Great North Road

  ‘But for crap’s sake keep alert for the creature.’

  They took hold of Ravi under his shoulders and started dragging him along. He moaned at the pain then quickly lost consciousness again.

  ‘So why did you come out here alone?’ Rebka asked.

  ‘Ravi asked me to, he said he didn’t trust anyone else. I was the one who survived the monster once before.’

  ‘Ah. That’s something I definitely want to hear about.’

  ‘You will. Later.’

  When they were fifty metres from the circle of vehicles, Angela gave Rebka another too-brief hug. Then Rebka’s clothes morphed into armour again. Angela watched the girl walk off into the heavy snowfall, feeling incredulous and elated in a way she had no right to be, given where they were and what they still faced. But . . . Her daughter was alive and knew her. The sensation of relief was phenomenal.

  She started dragging Ravi again. He’d shut down his body-mesh, so she couldn’t access his suite of medical monitor smart-cells, but she didn’t really need a grid display to know he was in a bad way.

  When her guidance module put her thirty metres from the convoy vehicles she linked to the net. Her e-i switched off her cache identity then called Elston. A last instruction wiped the restrictor program in the remote gun on Tropic-2.

  ‘What are you doing? How did you get outside the vehicles?’ Elston demanded.

  ‘I’m bringing Ravi in,’ Angela replied, smiling at the anger she knew would be gripping him. ‘He’s badly hurt. Warn the doc.’

  ‘Ravi?’

  ‘Yes. He’s alive. Just. Now are you going to help or just sit there and shout a lot?’

  *

  Vance Elston had personally led Sergeant Raddon and Leora Fawkes out past the vehicles. Sure enough, they’d found Angela dragging Ravi Hendrik along in a survival bag.

  Even Dr Coniff had given the injured pilot a worried look when she and Juanitar pulled the thermal survival bag off him. ‘Fluid,’ was all she said for the first five minutes as they went about appraising the extent of his wounds.

  Juanitar applied a collar of intravenous shunts around Ravi’s neck, pumping plasma and artificial blood directly into his depleted circulatory system. Then he sprayed a solvent on the skinseal patches. As the artificial scabs peeled off, blood began to pump out of the wounds on his upper arm. Juanitar clamped them, and started to repair the muscle and veins.

  ‘The spine has received some significant damage,’ Coniff announced. ‘The armour saved him from the worst, but what the hell did this do to him?’

  ‘That was the trees,’ Angela said. She was pressed up against the wall of the biolab’s cabin, watching intently as the two medics set about tending Ravi.

  ‘What do you mean, trees?’ Elston asked sharply.

  ‘He told me before he lost consciousness. The trees attacked him last night, specifically the bullwhips. The monster controls them somehow.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ Vance insisted automatically. As he said it, he knew the dread of doubt, that such a thing might very well be possible in such a vast strange universe that the Lord had created for His children to live in.

  Angela just laughed and pointed to where Dr Coniff was extracting a long fragment of the armour vest from the livid flesh of Ravi’s back. ‘So apart from being hit by a bullwhip branch, what else do you know can do that?’

  Vance glanced at Coniff for help, but she simply raised an eyebrow and returned to the blood oozing from the wound. ‘You said you found him on a ledge of ice on the waterfall. He could have landed on his back.’

  Angela simply shook her head, a smug smile on her face. She’d won and she plainly knew it; even he was giving the possibility serious consideration. Something had struck the MTJ, knocking it off the ravine. Something had knocked Mark flying. And the others, the ones they’d lost, had they been consumed by the forest? If the creature was truly the planet’s guardian, anything was possible. ‘I’ll walk you back to the Tropic,’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’ She stepped into the door chamber, wrapping the damp scarf back around her head.

  Outside, the snow had stopped; wisps of high cloud drifted slowly northwards, entwined with the ribbons of the aurora borealis. Red Sirius shone from the zenith of the sky, a pink dazzle-speck with radiative stipples so that to the human eye it appeared to be a sink point, consuming the light from the atmosphere.

  ‘Okay,’ Vance said. ‘So how did you get out there without me knowing?’

  ‘Just a net glitch.’

  ‘You know that means I can’t trust you now.’

  ‘Did you ever?’

  ‘It broke our net again last night.’

  ‘Wasn’t me. I’ve just risked my neck bringing Ravi back.’

  ‘Yeah, about that: why? Why you, and why go alone?’

  ‘He didn’t trust anyone else. I’m the one who survived it before, so I’m the one he turned to for help. Ask him if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘How did he call you?’

  ‘A secure link. I tried to locate its origin, but Ravi knows his black patches.’

  He stared at her with mounting exasperation. ‘Didn’t you consider the risk? Going out there by yourself?’

  ‘There were only three options: it was Ravi, it was the saboteur, or it was the monster itself.’ Her hand came up to pat the carbine in its chest holster. ‘Either way, I was ready.’

  ‘I should take that away from you.’

  ‘Really? I think Ravi made a smart call. Who else in this convoy can you really trust? Seriously? Karizma?’

  ‘Don’t.’ Vance held up a warning finger. ‘You know you should have called me.’

  ‘Whatever. Are you going to keep on denying the monster can control the trees, too? That piece of news has already flared down our little net.’

  ‘We will take adequate precautions from all possible threats.’

  ‘Stop talking corporate bullshit. You have to warn people very clearly that the jungle is extremely dangerous, especially to anyone outside a vehicle. You also have to launch a comm rocket.’

  Vance looked past the Tropic they were approaching, seeing the ice-cased trees standing tall at the top of the bank. His perspective played traitor for a moment, showing him an army of native elementals poised ready to charge down on his besieged command. ‘I know how to handle this.’

  ‘I hope so. If you don’t, we’re all dead.’

  They reached Tropic-2, and Vance opened the front passenger door. Corporal Evitts was sitting in the driver’s seat, wearing one of the hats Angela knitted, broken arm strapped to his chest. His expression was apprehensive. ‘She’s not to leave unaccompanied again,’ Vance ordered. ‘You are her escort on all duties.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Evitts barked.

  ‘Angela.’

  She paused, half in the Tropic.

  ‘Thank you for getting Ravi back. It’s the first time anyone has survived. That’s good for morale, no matter what else came out of this.’

  She nodded. ‘Second. He’s the second to survive.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. The second.’ As soon as she was in the seat he closed the door. Even now, Angela was a complete enigma to him. Every instinct he had was to assign a secret agenda as the reason for going out there by herself to find Ravi. He stared at the edge of the jungle, admitting to himself that perhaps he was just too scared to believe. If it was true, and the trees themselves were being roused to overwhelm the convoy . . .

  His e-i told him the convoy net had just acquired Tropic-1. He saw its location slip up into his grid, and frowned. The Tropic was driving along the Lan towards them barely six hundred metres away, which was all wrong, it should still have been driving along the lip of the canyon.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked Lieutenant Botin over a secure link.

  ‘We followed the canyon as ordered. About a kilometre after we lost line of sight on the camp we saw a route cut through the jungle. The buzz saws on an MTJ make a very distinctive trail. We drove down it, and it
just looped back to the Lan.’

  ‘They’ve gone back to Wukang,’ Vance realized. ‘Karizma saw her chance, and left us.’

  ‘The MTJ doesn’t have enough fuel to get that far, sir,’ Botin said.

  It only took a moment for Vance to figure it out. He turned to stare at the remaining truck and its sledge of bladders. Olrg, Chris, and Raddon were clambering over the truck’s framework, examining the bladders it was carrying. His e-i extended the link to include Olrg. ‘What was wrong with the fuel bladders?’ he asked.

  ‘Two of the bladders were empty when they were showing full,’ Olrg said, looking round from the framework. ‘There was a glitch in their sensors. We’re checking the rest of the bladders to make sure they’re registering correctly.’

  ‘Would the missing fuel be enough to take an MTJ back to Wukang?’ Vance asked.

  ‘Yes sir, probably. But the MTJs weren’t carrying any bladders.’

  ‘No,’ Vance said. ‘But the truck and sledge we left behind was.’

  ‘They didn’t transfer all the truck’s fuel over when we abandoned it,’ Botin said.

  ‘No, Karizma left a couple of bladders full. The truck is on her route back. They’ll strap the bladders to the MTJ and drive straight for the camp. We cleared a track through the jungle to reach the river, so it’ll be a relatively clear run back for them.’ Vance had to take a moment for his rage to peak. He was incredulous that any HDA personnel would mutiny. Not only that, by taking away an MTJ with its buzz saws and snowplough blade, they’d actively put the rest of the convoy in harm’s way. Their actions verged on anti-human treason.

  Vance walked over to the truck. Olrg was standing apprehensively beside it. ‘Is there any more fuel missing?’ Vance asked.

  ‘No sir. It looks like just the two bladders on the sledge.’

  ‘All right.’ Vance told his e-i to quest a ringlink that included everyone remaining in the convoy. ‘I regret to announce that MTJ-1 has mutinied, and made a run for Wukang. We still have MTJ-2, which will be sufficient to get us through the small amount of jungle we need to traverse between the Zell tributary which is our target, and Sarvar. Consequently, we are moving out in fifteen minutes. All drivers begin your vehicle checks.’ Vance closed the link and stamped off to biolab-1, too furious to say anything more. He didn’t even ask the Lord for wisdom and guidance, which was remiss of him, but the Lord would understand the frailty of human reaction in the face of such outrageous provocation.

  Monday 6th May 2143

  The blizzard had lasted for three days. On the morning of the fourth day, Saul Howard fed a couple of fresh logs into the stove in the centre of the bungalow’s lounge. He’d been up several times in the night to add more logs, making sure the fire didn’t die out. As a result, the room was still warm enough that he didn’t really need the blanket he’d wrapped round his shoulders. But one look at the snow piled up against the glass of the big glass patio door made him want to shiver. And he didn’t like to think how much was sitting on the roof. The bungalow’s net was telling him the PV panels weren’t generating any power at all. They were living off the regen cell store.

  Of course there was precious little light during the day, red or otherwise, to generate any electricity. He walked over to the sliding door, feeling the cold radiating from the glass. The occasional pastel shimmer through the driving snow told him the aurora borealis must still be active above the dense blanket of dark cloud.

  ‘It won’t last much longer,’ Emily said.

  Saul turned to see her standing in the doorway. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There can’t be much snow left, for one thing.’ He was convinced they were getting the worst of it, living next to the sea.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on. We’ll have some porridge for breakfast. That’ll help.’

  ‘Sure.’ He glanced at the stove, seeing the new logs starting to catch with plenty of hissing. Spapine wasn’t the best wood to burn, not that they had any choice.

  ‘How much wood have we got left?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Mindreader,’ he accused. ‘Another week’s worth, at least. I filled the spare bedroom. The blizzard will definitely be over by then.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to go scavenging again. There’s not much food left in the village.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I wish Brinkelle would start producing this clone meat she’s supposed to be brewing.’

  Saul winced. That rumour was now set in stone among the residents of Camilo Village.

  Emily started pouring water into the kettle. Saul sat on the settee, watching the snow flash past outside. He felt useless. Unable to do anything. Waiting passively. Terrified he was going to let his wife and children down, and unable to show his fear. Just like the previous time his life had fallen into crisis, twenty years ago.

  That had been the last time he’d spoken to Angela, too, the last time he’d ever looked into her eyes. Even then he didn’t recognize the gorgeous, beloved girl he’d married just three years previously.

  The last time . . . until she’d frightened the crap out of him by turning up back at the start of February. But even then she’d been a stranger, twenty years on and she was the same person who’d replaced his wife during the New Florida Zanthswarm. The one who had dispatched him to St Libra to help with her crazy plan. The one he’d said yes to, because he had nothing else to offer his tiny tragic Rebka—

  *

  Saul sat in a corner seat of Maslen’s café that morning, as he did every morning at the same time since he received the message, while wretchedly chirpy old-fashioned music played through the speakers. The seat gave him a position close to the emergency fire door, and provided him a view of the front door so he could watch who came in. Angela insisted on things like that; craft, she called it – straight out of a cheap zone spy drama. What she expected him to do if Bartram’s security troops ever came crashing in had never been clarified.

  But he did it anyway, because that was all he had left, the hated plan that she’d come up with. His whole life had become something he was watching from a safe dark corner inside his own head, looking out at the world through the big windows that were his eyes, making his body act out the part he’d been assigned, speaking the lines from the script she’d given him.

  It was mid-morning, and Maslen himself was still bringing trays out from the kitchen at the back of the café. The most delicious pastries and cakes were arranged artistically on the shelves in the glass counter, each one an individual mini-masterpiece. Saul stared at them, wanting to go and buy some more of the glazed fruit tarts. One more wouldn’t hurt him. He’d put on a lot of weight since he’d moved to Abellia. He did nothing but his work at Abellia TeleNet during the day, accepting overtime in the unsocial hours that no one else wanted. There was nothing else for him to do, certainly he never felt like exercising. The doleful part of his mind which seemed to be guiding him these days couldn’t see the point. Every time he went back to his tiny flat in the converted harbour warehouse he’d sit and access some book; biographies of historical figures were a favourite, or at least mildly interesting, he was working his way through American presidents and Russian rulers.

  He stirred his espresso, debating whether to get another tart when they came in. Angela looking wonderful in a short emerald-green summer dress, thick blonde hair barely contained in a long braid with leather straps. She still looked like a teenager, exactly the same as she had that day he’d first seen her in the Massachusetts Agrimech offices. If anything she appeared even younger now; it wasn’t achieved solely by her one-in-ten genetics, she possessed an uninhibited enthusiasm, her mouth curved permanently in a wondrous smile at the freshness of the universe she beheld. It wasn’t fair that she could appear so vibrantly youthful, when the best he could muster these days was sullen morbidity.

  There was another girl with her. Another of the girlfriends. Another whore. This one was probably twenty for real, had darker skin and thick hair, wearing a thin white cotton top and a matching sk
irt with a lot of midriff exposed between them.

  They were laughing together, talking in excitable whispers. Clearly the best of friends, and had been for years. Angela ordered a lemon tea, while the other asked Maslen for a smoothie. Then they teased each other about the pastries before sitting down together at a window.

  Saul did his best not to stare. Not that it would make any difference. All of the male clientele in the café were snatching looks when they thought the girls couldn’t see. Nobody was going to notice one more sad loser dressed in a company overall, not in this universe.

  After the laughter and happiness had tormented him for too long, the second girl got up and gave Angela a hug and a kiss. ‘See you back at the car in an hour,’ she said, and went out with a swirl of her white skirt and a gust of flowery perfume.

  Angela sat for a couple of minutes more, finishing her tea. Then got up and left. Saul waited, then followed her out.

  The streets in the old town were narrow and short, with abrupt junctions and even smaller side alleys between big industrial buildings. He walked down the length of a disused warehouse with big boards announcing a developer was going to transform it into loft-living apartments. Angela was waiting for him in the third loading bay, a dank cave of concrete and sagging composite panels where not even Sirius’s blue-white glare shone much light.

  They looked at each other for a long moment. Saul saw her youthful vitality façade had already been abandoned, exposing the cold ruthless woman which the shell of deceiving flesh encased. She gave him a curious gaze. ‘How are you coping?’ she asked. She even sounded concerned.

  ‘I’m here. I got everything ready just like you said.’

  Angela came over and put her arms round him, not showing any disappointment that he didn’t respond. ‘I never doubted that you’d manage what was necessary, but that’s not what I asked.’

  ‘How the hell do you think I feel? You’re my wife, I love you, and you’re doing this.’

  ‘This what?’

  ‘Bartram. The girlfriends. Whatever you had to do back in London to convince them you were the right sort of girl.’