roofs curving high over twenty platforms apiece, you could probably fit my apartment skyscraper inside one of them. And a marshalling yard that sprawled over fifteen square miles, a giant zoo of cybernetic machines and warehouses.
I had to switch terminals for the train out to Ormal. That’s a five-minute trip on a pedwalk, then I had to find the right platform. The insert that provides my virtual vision has interface problems now, so the guidance icons I was picking up from the station management array were blurred. Nearly misread the damn thing. Finished up on platform 11B waiting with a big crowd for the train. These people weren’t so stressed and desperate as the ones back in Sydney. More prosperous types, with suits a lot more expensive than mine. They had neat little leather designer arrays edged in gold or platinum tucked into the top pockets. You could see their fingers flicking about minutely as they shunted icons around their high-rez virtual vision. I even saw a few of those new OCtattoos, the ones that light up, tracing colourful lines across their skin. One woman had green and blue spirals on her cheeks.
The carriage wasn’t so crowded, so I got a seat by a window again. I guess most of my fellow travellers were up in first class. Trip to Ormal was a simple eight minutes. We rolled out from the end of the platform and across the marshalling yard. I could see the row of wormhole generators up ahead like a metallic cliff, bloody huge great rectangular buildings side by side with a wormhole gateway at the end, like the mouth of an old-fashioned train tunnel. Only these ones had light shining out of them; alien suns spreading a multitude of subtle shades across the rusting jumble of the marshalling yard.
Our train headed straight for a pink-tinged hole, and I felt the tingle of the pressure curtain across my skin as we passed through. Then we were rolling along a couple of miles of track surrounded by open countryside with strange bulbous grey and white trees before we reached the CST planetary station.
Harwood’s Hill, the capital, was small, barely half a million people. But it was beautiful, one of those places which had banned combustion engines. It was spread across a big slope that rose up out of a freshwater sea, with green spaces outnumbering buildings five to one. If I could afford it, I’d probably move there. You knew this world was making an effort to get things
My train had arrived late evening. I took a taxi out to the airport using the company card. Even the taxi cost more than the return train fare. I watched the yachts out on the lake, trying not to be all sour and envious, there must have been hundreds coming in to port, their sails all lit up by the sinking sun. Didn’t anyone in the city work?
The flight to Essendyne was another three hours. At the other end, the airport was little more than a flat patch of grass with a strip of enzyme-bonded concrete down the middle like it was left over from an experimental road building project.
Essendyne itself was a little town of stylish houses at the end of a valley. The surrounding mountains were impressive, too. In winter they have over a metre of snow. It is perfect for skiers.
I took another taxi out to the resort, a forty-minute ride. The place was only half-finished, with the main building a mass of scaffolding crawling with construction bots. Some of the cabins had roofs, but the insides weren’t fitted. I got that shitty sinking feeling as soon as we arrived. The office had told me the whole thing was in its final stage of completion, with the staff busy getting ready for guests. All that was left to do was a bit of landscaping. Complete crap.
The taxi dropped me outside the site manager’s office. She wasn’t available, some crisis out there among the scaffolding with a malfunctioning bot. Her assistant had the grace to look embarrassed as he explained that the hand-over date had been put back three months. It was difficult to get the materials out to Essendyne from the nearest train station, two hours’ drive away along a narrow road. No one from the resort company was even on site, let alone available to meet me.
Fucking pricks! Nobody back in Sydney had even bothered to check. Bastard scum! So I’d wasted an entire day on a trip to a client that didn’t even exist yet. I wanted to bill the dicks back home for the commission I’d lost and the expenses I’d built up.
The taxi took me back to the airport. And of course the plane back to Harwood’s Hill didn’t leave for another five hours. I hit the bar in the concourse — grand way to describe a hut with a glass wall. After an hour, when the anger was really peaking, I called Sydney and told the dick of an office manager what I thought of him. I didn’t wait for him to say anything back, I cut the channel and got my e-butler to block all incoming calls. There was a seafood bistro next to the bar. I went in and tried some of the local food. Not bad. Waitress was kind of pretty, too. Then I went back to the bar.
I remember one of the stewardesses helping me onto the plane. Great-looking chick with flaming red hair and a cute smile. I told her so, too. Then we took off and I was poorly. She helped clean it up. I slept the rest of the flight.
Harwood’s Hill was a grind. Strange city, small hours of the morning, with a mother monster hangover. Took a taxi to the CST station. Managed to find a little store that was still open and bought some cleaner tabs. I don’t take them often, they’re worse than the hangover if you ask me. But they do only last an hour before your body stabilizes. I was back in Sydney by then. Cold, depressed, with bones that ached. Couldn’t eat, and felt real hungry thanks to the cleaners. And absolutely fuck all to show for my time.
I went home. Bugger the expense, I took a taxi. I was kind of surprised my company card was still working by then. You know I thought that was my low point. Then the bloody next thing I know, the police are blowing up my door. I don’t know what they hit me with when they stormed in, but it was like my whole body was on fire. I just wanted to die. I mean, how could the universe do this to me?
WHAT THE COURT DECIDED
It was the biggest case ever to be heard in a Nova Zealand court; in fact it was the biggest anything to happen on Nova Zealand, period. Reporters from every unisphere news show flooded into Ridgeview, with their companies block booking entire hotels. Those unable to snag a room had to park their mobile homes on the ring road where they were jostled by curious camels brought to the planet by Bedouins eager to recreate their ancient culture out in the freedom of the vast deserts. While in town, the narrow streets with their broad white canvas awnings rapidly became clogged by giant mobile studio trucks.
Paula was given a room in the city attorney’s office. It was cramped, with desks shoved against the wall, and a noisy water tower, but better than trying to catch a train in each day.
When the case was opened in front of Judge Jeroen, Paula was surprised when the defence lawyer, Ms Toi, entered a plea of not guilty.
‘Is she going for some kind of technicality?’ Paula whispered to Stephan Dorge, the Directorate’s prosecutor.
‘I don’t see how,’ he whispered back. ‘They didn’t ask for a deal.’
‘What about the memory deposition?’
‘Nah, we can prove it’s an implant.’
When Paula looked at Ms Toi, she thought the lawyer seemed uncomfortable.
Prosecution opened with the forensics evidence from the launch site. The DNA match between Dimitros Fiech and the urine sample. Skin analysis taken at the Directorate’s Sydney office immediately after the arrest revealed traces of the missile’s chemical rocket booster exhaust on his arms and face; there were also plume traces on his yellow shirt. The jury was shown camera pictures from the Larsie marina and Ridgeview’s CST station. Additional corroboration was skin cell DNA taken from the boat.
‘The evidence which places Dimitros Fiech at the launch site is incontrovertible,’ Stephan Dorge concluded. ‘He fired the missile which killed a hundred and thirty-eight people. And for what? To push his perverted ideological platform.’
In the docks, Dimitros Fiech shook his head in disbelief.
Defence called Paula Myo. ‘I’d like to concentrate on the deposition of Dimitros Fiech’s memory on the day
