Peter F. Hamilton — Manhattan in Reverse
To all the Friday-night-down-the-pub boys,
past, present, and future, whose whimsical
flights of fantasy go a great deal further
than anything in this book.
Introduction
I’m not the most prolific of short story writers. I do enjoy the form, but novel writing takes up most of my time these days. Consequently I get to write about one story a year, if I’m lucky.
This then is a collection of all my short stories written since 1998, when the last collection,
The rest have all been published in various anthologies or magazines, apart from ‘Manhattan in Reverse’, a story featuring the detective from my Commonwealth universe, Paula Myo, which was written exclusively for this collection. I also took the opportunity to revise ‘Footvote’, bringing it slightly more up to date. A strange thing to do with an SF story set in the alternative near-past, but I couldn’t resist.
Peter F. Hamilton
Watching Trees Grow
ONE. OXFORD, ENGLAND AD 1832
If I was dreaming that night I forgot it the instant when that blasted telephone woke me with its shrill two- tone whistle. I fumbled round for the bedside light, very aware of Myriam shifting and groaning on the mattress beside me. She was seven months pregnant with our child, and no longer appreciated the calls which I received at strange hours. I found the little chain dangling from the light, tugged it, and picked up the black bakelite handset.
I wasn’t surprised to have the rich vowels of Francis Haughton Raleigh rolling down the crackly line at me. The family’s old
‘Edward, my boy,’ he growled. ‘So sorry to wake you at this ungodly hour.’
I glanced at the brass clock on the chest of drawers; its luminous hands were showing quarter past midnight. ‘That’s all right, sir. I wasn’t sleeping.’
Myriam turned over and gave me a derisory look.
‘Please, no need to call me,
‘Where?’
‘Here in the city, would you believe. It’s really the most damnable news. One of the students has been killed. Murdered, the police seem to think.’
I stopped my fidgeting, suddenly very awake. Murder, a concept as difficult to grasp as it was frightening to behold. What kind of pre-Empire savage could do that to another person? ‘One of ours?’
‘Apparently so. He’s a Raleigh, anyway. Not that we’ve had positive confirmation.’
‘I see.’ I sat up, causing the flannel sheet to fall from my shoulders. Myriam was frowning now, more concerned than puzzled.
‘Can we obtain that confirmation?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely. And a lot more besides. I’m afraid you and I have been handed the family jurisdiction on this one. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.’ The handset buzzed as the connection ended.
I leaned over and kissed Myriam gently. ‘Got to go.’
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Her face had filled with worry. So much so that I was unable to answer in truth. It wasn’t that she lacked strength. Myriam was a senior technical nurse, seeing pain and suffering every day at the city clinic — she’d certainly seen more dead bodies than I ever had. But blurting out this kind of news went against my every instinct. Obscurely, it felt to me as though I was protecting our unborn. I simply didn’t want my child to come into a world where such horror could exist.
My leather attache case was in the study, a present from my mother when I passed my legal exams. I had been negligent in employing it until now, some of its fine brass implements and other paraphernalia had never even been taken from their compartments. I snatched it up as if it were some form of security tool, its scientific contents a shield against the illogicality abroad in the city that night.
I didn’t have a long wait in the lobby before Francis’s big black car rolled up outside, crunching the slushy remnants of last week’s snowfall. The old man waited patiently whilst I buckled the safety restraint straps around my chest and shoulders before switching on the batteries and engaging the gearing toggle. We slipped quietly out onto the cobbled street, powerful yellow headlamps casting a wide fan of illumination.
The apartment which Myriam and I rent is in the city’s Botley district, a pleasant area of residential blocks and well-tended parks, where small businesses and shops occupy the ground floors of most buildings. The younger, professional members of the better families had taken to the district, their nannies filling the daytime streets with prams and clusters of small excitable children. At night it seemed bleaker somehow, lacking vitality.
Francis twisted the motor potentiometer, propelling the car up to a full twenty-five miles an hour. ‘You know, it’s at times like this I wish the Roman Congress hadn’t banned combustion engines last year,’ he grumbled. ‘We could be there in half a minute.’
‘Batteries will improve,’ I told him patiently. ‘And petroleum was dangerous stuff. It could explode if there were an accident.’
‘I know, I know. Lusting after speed is a Shorts way of thinking. But I sometimes wonder if we’re not being too timid these days. The average citizen is a responsible fellow. It’s not as if he’ll take a car out looking to do damage with it. Nobody ever complains about horse-riding.’
‘There’s the pollution factor as well. And we can’t afford to squander our resources. There’s only a finite amount of crude oil on the planet, and you know the population projections. We must safeguard the future, we’re
