Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  A dark figure emerged from the curtain of snow. ‘Son of a bitch,’ Angela grunted. It had been a trap! The thing was humanoid, with an all-over featureless, shiny skin like crude oil that the snow slithered off. Which wasn’t quite how she remembered it. The hands were ordinary, too, without any sign of the terrible blades. ‘What are you?’ she yelled defiantly as she brought the carbine round.

  It was the strangest thing, the figure held up a hand, finger extended in a universal gesture asking for a moment. The slick skin shivered, flowing in narrow currents, draining away from the head and congealing into the same parka and waterproof trousers as everyone wore on the convoy. Then a gloved hand reached up and unwound the long blue knitted scarf, exposing the face.

  Angel let out a startled cry.

  ‘Hello, Angela,’ Madeleine said. ‘Whatever are you doing out here?’

  Angela pointed the carbine at the sky as if she was performing a military salute. After the anxiety of creeping away from the convoy, the anticipation of treachery, it was almost too much for her to be confronting this girl. She felt the moisture build behind her eyes, a symptom of her profound longing. And she just couldn’t keep the farce going any longer, not here, not now. ‘Hello, Rebka,’ she blurted. ‘That’s . . . if you know your name is Rebka.’

  ‘Of course I know my own name, Mother.’

  *

  Angela was out jogging that fateful morning back in 2119. She liked to go out early, before the sun got too high and the clammy humidity from Oakland’s bayous crawled across the flatlands to starve her lungs of oxygen. Before baby Rebka woke and the first of the day’s inevitable mini-crises began. It was a time when she felt like she was far from her troubles. A false time, then, but one she needed.

  She ran along the laser-straight stony dirt tracks the compactors had cut out. Over the last couple of years the hulking Massachusetts Agrimech machines had laid out a massive grid, linking the farm’s vast fields for the tractors and drillers and harvesters. For those two years they’d enjoyed good harvests, the sweltering sun and abundant water allowing them to plant four crops a year. Saul had already filed the viability assessment with the Governor’s office, and they were waiting to be able to claim another eight thousand acres that lay to the north. The land there was wetter than the acres they already farmed; there would have to be some elaborate drainage dykes. Saul, of course, had already planned them out – pumps, levels, ditches. Work was the poor dear’s way of escaping from their worry over Rebka. She didn’t begrudge him that, their life was tough enough now.

  One of the big green and blue tractors rumbled towards her down the track, and she skipped up onto the stickgrass verge, not wanting to give the auto a moving obstruction to cope with. She was proud of the job all the Massachusetts Agrimech machines had done, but some of the software was definitely due an update. As Noah was constantly reminding her. The machine passed her, huge tyres splashing through the puddles in the ruts, and she smelt bioil in the warm fumes shimmering out of the vents. The fuel cells weren’t burning cleanly. They’d have to pull the tractor in for maintenance before the end of the month.

  Angela ran along field 17, which was just stubble now the combines had finished harvesting the Syntel breadmaize. It was due to be deep ploughed, then they’d plant it with Ni-hi barley. The chequerboard of their other fields stretched out beyond the mile-wide expanse of stubble. That was one thing she couldn’t get used to, the gentle rolling lands of Oakland weren’t landscape. She longed for mountains, some cliffs, a few valleys; something other than the interminable everglades and sluggish rivers and the oh-so-flat ground baking beneath its vast brilliant-sapphire sky.

  She came to the corner of field 17 and turned left. The track here was overgrown, leading to one of the storm-pump stations at the end of the dykes. Half a kilometre away, and parallel to the track was Route 565, the freeway which cut clean through the county all the way back to Yantwich, the state capital, eighty klicks away. She could see the farmhouse now, three hundred metres away from the barns and Qwik-Kabin stack where they’d been living for the last two years. The house was half completed rooms, half black scaffolding sticking up into the sky, with automata clinging to it. They were still waiting for the tanker of flooring raw the contractor had promised ten days ago. Not that Angela had the energy to chase him like she should be doing. Not these days; tending Rebka absorbed every moment.

  Sweat was trickling down her face, soaking the light-grey vest as she turned onto the final stretch leading back to the yard. When she’d started exercising again it’d been hell for the first few weeks, every muscle had been stiff, she got headaches, her body kept demanding the mass of food she’d consumed first during pregnancy then when breastfeeding. But she’d pushed herself, ignoring her aches. Now she was almost back to the kind of shape she’d been in before falling pregnant, flat stomach, flabby thighs just a horrific memory, puffy face deflated so that great bone structure returned to prominence. She and Saul had even been having some sex again, on nights when they weren’t holding some worried vigil over Rebka’s cot. Nights when she didn’t just burst into helpless tears of pity and rage at the fate which the universe had dealt her.

  Blue strobes caught her eye. An ambulance was racing along the freeway. Her heart jumped, and she stared intently at the Qwik-Kabin stack. Her netlenses were back in the bedroom. Jogging was a refuge from the pain of Rebka. She only left the house for forty-five minutes. Even Saul could cope for forty-five minutes. Surely?

  Angela picked up the pace, flying along the track.

  Sure enough the ambulance turned off the freeway at their drive, and started bumping down the long ribbon of crushed stone to the yard. She almost beat it to the Qwik-Kabin stack. The paramedics were already going through the door when she rounded the corner of the grain-drying shed and pounded through the puddles.

  Half of the ground-floor lounge was given over to medical equipment, effectively turning it into a paediatric care ward. There was only one cot-bed, made of stern metal with big retractable wheels. One of the paramedics was bent over it. Angela couldn’t help the fast intake of breath at the sight. Saul was hovering beside the paramedic, looking all grief-stricken and pathetic.

  ‘What happened?’ Angela shouted.

  And Saul was walking towards her, his arms held up in placation. ‘It’s all right. She was having trouble breathing, the monitor fibres said her oxygen intake was falling. I called them before it gets critical.’

  She pushed her husband aside without bothering to reply or censure – as she’d been doing far too often of late. She knew that was wrong, that this wasn’t his fault, but he was all she had to vent her anger on.

  ‘It’s okay, baby,’ she cooed at the little shape lying on the cot-bed’s mattress. Far too little for an eight-month-old, wearing a one-piece grow with pretty cartoon flowers. Rebka had tubes and data fibres snaking in through the grow’s collar, and sleeve cuffs, and ankle bands. A grey-silver dialysis module sat on the mattress beside the infant, relieving her beleaguered kidneys. Frail, sickly Rebka’s wrinkled face was screwed up as she wiggled in discomfort, a thin gurgling emerged from her mouth. She was too weak to cry properly. The oxygen line in her nose hissed lightly.

  Just the sight of her daughter struggling for breath was enough to make the tears well up in Angela’s eyes.

  ‘She’s still getting enough oxygen,’ David, the paramedic said. Angela knew the whole county’s emergency services staff by their first name now. ‘We don’t need to intubate,’ he assured her.

  ‘All right. Okay,’ Angela said, dabbing at her tears, desperate for the good words. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Her lungs’ oxygen-processing capacity has been in decline for a while,’ Alkhed said; the other paramedic who had been studying the monitors. ‘We’ll take her in and they can find out why.’

  Angela squeezed her eyes shut. Take her in. Back to Palmville County General; the paediatric wing that she knew better than her own half-built house, its too-dar
k blue paint, the breezy lumin-pictures of anthropomorphized animals on the walls, the bed linen with its bees and dinosaurs, the parents’ lounge: Hell’s own waiting room with its dead-eyed weepy occupants where she didn’t belong.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Angela said. She held her jaw rigid, trying to get a grip on her tumultuous emotions. Another problem. Another vulnerability for that tiny body to deal with. She’d thought Rebka’s lungs were out of danger, that the steroids were working now the respirator had been disconnected two weeks ago.

  There had been no indicator; the pregnancy had gone well. Tests, and there were dozens, always showing mother and daughter were doing fine. New Florida might be a new American world, but it didn’t lack for medical facilities, and Oakland was a fully fledged state now, with senators back in Washington. Palmville County General had an effective professional paediatric department. The Howard family’s medical insurance, taken out with an Earth-registered company, was top-rated, and fully paid up.

  It was only after the birth that they got an inkling of the dread that would befall their beautiful daughter. Rebka’s jaundice, perfectly normal for babies, developed into full-blown liver failure that required a genemod pig organ transplant. That was the first of a deluge of medical calamities the child underwent. Each one was skilfully treated by the hospital and its devoted team. But every time one was sorted out, another disorder would appear. Their accumulation had led the doctors to suspect a systemic failure they hadn’t managed to diagnose.

  Most worrying to her distraught parents was her lack of growth. At nine months she was five and a half kilograms, and barely fifty-three centimetres high. But with her hypoplastic left heart syndrome, polycystic kidney disease, protein deficiency resulting in poor muscle development, weak immune system, and various allergies, below-the-curve growth was inevitable, the chief paediatrician warned them. Fortunately, her neurological development was unaffected. Saul had sworn she smiled once, only ten days ago.

  David and Alkhed wheeled the cot-bed out of the door, with the paraphernalia of critical medical support equipment resting on the shelves below the mattress. It was designed to fit in the ambulance’s treatment bay. Once it was locked into place, David started plugging the systems into the vehicle’s power and data sockets.

  Angela picked up her bag that was kept permanently packed and ready beside the front door. Saul took his, then they were both in the back of the ambulance, with David tending the young patient, and Alkhed in the front, supervising the auto.

  At least they didn’t have to use the sirens, though Alkhed did keep the speed at a steady one-twenty kph down the freeway. It was early, so there wasn’t much traffic yet. The familiar signs and farm roads slipped past the blackened windows. Angela stared at them blankly, refusing to let her utter misery rise up lest it drown every last rational thought in black despair. She hated the helplessness, the pathetic gratitude every time the hospital paediatricians countered a new crisis. Hated asking herself what was next, because that meant she was expecting some new problem to manifest when she should be willing her darling sweet child to get better. But her greatest hatred was directed right at the heart of an uncaring universe that could inflict so much suffering on a life so precious and innocent.

  They drove past the off-ramp for Stamford, and Angela automatically reached for the bag. She was a mess, wearing a fitness vest and shorts, hair all tied up in bands, sweat-soaked socks in muddy trainers. There was a fleece jacket in the bag, some sports pants; netlens glasses and audio interface, even some cash, along with toiletries in a tatty old washbag. She blinked at that bag in surprise as she rummaged through looking for socks. It was probably her oldest possession, the one she’d brought with her from New Monaco with the smuggler’s bar of soap.

  That life was gone. If she recalled it at all now it was like the memory of a zone drama. It was hard to believe she was that billionaire princess. She’d got over it, that had been her triumph where she suspected so many of her kind would have failed; started to build a real life, not a fabulous life, but an adequate one that had potential. After all she had centuries to develop her stakeholding on a new planet into an empire that one day even her father might have approved. And sweet soppy Saul was a pleasant enough companion.

  It had been perfect. Truly, two years of newlywed bliss while the farm flourished, they had friends, and most nights were spent hurrying to get naked in bed.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Alkhed asked.

  Angela looked past him through the ambulance’s windscreen. Outside, the sun seemed unnaturally bright. Then she realized that something else was searing through Oakland’s cloudy sky. Trees along the side of the freeway developed a second shadow that started sliding round quickly. Something brighter than a solar flare streaked down out of the heavens away to the south, dropping below the horizon.

  She looked at Saul, whose jaw had dropped open.

  Then her e-i was clamouring for attention. The HDA was officially declaring a Zanthswarm alert in the New Florida system. Evacuation procedure files were being downloaded to every citizen. She was too shocked to say anything.

  ‘We have to go back,’ Saul said. ‘The . . . the farm. It’s everything we have. We’ve got to get . . . to get—’

  ‘Sorry, man, I ain’t going anywhere,’ Alkhed said. ‘I’m taking this bus to collect my family. We’ve got to get out of here, off this whole planet.’

  ‘We’re not going back,’ Angela said, ignoring Alkhed and staring directly at Saul. ‘This is a Zanthswarm. Do you understand? In a day there will be nothing left. Nothing! It’s over. There is no farm, not any more.’

  Daylight changed again, with a bright glare sweeping through the eastern sky like slow-motion lightning.

  ‘What do we do?’ David cried in a frantic voice. ‘We have to get to my house.’

  ‘No fucking way, man,’ Alkhed snarled. ‘We’re picking up my people.’

  ‘My girl is pregnant.’

  ‘I’ll drop you off close.’

  ‘You’re on the other side of town.’

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ Angela said. ‘We’ve got days before it gets critical. The Thunderthorns will be flying soon, they’ll knock the Zanth rifts out of existence. They are there to give us all the time we need to get to the gateway.’

  ‘I’m getting my family,’ Alkhed said stubbornly.

  ‘You’re going to drive us to the hospital,’ Angela said. ‘Both of you parked your cars there. You get into them and drive to your families. That way we all get what we want.’

  ‘No,’ Alkhed repeated stubbornly. ‘You can ride with us if you want, there’s room, but I ain’t taking no detours.’

  ‘Screw you, man,’ David yelled.

  ‘I’ll drop you off, I said I would.’

  Angela didn’t have time for this shit, and Saul wouldn’t be any use. He’d carry on with trying to be reasonable. They were past that now. She knew exactly how people reacted when their lives fell apart in a single moment. Down at the bottom of the washbag were some tox sacs, for when it all got too hard at the hospital, when she couldn’t stand to watch her baby swamped by tubes, when five doctors were bent over her working frantically. She picked them out and swung her arm round, bumping three sacs simultaneously against Alkhed’s exposed neck.

  ‘Hey!’ Alkhed yelped. He was clawing frantically at his neck while Saul and David stared at her wide-eyed. ‘What the fuck, man? What . . .? Oh, whoh.’ He started fast blinking. ‘That is . . . whay?’ His head started to flop about as if his neck muscles had lost all their strength.

  ‘Angela!’ Saul said.

  She gave him her cold look. ‘Yes? You want to go to his house? You want to get thrown out when his family realize there isn’t enough room for all of us, and we have to keep Rebka’s support units going? That what you want?’

  Saul coloured bright red. ‘No.’

  Alkhed slumped forward over the steering wheel.

  ‘Help me get him out of there,’ Angela said.

/>   Together David and Saul pulled the semi-conscious, tox-delirious man out of the driver’s seat. Angela climbed in, and switched the ambulance to manual. ‘David, I’m dropping the two of you off at the hospital.’

  ‘Okay,’ the paramedic said nervously.

  Angela grinned savagely at his meek tone, and switched the siren on as she twisted the throttle, accelerating up to one-fifty. Alkhed’s sunglasses were lying on the dashboard. She put them on even though the clouds were building and she could see the grey sheet of rain advancing towards Palmville. It was a good choice. A few minutes later the first nuclear explosions detonated five hundred kilometres above them as the Wild Valkyries squadron began their impossible task of intercepting the Zanth chunks descending on the planet. The clouds diffused the violent light-bursts, but even their grey underbellies glowed with monochrome brilliance from the explosions.

  The ambulance hit the outskirts of Palmville with its neat rows of white bungalows sitting in their lakes of lush green lawns. Cars were pouring out of the prim estate roads, charging onto the feeder road to the freeway. People didn’t care about speed limits any more. Traffic lights were being ignored as the fusion bombs continued to explode above the atmosphere. Three junctions were badly snarled, Angela had to drive up on the sidewalks to get round. The air was jammed with the sound of furious horns. Heading into town was easier than it was going to be getting out.

  The rain arrived at the hospital at the same time as the ambulance. Angela drove straight to the staff car park and braked. ‘Out, David!’

  For a moment he looked like he wanted to argue. But now Saul wasn’t showing any sympathy. The rear door popped open, and Saul shoved Alkhed’s dreaming body out onto the wet asphalt. ‘Good luck,’ Saul yelled at David as a heavier belt of rain swept across the cars. He was given a venomous glare in return.

  Angela didn’t wait. She slapped her hand down on the door close button, and twisted the throttle again. They went racing out of the car park, back onto the main arterial road leading back to the freeway.