Great North Road (17 page)

“You know, I can’t quite place that accent of yours,” Paresh said, all boy-puppy smiles when she crumpled up the packet and tossed it into the waste bin below her seat.

“Really?” It was funny how this one game remained utterly constant down the decades, in jail or out. And nobody had ever had to teach her how to play to perfection. “So what’s your best guess?”

“Okay then. I’d say it’s not quite pure UK region, so I’m going for: You lived in the States at some time.”

“Or I grew up in the States and then spent twenty years having UK English alone spoken to me in jail.”

“Oh, okay.” He didn’t quite blush. “So which part of the States, Earth or trans-stellar?”

“I didn’t grow up in the States. My mother is French.”

He laughed. “Damn, you’re a tough nut.”

“Now you’re just dreaming.”

“Your file says you’re forty-two.”

“Never argue with a government file, they are wise.”

“If it’s true that means you’re a one-in-ten.”

“And that bothers you?”

“No. Not at all.”

“How very liberal of you.” Angela caught sight of the sign on the side of the A1; the turnoff for the A167 was just ahead. That meant they were only a few minutes out from the HDA base, and once she was in there she’d be confined inside its perimeter. Elston would make sure of that. She peered through the mini bus’s windshield. “Isn’t that Last Mile up ahead?”

“Yeah, but we’re going straight to the HDA base,” Paresh said.

“I’d like to make a quick detour, first. If you don’t mind.”

“What?”

“Look, sometime soon after we get to the base, we’re going to get shipped out to St. Libra. You do know what the Last Mile is, don’t you?”

“Sure. It sells you everything you need to live on St. Libra. Why, you figure on buying a farm there?”

“I’m not staying there—once we’ve found the alien I’m back to civilization.”

“So what do you want to visit Last Mile for?”

Angela raised her voice so everyone in the mini bus could hear, insurrection targeting those precious hearts and minds. “I’ve been to St. Libra before.” She plucked at the coarse gray fatigues she was wearing. “Trust me, you do not want to go there with just government-issue kit covering your ass.”

Paresh gaped incredulously. “You want to go on a
shopping trip
?”

“Have you looked out the window in the last fifteen minutes?”

“Do what?”

“Scope the traffic. Half of everything heading north with us right now is an HDA vehicle of some type. This is real, guys, the expedition is happening even if they haven’t bothered to let you all in on it.”

She watched everyone suddenly start scanning the road.

“Okay,” Paresh admitted. “We knew we were headed for St. Libra. I’m not arguing that.”

“Good. Because visiting the Last Mile isn’t some girlie mall blitz for pretty dresses. I want to survive the next month, thank you. And that means I want boots that aren’t going to rot away in the humidity and swamp mud; more than one pair. Are you sure yours will last against everything St. Libra’s jungles can throw at them? And trust me, you need double-layer breathable socks no matter where you are on the planet. Are they HDA standard? Have you guys ever seen footrot fungus? I did while I was there before, plenty of times. Does HDA medic service provide enough nuflesh to cover the chunks they’ll need to chop off you? And what about UV-resistant shirts and trousers, and factor-eighty sunscreen? Without all of those in combination your skin’s going to fry. Sirius is a white A-star, remember? Twenty-six times brighter than Earth’s sun. You don’t need a microwave to cook your frozen dinner, just hold the pack up to the sky for thirty seconds. Now name me the times when HDA gave you the right equipment for your exercise mission, then out of that big list, name one that’s been rammed together faster than this expedition. So tell me the logistics corps in their air-conditioned offices back here on Earth are going to get it right for us poor front-line sods eight and a half light-years away. It’s not just me that needs to take a visit to Last Mile. If you truly care for your squad, Paresh, you’ll give them the chance to stock up with the most elementary kit they need for St. Libra. And it’s all lying there on the shelves at the cheapest prices anywhere across the trans-stellar worlds.”

Paresh held his hands up. “Okay. Jesus, I get it.” He glanced along the aisle to see a bunch of expectant faces, silently demanding just one thing. “All right, we don’t have a scheduled arrival time, we just have to be there for a briefing at fifteen hundred hours, so we can spare an hour maybe. No more.”

“I’ll only need thirty minutes. And I’ll be happy to advise you guys on what works and what’s a rip-off.”

“All right, Atyeo, cancel the auto and take us to Last Mile.”

Up at the front of the mini bus, Private Atyeo grinned in relief. “Yes, Corporal.”

“Happy now?” Paresh was feigning exasperation.

“Thank you.”

They turned off at a junction just past
Angel of the North,
that huge ancient ribbed steel statue that stood solitary guard over Tyneside.
Somebody back then had foresight,
Angela thought,
because
if ever anywhere on this world needs divine protection, it’s the city with a gateway to St. Libra.
Although if Elston was correct about the latest North murder, it was too late already. The majestic, rusty old angel had been caught sleeping.

A couple of minutes later they turned into Last Mile. Here the elegance of Newcastle’s Georgian center and the utility logic of its residential estates had been abandoned as a favor to the gods of commerce. The gentle valley had once been a sprawling industrial estate of light factories, wholesale markets, and warehouse stores. A lot of those original twenty-first-century frame and panel structures of the estate were still there. Their outlines invisible now, swamped under the twenty-second-century composites that automata had assembled around and over them like mechanical tumors.

Kingsway, the broad main road leading straight up to the gateway, was ruled by the major trans-stellar companies. Angela directed Atyeo into one of the avenues branching off the thoroughfare, where he parked in front of the Honda franchise. The glass wall of the showroom displayed a pageant of the latest models, but not for St. Libra were the sleek sedans and roadsters that caught the eye, and were envied by schoolkids the transworlds over; this was the arena of utilities and farm trucks and land exploras, which could take anything nature at its most rugged could throw at them. The showroom took up less than a quarter of the building; the rest was occupied by tanks of raw feeding 3-D printers and microfacture cells that produced customized components and interiors that assembly rigs could screw, bolt, click-lock, laser, and epoxy onto a range of standard bodywork–chassis combos shipped in from the more sophisticated principal factories.

Angela led them along the other side of the avenue, past the suppliers selling GM grain and seed that was guaranteed to sprout from St. Libra’s soil with its mélange of vigorous alien bacteria. It ended in a wall of glass doors leading into the huge Birk-Unwin store.

“This was one of the first to sell stuff to people emigrating through the gateway,” Angela said as the squad filed in through the doors. “Birk started out with a single stall back in the day.”

“How do you know all this crap?” Gillian Kowalski asked as she stared around at the cliff-like shelving rows.

“I’ve been here before,” Angela said, which wasn’t quite true, and was stupid because it gave too much away. “Their branch in Abellia, anyway,” she added.

Birk-Unwin was primarily a retail warehouse selling clothing and household items, the kind of products perfectly suited to its buy-it-cheap-and-pile-it-high philosophy. However, a small section at the side was given over exclusively to camping kit—and
small
was a relative term amid the store’s cavernous interior. There were no assistants; they cost too much. Instead smartdust meshes watched and security guards patrolled to deter pilfering. Customers would pull an item from bins on the shelves and try it on; if it didn’t fit they dropped it and reached for the next size. A small team of staff walked along the shelves, restocking and throwing stuff back that people had tried on.

In the camping section, Angela found herself a couple of pairs of excellent leather hiking boots from an established Austrian company (three seasons out of date), then had to scramble along a high shelf to track down the waterproof gaiters that fit them. After that came eight pairs of proper (non-synthetic) wool socks, long-sleeved T-shirts, three pairs of lightweight UV-proof trousers, and sunguard oil in liter bottles. She went for practical equipment next: a solar charger, small hand-pumped torch, inertial guidance module, solid memory cache that could link to her bodymesh, and, in a higher price bracket, two wraparound sunglasses with smartlenses that provided night vision, infrared, and electronic magnification. Last of all she found a decent utility belt pre-loaded with a whole range of useful compact camping tools. It took a while to put it all together, as the squad members kept asking her opinion about stuff they found.

She was advising Leora Fawkes on a self-cooling bottle when she caught sight of Paresh stiffening. His mouth moved silently, a sure giveaway that he was on a call. Knowing what was coming, she dropped a couple of cotton sun hats into the collapsible weather-resistant bag on her trolley. The display on the handle registered their smartdust tags, and she tapped the Finish & Pay icon. Her e-i told her it had authorized payment to Birk-Unwin’s account. Everything she’d chosen was in the bag; she zipped it up in a decisive motion.

“Everyone!” Paresh announced loudly. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Angela swung the bag around and pushed her arms through the shoulder straps. Paresh was suddenly standing beside her. He didn’t look angry, exactly; more like troubled.

“Problem?” she asked.

“We have to go,” he said tightly.

“Sure.” Keeping it light. Not knowing what all the fuss was about. Couldn’t envision that Elston had just gone into meltdown when he found out about their innocent little detour.

The mini bus set off back along Kingsway and up to the HDA camp squatting on the slope above. It was crowded in the vehicle now, with the aisle full of store bags, and an air of apprehension building as they approached the high perimeter fence. Angela noted the innocuous matte-black spheres rolling along the runtrack between the razor mesh, the lion and eagle emblem. A big sensor hoop curved over the entranceway in front of the red-and-white-striped barrier. Guards in thick coats carrying automatic pistols in weather sheaths stood by the side, waiting for an alert from the AI that reviewed the deep scan of every vehicle that came in. She stared at the lion and eagle emblem, unable to look away. Her body’s core temperature seemed to be dropping by the second, making it impossible to move as the memory came flooding back. The last time she’d past through a fence with that same evil emblem glowing proudly on the posts had been twenty years ago …

That little shit Vance Elston had been sitting in the car with her. They’d told her it was the prisoner transfer vehicle—stupid stupid, since when did the UK region prison service agency use black limousines with opaque windows. It was the day after the court case had finished with its frightening, insane verdict, and she was still in a daze at being found guilty, so numb she never thought to question anything. Not that it would have done any good. She was meat now, no longer human with rights. Not that she’d had many in the first place.

She’d taken one look at Elston with his air of superiority and smart gray fatigues, and knew him for what he was—someone small, brown-nosing his way up the career pole with a whole flock of insecurities about his origins making him a rule-worshipping fascist. But the court had found her guilty and sentenced her, so she didn’t care what kind of ass had been sent to escort her to Holloway. He walked her calmly and politely out of the court cells and she questioned nothing until she saw the limousine—which wasn’t quite right.

“Where are we going?” she’d asked.

“A holding facility.”

Which should have started the alarm bells ringing loud and clear. But her mind just wasn’t up to it—the horror of everything she’d seen at Bartram’s mansion, the fear of being caught at the gateway, and the worry, so much worry that everything had gone wrong. But there had been no sign of him, no word, no mention by the dumb police who questioned her. So it must have been okay. The money transfer had worked. That thought alone held her steadfast through the farce of a trial.

Even then, driving through London on the way to the prison where the judge wanted her to spend the rest of her life, she clung to that one precious chunk of knowledge.
They didn’t know
. Everything would be all right. And even then, she was sure that one day she’d be out because the monster was real, and one day people would meet it again.

The car had pulled into a small compound somewhere near the Thames, with the HDA signs prominent on the fence. A crystal-white executive VTOL jet was sitting on the pad. It didn’t register, because such a thing didn’t apply to her. So she sat passively in the limousine as it drove toward the striking little machine. There were HDA guards from the GE Legion standing beside the airstairs. Then they pulled up outside, and Elston opened the door.

“What is this?” she asked. Her brain was finally starting to work again, assessing, plotting out scenarios. None of them ended well.

“Come with me,” Elston said.

“You’re not taking me to prison. What is this? What’s going on?”

He held up a palm-sized Taser. “Get in the plane, or I use this and drag your zapped ass up those stairs.”

She shrank away from him, and he really did it, he jabbed the Taser prongs down on her shoulder. When she stopped screaming, the two guards pulled her stunned, shaking body out of the car and hauled her up the airstairs.

The flight was three hours long, but she didn’t know what speed they were traveling at, and she didn’t recognize the marque. The plane had narrow delta wings; it was probably supersonic. It was night outside when they landed, so she had no idea where they were. Not that it mattered—even if she knew the exact geographic coordinate, it was of no possible use. There was no one she could call, no one who would help.