Transit
By Ben Aaronovitch
Prologue
The Doctor stood alone on a Devonian beach and tried to persuade the lungfish to return to the sea.
'You won't like it,' said the Doctor.
He noticed that the fish's fins had become short stubby legs. It had become an Ichthyostega, the first true amphibian. The Doctor checked his watch. About two million years early at that.
'You're making a big mistake,' said the Doctor.
The amphibian ignored him, its flat head fixed on the line of cool vegetation ahead. It had covered a quarter of the distance across the hot white sand.
'I know it's crowded in there,' pleaded the Doctor. 'I know the food chain is overstocked, I know it's a fish-eat-fish ocean ...' He trailed off. The gill slits had healed up, the legs lengthened. Claws sprouted from the feet. The panting mouth was full of teeth.
From across the sea came the sound of thunder.
'Don't do it," said the Doctor. But too late. The reptile was suddenly flushed with hot blood. Hair sprouted over its body, it got off its belly and surged up the beach, getting smaller all the time.
By the time the Doctor caught up with it, the mammal was five centimetres long and cowering behind a shell. From the forest ahead came the crash and roar of gigantic lizards.
The Doctor hunkered down and stared at the rodent. Its small eyes gazed over the half of the beach that remained. The Doctor felt that it should at least look terrified but it didn't. It looked expectant.
There was a sudden scream in the stratosphere and the earth bucked under their feet. 'Did that sound like a ship full of Cybermen to you?' asked the Doctor. The sky went black with dust, the temperature dropped, the forest echoed with the meaty thump of collapsing species. 'I was there, you know,' said the Doctor. 'I lost a good friend. Not that you care.'
The dust cleared from the sky. The sun came out. The forest was silent. The rodent ran for the treeline. The wind blew in from the sea, bringing the smell of salt; from the horizon dark clouds raced towards the shore. When the Doctor looked back the animal was walking upright, flexing its new hands. As he watched the biped shed her fur. Breasts sprouted, the cranium ballooned backwards, the forehead lifted. Intelligence flared in brown eyes, the co-ordinated digits of her right hand picked up a stick and she looked around for something to hit with it.
The storm struck the beach.
The Doctor struggled through the rain and stepped in front of the human, blocking her path. 'Don't do it!' he shouted over the wind. But her eyes were full of fire and dangerous ideas. She raised the stick which became a club, a sword, a gun, a hydrogen bomb. Lightning fused the sand around them.
'Please,' said the Doctor.
The stick came down on his face.
PART ONE
'Are you sure,' asked his companion, 'that this is the nineteen-eighties?'
The Doctor looked around. 'Which nineteen-eighties did you have in mind?'
Conversations that never happened.
1: Oncoming Trains
Olympus Mons West
Credit Card took the call from Central but he had to shout to make himself heard. Dogface was arguing over a game of Damage with Old Sam. Only Dogface was crazy enough to pick a fight with an old veteran like Sam, but Dogface always said that even Old Sam got bored with pushing people about. It was good therapy, he said, to stand up to him from time to time. At the time the call came in, both were in full flight, Old Sam on his feet with his two-tone dreadlocks flailing around his head, Biondie edging towards the door while Lambada surreptitiously cleared any breakables from the table. Dogface was leaning comfortably back in his chair, arms across his chest, a big eastwood clamped in his mouth. Old Sam had cranked up to full volume, swearing in something that had been an Indo-European language about two hundred years ago. Credit Card figured that the military must have augmented his lungs along with the rest of his body.
Credit Card sighed, stuck his right index finger in the slot and jacked into the system direct.
'What the hell's going on down there?'
Credit Card winced. Talking to Ming the Merciless was a pain face to face, going direct was like rubbing his brain on a cheese grater. 'Keep it down,' he sent, 'I'm plugged in.'
Ming the Merciless had a problem, mainly a brown-out on the Central Line which was knocking fifteen seconds off transit time station to station. Ming was very democratic: if she had a problem she liked to spread it around.
'We're on a break.'
Ming didn't care. She wanted the problem sorted out - now.
Credit Card pulled his finger from the socket and watched Ming doing goldfish impressions on the screen, her mouth silently opening and closing.
'What's Ming want?' asked Lambada.
'Brown-out on Central.'
'Again?' said Lambada.
'It's the regulators,' said Old Sam. 'They're bloody antiques.'
'Twenty-bloody-five years old,' said Dogface.
Old Sam sat down opposite Dogface and chewed the end off a fresh eastwood. 'Got a light?' he asked Dogface, who tossed the lighter to him. Old Sam snatched it from the air, insect fast, just to show that forty years hadn't slowed him down none.
Credit Card plugged his finger back in. 'It's the regulators,' he told Ming.
'I know it's the regulators,' screamed Ming, 'of course it's the bloody reg ...'
Credit Card yanked his finger out again. 'She says she knows that it's the regulators.'
'I hate that Ming,' said Lambada.
'Yamatzi series five,' said Dogface. 'It's the coupling on the field controller.'
'Always dropping out of line,' said Old Sam. 'Two, maybe three, angstroms.'
'Five angstroms,' said Dogface.
'Very dodgy workmanship,' said Old Sam.
'Not like the new Nigerian regulators.'
'Japanese got no idea how to make precision gear.'
'It's not in their culture.'
'Not like the Africans.'
'Now they understand interstitial dynamics,' said Dogface. 'All that mystical stuffs second nature to them.'
'You can't swear undying loyalty to your company and then build something that relies on the transient nature of reality as a basic operating principle,' said Old Sam and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling.
'Common sense, innit?' said Dogface.
'So what do I tell Ming?' asked Credit Card.
'Tell her we'll get round to it later,' said Old Sam.
'Much later,' said Dogface.
'Don't you ever worry about getting the sack?' asked Lambada.
'Nah,' said Old Sam. 'Me and Dogface are the only ones who know how the system really works.'
'I could fix them,' said Blondie.
'Shut up, Blondie,' said Dogface.
STS Central - Olympus Mons
Ming the Merciless decided that banging her head violently against the console was not an effective method of stress management and consoled herself by screaming at the next person she saw. Once the young technician had fled into the corridor she sat down and considered her position.
The duty office overlooked the master control room. Colour-coded holograms displayed the system in its entirety. Red for the mterWorld lines like the Loop, Central Line and Outreach, orange for the commuter networks, blue for the feeders and yellow for the branch lines. A three-dimensional tangle of colour, each subsystem descending into a fractal infinity while data streams in white light marked the passage of a hundred thousand trains, fifty-six million passengers at fifty thousand stations.
It was an animal, Ming had decided a long time ago, a vast organism with a multitude of orifices that swallowed people and spat them out elsewhere. Grown up from an embryo over two centuries, it encompas
sed the solar system and stopped the ancient motion of the planets. In subspace all distances are the same distance so distance became meaningless. Orbits became an abstraction, the distance to Mars was a function of how far away the nearest station was. For most people the map of the system was the map of the universe.
And now the system was ready to eat up the light years between Sol and Acturus. Amongst the tangle of light, a new thread, picked out in silver, and a new station - Acturus Terminal, a new line, the Stella Tunnel, the Stunnel. The beast had yawned and stretched out to annihilate another frontier.
The trouble is, Ming thought, the beast is sick.
Lunarversity
Kadiatu was watching The Bad News Show on English 37, lying on her back with the TV projected on to the ceiling. It was hot and her bare back kept sticking to the plastic skin of the mattress. The campus administration had promised that the environment would be fixed soon, but what with recent cutbacks students weren't holding their breaths. Bad News was showing a jumpy video of a security raid in Melbourne, intensified images shot over the shoulder of the lead policeman. Yak Harris, the Bad News anchorman, was making a big deal out of the way the camera operators wore full combat armour, 'Better than the real cops'. Yak chortled ruefully as one of the policemen went down with a bullet in the face. 'Just goes to show, you can't be too well protected,' Right on cue they ran a twenty-second advert for personal armour - 'How safe are you?' - and Yak was back with the latest body count over a slowmo action replay of the cop's death. Vivaldi in the background as the body toppled lazily downwards. 'Let's see that from another angle,' said Yak Harris and smiled his perfect computer-generated smile.
Kadiatu's stomach rumbled.
She turned off the TV and rolled to her feet. At head height the air was hotter and smelt of zinc. Kadiatu wrapped a sarong around her breasts, pushed her moneypen through her braids and opened the door. Some of the students had pulled their mattresses out into the corridor to take advantage of the slight breeze that blew down its length. By the time she reached the refectory sweat was trickling down between her shoulder blades and thighs, and the cotton of the sarong stuck to her skin as she moved. The refectory was deserted, dark and even hotter than her room. On the far wall, opposite the entrance glowed the drink dispenser. 'Solar Cola' in cool blue neon letters. Kadiatu paused at me door and looked round the cavernous interior. Granny bashers sometimes infiltrated the campus. They'd take you apart with their own hands just to get enough for the next fix. Some poor bastard from Sociology had been jumped a week ago and was spending the rest of the year in a vat growing a new spinal column. The entrance cast an aisle of light fifteen metres across the floor to the drinks dispenser - 'Cool Refreshing Solar Cola'. On either side she couid make out the flat shadows of tables stretching away into the darkness. Squaring her shoulders, Kadiatu set out with studied nonchalance. It was silent except for the hum of the dispenser's refrigeration unit and the slap of her bare feet on the vinyl floor,
She was halfway across when she heard the noise, a muffled whirring, snorting sound, somewhere off to her right. She stopped and slowly turned towards the sound. It was low down under the tables and coming towards her, snuffling like a dog.
Except you didn't get dogs on Luna. Or only in restaurants. There were rules. Kadiatu saw movement, just a shape, low slung with close-set red eyes, a prehensile snout weaving from side to side as it advanced. You didn't run from animals, she knew that. She just wished she knew what the other options were. It was too late, the animal was there, darting out between the tables, its snout whipping round to strike at her legs. Kadiatu jumped out of the way and watched the cleaning robot zip past. The two red laser sensors mounted above its suction hose probed for obstacles as it vacuumed the floor.
'Piss off,' shouted Kadiatu as the machine vanished into the shadows again.
I come from six generations of fighting men and women, thought Kadiatu, and I get freaked out by a domestic robot. They'll be doing orbits in the family vault tonight.
Kadiatu walked the last few metres. She was sure that the air was getting hotter in the refectory. She pressed her cheek against the cool plastic of the Solar Cola machine and slotted in her moneypen. Nothing happened. 'Please,' she said softly trying all the combinations. 'I'll drink anything, as long as it's cold and wet.' Kadiatu slid slowly down on to her knees.
You'd think, she thought, that since we were an intelligent species we'd have attended to the details. That we'd build an air-conditioning system that can deal with the two-week lunar day, that we'd at least remember, when the temperature was up in the thirties, to refill the bloody Solar Cola machine.
She turned round and pressed her back against the cool flank of the dispenser. You'd think, thought Kadiatu as the condensation trickled down her back, that I could make a student loan last the whole term.
The cleaning robot sidled up and sniffed her feet to see if she were rubbish.
'I've got to get out of this place,' said Kadiatu.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
Ming stepped out of a VIP shuttle on to the new Central Line platform. The terminal complex was being built into the bedrock under the permafrost of the Martian pole, half the world from Olympus Mons - one stop up the line and three minutes by Transit. Only half the light fittings had been installed and a team of artificers were still laying the red and green ceramic finish on the platform walls. Ming called up the building schedule on her clipboard: the platform should have been ready for over two days. Most managers had a data projector chipped direct into their retinas but Ming liked to see where she was going and besides, you could hit people with a clipboard. A big silver arrow pointed at a wide exit. At least the direction holograms were up.
The galleria was filled with noise and dust. Both walkways were in place but the consumer outlets were still big gaps in the walls. Here and there, messages in spray paint indicated that the space had been leased in advance. A Kwik-Kurry franchise - 'Service in thirty seconds or your money back!' -was already doing trade off portable stoves, and the smell of spices mingled with the cement dust. Off-shift workers squatted in little groups eating curried goat with their fingers.
When the complex was operational passengers would pass through the galleria on their way to the Stunnel terminus. It was hoped that it would generate enough profit to cover the Stunnel operating costs. Only the Central Line would run direct trains through to Acturus and then only two an hour. The Acturans were still bargaining to up the number of through trains but STS had put its foot down. They talked about smuggling, criminals and terrorists escaping from justice, even the chance that some stupid Vrik would try freesurfing the Stunnel, but Ming knew it was really a question of money. The Stunnel's R&D costs had almost bankrupted the network, with Reykjavik talking about another fare freeze. If they didn't recover the operating costs through the ancillary income then STS would suffer a financial collapse, the knock-on effect would sink the rest of Sol's economy, chaos would stalk the land and billions would starve. At least that's the way thc-board of directors told it. Hectares of office space and housing were being lasered out of the rock to the north and south of the galleria. The total investment was staggering, it would be the biggest single below-ground complex of its type in personspace. It was being said that the STS financial comptroller was visiting his acupuncturist so often he looked like a pin cushion.
The actual terminus was something else again.
Lowell Depot (Central Line Terminus)
Dogface and Blondie were heading for the end of the line riding a maintenance engine up the Central Line's freight tunnels. The engine was open-decked and Blondie, who'd been a floozie for less than a month, kept his eyes narrowed down to slits. Unlike the enclosed and shielded passenger trains, the engine was rendered insubstantial by the boundary effect. Only the field controller, a black sphere that pulled the ghost train towards the tunnel's vanishing point, retained any solidity. Lambada said that looking too closely at infinity could turn your
brain inside out. Dogface slouched in the cockpit, staring around him at the hallucinatory patterns of the tunnel wall with studied nonchalance. Lambada called that 'bad acid macho', but Blondie noticed that she went up front just the same when she rode the flat tops. The shifting streams of colour were punctuated by blasts of reality as they flashed through the stations on their way to Pluto and the edge of the system.
Lowell Depot was stuck in the middle of a low-rent housing project known to the media as 'Aryan Heights' and locally as 'the Stop'. Dogface coasted the engine into the freight dock just ahead of a cargo flatbed. Blondie watched as the robot handlers unshipped plywood crates of food and drink, all of them the cheapest possible generic brands. With eighty per cent of the Stop's inhabitants on welfare, even the crates would be cannibalized for furniture and firewood. The flatbed would run back empty. Nothing of any value came out of the Stop.
Dogface grabbed his kit and they walked down the narrow connecting corridor towards the passenger platforms. It terminated in a security door to keep people from hitching free rides on the flatbeds. Dogface unlocked it with his index finger and the door hissed open. The platform beyond was clean. Platforms for the InterWorld lines usually were. It was the feeder lines that got knee-deep in garbage. A small group of people in dowdy overwashed clothes waited with quiet resignation for the next train. They were body servants, cooks, cleaners, the Stop's second biggest export. Further up the platform stood young men and women with feet jammed into high-heeled boots, thighs into fishnets, breasts overflowing bra cups, buttocks wrapped in lycra, the white flesh crammed into the selling clothes - the Stop's principal export waiting to go to work. As they walked past Blondie tried keeping his head down but it didn't work. Someone called his name, his real name, and he turned to look without thinking.
'Hey Zak, wait up!'
He almost didn't recognize Zamina as she clicked towards him, face hidden under a layer of skin tone. Blondie looked at Dogface who shrugged and walked on - he could catch up in a minute.