as soon as they emerged through the customs and immigration archway. It was like they had a hologram advert flashing over their heads saying: EASY. He couldn’t ever remember seeing such obvious offworlders before. Both of them gawping round at the cavernous Hall, delighted and amazed by the place. The little one giggled, pointing up at the transit informatives, baubles of light charging about overhead like insane dragonflies, shepherding passengers towards the right channels.
Simon was off immediately, coming away from the noodle stall he’d been slouching against as if powered by a nuclear pulse. Moving at a fast walk, the luggage cab buzzing incessantly at his heels as its small motors strained to keep up. He was desperately trying not to run, the urgency was so hot. His principal worry now was if the others of his profession saw them. It would be like a feeding frenzy.
Louise couldn’t bring her legs to move. Her fellow passengers had swept her and Genevieve out of customs, carrying her along for a few yards before her surroundings exerted a grip on her nerves. The arrivals Hall was awesome, a stadium of coloured crystal and marble, saturated with noise and light. There must surely have been more people thronging across its floor than lived in the whole of Kesteven island. Like her, they all had luggage cabs chasing after them, adding to the bedlam. The squat oblong box had been supplied by the line company operating the lift capsule. Her bags had been dumped inside by the retrieval clerk, who’d promptly handed her a circular card. The cab, he promised, would follow her everywhere as long as she kept the card with her. It was also the key to open it again when they got down to their vac-train platform. “After that you’re on your own,” he said. “Don’t try and take it on the carriage. That’s MKS property, that is.”
Louise swore she wouldn’t. “How do we get to London?” Gen asked in a daunted tone. Louise glanced up at the mad swarms of photons above them. They were balls of tightly packed writing, or numbers. Logically, it must be travel information of some kind. She just didn’t know how to read it.
“Ticket office,” she gulped. “They’ll tell us. We’ll have to buy a ticket for London anyway.”
Genevieve turned a complete circle, trying to scan the Hall through the melee of bodies and luggage cabs. “Where’s the ticket office?”
Louise pulled the processor block out of her shoulder purse. “I’ll find it,” she said with determination. It was just a question of accessing a local net processor and loading a search program. An operation she’d practised a hundred times with the tutorial. Watching the graphics assemble themselves in the display as she conjured up a welcome feeling of satisfaction.
I’ve got a problem and I’m solving it. By myself, and for myself. I’m not dependent.
She grinned happily at Gen as the search program interrogated the station information processors. “We’re actually on Earth.” She said it as though she’d only just realized. Which, in a strange way, she had.
“Yes,” Genevieve grinned back. Then she scowled as a scrawny youth in a red and blue uniform barged into her. “Hey!”
He mumbled a grudging apology, side-stepped round the luggage cab and walked away.
The block bleeped to announce it had located the vac-train ticket dispensers for Hall Nine. There were seventy-eight of them. Without showing any ire, Louise started to redefine the search parameters.
Easy, easy,
Simon headed for the stalls at a brisk pace. There was a staff lift at the middle. Route down to a quieter level, where he could examine his prize. He was ten metres from the front line of stalls when he was aware of two people closing on him. It wasn’t an accidental path, either, they were coming at him with all the purpose of combat wasps. Running wasn’t going to do any good, he knew that. He pressed the release button on the grabber hidden in his palm. The girls’ luggage cab swerved away, no longer following him. Now, if he could just dump the grabber in a waste bin. No proof.
Shit. How could his luck turn like this?
One of the cops (or whoever) went after the luggage cab. Simon hunted round for a bin. Anywhere there was a fast food bar. He ducked round the first stall, making one last check on his pursuers. That was why he never saw the third (or fourth and fifth, for that matter) GISD agent until the woman bumped right into him. He did feel, briefly, a small sting on his chest. Exactly the same place she was now taking her hand away from. His guts suddenly turned very cold, then that sensation faded to nothing.
Simon looked down at his chest in puzzlement just as his legs faltered, dropping him to his knees. He’d heard of weapons like this, so slim they never left a mark as they punctured your skin; but inside it was like an EE grenade going off. The world was going quiet and dim around him. High above, the woman watched him with a faint sneer of satisfaction on her lips.
“For a couple of bags?” Simon coughed incredulously. But she’d already turned, walking away with a calm he could almost respect. A real pro. Then he was somehow aware of himself finishing the fall to the floor. Blood rushed out of his gaping mouth. After that, the darkness rushed up to drown him. Darkness, but not total night. The world was only the slightest of distances away. And he wasn’t alone in observing it from outside. The lost souls converged upon him to devour the font of keen anguish that was his mind.
“That way,” Louise said brightly. The block’s little screen was showing a floor layout, which she thought she’d aligned right.
With Genevieve skipping along at her side she negotiated the obstacle course of stalls. They slowed down to window shop the things on display, not really understanding half of them. She also thought there must be a subtle trick to negotiating the crowd which was eluding her. Twice on the way to the dispenser, people banged into her. It wasn’t as though she didn’t look where she was going.
The block had told her there was neither a ticket office, nor an information desk. A result which made her acknowledge she was still thinking along Norfolk lines. All the information she needed was in the station electronics, it just needed the right questions to extract it.
A vac-train journey to London cost twenty-five fuseodollars (fifteen for Gen); a train left every twelve minutes from platform thirty-two; lifts G to J served that level. Once she knew that, even the transit informatives whirling past overhead began to make a kind of sense.
Western Europe accessed an agent’s sensevise to watch the sisters puzzle out the ticket dispenser. Enhanced retinas zoomed in on Genevieve, who had started clapping excitedly when a ticket dropped out of the slot.
“Don’t they have ticket dispensers on Norfolk, for heaven’s sake?” the Halo supervisor asked querulously. He had maintained executive control over the observation team during the Kavanaghs’ trip from High York down to the Mount Kenya station, anxious that nothing should mar the hand over. Now, curiosity had impelled him to tarry. Having initiated a few unorthodox missions in his time, he was nevertheless impressed with Western Europe’s chutzpa in dealing with Dexter.
Western Europe smiled at the sensevise overlay of Halo, who appeared to be leaning against the marble fireplace, sipping a brandy. “I doubt it. Some cheery-faced old man in a glass booth would be more their style. Haven’t you accessed any recent sensevises of Norfolk? Actually, just any sensevises of the place would do. It hasn’t changed much since the founding.”
“Damn backward planet. It’s like the medieval section of a themepark. Those English-ethnic morons abused the whole Great Dispersal ethos with that folly.”
“Not really. The ruling Landowner class introduced a stability we’re still striving for, and without one per cent of the bloodshed we employ to keep a lid on things down here. In a way, I envy all those pastoral planets.”
“But not enough to emigrate.”
“That’s a very cheap shot. Quite beneath you. We’re as much products of our environment as the Kavanaghs are of theirs. And at least they’re free to leave.”
“Leave yes. Survive in the real world, no.” He indicated the observation operation’s status display. It wasn’t a pleasing tally. Five people had been eliminated by the guardian blanket of GISD agents—pickpockets, sneak thieves, a scam jockey—as the sisters made their way across the concourse. Extermination was the quick, no arguments, solution. It was also going to cause an uproar with the local police when the bodies were discovered. “At this rate, you’re going to wind up slaughtering more people than Dexter has to protect them.”
