Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ken said.

  *

  While the Owl spiralled down, Karizma Wadhai was supervising the team tasked with lifting the domes again. This time the snow had drifted almost a metre up against the panels. The bulldozers pushed it out of the way, leaving room for the self-loading trucks to slide their lift forks underneath. Josh Justic’s dome was the first they attempted to move. The trucks had barely got it half a metre off the snow, when they heard a tremendous crack. It lurched as a split opened up, cutting neatly across panels. The trucks hurriedly lowered it again as the uneven sections shifted about.

  Inspection showed that seven of the panels had fractured and split. ‘It’s the cold,’ Ophelia explained to Elston as they walked round the broken dome. ‘We weren’t expecting it to be this cold.’

  Vance examined the jagged gash in the panels; the sagging dome put him in mind of an egg that had defeated the hatchling inside. ‘Are all the domes going to split?’

  ‘If we try and move them, then yes. They’re just too brittle to lift now.’

  ‘And if we leave them in place, the weight of snow will also fracture the panels, yes?’

  ‘Probably, sir, it depends on how much snow builds up.’

  Both of them turned to face the north-east where the Owl had shown the next storm was approaching. Already, snow was starting to fall, thin hard specks forming a grainy layer on the existing mantle. Pink sunlight was fading as evening drew in, abandoning the sky to the restless borealis waves.

  ‘How do we protect them?’ Vance asked.

  ‘We thought the bulldozers could shunt the existing snow into a wall around each dome. That might act as a snow break, at least for this next blizzard. It’s the best proposal we have.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll give that a go. What about this dome, is this repairable?’

  ‘No, sir. We can’t patch the panels, we just need to make new ones and reassemble. And we can’t do that in the timeframe we’ve got left today.’

  Vance took a look round the camp. It was a depressing sight, he admitted to himself. Six people and a Land Rover Tropic were just visible out on the snow field half a kilometre away, waiting for the Owl to finish its decent. The bulldozers and self-loading pallet trucks moved round slowly, crushing deep ruts into the snow in a random pattern that people had to straddle while they walked about. Snow almost covered the other vehicles, turning them into idiosyncratic lumps. A well-worn path to the clinic, which had snow piled up to the Qwik-Kabin roof where the drift just rounded off. A ramp had been dug down through it to the entrance, and held in place by a flimsy makeshift fence of posts and packing straps. But then, he acknowledged, everything in Wukang had a makeshift feel to it right now. The microfacture shack had what amounted to a road leading to its entrance, so many vehicles had driven up to it. Camp personnel, always in pairs or more, moving round slowly in their parkas and quilted trousers, collecting fresh stores from the pallets, which first had to be dug out with spades the microfacture team had printed. The general systems crew were working on the fuel cells, making sure they’d keep working through the storms.

  It was all wrong, he thought, they were struggling to keep up with current conditions while trying to be vigilant for the alien’s return. Day-to-day existence was taking up all their time and effort. They had to lift themselves out of this deadly hiatus. And they would never do that by staying here.

  Vance came to his decision, and quested a link to Antrinell and Jay. ‘We’re going to leave, travel in convoy to Sarvar.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jay asked.

  ‘Yes. Our situation here is unsustainable. We’re sitting round accomplishing nothing and presenting ourselves as a target for the creature. Heating the domes is consuming a huge amount of fuel. Right now we have a decent bioil reserve that can power the vehicles all the way to Sarvar. If we wait here for another week or ten days, that reserve becomes marginal. We need to prepare and move out as soon as we can. The schedule Vermekia sent is a good place to start, but we’ll need to modify it considerably.’

  ‘You made the right choice,’ Antrinell said. ‘I can’t see them resupplying us inside of a month. There was way too much politics crapping on us from the top of the expedition.’

  ‘And we’re probably safer travelling,’ Jay said. ‘Vermekia was right, the creature will have trouble keeping up.’

  ‘I’m not giving up on our primary mission to capture it,’ Vance said. ‘We need to work that into our travel plan.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Vance started issuing his orders. Bulldozers to build protective snow walls round the five remaining domes. The people in Justic’s broken dome to billet down elsewhere. The microfacture team and the vehicle technicians to move into the now-reinforced microfacture shack and live there during the blizzard, where they would start printing the items needed for the trek south. Vehicle refit to start as soon as the blizzard ends. Department heads to liaise on ringlink during the blizzard, where the convoy details will be finalized.

  *

  Marvin Trambi kept on working while the rest of the camp jumped about to prepare them for the next blizzard. Conditions in mobile biolab-2 were calm and easy. The fuel cells providing the cab systems and laboratory with power operated at high temperature, which was bled into the air-con, keeping the scrubbed atmosphere inside at a civilized twenty-three degrees. The lighting was white and bright. Their little habitation cabin, wedged between the driver cab and the lab itself, had five bunks along with a kitchen gallery, and even a shower in the tiny washroom cubicle.

  He’d done his fair share of moving loads around outside in the lulls between snowstorms, so he’d experienced the conditions the rest of the camp endured. It left him feeling mildly guilty about living in the biolab, but his work was the reason the expedition had been sent out here. Something everyone else seemed to be losing sight of with the murders and sunspots and weather flip.

  He was sitting at the bench which ran the length of the lab, listening to some light jazz while the equipment was running genetic sample analysis. The biolab came with five separate RFLP analysis systems. Marvin had spent weeks sitting at the bench, reviewing the plant samples his colleagues brought in. The bio-lab carried the most comprehensive database of St Libra botany outside Highcastle University. When the little segments of bark, or branch or leaf cluster captured by the samplers was brought in, the first thing he did was run the visual identification routines. Anything that resembled a plant already in the database was immediately rejected. Some were zebra mirrors, a CO2 to oxygen variant, while the records showed an oxygen to CO2 converter with the same leaf shape – they were also rejected. The expedition was looking for a much greater divergence than that. Even restricting the genus they ran through genetic analysis to complete unknowns, the two biolabs had so far seen over nineteen thousand different plants through the autoradiography process, searching for evidence that just one of them had a different ancestry, originating along a different branch of the evolutionary tree. They hadn’t found even a hint of difference.

  It was fully accepted among the expedition xenobiology team now that St Libra was bioformed. Their only argument was how long ago the event had occurred. However, Marvin was still interested in mapping the genetic difference. Given how many plants they’d encountered over a relatively small area of the total planet, the original genetic base must have been huge. After all, the plants had to evolve somewhere. It was a sore puzzle to Marvin how quite this many distinct plants could originate from a single common ancestor. His favourite hypothesis was that they’d evolved on a world with an even bigger surface area than St Libra, which raised some intriguing cosmological questions.

  What he was truly desperate for was a hint of what else might have evolved on the origin planet. Presumably the planters had. After all, why would you bother bioforming a planet with vegetation that wasn’t compatible with your own biochemistry? But if they had evolved in tandem with the St Libra plants, then surely the St Libra plants were
adapted for a biosphere with insects and animals – which they didn’t seem to be. But that avenue of investigation was so far nonexistent. Whatever the original plant on the origin world, it was giving no clues as to what else it had shared that world with. And it was curious that St Libra’s plants thrived so well without insect and animal life, a milieu they’d evolved into. But if they were truly natural, then who had transported them here, and why?

  St Libra was an intellectual challenge on so many levels. Barely a week in, before they even got to Wukang, Marvin realized he was far more content amid the enigmatic zebra botany jungle than he’d ever been studying the Zanth.

  He carefully prepared a further batch of leaves for the first stage of analysis, feeding the capsules the sampler embedded them in to one of the automated processors which mashed them up separately before injecting a reactive agent which would break down the cell membrane to release the genetic material contained within. After that he could begin the more lengthy process of preparing that material for autoradiography. Their top-range scanners from the Cambridge Genomics Agency could run fifteen thousand simultaneous comparisons – more than they’d ever had in one batch.

  Except the lab had run out of the agent. ‘Damnit,’ he mumbled. His e-i quested the lab’s net. The camp’s diminished network told him the lab supplies were still outside in a pallet. It was one that’d been moved close to the domes and vehicles, but still . . . outside.

  Marvin stood up and stretched, unkinking stiff muscles. There was just so much damn preparation involved with going outside these days. He went into the little decontam airlock at the front of the lab, and cycled it. Smara Jacka was in the driver’s cab, drinking tea from a mug as she munched on a packet of chocolate bonbons. She peered back through the small open hatchway into the central cabin as Marvin started pulling on his waterproof quilted trousers.

  ‘We’re out of the sample reactant again,’ he complained.

  ‘Damnit. Okay, I’ll come with you.’

  Elston’s standing order was that no one was allowed outside alone. Marvin looked at the weather outside the cab’s wide windscreen. Snow was whipping past, illuminated in the pastel emerald and cerise and topaz blooms of the borealis. It was the leading edge of the blizzard, not that he was sure he’d be able to tell the difference when the main body of the storm was upon them. The camp’s links were full of snatched comments as the AAV crew helped the Land Rover Tropic driver creep towards the domes; the vehicle’s wheels were losing traction on the claggy snow, and everyone was anxious to get back to their accommodation dome. Others were still getting supplies to the remaining domes. Josh Justic and the others from the broken dome were taking their belongings to new billets; as were the microfacture team as they headed for their shack. A Legionnaire squad was making one final perimeter patrol, trudging unhappily along the route, unable to see more than ten metres. The systems crew and aircraft technicians were trying to finish the lighting rigs they used for aircraft maintenance at night, hoping they could flood the campsite with light, and provide some kind of warning should the alien killer return.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Marvin said as he shoved his arms into a parka, fastening it over his armour vest. ‘Our pallet is only twenty metres away.’ He patted the Heckler carbine as he put the shoulder sling over his head. ‘And my friend here will look after me. You can see me most of the way from the windscreen anyway.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  Gloves, two layers; a hat with ear muffs under an armour helmet; pull the parka hood over that; ski-style goggles – and he was ready. He went into the door compartment, and his e-i gave the vehicle his lock code. The outer door popped out, and slid to the side on its rails. Snow gusted in, and heat raced away from him. He went carefully down the short ladder-steps to the snow outside. They’d moved the biolab that afternoon, driving it up out of the drifts that had accumulated on both sides. But the snow was accumulating against the big wheels once more.

  He looked round as the door slid closed and locked again. There were maybe thirty people outside, hurrying to wherever they were going to wait out the blizzard, yet he couldn’t see one of them. His bodymesh link with Wukang’s net dropped out, then returned. The aurora borealis turned his speckled universe a dainty violet shade which chased away to salmon pink.

  Marvin’s e-i gave him a navigation display in his grid, highlighting the pallet with the lab supplies. He put one hand on the Heckler, and started walking towards it. Ten paces later, and the biolab’s headlights flashed twice. He waved at the dark shape, assuming Smara could see him.

  A minute later he was at the pallet. It took a while for him to clear the snow away from the side, wiping with gloved hands that were steadily becoming colder. Feeling began to seep away from his fingers. Eventually he exposed the flaps and opened them to get at the slim containers packed tightly inside. His helmet-light shone a stark halogen-white beam on the labels, and his e-i sent out a ping to the tag he wanted. A purple symbol appeared in his grid, identifying the container with the agent.

  Far above, the aurora shimmered to a lambent green, casting a benign cyan glow across the pallet. A shadow slid over it, as smooth and oppressive as a lunar eclipse. Marvin twisted round.

  The monster stood before him.

  ‘No,’ Marvin whimpered. Even through the numbing fear, he stared in amazement, trying to find the alienness of the bulky figure, the pure scientific evidence of evolutionary divergence from terrestrial life. Like all the xenobiology team he’d been given full access to the restricted reports of Frontline’s interrogation of Angela Tramelo. She had described it well.

  Dark it was, with those infamous savage knife blades for fingers. Leather turned stone for skin; today splattered with snow that clung to every wrinkle. Bipedal humanoid profile, he noted, with limb articulation a perfect match for Homo sapiens. A calcium mask face incapable of expressive projection. But the eyes, Angela had never mentioned the eyes; sunk back protectively into their sockets, they were human.

  It was fast. An arm shot out, striking him in the chest. The terrible force flung him back violently, spreadeagling him against the pallet. But the impact went on longer than a simple blow, and it slowed at the end, as if the monster was punching through viscous fluid.

  The arm was pulled back. For some reason, Marvin could no longer feel anything. His body had stopped breathing, even the growl of the wind had lessened to a sigh. Sweet gentian borealis light glimmered around him. It illuminated glistening fluid dripping from the monster’s fingerblades.

  Marvin looked down at his chest. Blood was flooding from the rent in his parka. The blades had punched clean through his warm clothes and the armour vest underneath.

  He opened his mouth to say: ‘Oh,’ but blood surged up into his throat, drowning his vocal cords. The warm liquid poured out of his mouth as his legs gave way, pitching him forward. Marvin Trambi was dead by the time his face smacked into the snow.

  *

  It was true springtime in Newcastle now. April had brought nights that were still cool, but by day the sun shone bright and warm out of a cloudless sky, rising a little higher every noon. If there were showers they were swift, moved on quickly by a brisk wind to leave the city gleaming fresh and clean in their wake.

  Ian always enjoyed the spring. Everybody’s mood improved after their immersion in the drab winter of north-east England. Girls wore dresses again. Urban trees budded, adding a refreshing frosting of verdant green to the harsh stone and concrete streets.

  And this year Tallulah had entered his life. This year promised to be the finest yet. He just had to play it right.

  By eleven forty-five that morning the silver rain had stopped, and the sun was shining intermittently through clouds that scudded away into the western horizon. Ian walked over to Eva’s desk. She’d been assigned to another third-floor office, working a case over in Arthur’s Hill where a family argument had resulted in the father killing one of his children before the mother
chopped him apart with the knives she’d brought back home from their restaurant. Did that make it premeditated? Eva was working through witness statements and psychiatric reports to determine what had really happened that bad night.

  ‘Buy you some lunch?’ Ian asked.

  Eva gave him a surprised look before her freckled face turned happy. ‘Sure. Thanks. This is just too gruesome. Those poor kids.’

  ‘I thought there was just the one?’

  ‘One dead, but he had a brother and sister. They’re both in care now. Nobody is going to win this one.’

  They walked out into the mild humidity of Grey Street, and turned down towards the river.

  ‘So have you seen Sid?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Not over the weekend, no.’

  ‘We’re going to have to trigger the downloads soon.’

  ‘I know, pet. I heard legal is going to send the North file on to the Prosecution Bureau tomorrow. If we don’t have anything on Sherman, it’s all going to hit the fan by the end of this week.’

  ‘I don’t know why he’s waiting so long. I would have downloaded by now.’

  ‘Aye, that’s why he made it to third grade. He takes risks.’

  ‘Sid?’

  Ian gave her a grin. ‘A dark horse is our Sid, pet. Thought you knew that by now.’

  They walked down Quayside, going under the base of the Tyne Bridge.

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ Eva asked.

  ‘In here.’ Ian led her into the Tollamarch Arms, one of the pubs that occupied the big row of Georgian buildings that lined this end of Quayside. The room running along the front was a grandiose relic of ancient corporate elegance, with a high ceiling and the kind of wide oak floorboards that no one could afford these days. Where solicitors and their clerks once prowled through ledgers there was now a long bar complemented by deep leather chairs and polished resin tables with knotted legs. It served a good range of bar snacks and provided an excellent view out across the river, the perfect venue for middle-management lunches. They found a window seat; Ian ordered a mineral water while Eva chose a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.