Great North Road (88 page)

Sid closed the locker door and left the macrobuilding.

W
EDNESDAY,
M
ARCH 27, 2143

It was two o’clock in the morning, and this was absolutely the last application of the night. Ian was tired after an evening of chasing the streets for the known cars of all Sherman’s crew. A casual brush past, then a quick tap with an applicator tube without breaking stride. Changing identity masks and wriggling in and out of clothes in the privacy of his own car, so none of Sherman’s visual analysis routines could watch through security meshes and identify a pattern as he and Sid and Eva collided with the target vehicles.

As far as they could tell, no alert had gone out. So at half past eleven, Ian had cracked an empty flat in the same Heaton tower block where Marcus Sherman rented on the nineteenth floor. He’d worn an identity mask modeled on the absent owner’s face, keeping the building security net mollified. Now he was lying on his belly in the cloakroom, studying his grid to monitor the progress the specialist drill in front of him was making as it slowly bored through the wall. The little machine made no sound as it slowly spun the half-millimeter-diameter bit through the cavity between the two flats, creeping forward with achingly slow precision. Developed specifically for hostage tactical teams, it could cut through almost any kind of wall material without giving itself away. With a millimeter to go through the final plaster panel, Ian ordered it to stop. His e-i accessed a monitor program he’d infiltrated into the tower’s network, and he tightened his grip on a nine-millimeter Tunce pistol he’d liberated from the Market Street evidence vault.

Ian had waited until Sherman was back in the flat before beginning. It was their optimum time, he and Sid reasoned. With Sherman in residence the flat’s perimeter security would be operating on reduced sensitivity, watching for human-sized trouble; a lone assassin, or a hit team, or a snatch squad. There were a couple of hardmen in the flat on the other side of the hall, ready to respond in seconds should anything hostile begin a stealthy approach to their master’s lair.

After Sherman arrived home at one o’clock, the delectable Valentina had been delivered to him, wafting in on the scent of Parisian perfume and trailing gossamer ribbons from the arms and hem of her diaphanous black jacket. Ian had given them forty minutes to relax, maybe tox up and move into the bedroom; then he started the drill.

He ordered it to recommence. Ninety seconds later the diamond-edged tip gently penetrated the plaster. Diminutive holes around the bit’s point sucked up any dust, pulling them back so not even the tiniest evidence of the puncture was left scattered on the carpet of the master bedroom’s built-in wardrobe. With the hole complete the drill bit withdrew.

Ian held his breath. There was nothing, no alert flashing through the tower’s network, no goons bursting out of their flat with firearms waving around. Air escaped slowly through his squeezed-up lips as he felt the tension in his spine throttling back. He slipped the pistol’s safety back on and let go of the grip.

Normally, this was the point where the hostage team would send a cloud of smartdust puffing through to gain data on the local environment, position of bad guys and victims. Not tonight. Ian held up the small, clear plastic case and looked at the tiny ant shape inside. It was one of the toys Ralph had supplied. Ian still wasn’t sure why the spook had cooperated, but knowing they had some kind of approval from on high had given their off-log observation a legitimacy that was comforting. Not that the spook wouldn’t dump them the second anything went wrong, he acknowledged stoically.

The tiny cybernetic ant crawled through the drill hole, unspooling a gossamer fiber as it went. It was a simple remote control, eliminating the need for any link emissions that might be detected. A weird monochrome fish-eye view expanded into Ian’s grid. Carpet strands loomed around him like a thick stumpy jungle. He directed the ant toward the first pair of shoes.

There were eight pairs in all, from traditional black handmade leather evening shoes, to tough ankle boots, to some worn trainers. The ant took eleven minutes to get to them all and stick a smartmicrobe bug to the heel of each one. Ian eventually walked it back to the hole, spooling up the gossamer fiber as it went. When it was back in the case, a different probe was sent into the hole. Original plaster fragments were mixed with a clear epoxy and extruded, filling the hole so no suggestion of the breach remained. When Marcus Sherman opened the wardrobe tomorrow morning everything would be as before. Ian could only hope he’d put the shoes he’d worn that night into the wardrobe, rather then flinging them across the room as he and Valentina tore his clothes off. Somehow, he couldn’t envisage Sherman doing anything that spontaneous. From when he’d seen over the last few weeks, the man’s control freakery extended to every facet of his life.

*

Angela woke to find that the silvery thermal blanket had slipped off the tropical sleeping bag sometime during the night. Her feet were cold, and her nose was sniffly from the chilly air. Ringlight and the borealis phantasms shivered around the inside of the mess tent where the cots had been set up, generating a perpetual unstable twilight. It seemed as though half of the camp’s personnel were snoring, or coughing, or squirming around. Nobody was at ease.

Without her grid clock telling her it was only five AM she wouldn’t have known what the time was. She sat up to pull the foil blanket back, and saw Paresh on the cot next to her. He’d been out on patrol until a couple of hours ago, and he was due out again in another three. That was all he and the Legionnaires did these days, tramp around and around Wukang with their helmet sensors straining through the rain and mist and weird light and electrical storms.

She gave him a wistful look. His strong young face was aging by the day, with dark bruise skin around the eyes, stubble, a tautness pulling at the flesh beneath his chin. And dirt. All of them were filthy now, jungle soil lodging in their pores, encrusting nails, matting hair. No one took time in the showers. Alone, naked, unseen. Too much of a risk with the monster creeping around.

Paresh twitched and let out a slight moan. Somehow he’d twisted the one-tog sleeping bag around himself. Angela went over to him and slowly unzipped his bag, careful not to wake him. Then she snuggled into the little gap on the cot, draping her own open bag over the two of them like a narrow quilt, and tucked the foil blanket on top of that. Paresh shuddered again. She stroked her silly, troubled puppy boy as she would any child with night terrors and he nuzzled up to her. His breathing calmed and he fell into a deeper sleep. Satisfied, she put her arms protectively around him. That was when she saw Madeleine on the other side of the mess tent, who was wide awake and watching her. They looked at each other for a long moment as Angela gave the girl a lopsided grin. Madeleine eventually gave an identical grin and rested her head back down, closing her eyes.

Angela stayed perfectly still, blood pounding around her body as the wonder alone warmed her.
She knows. That smile, she’s telling me she knows.
Some part of her wanted to jump out of the cot and run over to the girl. The temptation was instinctive and almost overwhelming. But if she did that, then the last twenty years would have been for nothing. Elston, just a few cots away, would know, would work out what had happened because he was a tenacious little shit. With that information, he might even go on to figure out that her body with its genetically improved organs had dealt with the drugs they’d pumped into her faster and more efficiently than they had known. That she’d never completely lost control as they believed. Not that she’d lied, but she’d held back from volunteering as many truths as others undoubtedly had in that diabolical room. Shielding the one truth that gave her the will to live, to fight, to retain her sanity.

Amid the flickering light of the besieged atmosphere she tightened her arms around the puppy boy and forced herself to calm. Surprisingly, the contentment sent her back off to sleep soon after.

Breakfast preparations woke her an hour later. Paresh was now thoroughly entangled with her. Legionnaires around them were sitting up and grinning knowingly at her. She shrugged back at them, then nudged him awake.

Madeleine and the other general staff had been up awhile. Breakfast was already under way as Angela and Paresh shambled over to the counter. Dawn’s pink light was shining through the mess tent windows, exposing the sorry sight of another morning. The cots had all been crammed at one end of the mess tent, with the tables at the other and the counters in the middle. Overhead, the roof sheet was patched and webbed, reinforcing it against any further hailstone deluges.

Good hindsight,
Angela thought. She collected a big mug of tea and picked up a package of bacon and scrambled egg on toast, adding a smaller package of grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. She and Paresh sat together, him rubbing sleep from his eyes while she opened the package seals and piled food on her plate.

“You always eat like this,” he said.

“Most important meal of the day,” she told him. “Didn’t your mom tell you?”

“Most girls I know are concerned about their weight. It never seems to bother you.”

“Is that good?”

He grinned and sipped some of his coffee. “Sure.”

“I have a fast metabolism. I just need to exercise and the calories burn off quick.” Angela gave the mess tent door a dejected glance. “Not that I’m getting any exercise at all right now.”

“Angela?”

“This doesn’t sound good. Sure you want to ask?”

The puppy boy almost backed down, but the question was clearly chewing him up inside. “Why are you here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You knew there’s an alien here, right? So you knew we’d find it eventually.”

“I’d say it found us, actually.”

“Whatever. It’s here. It’s real. There was no need for you to accept Elston’s offer to come back here. You could have waited a few months. Then when the expedition gets back you would have been exonerated. You knew that. You could have gotten a lawyer, or something.”

Angela pushed the bacon around with her fork: she was watching Madeleine behind the counter as the girl smiled bravely and handed out packages and found extra sachets of ketchup and added milk to tea and poured coffee and fended off the flirts. The girl’s personnel file didn’t have much detail, just the basics: where she was born, parents, school, address, credit rating, a couple of references from past employers. One of millions of GE twenty-year-olds going nowhere. Except of course she wasn’t.

“So why?” Paresh persisted.

“Huh? Oh. Have you ever been to jail, Paresh?”

“No.” He shook his head emphatically.

“Then you’ve no idea what it’s like. I was there for twenty years, Paresh. Locked up like a beast for seven thousand three hundred days. And that was for something I didn’t do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I could have sat it out for another six months. But why the fuck should I? I’ve spent twenty years knowing the truth, that I’m innocent. Twenty years of being called a liar. Twenty years of being some piece of subhuman filth without rights, without a voice. Twenty years of abuse for something I didn’t do. Twenty years because the government and the Norths are corrupt. Twenty fucking years I was locked up. And the alien put me there. That monster did this to me. It took everything away from me.
Everything
. All I’d known. All that I loved. Every night when I was sealed away in that tomb they called a cell, all I truly possessed was the knowledge that it was real. That it was out here laughing at me. That’s what kept me sane, even though it’s a very shaky kind of sane. So, yeah, I came back on the expedition that’s hunting it down. Because I’m going to find it, Paresh, with or without anyone else’s help. And when I do, it will pay for what it’s done to me. And, Paresh, don’t you stand in my way when that happens, because nothing in this universe will be able to protect you if you do.” With that she got up and strode out of the mess tent.

Outside, the air was cool. Clean, too, empty of spores, which she relished, taking down deep breaths to try to calm herself. It had rained overnight, of course, leaving the plants and the ground glistening. But the shine was sullied; leaves on the bushes and vines were brown around the extremities now, frostbitten by hailstones. Over in the distance she saw Atyeo and Gillian in their armor, walking along the row of ruined tents. Gillian raised an arm in greeting.

Footsteps squelched in the mud behind her. For one blissful second she thought it might be Madeleine. But no, they were too heavy for that.

“Are you all right?”

She turned to look at Elston’s concerned expression. His protective armor vest emphasized how broad-shouldered he was. For most people his presence would have been intimidating.

“Do you care?” she asked.

“That was some speech back there. I didn’t hear all of it, but enough to worry me.”

“I didn’t say I was going to kill it. But there’s nothing in my contract that says it has to be in one piece when I turn it over to you.”

“We don’t actually have a contract.”

Angela chuckled. “I didn’t think God had lawyers. The other fella’s got them all, hasn’t he?”

“I’m just making sure you don’t do anything stupid, is all.”

“Thanks for the interest, but I keep telling you, I’m capable of looking after myself.”

“Yes. I’m aware of that.”

“At least we all survived another night. But I see the relay bandwidth is still pitiful. Did Sarvar manage to launch a replacement e-Ray?”

He sighed. “No. They had high winds all yesterday. They’ll try again today.”

“So if we do catch our alien, whatever condition it’s in, how do we get it back to Abellia?”

“For that, they’ll send a Daedalus. They’ll send an armada of them if that’s what it takes to get through.”

“Uh-huh? I don’t know how well your chain of command is working, but there have been rumblings.”

“Rumblings?”

“About us being stuck here. There’s talk that you’re not doing enough to get us out.”