of the broad streets. “Golly, this is better than the aeroambulance.” The little girl grinned.
Louise rolled her eyes. Though once she accepted the fact that the control processor did know how to drive, she began to breathe normally again. The buildings rushing past were old and sombre, which gave them a dignity all of their own. On the other side of the pavement barrier, pedestrians jostled their way along in a permanent scrum.
“I never knew there were so many people,” Gen said. “London must have more than live on the whole of Norfolk.”
“Probably,” Louise agreed.
The taxi took them a third of the way round the expressway, then turned off, heading back down to ground level. There were parks on both sides of the road when they started their descent, then buildings rose up to their left, and they were back on one of the ancient streets again. The pavements here didn’t seem so crowded. They slowed drastically, pulling over to the right alongside a large cube of white-grey stone with tall windows lined by iron railings and a steep state roof. An open arcade ran along the front, supported by wide arches. The taxi stopped level with a gate in the roadside barrier, which a doorman opened smartly. He was dressed in a dark blue coat and top hat, a double row of brass buttons gleamed down his chest. At last, Louise felt at home. This was something she could deal with.
If the doorman was surprised at who climbed out of the taxi he never showed it. “Are you staying here, miss?” he asked.
“I hope so, yes.”
He nodded politely, and ushered them under the arcade towards the main entrance.
Genevieve eyed the front of the stolid building sceptically. “It looks dreadfully gloomy.”
The lobby inside was white and gold, with chandeliers resembling frost-encrusted branches that had dazzling stars at the tip of each twig. Arches along the long central aisle opened into big rooms that were full of prim white tables where people were sitting having tea. Waiters in long black tailcoats bustled about, carrying trays with silver teapots and very tempting cakes.
Louise marched confidently over to the gleaming oak reception desk. “A twin room, please.”
The young woman standing behind smiled professionally. “Yes, madam. How long for?”
“Um. A week to start with.”
“Of course. I’ll need your ident flek, please, to register. And there is a deposit.”
“Oh, we haven’t got an ident flek.”
“We’re from Norfolk,” Gen said eagerly.
The receptionist’s composure flickered. “Really?” She cleared her throat. “If you’re from offworld, your passports will be satisfactory.”
Louise handed the passports over, thinking briefly of Endron again, and wondering how much trouble the Martian was in right now. The receptionist scanned the passports in a block and took the deposit from Louise. A bellboy came forward and relieved the sisters of their bags before showing them into a lift.
Their room was on the fourth floor, with a large window overlooking the park. The decor was so reminiscent of the kind Norfolk landowners worshiped it gave Louise a sense of dйjа vu; regal-purple wallpaper and furniture so old the wood was virtually black beneath the polish. Her feet sank into a carpet well over an inch thick.
“Where are we?” Gen asked the bellboy. She was pressed up against the window, staring out. “I mean, what’s that park called?”
“That’s Green Park, miss.”
“So are we near anywhere famous?”
“Buckingham Palace is on the other side of the park.”
“Gosh.”
He showed Louise the room’s processor block, which was built in to the dresser. “Any information you need on the city for your stay should be in here; it has a comprehensive tourist section,” he said. She tipped him a couple of fuseodollars when he left. He’d been holding his own credit disk, casually visible through fingers splayed wide.
Genevieve waited until the door shut. “What’s Buckingham Palace?”
The AI was alert to the glitch within a hundredth of a second. Two ticket dispenser processors and an informational projector. It brought additional analysis programs on line, and ran an immediate verification sweep of every electronic circuit in Grand Central Station.
Half a second. The response to a general acknowledgement datavise from five sets of neural nanonics was incorrect. All of them were within a seven metre zone, which also incorporated the failing ticket dispensers.
Two seconds. Security sensors in Grand Central’s concourse focused on the suspect area. The AI datavised to B7’s North American supervisor the fact it had located a possessed-type glitch in New York. He had just framed his query in reply when the sensors observed Bud Johnson go cartwheeling over someone in a black robe crouched on the floor.
Three and a half seconds. There was a visual discontinuity. None of the sensor short-term memory buffers had registered the black clad figure before. It was as if he’d just materialized out of nowhere. If he had neural nanonics, then they were not responding to the ident request datavise.
Four seconds. The North American supervisor took direct control of the situation in conjunction with the AI. A datavised warning went out to the rest of the supervisors.
Six seconds. The full B7 complement of supervisors was on line, observing. The AI’s visual characteristics program locked on to the shadowed face inside the black robe’s hood. Quinn Dexter rose to his feet.
South Pacific: “Nuke him. Now!”
Western Europe: “Don’t be absurd.”
Halo: “SD platforms armed; do you want groundstrike?”
North America: “No. It’s completely impractical. Grand Central Station’s concourse is a hundred and fifty metres below ground, and that’s spread out below three skyscrapers. There isn’t an X-ray laser built that could reach it.”
South Pacific: “Then use a real nuke. A combat wasp can be down there in two minutes.”
Asian Pacific: “I second that.”
Western Europe: “No! Damn it. Will you morons control yourselves.”
North America: “Thank you. I’m not going to blast Dome One into oblivion. There are twenty million people living in there. Even Laton didn’t kill that many.”
North Europe: “You can’t let him go. We have to exterminate him.”
Western Europe: “How?”
North Europe: “South Pacific’s right. Nuke the shit. I’m sorry about the other inhabitants, but it’s the only way we can resolve the situation.”
Western Europe: “Observe, please.”
Eleven seconds. Bud Johnson’s face had turned purple. He scrabbled feebly at his chest, then pitched over onto the floor. People clustered round him. Quinn Dexter became translucent and quickly faded from view. The AI reported all the processors had come back on line.
Military Intelligence: “Oh shit.”
Western Europe: “Will a nuke kill him now do you think? Wherever he is.”
South Pacific: “One way to find out.”
Western Europe: “I cannot permit that. We exist primarily to protect Earth. Even with our prerogatives, you cannot exterminate twenty million people in the
Halo: “The boy’s right, I’m afraid. I’m standing down the SD platforms.”
South Pacific: “Terrorist demon, more like.”
Western Europe: “I’m not arguing definitions. All this does is confirm I was right the first time. We have got to be extremely careful how we deal with Dexter.”
North Pacific: “Well at least shut down New York’s vac-trains.”
Central America: “Yes. Isolate him in New York. You can creep up on him there.”
