Great North Road (105 page)

But then, she didn’t know what he’d gone through before they’d met. These circumstances were nothing like those; but the goal was identical: survival. He knew he could keep going no matter what, because he’d endured all the misery and hardship and hopelessness once before. Saul and adversity were no longer strangers.

Out in the villa’s kitchen, Markos and Otto had just about cleared the fridge of its bounty. Saul’s torch beam bobbed around the extravagantly equipped room, marveling at how fast it had lost its value and relevance.

“Almost finished,” Otto said.

“We’ll need a couple more trips to empty the freezer,” Saul said. “It’s a good-sized haul.”

Otto nodded, watching Saul’s torch illuminate the swanky kitchen. He was clearly thinking along similar lines. “Then what?” he asked. “What happens when there’s no more houses left to scavenge from?”

“The sunspots have to end sometime,” Saul replied. His standard reply every time the children asked that same question. “Even if it takes a year.”

“We won’t last a year,” Otto said.

“There’s always the Institute.”

“What about it?”

“They have clone vats. I imagine there’s all sorts of single-cell proteins they can grow to feed us.”

“That’s right,” Markos said. “Brinkelle has a fusion plant out there as well. They can keep us going for as long as it takes.”

“Then why hasn’t Brinkelle said anything?”

“I don’t know,” Saul said, tiring of the way everyone turned to him. “Maybe she doesn’t want us to develop a dependency mentality.”
I could certainly do without it.

“But you think they can grow food?” Otto said.

“There’s seventeen thousand biogenetic researchers who will starve if they don’t find a way. That’s got to be a big incentive.”

“Sure,” Otto said, convincing himself. “Yeah, of course they will.”

Markos and Saul exchanged a glance; then Saul picked up his heavy bag of frozen food and headed for the stairs.

*

It was gone eight o’clock in the evening before Sid finally finished his conference links and meetings with the legal department and planning sessions with Market Street’s operations chief; then there was just his own datawork to finish off. A day of arguments and deals and agreements and discussion, with everything checked and scrutinized by Milligan and his cronies who delighted in manufacturing problems and pushing them Sid’s way. He’d promised Jacinta he’d be back home by six, “seven at the latest, pet, honest.” But that was before the GE’s announcement of a settlement to the St. Libra residents’ negotiations. He was starting to form the opinion that Kressley might have earned his money after all.

All day long the transnet had been cluttered with news about the agreement. The GE negotiators had finally agreed to permit a limited return of non-bioil workers from Highcastle. They were to be issued with temporary humanitarian resident permits, and pay a significant Return Bond. The permit would automatically expire one month after the sunspot outbreak was officially declared to have ended.

In reality, that meant two hundred thousand people were going to come pouring through the gateway, starting on Saturday. That left Newcastle with three days to prepare for them.

Dispersal was the mayor’s strategy, tying in to the main GE policy. Every hotel room in the city was taken by the bioil company workers who had already been allowed through the gateway. There was no room for anyone else, so they were to be bused out, put on trains, and sent across the continent. The southern states weren’t happy about that; Highcastle’s population was mostly drawn from the northern states and France, who all had massive bioil production facilities on the giant world. Further concessions had to be made, such as assisting the refugees out to the GE trans-space worlds where there was plenty of room for fresh settlers. Anything that stopped them from settling on the old continent. And Newcastle was the test. Additional anti-vagrancy by-laws were being rushed through council, giving police and their contracted agencies fresh, stronger powers to move people on. Humanitarian funds were also sought from various charities, government bureaus, and aid agencies to help the flow of people onward and outward.

All of this was going to require some strict policing to make sure no one got lost between the gateway and their transport out of the city. Hundreds of police, along with more than two thousand agency constables, were going to be deployed to secure the routes. GE border troops would be held in reserve. And all the arrangements were going through Sid’s C&I office, to be examined and authorized. His e-i had been subjected to a deluge of calls from agency executives, friends who knew agency people, colleagues who were now becoming intermediaries. His diary was already full of dinners for the next two months (with the agency providing its own licensed babysitters each time), and he’d turned down five holidays—two of which were on trans-space worlds. Jacinta hadn’t been too happy about that, though interestingly three medical agencies had already been in touch offering her a chief-of-staff position and a big raise.

The wealth and power he’d been shown were impressive, but he was quietly pleased at the way his office had handled the logistics. The city would be ready to cope with the deluge of freezing, hungry, and broke refugees when they came pouring through on Saturday morning.

Sid had said good night to his new team and took the lift down to the first sub-basement. Down here, in a concrete warren with steel doors and harsh blue-green lighting, were a dozen restricted rooms, the largest of which was the firing range, next to the armory. Sid avoided those, and made his way to the secure equipment store. The area was divided into five sections, and Ian had looped the mesh log on each of them, so no one knew he was walking down the corridor to the mid-security vault containing the mobile surveillance equipment. His e-i sent Detective Brannagh’s identity and code into the lock; Brannagh was in the Police Standards Division, one of those in last year’s investigation into Sid’s conduct. He didn’t have a lot of allies in Market Street should anyone ever run an audit on the equipment store. The locks clicked back and the door swung open.

The room inside was ribbed by concrete and split by five rows of metal grid shelving. Ancient aircon fans whirred into life, trying to deal with the fusty air. Sid walked along the second rack, examining the neatly stacked cases. There were a lot of gaps, he noticed in bemusement. Most detectives grade two and above knew how to access mid-security facilities.

He found the cases he wanted on the third shelf; black aluminum rectangles, thirty centimeters by twenty, and ten thick. Again his e-i gave the vault’s inventory management net Brannagh’s codes. He pulled three of the cases off the shelf and turned to go.

“Evening, boss,” Abner 2North said.

Sid winced. He hadn’t heard Abner come in, and of course Ian had disabled the meshes so he couldn’t use them himself to check he was alone. Nothing for it, he’d have to bluff it out. He smiled at Abner. “Evening. Just collecting some micro copters for a case. What are you looking for?”

“Boss, that was awful; you’re chief of C and I now, you don’t do cases that need a micro copter. So if you don’t mind I’ll cut the bollocks, seeing as how you’ve disabled the mesh logs. Ian left a whole load of covert surveillance monitors running using Vance Elston’s authority codes. Now you, he, and probably Eva are carrying out some kind of off-log operation. I’m not too bothered at that, we all do it. But this was my brother who was murdered. I think I have a right to know if you know who killed him.”

“Aye, crap on it,” Sid grunted. He supposed he should have realized that someone would notice eventually, especially a detective with Abner’s forensic training. “Who’ve you told?”

“No one.”

“All right. But let’s not do this here. We need to leave.”

“Sure. Let me give you a hand with one of those.”

Sid hesitated as Abner held out a hand, his expression carefully neutral. That face … Sid remembered it white and passive on the mortuary slab; Augustine, angry and determined; Aldred, so calm and calculating. It really was true, the Norths were everywhere in Newcastle, one way or another. He sighed in acknowledgment of that simple reality, and passed a case over to Abner. “Thanks.”

“Brannagh, huh? Good choice.”

Sid shrugged. “Aye, what can you do? Jenson San’s already left.”

For once Ian must have accessed the meshes on the staircase leading up to the door of his flat. He wasn’t surprised when Abner walked in with Sid, just edgy. It was left to Eva to give the North a worried look.

“He found the observation routines,” Sid said by way of explanation.

“Crap on it,” Ian muttered, pressing his lips together in anger. “Sorry, boss, I should have been more careful.”

“So now what?” Eve asked.

“I want to find who murdered my brother,” Abner said.

“You might not like the answer,” Sid told him.

“Is that why you’re doing this off-log?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, look, I’m not going to turn you in to Milligan or Aldred. But I need to be part of—what?” He looked around at their expressions.

“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” Sid told him carefully.

“Just … what is going on?”

Sid knew he didn’t have a choice, he hadn’t since Abner caught him in the store. Probably a long time before that if he was honest with himself. “We found out why your brother was murdered in the St. James apartment.”

“Oh?”

“Tallulah Packer was having an affair with Aldred last year. He has her door lock codes.” Sid waited for a response, but Abner said nothing, so he told him the worst of it. That Aldred knew Marcus Sherman, that this was all some corporate maneuver, that Norths were probably fighting Norths. How they’d bugged Sherman’s people—and Aldred.

“What did you find out from the downloads?” Abner asked quietly.

Sid was impressed. He knew if he’d been told how his family was implicated in something this terrible, he wouldn’t manage to stay so calm. But then, Abner knew exactly how his brothers behaved. “The downloads didn’t capture as much as we’d hoped. There’s a lot of conversations we only got one side of. But from what we’ve put together so far, Sherman’s team is planning a raid on Trigval Molecular Solutions. That’s a very high-tech company based in Jarrow. They specialize in molecular assembly chambers. We don’t know what they’re used for—that information isn’t in the transnet, which is interesting—but they’re a defense-listed company.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Abner said softly.

“How come?” Eva asked.

“They’re important to Northumberland Interstellar. And I was up to speed on the family business before I shifted over to the police.”

“How important?” Sid asked.

“Trigval’s molecular systems can produce active-state matter. That’s a kind of intermediate or trigger state for effecting negative matter properties. Which is the basics of trans-spatial connection technology.”

“So this raid could wind up affecting the gateway?” Ian asked.

“Not really, or at least not directly. It’s not like active-state matter is scarce; a lot of companies produce it. And you can hardly have a black market in the stuff. It takes some very specialist raw, for a start. I don’t quite understand this.”

“Maybe it’s just a simple technology theft?” Eva said. “Sherman has a buyer for the technology in the distant worlds.”

“And why would Aldred be involved?” Abner asked. “Northumberland Interstellar owns a gateway. We have the technology, we don’t have to steal it.”

“Because of something else he’s involved in,” Sid said. “That’s the whole problem here—we don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

Abner looked at the small black case he was holding, as if he’d only just seen it for the first time. “So what’s your plan?”

“They’re still putting the raid together. We’re going to use the micro copters to provide us with full coverage. This time we’ll be able to see what they’re up to.”

“This time?” Abner asked sharply.

“They’ve been involved in other, similar, activities,” Sid said. “A handover. Talk of another acquisition. And we’re sure they were the ones who firebombed Reinert’s garage. If we can follow them afterward, and see who they hand this stuff over to, we may get a better idea of what exactly is going down.”

Abner nodded slowly. “And the micro copters would be ideal for that. Okay, I was trained to fly one of these. I’ll help you with the observation.”

“And after?” Eva challenged. “If it turns out Aldred was involved in the murder. What then?”

“I’ll help you arrest him myself,” Abner said. “And I’ll make sure he’s held to account for what he’s done.”

“You’re the same as him, as are all of your bothers,” Sid said. “Do you think you’re capable of killing one of them?”

“No. I personally couldn’t do that. But we are all slightly different—it’s only urban myth that has us as identical. He’ll have a reason for doing what he’s done. I’m looking forward to hearing what it is.”

S
UNDAY,
A
PRIL 21, 2143

Vance had to lean into the wind, which drove the hard ice particles almost horizontally across the camp. He was glad the microfacture team had finally gotten around to printing some decent protective goggles. The particles that did strike the few slivers of skin unprotected by fabric stung badly before the cold numbed the graze.

Beside him, Private Omar Mihambo was on escort duty, schlepping stoically through the raging snow and effervescent mutable light of the aurora. The Legionnaire’s weather-sheathed carbine was held ready, and he was scanning around as best he could. His cheek was now recovering underneath its layer of nuflesh, which was working its magic. The patch was protected from the elements by various membranes. On top of those he was wearing several thin layers of fabric, wound like a facial turban. A balaclava knitted for him by Angela went over that so he could wear his armor helmet without it rubbing against his cheek. Then he’d put on his specially sculpted snow goggles. Lieutenant Botin hadn’t thought he was ready to be put back out on patrol, but Omar had pleaded and Vance acquiesced.