Great North Road (114 page)

Sid grinned out at the wonderful old sunlit stone buildings of the city center, enjoying the daydream of a world where everything worked smoothly and in his favor. So close to the resolution, he was intently curious about whatever corporate fight had resulted in the North’s murder. He was sure Ralph would tell him, even if it was off-log.

His e-i told him Ralph was calling. “Morning,” he said cheerily.

“I need you to come to Cuckoo Farm, now,” the agent said.

The Market Street station was thirty seconds away. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. I’ll drive up to you. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

“No, I don’t want you in your own car. Sherman probably has a list of every police officer’s vehicle license code. And if he doesn’t, Aldred certainly has.”

Which was true spook paranoia, Sid thought, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Okay then, how do I get there?”

It was a drive to the HDA base in Shipcote, where he switched to a civilian car with an agent. That drove him to a commercial district alongside the A19, and another change of vehicle. This time a company van belonging to Allison’s Floral House. He even had to wear the overalls.

They pulled in to Cuckoo Farm just after nine o’clock—to anyone or any program observing, just another regular flower collection.

It wasn’t the first covert visit the farm had enjoyed that morning. When Sid walked into the lounge it had been filled with consoles and big hologram panes, far more equipment than the few cases he’d seen being unpacked before he left. The farmhouse Jede had led them to was center stage of the panes and screens, shown from various angles. Among them the images came in just about every color, covering a vast range of spectrums from straight visual to thermal to electromagnetic. There was even a grainy high-magnification monochrome, which seemed to be drifting. Ten agents were sitting at consoles, four of them on fold-out chairs, monitoring the operation. A couple of smaller screens were flicking through faces, with profile streamers running along the bottom.

As he watched the monochrome image, someone walked out of the main building and over to an outhouse.

“Hostile three,” someone announced. “Hair pattern confirmed.”

“Thanks for coming,” Ralph said.

“Sure. How are you getting these images?” He pointed at the black-and-white picture. “I thought you were worried about them picking up emissions from airborne systems.”

“We are. That’s a satellite feed. We’re altering the low-orbit sensor flotilla orbital tracks to provide constant coverage. A satellite passes overhead every three minutes now.”

“Aye, crap on it. That must cost a fortune, man. I didn’t know there were that many of them up there.”

“Classified.”

“So what the hell do you need me for?”

“Something happened. I want you to advise Agent Linsell, who is about to start running a team for me out of the HDA’s Shipcote base. We need to put Sherman, Aldred, and all known associates under constant observation. You’re familiar with them, so you can draw up the protocols, provide her some tactical intelligence.”

“Aye, but Sherman’s a canny bugger, mind. And Aldred has his own corporate security department shielding him.”

“You’re smarter than them, you’ve shown that. And you don’t even have to consider a budget. Linsell will requisition whatever you tell her she needs. We must have constant real-time data on all of them. And I need it starting by this afternoon.”

Sid gave the panes another look, becoming alarmed by the intensity of the operation. “Okay, I can help advise. So why are you doing it? What changed?”

Ralph turned to one of the screens running through faces. It froze to display a man Sid thought he knew, maybe late thirties, a long face, receding hairline, and wearing old-fashioned glasses. Couldn’t put a name to him.

“We deployed some remote insects last night,” Ralph said. “They sneaked through the woods and established some meshes, then positioned a couple of long-range lenses in the treetops. They all have fiber-optic links to us, so there’s no giveaway signature.”

“Insects? Really?”

“Better versions of the ones I loaned you. Yes. We got good coverage of the farm and its surrounding buildings. Then two hours ago, we saw this man. He came out of the farmhouse and went to the largest barn. Hasn’t come back out yet.”

Sid stared at the face on the screen. “Who is it? I think I know him.”

“You do,” Ralph said flatly. “Professor Sebastian Umbreit—there’s a planetwide alert out for him.”

“You are crapping on me,” Sid said on a gasp. “He’s the D-bomb designer that went missing.”

“Kidnapped, along with his family. Yes. And whoever brought him here has now supplied him with defense-grade microfacture equipment capable of producing active-state matter. That’s what they took from Trigval last night, and it’s a major component in D-bombs.”

“Fuckit, man. What do they want with a D-bomb?”

Ralph shook his head sorrowfully. “I’ve no idea. But we seriously need to find out.”

T
UESDAY,
A
PRIL 30, 2143

The clouds had been thinning out all morning before abandoning the sky completely for the afternoon. It was the first time in weeks Angela had seen the rings in their full majesty, though Red Sirius and iridescence from the aurora borealis was now daubing them a sickly mauve as they curved above the southern horizon. Below it, three kilometers away at the bottom of a gentle slope, was the Lan tributary. Angela kept looking at it, mainly for reassurance that something on this wretched journey was finally going right. As Leif had predicted, it was flat, solid, and relatively straight, a proper highway through the unforgiving landscape with its jungles and valleys. Three kilometers away. So close now.

As she trudged along the line of the stalled convoy vehicles the freezing air was clear enough for her to see the crests of the aurora streamers tens of kilometers overhead. Above that she caught the occasional glimpse of a hazy mauve phosphorescence capping the atmosphere. The ionosphere, overwhelmed with the particle storm from Red Sirius, was glowing like a faint neon sign, radiating the planet’s distress back out into space. Flickers of thin lightning played through the upper atmosphere as the layers sought to equalize their energy levels.

For all its strange beauty the sight was depressing. The climate wasn’t going to change in the short term, and short term was what they now operated in. Even that seemed to be running out on them. She passed the small orange garage balloon that contained MTJ-1, which was now looking flaccid as the maintenance team prepared to open it up again and drive the vehicle out.

Two of the axle hub motors on MTJ-1 had failed within three hours of each other on Monday afternoon. Everyone started muttering about sabotage. Except Leif and Darwin, who’d been half expecting it. As they told Elston, a vehicle that had fallen down a gorge was always going to have reliability problems on a two-thousand-kilometer trek. A diagnostic review showed that nothing other than a complete replacement would do. So out came the fabric garage for the vehicle team to work in. They’d spent eleven hours solid stripping out the old bearings and replacing them from the spares stock.

Angela arrived at biolab-2, and her e-i ordered the sliding door open. She waited until the small door compartment had cycled before taking her balaclava and gloves off. As always, the light and warmth seemed unusual to her. The air somehow managed to make her feel queasy, but then there were nine people sharing the biolab along with the strong smell of medical antiseptic, all of which put quite a strain on the aircon filters.

Paresh was awake and propped up on pillows, which allowed her to ignore the sensation. His cheeks were partially flushed, like a schoolkid at play. She supposed that was good.

“Hi,” she said as she slithered between his gurney and the one where Luther was resting. Luther still looked in a bad way, with gray skin and a whole load of tubes connected beneath his sheet. She didn’t like looking at the fluids in the bags on the end of them, the colors were just wrong.

“Hey, you,” Paresh replied.

Angela gave him a quick kiss, very aware of everyone else crammed into the cabin and driver’s cab. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good. The doc’s giving me the good drugs.”

“Lucky you. We’ve started on the composition gel.”

“Yeah, I know.” He gestured over at the tiny galley alcove, which had one of the mealmaker machines sitting on a shelf, with thick engineering tape helping secure it to the stainless-steel surface.

Angela wrinkled her nose up it. They looked like a budget version of the coffee machines franchise cafés used, just without the steam and whooshing sounds. Operation was simple enough: You slotted the gel pack on top and chose your meal, which came in a tiny silver carton, colored according to food type: beef stew, apple crumble, mashed potato, soup, chicken curry—more than twenty varieties. The machine blended the flavor into the gel along with a gelatin-type powder to alter texture, giving a reasonable approximation of a proper meal—so claimed the manufacturer’s wizzo brochure file. As Angela and everyone else discovered that lunchtime, what actually farted out of the nozzle was a blubbery cream with grains of food dye and bitter artificial flavoring mixed unevenly.

“I can’t believe I put that stuff on the stores list,” she told him. “If I was trying to save weight I should have just left Karizma behind.” Just thinking about food sent a shiver down her body. She was strangely cold despite the biolab’s heat.

Paresh grinned. “I wouldn’t know, the doc is keeping me on real food.”

“Hell, I wish I was injured.”

“Don’t be, there’s only so much chicken soup a man can take.”

Angela turned to where Dr. Coniff was sitting close to Luther’s gurney. “How long before he’s up again?”

“Give it a few more days,” the doctor said. “This stopover is probably the best thing that could have happened. It gives the nuflesh a chance to stabilize his rib fractures; it’s binding them together nicely.”

Angela squeezed his hand. “See, you’re doing fine.”

“Yeah. So how long before we can get going again?”

“Darwin is taking MTJ-1 out for a test drive. They were deflating the garage when I came over. If the bearings are working okay we’ll drive down to the tributary first thing in the morning.”

“I heard the colonel has already checked it out.”

“Sure. MTJ-2 and Tropic-1 drove down there this morning. The water’s frozen solid, and there’s only a meter or so of snow on top. We’ll be able to make up for a lot of lost time, and it won’t punish the vehicles anything like the jungle has been.”

“Finally, some good news.”

She held up the bag she’d carried over. “New sweater for you when you get up. I rushed it a bit, so the lines aren’t perfect.” Another involuntary shiver ran along her muscles, making her arm shake as she handed the thick red-and-blue sweater over.

“Thanks.”

The doctor was giving her a pointed look. “I’d better get back,” Angela said. “I’ve got a whole load more balaclavas to knit. Looks like I’ve finally found my true talent.”

Paresh coughed, wincing badly. “Everyone likes what you do.”

“Sure. You take care now. I’ll come back next refuel stop.” He looked disturbingly weak lying there, so much so she found it upsetting. Coping with illness—either her own or in someone else—wasn’t something she had ever done well; an inability that was close to shaming her. She deliberately avoided glancing at Luther as she wriggled out between the gurneys. Shifting him into the driver’s cab to make room for the emergency clearly hadn’t done him any favors. She’d overheard Juanitar Sakur saying how much internal damage Luther was suffering, and how the convoy journey wasn’t helping.

“I’ll come out with you,” Mark Chitty said. “I have to check on Dean Creshaun.”

Angela waited politely while the paramedic pulled on his layers and parka. They both went through the door compartment together. Outside, MTJ-1 was being driven cautiously on a big loop around the convoy vehicles, just skirting the swath of trees to the east. The garage formed a strange puddle of fabric on the ground, more gentian than orange in the unstable light.

Chitty waved good-bye and tramped off to biolab-1 where Dean was recuperating from his injuries. Mild concussion and bruised ribs didn’t require the kind of intensive monitoring and attention Luther needed, so the doctor had assigned him a berth over in the other biolab where he’d be comfortable for a few days.

As Angela walked back to Tropic-2 she felt her stomach churn again. And a headache was building now, as well. Her mouth was filling with saliva, and she was worried she was going to be sick. Something was making her oddly sensitive to the changes of air. Then she felt an altogether different urge from her body. “Oh son-of-a-bitch,” she moaned and started running as best she could for the Tropic. She was going to need the panseat fast as soon as she got inside. Her e-i established a link to Madeleine, and she pleaded with her to get everything ready. Screw dignity, she was desperate. Sweat was breaking out all over her body.

“Not you, too?” Madeleine replied.

Angela didn’t even care who else was suffering, all she could focus on was getting to the Tropic.

Mark Chitty left biolab-1 as Sirius sank down toward the horizon. There was basically nothing wrong with Dean anymore; the checkup had been a formality. He could rejoin Tropic-1 in the morning when they all set off.

Thin flakes of snow swirled around him as the wind picked up, stirring the surface. He watched the vehicle engineering team carrying the rolled-up garage to the sledge behind biolab-1, and waved to them as they passed. MTJ-1was now back in the convoy line, with a couple of people at the rear, fixing boxes back into the pannier. Several people were heading back to their own vehicles. Two of them seemed to be running, flailing legs kicking up short plumes of snow. With all the wind-down activity, Mark could allow himself the belief that they really would start off down the tributary tomorrow morning. A route that would carry them clear through to Sarvar. Another week and they’d be safe.