the Noise Within (2010) (14 page)

"Sorry, sir?"

"Nothing."

Philip had to admit that Shippeys had done a fabulous job. Since their traffic supervision system had been adopted here, with interconnecting arterial highways between all the population centres involved, major snarl-ups were a thing of the past and road traffic fatalities had been reduced to virtually zero. The 'virtually' could be explained by such factors as freak natural disasters, rebellious free spirits who still insisted on driving manually along unregulated rural roads outside of the towns, and very rare systems failures.

Nobody really drove their cars any more. They simply got in, logged onto the traffic system's grid, stated their destination and sat back, surrendering control to central and joining the stream of computer-directed traffic which flowed constantly throughout the city's streets, as smoothly as blood feeding a body. Perfect, really, from the state's point of view. The road system had in effect become another form of public transport, though one in which people's 'space' was never invaded and their privacy was maintained, while the public shared much of the burden of cost by financing their own vehicles. Add to that the freeing-up of resources previously dedicated to traffic control or dealing with accidents and their consequences, and it was no wonder Shippeys' system had proven to be so popular on so many worlds.

None of which allowed for the presence of an unregulated vehicle on the urban roads. Philip chewed at his bottom lip, never having heard of anything like this before. Memories of his helter-skelter flight from the building's computer system came back to haunt him, along with that nagging fear that his escape had not been as clean as it seemed. Paranoia, surely; it was ridiculous to think that last night's events were in any way related to this rogue vehicle.

He had just about convinced himself of that when the red lozenge changed lanes, moving out to join the string of beads his own car was a part of.

"Get me Phil." Normally, the in-car computer was adequate for its purpose, but in a situation like this Philip preferred to have access to a higher level of insight and resource.

"Here," the summoned partial said, almost at once.

The suspect car had changed lanes as smoothly as you like, which meant a suitable gap in the traffic must have been created to accommodate it, yet the system was apparently oblivious to the vehicle's presence. All of which suggested that somebody was manipulating things very deftly.

"How's he doing this?" he asked the air, not bothering to check if Phil was up to speed - he would have been as soon as he arrived.

"Not certain as yet. I'm working on it. The system has myriad elements and a host of perfectly legitimate sources of input - it has to, in order to remain flexible. Trying to trace one source that shouldn't be there, or one that should but which is doing things out of the ordinary... took me a while."

"You
have
found it, though?"

"Of course." Phil might not have represented as comprehensive a personality download as Mal, but he was well on the way and was certainly a good deal more sophisticated than the standard 'protocol partial' which most people created and employed. Phil was Philip's closest ally, able to access places and information which the corporeal Kaufman could never have reached and martial resources in an instant which would have taken Philip considerable time and effort. The perfect assistant - unflinchingly loyal, and he always knew what Philip was talking about.

"It's as if the whole system is in denial - accommodating this unregistered car but refusing to acknowledge the fact," Philip murmured.

"Actually, that might be a better analogy than you realise. They're hacked deep into the system, to the point where not only are they able to manipulate it, they're then able to erase their own tracks and all record of the vehicle as they go. Ingenious, really."

This still didn't prove the rogue had anything to do with Philip, but he never had been a great believer in coincidence. Assuming it really was after him, he still didn't see what those driving the car were hoping to achieve. Due to the inevitable slight delay in its response to Philip's lane change the rogue was now three cars further back than it had been, and they were now both in the fastest lane. So how was it ever intending to catch him?

Perhaps this was simply a joyrider out to buck the system and Philip was being over-sensitive following the previous night's narrow escape. Mind you, if so, this had to be the most expensive and sophisticated joyride in history.

He watched uneasily, waiting for the unregulated car to
do
something.

He didn't have to wait long.

The suspect vehicle moved out to straddle the two lanes - both the one they were in and the slower one they had recently left. As it did so, the cars ahead of it all shifted sideways a little, the two lines drawing away from each other to leave a clear path between Philip and the rogue.

"Can
we
do anything like that?" he wondered.

"No chance," the partial replied. "I don't have that sort of access to the traffic system, let alone control. I might be able to find a way given enough time, but -"

"We don't have that time," Philip finished for him. He watched as the rogue began to accelerate, easing towards them. "Can we at least patch through what we're seeing to traffic central to show them what's really going on out here?"

"That much I can do."

"And give me a wing mirror, will you? So I can see what's happening back there for myself."

The car duly extruded a mirror from its seamless exterior. Glancing out, Philip could see the maverick clearly enough. A gleaming silver pod on wheels, moving steadily up through the corridor which had so conveniently opened in the traffic to accommodate it. The corridor extended as far as his own car. The fact that in front of him the other vehicles remained stolidly in the centre of their lanes effectively banished any doubt.

He was the target. And a damned easy one too, as things stood.

"Phil, take us off the grid and switch to manual drive."

The dashboard before him immediately split open and a steering wheel unfolded, the column supporting it gaining instant rigidity. At the same time, straps appeared from the back of the seat, which he automatically clipped into place. Philip grasped the unfamiliar wheel tightly, wondering whether this was really such a good idea. It was years since he had driven anywhere, let alone through a crowded city thoroughfare. One further glance at the sinister silver shape in the wing mirror convinced him that he had little choice.

Slowly, he turned the wheel and thumbed the accelerator. His car drifted out of lane and he began to close on the vehicle in front. There didn't look to be enough room to pass between that and the car immediately beside it, but he was going to have to try and squeeze through anyway... and if by some miracle he managed that there would be the next one and then the one after that. He was bound to hit one of them. But what choice did he have?

A warning light which he hadn't even known existed flashed at him from near the top of his viewscreen and a soulless female voice repeatedly asked him to abandon manual control and return to the grid. Ignoring her, he pressed a little harder on the accelerator and closed in on the two cars.

He found he was staring, his eyes wide, when all he really wanted to do was close them tight. His gaze darted between the pair of vehicles, and then focused on the seemingly tiny gap between, which grew smaller the more he stared at it. Finally he decided to concentrate on the space itself rather than the sides of the cars which defined it. He took a deep breath and committed himself, thumbing the accelerator another notch.

At the very last instant, as the snub nose of his vehicle entered the gap and he felt certain he was about to hit one or the other, the two cars ahead of him veered apart.

"Traffic central," Phil supplied. "They might not be able to see the renegade but they
can
see you, and have made room to avoid you causing an accident."

Philip felt a huge surge of relief and pressed his thumb down as far as it would go, feeling the car surge forward in response, shooting between the twin lines of other vehicles.

But the silver car continued to close. The two of them were racing down the same corridor. There had to be a break at some point, even allowing for the fact that this was 'rush hour' when those who still physically went to work were liable to be travelling home, but there was no sign of one yet. Ahead of him stretched twin lines of cars, appearing to be strung together like beads on a wire, creating boundaries which defined his world at present. This was a straight race - a hound and a hare; and it was immediately apparent that the pursuer had the legs on Philip's hare.

The bordering cars were passing in a blur, the speed of his passage robbing them of definition, so that they seemed to be almost solid barriers. His concentration was fixed on the road ahead, on keeping the wheel steady. The silver nemesis continued to edge nearer, until it loomed close behind him, filling the rear windscreen as if intent on ramming his vehicle. Was that the plan - to shunt him into the other cars at high speed?

If so, Philip didn't see how he could prevent it. There was no way out. He could
feel
the presence of the other car so acutely it might as well have been breathing down his neck.

A reckless impulse gripped him. If this really was the end, then let it be on his terms, not the pursuer's.

Before he could analyse the concept and think of all the reasons why this was such a bad idea, Philip lifted his right thumb off the accelerator and at the same time pressed his left down hard on the brake. He had read about, heard about and seen dramatisations that involved the squeal of tyres, but had never experienced the effect firsthand before. The sound struck him as suitably dramatic. As the skid began, the car held remarkably steady - a testament to the quality of the design - for all of that split second or two before the rogue slammed into its back, throwing him violently forward in the restraints, the straps biting into his shoulder.

Impact cushions inflated on all sides. The car seemed to slew and rock. Philip lost track of what was happening. The straps around him became implements of screaming agony, gripping, biting and squeezing him as his body was flung this way and that, its momentum struggling against them.

Finally, mercifully, the chaos stopped.

For long seconds he simply sat there, breathing deeply, raggedly, feeling his bruises and his aching neck and not quite able to believe he was still alive.

A sense of danger did not so much seep back as slam back into his thoughts. Yet the impact cushions still engulfed him and he had no idea what was going on beyond them.

"Phil, get rid of these stupid bags, will you!"

"Those stupid bags just saved your life," the partial's calm voice reminded him.

He felt a huge surge of relief that at least this much of the car's systems still worked. "That's as may be, but if I can't see what the hell's going on, they might yet cost me it as well."

The foam-filled bags were deflating even as he spoke, their contents dissolving to liquid smears, and he was already able to see past them. The first thing that struck him was that nothing was moving. The cars on both sides were stationary; traffic central must have shut this section of the grid down. Then he looked behind, primarily to see what had happened to the rogue, but what he first noticed were the dented, partially buckled forms of several cars in the 'wall' on his left, and at least one badly scraped vehicle to the right.

"Central had stopped all traffic before the actual crash," Phil told him; which explained why the cars had seemed to flash past so quickly. "You were pushed into one car, scraping along its side, then caught the back corner of the next, which brought the back of your car around and sent you sideways. The back struck a car in the opposite side and you rebounded to hit a further four cars on the left. It's a miracle you didn't roll."

Phil made it sound so simple, so clinical. "Did I hurt anyone else?"

"Unknown."

Then he saw the silver car, which lay on its side, the crumpled front wedged between two of the cars in the right-hand lane, which themselves had been pushed out of traffic central's nice neat line. Both looked to have sustained a fair bit of damage and the nearest had half-mounted the car in front, causing it to now rest balanced at a precarious angle.

Sirens were sounding somewhere in the distance.

As Philip took all this in, he saw movement from the rogue. He saw first a black-clad arm and then a head emerge from the skyward side of the stricken vehicle. There was something odd about both. They seemed ill-defined, like hastily drawn sketches of a head and limb.

First one and then a second black figure clambered from the stricken car, to drop to the ground, presumably keen to make their escape before the police arrived. Although he was looking straight at them, Philip found it frustratingly difficult to actually see the pair; it was as if his gaze kept sliding past them every time he tried to focus. All he was left with was the impression of vaguely human forms in a fuzzy smudge of black, which was a very bizarre and unsettling sensation.

"What the hell are they wearing?"

"Matts," Phil replied. "They utilise similar technology to the military's shimmer suits but aren't as effective. A poor man's version of the real thing."