constantine 1: 2119
Constantine rubbed his temples in an attempt to ease his headache. He felt as if his brain needed a reboot. It seemed as if it had been processing without break for four months now: it was no surprise he was seeing gaps beneath the sky.
There was one outside the window of the I-train right now, just behind the three glass towers that marked the boundary between land and sea at the westernmost tip of the Great Australian Bight. It was a magnificent, though flawed, view. Red-lit streamers of cloud slid across the yellow sky, distorted and magnified as they moved behind the three enormous, transparent, fir-cone-shaped monuments. The towers themselves climbed into the evening sky at the edge of the steely grey sea flecked with the brightly colored sails of pleasure yachts that skipped and wove between the robotic cargo liners. It was a picture of both calm and motion, leisure and industry, the natural and the manufactured world. A tourist’s view of a famous scene marred by only one inconsistency.
In between the sea and the sky: nothing-an untuned grey gap where the earth didn’t quite meet the heavens. Constantine looked away. He had been seeing things for the past three weeks now; he didn’t need further reminding how hard he had been working, nor how much he had allowed his brain to become overloaded by extra intelligences.
The mineral water in the glass resting on the bentwood table before him shimmered. A standing wave had formed on its surface as the I-train braked, and one of the intelligences that shared his mind calculated the acceleration that took a train from mach seven to mach zero in a little under five minutes and idly modeled the way in which the forces that achieved this were reflected in the liquid in front of him. Constantine tried to ignore the endless stream of figures that filled his mind.
“Not now, White,” he muttered.
The train was entering Stonebreak. The checkerboard of green pasture and yellow cornfields that decorated the first level streamed past the windows of the car. This is how they displayed their wealth down here, Constantine reflected. Not in a crush of tall towers that sucked every last cent of value from the available land, but rather in an expansive and expensive display of space.
– Not entirely true, said Red, another of the intelligences crowding his mind.-They also need the food.
Constantine didn’t care. His head hurt. All he wanted was to get off the train and into his hotel room. The end was close. The tension was getting to them all.
The train dipped underground and started its final deceleration, and the other passengers began to collect their possessions. Some rose and made their way to the doors; Constantine simply gazed out of the window into the darkness of the tunnel. Two years of plotting and planning, all set to end in Stonebreak. The idea didn’t seem real. He took a sip of water from the glass and tried to think about his wife as the train drew to a halt, tried to summon up a picture of her in his mind that was more than a fading abstraction. It had been too long.
It was the busiest time of the day at Stonebreak International. No doubt Constantine’s journey had been scheduled to arrive during the evening rush, amid the simultaneous arrival of several intercontinental trains. Constantine’s life over the past two years had been spent in an interminable bustle of crowds, one tree hidden in a never-ending forest.
The station was old and shabby: the iridescent patterns of dead VNM bodies that had formed the halls may have looked cutting-edge twenty years ago, now they just seemed faintly embarrassing. Their interlinking shapes had been covered with hard-wearing transparent plastic; even so, the walls and the floors by the skylifts were scuffed and abraded by constant use. Constantine entered the elevator and asked for the roof. As he rose toward the high-vaulted ceiling, he looked down at the silver ribbons of the I-trains, curled in tight spirals around the central spoke of the terminus.
“This place is a mess, huh? The new station can’t open too soon.”
Constantine jumped at the sound of the voice. A woman was standing at the far end of the elevator.
“I didn’t see you get in here,” said Constantine, checking his intelligences.
– I did, said Red.-She slipped in just as the doors were closing. You were turning to look at the view.
“You, of all people, shouldn’t be surprised at how I slipped in here.” She held out a hand. “I’m Mary Rye. That’s my name.”
Constantine refused her handshake. Mary gave a sniff and withdrew it. She pointedly wiped her palm on the pocket of her green jacket.
– She’s been drinking, said Red.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t deserve that,” said Mary, head tilted forward. Her thick Australian accent made her sound old-fashioned in these days of standardized elocution. “How long have you been a ghost? Two years, I’d guess. So what the fuck do you know about it? Nothing. That’s what you know about it: nothing.”
Constantine felt himself perspiring. Sweat was trickling down the small of his back, despite the air- conditioned freshness of the elevator.
He spoke carefully. “A ghost? I don’t understand what you mean.”
Mary gave an impatient shrug of her shoulders and waved her hand dismissively. Her green suit looked expensive but shabby. Two long strands of cotton trailed from the hem of her blouse. A brooch in the shape of three little cats was pinned lopsidedly to her lapel.
“Sure you don’t,” she said with heavy sarcasm. She waved her hand in the direction of the doors. “Look, I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. I know what to look for. I know what I see. I wait on the platform and I look out for people like you arriving. A train pulls in and the crowd on the platform parts like the Red Sea? I look to see who’s walking along the path that forms. I see the cameras suddenly turn to look in one direction? I look in the other. I do that and I spot someone like you. The most ordinary-looking person in the building, and yet you never have to stop or step aside; your elevator is always waiting and your car always stops right by the exit. You never get stuck behind the person with the luggage and you’re always just ahead of the person stopping to ask directions. You’re one huge statistical improbability: your life is planned so that you will never be remembered. You’re a ghost. Just like me.”
She finished speaking just as the skylift emerged from the ground into the red light of evening. Through the glass, they could see rush-hour pedestrians hurrying by in all directions. Constantine tapped his fingers against the hard plastic of the console that nestled in his pocket.
“Well, whatever you say, madam. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
He stepped out into the cool Australian evening and strode toward the waiting boat that would take him to his hotel. Mary took hold of his sleeve and pulled him backwards.
“Hey, don’t you madam me and then walk away. I was speaking to you. Didn’t you hear me? Of course you heard me. You were ignoring me. Being rude.”
Constantine turned to face her, conscious that she was on the verge of making a scene.
“Would you mind letting go of my arm please, mad-” He paused.
– Mary, reminded the Blue intelligence. There was an edge of amusement to its voice.
Constantine said nothing. Mary gazed at him with bleary eyes. There had once been a pretty face there, thought Constantine abstractedly, but now it was lost beneath the podgy swelling of fat and over-applied makeup. She spoke gently, her hard little chin pressing down against its soft cushion of flesh.
“I have a name,” she continued with a drunkard’s dignity. “Please do me the courtesy of using it.”
“Very well…Mary. Please let go of my arm.”
The two uniformed porters who stood by the varnished wooden sides of the hotel boat were now looking in his direction. Pink galahs fluttered beneath the huge expanse of the red sky. Constantine felt incredibly exposed.
Mary caught his expression and laughed.
“What are you so worried about? No one will be watching us. We’re both invisible. Both invisible. Fact of life. Fact of our lives, I should say.”
At that she took hold of her green skirt by the hem and pulled it right up so the tops of her thighs were exposed.
