Great North Road (92 page)

The panels were a problem, Angela soon found. The way they were printed, with fiber 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 hoarfrost 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 fiber 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, the weave allowed some natural airflow. 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 were 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 wooly 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.

W
EDNESDAY,
A
PRIL 3, 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 were on top of the Eclipse Mountains.

“Air,” Madeleine groaned back. “Carbon monoxide. Killing us.”

Shit.
Angela searched around the dome, seeing Omar lying facedown 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 toward 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 that 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. Swayed up onto her knees, grabbed the outside curtain and tugged.

A blast of freezing snow-saturated air knocked her backward. 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 around the chemical toilet ripped free and joined the mini cyclone. Weird flares of light amid the deluge of snow stabbed 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 semiconscious Omar. He wailed as its glowing red surface seared into his cheek and ear. Flesh sizzled, jetting out puffs of smoke. He jerked around 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 monoxide buildup.” 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 hoarfrost 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-meter-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.

“And we’re going to stay that way,” Madeleine said.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Need some help,” Paresh said. “First-aid kit, someone.”

“Got it,” Angela said. She rose unsteadily to her feet and told her e-i to find the box’s smartdust tag. The dome was a complete mess. Her grid showed her an overlay, with a purple icon pulsing on top of Lulu’s cot. She shoved it aside and picked up the first-aid box.

The side of Omar’s face was bad. His skin was charred, cracking open to show bloody red flesh below. Paresh bumped a painkiller sac on his neck, and started spraying the burn surface with a nuflesh foam.

Angela started to monitor the camp’s links. Four of the other five domes had responded; all of them were suffering from carbon monoxide buildup; all reporting their grilles were blocked; some of the occupants had already lapsed into unconsciousness. However, with the alarm raised, the entrance curtains were opened, allowing gales of fresh air inside. Without an answer from the sixth dome, Leora Fawkes, who was on duty in biolab-1, went outside with Roarke Kulwinder, the two of them holding on to each other as they forced their way through the blizzard to the dome and unsealed the outer curtain. They found the five people inside—Josh Justic, the pilots Lorelei and Juan-Fernando, Bastian 2North, and Olrg Dorchev—all unconscious but alive.

By then, Atyeo and Ophelia Troy had gone out to inspect their dome and find out what had gone wrong. They reported that the wind had driven powdery snow into the protective vents on top of the dome, blocking them. No air could get in through the grilles. It was easy enough to clear, but it had to be done by hand—from the outside.

Medical reports weren’t so promising. Lorelei, Olrg, Winn Melia, Chris Fiadeiro, Sergeant Raddon, and Forster Wardele were all suffering bad CO poisoning; then there was Omar with his ruined face. Dr. Coniff wanted her paramedics to check the poisoning cases. She also asked for Omar to be brought to the clinic where she could treat his burns and make sure his eye wasn’t damaged. Elston and Botin arranged for Antrinell and Darwin Sworowski to pull a stretcher like a sledge, which they’d use to take Omar over to the clinic. They’d be escorted by Botin and Gillian Kowalski, who’d return with Chitty and Sakur. The two paramedics would go around the domes, examining the worst poisoning cases.

That just left the blocked air vents. Elston didn’t want the curtain doors open; that offered no one protection against the ferocious blizzard, and little warning should the monster arrive. His order was for a Legionnaire to pair up with someone from each dome; together they’d go out and clear the vents. They’d monitor how fast the snow built up again, and repeat the clearing process every couple of hours. It wasn’t pleasant, but better than CO poisoning or being directly exposed to the brutal elements for however long the blizzard lasted.

Angela paired up with Paresh. She pulled on her parka in the glacial air that now filled the dome, numb hands taking a long time to zip up the front. She hunted around for her boots, while a weepy Lulu was comforted by Madeleine. The gloves she’d used the day before were still damp and starting to stiffen as they froze. She righted the heater and turned it back on, holding her hands above it. The moisture started to thaw, dripping down onto the orange circle to hiss and boil while chilblains gnawed at her fingers. While she was preparing to go outside again, Madeleine was helping a teary Lulu into her parka. Paresh upped Omar’s painkiller dosage, and wrapped him up in his own sleeping bag.

Hands began to pull at the bottom of the outside door curtain’s seal.

“Who is that?” Angela bellowed. Paresh lifted his Heckler carbine and swung it around on the entrance in a single smooth motion.

“Antrinell,” a voice yelled back over the wind. The curtain seal parted and the wind surged in again. Angela grabbed the base of the heater before it could tip over, and switched it off to be safe. A blaze of light erupted briefly, silhouetting a figure kneeling on top of the snow mound.

Antrinell pushed his way into the dome through the gap. Snow stuck to every part of his parka and trousers in clingy strings and gobbets. His helmet light shone a yellow beam around. “Sorry to scare you,” he said. “That damn electrical storm is screwing with our links. Nobody can broadcast anything out there.”

“I’ve never seen lightning like that,” Angela said.

The bulky figure made a shrugging motion. Behind him, Darwin was pushing his way through the gap. Between the four of them, they managed to manhandle a semiconscious, moaning Omar outside and onto the waiting stretcher. There was a canopy over half of it to protect his head and torso from the elements. Angela couldn’t see it being much use in these conditions. They had to get him to the doc somehow, though, and it was better than nothing.