a lost art,’ Madeleine said. ‘I guess I know where you learned.’

  ‘The authorities had to find something for inmates to do. There’s lots of courses available for stupid activities like this in jail. I have to admit, I never thought it was something I could ever use on the outside.’

  ‘So why did you sign up for it?’ Paresh asked.

  Angela held up a needle and gave him a wicked smile. ‘You’ve no idea how useful it was getting my hands on something like this in Holloway.’

  ‘Are you going to sue them?’ Omar asked. ‘I mean . . . twenty years! Holy crap.’

  ‘If they’re sensible and offer me decent compensation, I won’t have to take them to court.’ Angela started knitting again, the click click click of the needles just audible above the snarling wind and shivering entrance curtain.

  ‘I don’t think I could stand being locked up for twenty years,’ Lulu said. ‘Not if I hadn’t done nothing wrong. What can they pay you for that? It’s not right.’

  ‘A very large amount of money,’ Angela said. ‘For a start.’

  ‘And the people that put you in jail?’ Omar asked. ‘What about them? They must have covered up evidence. They’re corrupt. They need to be taken down.’

  ‘I really can’t be assed spending time wrecking their careers, what’s left of them,’ Angela said. She held up the hemispherical shape she’d achieved. It just needed a rim and then the earflaps attaching. ‘You see, I’ll be reaching middle age when they’re four hundred years dead. How does revenge get finer than that?’

  ‘Aye, pet, how old are you really?’ a rapt Lulu asked.

  Angela winked. ‘Enough to know better.’

  *

  After she finished the hat, and made sure it did fit under Paresh’s helmet, Angela started work on a scarf for herself. There would be gloves next, she decided. Then a big pair of bed socks. After that, she’d consider taking requests.

  The ice crystals coating the walls of the dome were starting to grow like miniature stalagmites. Each time someone walked across the frozen floor, their boots would scrape off a fine layer of glittering crystals. Thunder started to resonate outside during the evening, the discharges muffled by the weight of fast snow raging past outside.

  Roarke Kulwinder, sitting in the cab of mobile biolab-2, let everyone ride his vision, seeing the lightning flashes erupting behind the smear of white motion that had engulfed the vehicle. The data cables connecting the domes and vehicles together were holding well, allowing Elston, Botin, and Sergeant Raddon to monitor everyone’s bodymesh constantly. Sensor meshes in each dome were also linked to monitor programs, making sure the monster didn’t get in.

  ‘It’d need inertial navigation to find us in this,’ Omar concluded after watching the blizzard through Roarke’s eyes for a few minutes.

  They made supper at seven o’clock, heating packets of pork stew and tea sachets in the microwave. Angela caught Madeleine watching her several times, just as Madeleine had caught her trying to sneak glances across the dome. Nothing was said between them. Any outside observer would assume they didn’t much care for each other, Angela thought wryly. She’d seen it in Holloway often enough; the silent challenges, rigid politeness in public. Then when the guards had their backs turned it was either fight, get fucked, or fly over the wall. Holloway never had a wall any inmate could reach.

  Everyone settled down at nine o’clock after another sachet of tea. Angela dressed in two layers of thin trousers and long-sleeved T-shirts before topping off with her one sweater and jamming a woolly hat (her first effort) over her head. She managed to get three socks on each foot before worming into her sleeping bag. Omar took the first watch, allowing Paresh to get onto his cot beside Angela. They grinned at each other, content with the proximity. The lanterns were turned down to a glimmer, with the radiant heater still glowing bright cherry-red in the middle of the dome, sending a heat shimmer mushrooming through the air above it. The encrustation of ice crystals seemed to glow even brighter in the gloom. Outside, the wind and thunder continued their battle. The taut entrance curtains played their discordant violin harmonic incessantly. Angela just knew she’d never get to sleep.

  Wednesday 3rd April 2143

  Angela was woken by a hand shoving hard against her shoulder, shaking her vigorously. Even then, she could barely make it up to consciousness. When she did force her eyes open she had a splitting headache. ‘What?’ she croaked.

  Madeleine was on her knees beside the cot, her face pale, straining to suck down air as if she was on top of the Eclipse Mountains.

  ‘Air,’ Madeleine groaned back. ‘Carbon dioxide. Killing us.’

  Shit. Angela searched round the dome, seeing Omar lying face down next to the radiant heater. The wind and thunder were still howling outside. She made a supreme effort to struggle out of the sleeping bag. Madeleine was crawling towards the entrance curtain, every movement a terrible effort. She fell more than once. Angela almost blacked out again as she began her own squirming. The two of them arrived at the vibrating sheet, and managed to prise open the seal at the bottom. An airtight seal so the freezing wind and snow didn’t come billowing in.

  Angela heaved, gulping down the clean air which had been caught in the small gap between the inner and outer sheets. For a moment her head began to clear. She knew the clarity and strength wouldn’t last. She swayed up onto her knees, grabbed the outside curtain and tugged.

  A blast of freezing snow-saturated air knocked her backwards. The snow banked up against the outer curtain avalanched into the dome, engulfing her legs. It was cold, painfully so. The lanterns swung wildly, clashing against the rocking kitbags. Anything loose took flight. The curtain round the chemical toilet ripped free and joined the mini-cyclone. Weird flares of light amid the deluge of snow stabbe
d into the dome for a second then vanished.

  ‘Full broadcast alert,’ Angela shouted at her e-i. ‘Wake everyone.’ She kicked her legs out of the snow.

  Paresh and Lulu were thrashing about in their sleeping bags as the wind tipped them onto the floor. The heater had toppled onto a semi-conscious Omar. He wailed as its glowing red surface seared into his cheek and ear. Flesh sizzled, jetting out puffs of smoke. He jerked round instinctively. Another lightburst from outside provided macabre illumination for the scene.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Elston demanded.

  Angela struggled to her feet. Madeleine was already trying to secure the outer curtain, but there was so much snow on the floor she could only close the top half. The dazzling light flared once again, sending blue-white rays prising their way through the gaps.

  ‘Carbon dioxide build-up.’ Angela peered up through the wavering light and gyrating kitbags inside the dome. There were three grilles on the apex panels, designed to let air through and keep rain out. They were covered in hoar frost like the rest of the panels, but that shouldn’t be enough to block them. ‘The grilles don’t work. You need to warn everyone.’

  Paresh made it out of his sleeping bag; he was groggy, fighting the debilitating headache, but got the heater upright, switching it off. Its rosy glow faded. The lanterns were turned up to full brightness. Lulu was still in her sleeping bag on the floor, crying like a baby, her wailing as loud as the wind and thunder.

  Angela helped Madeleine close the outer curtain, sealing it down to the top of the half-metre-high pile of snow. Her fingers had just about lost all feeling by the time they started on the inner curtain. The flesh was white, and she was shaking badly. ‘Thanks,’ she said to Madeleine through chittering teeth. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘My smartcells warned me,’ Madeleine panted back. ‘The medical suite monitors my breathing.’

  ‘Right.’ Angela didn’t know what else to say, maybe something about how good that medical suite was. But no minimum-wage Geordie catering girl would ever have smartcells like that. So she kept quiet and gripped the girl’s shoulder tightly; the first time she’d ever touched her. Her eyes watered up. ‘We’re alive,’ she said with a desperate smile.