She reared out of the water, braids flying around her face, droplets flying off to crater the lake around her. She stood waist deep, the sun on her back, and flexed her shoulders. A pair of ochre-coloured swans cruised past with microtags pinned into their long necks, and she laughed and flicked her hair at them. The swans merely changed direction and disdainfully swam round her.
Blondie, she thought. What kind of a name was that? She climbed out of the lake and french-braided her extensions as she walked back to her clothes. There'd been an intensity about his lovemaking, something close to anger in the way he'd clung to her afterwards. She found the rose caught in a fold of her jacket, it was a deep purple, so purple as to be almost black. He'd bought it from a vendor by the Shen Wu gate of the Forbidden City when they were watching the dragons twitching past to the snap and bang of fireworks. She'd let him tuck the rose behind her ear and they'd kissed for the first time, their lips tasting of tequila and gunpowder. She pulled his T-shirt on over her wet skin, tucked it into her leggings and pulled her belt tight around her waist. Carefully smoothing out its bruised petals she tucked the black rose back behind her ear and threw on her jacket. As she turned to go her hand slipped into her pocket to check her moneypen, a small defensive habit picked up on Luna.
Her moneypen was gone.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
The PR executives were arguing with the security executives and the security executives were winning but only because they were armed. Judging from the number of security firms represented half the cabinet was going to attend the ceremony. Verhoevan could practically smell the power. The President's own security cliche, Viking Protection, were taking up positions around the finished podium. They were big grim Icelanders with dragonboat logos on their body armour, and people scrambled out of their way as they ran their checks.
Verhoevan was trying not to get his spotless coverall dirty as he made minute adjustments to the regulator. Behind the greasy shine of the gateway Lorenzo attractors were held in a precise pattern by a gravito-magnetic field. With just the carrier wave coming through they hardly moved, but once initiation started they would start to spin, drilling a hole through reality.
The KGB started ushering in the general public who'd been waiting in the unfinished galleria. A carefully selected ethnic and cultural cross section of the solar system drawn from Rent-a-Crowd's extensive books. A lot of the unemployed did Rent-a-Crowd work to supplement their welfare cheques but these looked like real professionals, ready to cheer their guts out on cue.
Twenty-six light years away, anchored deep in the bedrock of Acturus II, another set of attractors turned slowly, just enough to broadcast the carrier wave. Before the initiation could begin the attractors on Mars would have to be precisely tuned so that both sets turned in synergenic harmony. Verhoevan had initiated fifteen tunnels in his career, and not a single one had collapsed. If only the carrier wave would stop fluctuating on this one. He was sure it must be a function of the immense distance, like the gateway's colour, at least that's what he hoped it was.
'Got it,' he shouted as the regulator board went green. 'Tel! Ming we can start the final countdown any time she's ready.' He looked at his hands - they were shaking.
STS Central - Olympus Mons
Ming cowered behind the armchair as her father lurched towards her. In his hands was his broad leather belt which he snapped angrily as he advanced. Ming was choking on the cheap booze smell that issued from his gaping mouth. "No, Papa,' she whined as the beast loomed over her.
'Boss!'
Ming's neck cracked as her head came off her desk. Zap blackout, she thought, how many have I taken? The terminal screen was fuzzy, and she squinted it into focus - 71 per cent power availability.
How long had she been out?
'Boss!'
'What?'
'Verhoevan says he's ready.'
'Where's Murphy One?'
'On its way.'
'Verhoevan?'
On a media feed Ming saw Verhoevan plug Ids finger into a handy socket. 'Yeah?'
'What the hell are you wearing?'
'Don't ask.'
'The President's on his way.'
'I never would have guessed, have we got the power?'
'Yes, but get on with it.'
'Guess what?'
'What?'
'I'm going to be on the podium with the rest of the high and mighty.'
Ming cut the connection. Her head was beginning to throb. The customer complaints mainframe had crashed, the negative calls display was filled with gibberish. The main display had zoomed in on the Acturus Terminal schematix, the Stunnel had become a thick silver cable, the terminus a cone in semi-opaque green, the offshoot of the Central Line a thinner cable in red that trailed off screen. White lines were overlaid on the image, the room temperature superconductors that would cany the power from all over the system to the Stunnel gateway. Junction markers were picked out as blue triangles clustering around the open end of the green cone; on the master board the power conduits were highlighted, the beast's nervous system laid suddenly bare.
Ming stood up, stepped over to the rail and leaned over. Down in the pit the controllers all turned to stare up at her.
'All right children,' said Ming, 'let's crank it up.'
Kings Cross (Central Line)
Kadiatu came running out of the Paris Axis platform. Behind her the wasp whine of the ticket drone followed. It had picked her up when she changed at Manderlay, tracking her by pheremone and heat signature. She could have lost it in a crowd. but today there weren't any crowds. The ECM crystal plaited into her hair was useless: this close any interference pattern would light her up like a shop display. Somewhere behind the drone was an inspector, by law a human being, slowly closing in to arrest her.
Kings Cross was an old station from the time when train tunnels were just long horizontal holes in the ground. An evolved station not a planned one, a ganglia that gathered up half the transcontinental feeder lines that quilted Europe, a messy disorder of physical tunnels and a good place to lose a ticket drone.
She jumped into a lift marked Krakow in blue letters, breathing hard as the field snapped her two hundred metres up the shaft and on to the platform. The indicator hologram said the next train was in three minutes, not soon enough. A couple of men were standing underneath the sign, not enough of them either. They looked wary as Kadiatu ran towards them, two respectable English guys in topknots and linen kaftans. 'Lend us fifty,' she said as they backed away. 'I just need it for the fare home.'
Too late. She could hear the ticket drone again, its engine whine echoing in the lift shaft. 'Shouldn't be allowed,' said one of the men as Kadiatu dashed for the exit.
She should have known better than to get cosy with some low life from the Stop. Now she was gatecrashing the transit system with no moneypen and twenty grand in debt to Max That wasn't going to be six hours walking-around time with no kinky stuff. Max was going to invent new perversions to pay off twenty thousand. Except it wasn't going to come to that. because she was going to catch up with Blondie, get her money back and then some.
First she had to ditch the ticket drone.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
Power fed into the gravitic induction field, and the attractors started to whirl. Biting into the soft stuff of reality like drill teeth into sandstone. It was silent work, an operation on a level far away from human senses, but in his mind Verhoevan thought he heard the space-time continuum groaning under the assault. Data flowed past the peripheral vision of his left eye. The alarming fluctuations in the carrier wave had ceased, the signal was good and strong.
'Citizens,' a voice boomed, 'I give you the President of the Union of Solar Republics.'
Verhoevan was seated six seats along and one row back from the President. He had an excellent view of the famous bull neck as the fount of all political power rose to his feet. The Rent-a-Crowd started cheering and the President grinned with pleasure,
waving his left hand to calm them down. Verhoevan wondered if the man got real satisfaction from such a crowd, knowing that the cheers came on the precise cues of the Event Horizon stage managers.
'My fellow citizens,' said the President.
At that moment Verhoevan noticed that the attractor spin rate was accelerating above the initiation parameters.
'My fellow citizens,' said the President again, as the crowd fell silent. 'We are assembled here to witness one of the most remarkable engineering projects of our times.'
Verhoevan considered it might be a power surge but the input rates remained stable. Planned initiation was in ten minutes, a carefully calculated climax to the President's speech, but the tunnel seemed to have other ideas. If the power wasn't coming from this end of the Stunnel where was it coming from?
'An engineering project that will provide opportunities for new industries, new growth and above all new employment for the nation.'
Verhoevan looked over the heads of the professionally intent crowd. The gateway seemed placid enough, but behind it the attractors whirled out of control, skidding into a new configuration. The figures piled up on the inside of his eye, crowding his sight, he was caught up in a sudden painful terror.
'It is a project that only one nation, in a galaxy crowded with nations, one nation that would have the expertise, the courage and in bald truth the audacity to conceive of. This day will become a piece of history.'
The flags suspended from the ceiling rustled in a sudden breeze, a scrap of paper by the gateway controls whirled into the air. Verhoevan lurched to his feet.
'Shut it down,' he screamed at his staff, 'shut it down.'
But it was too late.
Kings Cross (Central Line)
It was the blue box that did for Kadiatu. It had no reason to be on the Central Line platform and perhaps that's why she ran straight into it.
The inspector had almost caught her moments before when she made a break for the surface, waiting for her in front of the exit lifts as she raced out of a connecting passageway. Kadiatu had a good look at him as she tried to translate her forward momentum into a turn. Thin lips under a black visor, the yellow and black sigil on the chest plate of his armour, ancient logo of the KGB, the world's oldest security turn. With the ticket drone behind her Kadiatu was forced on to the empty platform.
Exhaustion, thought Kadiatu, exhaustion made me stupid.
She tried to get to her feet but the platform felt too comfortable. From where she lay the box looked enormous. It seemed to lean over her and she was suddenly scared that it might topple over and crush her underneath. Down the platform she could hear a pair of heavy boots crunching towards her.
Wind whispered through the station.
2: Crazy Paving Man
Kings Cross (Central Line)
Bernice decided that the Doctor had a cavalier attitude to first steps. In her experience the first step into a new environment could kill you faster than a bad-tempered Dalek. You were supposed to be cautious. The explorers' manual had a check list: check the atmosphere, check for bugs, animals, subsidence, solar radiation, check that the goddam landing ramp had extended properly. It went on for fifteen pages.
Not the Doctor, though, Bernice thought. A quick look round with the TARDIS scanner, he puts on his hat, opens the door, and out he goes.
It was the Doctor's assumption of invulnerability that worried Bernice. She hoped it applied to her as well.
When she followed him out of the door, it was with the guilty assumption that anything nasty would have to go through him first.
And that was her first mistake.
STS Central - Olympus Mons
The security feeds went down in a blaze of static.
'What the hell was that?' yelled Ming.
She switched a monitor over to English 37 and The Bad News Show, Yak Harris caught between slots, frozen solid with his mouth open. There was a sudden pixel flicker and Yak's suit changed colour.
I'll be damned, thought Ming, he really is a computer program.
'Well,' said Yak Hams, jerking into life. 'Well, we seem to be having some technical problems from the Acturus Terminus.'
You and me both, thought Ming. Up on the status boards a silver line pierced into the station's heart. 'Give me an op-stat on the stellar tunnel.'
'It's down,' said a controller.
'Down?'
'Just the carrier wave.'
'Can't be down,' Ming checked the status board again. 'We pumped twenty-two gigawatts into the bloody thing.' Enough to fry a small town. 'Any contact with the terminal?'
'Nope.'
'Why not?'
'Break down at the terminal end.'
'Hardware or software?'
'Your guess is as good as mine.'
'Get maintenance for me,' said Ming, 'and the KGB.'
The master console in her office chimed for her attention. Threat analysis catching up with the real world displaying an options panel on the screen. The computer wanted Ming to choose between a technical malfunction or external threat. She glared at the screen.
Not yet, she thought, not until I know what's going on.
A timecode at the top of the screen counted down from thirty minutes. When it reached zero the computer would make up its own mind. Ming wanted to know what moron had thought of that.
It was three minutes since the Stunnel was supposed to have opened, four minutes since they lost contact with Acturus Terminal. Ming's instincts were to boot the problem upstairs but the senior management had all been attending the opening ceremony.
She was on her own.
She tore the comer of her last packet of zap and dumped one in a cup full of dead coffee. It started to fizz. She ordered the controllers to isolate the terminal and start pulling the trains out of the depots and whack them back into the tunnels.
The President was at the opening ceremony too. Which meant she should have heard from the security services by now, from Event Horizon at the very least.
On the media feed Yak Harris was talking to a panel of experts. A good sign that the media didn't know what had happened either. Ming wondered whether the pundits were computer-generated as well.
The Stop
The air was the colour of dust and there was no memory of a warning, no precognition, no transition, just a sudden birth into this confusion of falling stone. Instinct and training dragged her forward towards a rectangular patch of light ahead. Left hand clamped over her mouth, shallow breathing through her fingers, forcing herself to stay upright, smoke rises but dust falls.
She had a sense of a heavy mass shirting above her and she stumbled faster. Shadows crashed down behind her, shock waves billowed through the dust, streaming around her and into the light. For an instant she saw the figure of a woman framed in the rectangle ahead. An image of herself, hunched and stumbling.
No warning, like an orbital strike, like a missile in terminal phase, sprinting ahead of its sound wave. Not even a whisper before it hits and strips the houses down to their bare bones.
From in front, she thought as she met the impossible shadow face to face, the light is coming from the front. Then she knew, even before the dust veil lifted to reveal the face.
'Mother,' she wailed, hands groping forward, grasping and meeting nothing. Dust filled her throat and eyes, stopping up the tears. Left her blindly struggling forward. 'Mother,' she tried to call out but the dust choked off the sound. Blindly she fought to get further but it felt as if the dust was piling up around her, drifts creeping up her thighs and back. Her mind became filled with the heavy thud of her heartbeat, her chest filling up with an awfui vacuum, as if some membrane had torn as she fell forward into space and clear air.
Terminal phase, the final fail to ground zero.
Impact.
Stale air blew out of her lungs, saliva and dust spewing upwards in an arc. A stripe of numbness crashed down her side and arm. She heard her bones breaking and in that moment she remembered her name.
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Kings Cross (Central Line)
Kadiatu remembered another rescue like this. Thrashing useless limbs, swallowing water, watching the sunlight recede as she sank down into the stream. Under the water her friends' voices became shrill and distant. When she bashed her head against the side of the boat it was like a wooden gong, a deep profundo boom which intermingled with the pain until she couldn't tell them apart. Her father saved her that time, yanked her from the river by the hair, his big fist knotted in her braids. That's why your mother plaits your hair, he told her later, to give me something to grab hold of.
Something had come through the station.
Something that howled out of the tunnel and filled the wind with knives and the stink of ozone. The Inspector had been lifted from his feet and hung shaking before her. There was a sharp crack as his visor shattered and Kadiatu glimpsed a pale contorted face. Then he vanished in an expanding cloud of blue vapour that was in turn shredded by the wind and blown away.
That was when somebody grabbed Kadiatu's hair and pulled her to safety. Except she wasn't a child any more, wasn't drowning in the washing stream on a bright Makeni morning to the shrill screams of her friends. It was not her father's hand that was knotted in her hair, yanking her up and away from the platform edge. Whoever it was they were strong, lifting her easily to her feet as if she still were that child and not the seventy-two kilos of bone and muscle she had become.