The Departure (16 page)

Ricard would probably assume she was heading for the garage, but would want to know what she was up to after she halted, therefore she must park the crawler well out of sight of any of those windows glinting like slabs of mica in the stonework. She chose a wall of the hex that faced in towards the centre of the base, where no windows had been made, and where a couple of large insulated water tanks had been erected. By now the overheat warning continued perpetually and the gearbox was making a sound like ball-bearings being rattled about in a tin can. Upon drawing the crawler to a halt, she noticed a haze of vapour in the cockpit, and bleeding out through the holes in the screen– smoke from that gearbox. The shepherd, obviously recognizing her only possible exit from the vehicle, strode round and squatted just beyond the airlock. Next the com light came on—Ricard wanting to talk to her.

Var stood up, rubbing at her arms. The left forearm, from which Miska had removed her ID implant, was particularly painful. Stepping into the rear of the crawler, she eyed the tools available. Gisender had taken out a saw with a circular, diamond-tipped blade, probably so as to quickly cut open the ducting that the fibre-optics had run through, also some hydraulic shears for severing the optics themselves. These would do nicely; but first there was the shepherd to deal with.

She opened the inner door to the airlock, which extended across the rear of the cargo compartment, unlocked the outer door and pushed it open just a little, and peered out. The shepherd immediately rose out of a crouch and drew closer, only a couple of metres away, and looming above. Even in the thin air she could hear the hissing sound its gecko tentacles made. She returned to the cargo compartment, bent over Gisender and hauled off the tarpaulin.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said, lifting up the corpse.

She shouldn’t feel so concerned about human bodies, for many had already gone through recycling here, along with the other waste, whilst more recent ones resided in a silo stored for when they would help make up the soil necessary for the arboretum. Manoeuvring Gisender’s body through the airlock itself was easy, though she did wonder if its lack of weight would be noticed. She then pushed the outer airlock door open, just enough to shove the dead woman outside. And the shepherd instantly pounced, its shiny legs clattering against the crawler, tentacles spearing down like the tongues of chameleons. Var held back for a moment as the arachnid machine retreated, then she moved forward to peer outside again. The shepherd was striding away, with Gisender tightly clasped against its underside, clearly with no idea that it had retrieved the wrong EA-suited human.

Var returned to the cargo compartment to pick up the diamond saw and its battery box. She took the shears too, though the saw ought to be enough. She needed to act quickly now, before Ricard discovered that his shepherd had only retrieved a corpse.

EARTH

His other preparations, made after he completed the escape tunnel, were good, though Saul had been hoping not to need them. The dyke curved round for nearly a kilometre, the water in it growing fetid and the silkweed becoming a toxic orange. Glancing back, he could see a pillar of smoke rising from the abandoned bunker’s location and, worryingly, two shepherds patrolling around it. But only as he and Hannah moved into the shadow of a processing plant did he witness more aeros arriving.

The dyke carried the outflow from apparatus used for cleaning and preserving vegetables. He imagined that the orange tint of the water derived from the antiviral and antibacterial sprays used to extend shelf-life. That was not quite the organic dream of previous ages, but then, over the last century, and faced with the cold realities of trying to feed an out-of-control population, a great many of Earth’s dreams had been abandoned.

The outflow pipe ran out underneath a security fence, and many months ago he had cut through the bars of the grating at the near end of it and secured them again simply with ducting tape. It came away easily, and they proceeded through darkness, ankle-deep in toxic water, to an inspection hatch he’d previously altered so that it could now be opened from the inside.

“This way.” They crossed a carbocrete yard and skirted the looming silos and juice tanks, also the big storage barns beside which robotic harvesters were parked.

From here, when the season arrived, the great combines, diggers and sievers would depart to harvest the crops, before returning to pump, blow or otherwise convey their loads into the processing plant. Keeping in the lee of a wall made from blocks of bonded ash, the pair of fugitives moved round to the forecourt where lorries and tankers awaited. Some of these were robotic, but others of an older make required human drivers. All these took rapeseed oil and bamboo pulp to fuel plants and power stations respectively, vegetables to MegaMalls or other processing plants where they were further preserved, and cereal crops to be turned into all sorts of commodities. Saul knew, for instance, that the big bread factory in Suffolk used a great deal of bamboo pulp in its flour mix to bulk its products out.

“Over there.” He was heading for a nearby grain lorry when he noticed Hannah staring at something over by the fence. He glanced over that way too, but couldn’t figure out what had caught her attention until a swarm of flies rose up. Someone had obviously made it this far through the surrounding fields, and then been brought down at the fence.

“Why?” she asked, her voice choking.

It seemed an odd question to be asking him then and there, but then he himself had grown used to seeing the dead scattered across the agricultural landscape, and smelling the occasional stench arising some days after another desperate human being had fallen foul of readerguns or razorbirds.

“Because human life has been cheapened by its sheer number?” he suggested.

Hannah had no reply for that, so they now climbed up into the truck’s cab. He paused to watch as a robotic tanker pulled out of the forecourt, probably loaded with sugar syrup that had been processed here during last season.

“You can drive this?” Hannah asked him, her gaze still fixed on the fly-blown corpse clinging to the razormesh. “It won’t be picked up?”

“It’s always wise to be prepared,” he replied, reaching under the dashboard and pulling out the black box he’d stashed there previously, which was linked in to the truck’s computer. The click of a switch overrode the recognition system that allowed only approved drivers to operate the vehicle. He pressed the start button and, after the hydrogen turbine had wound up to speed, reversed the lorry round, before heading towards the compound gate. It opened automatically, and soon they were out on the all-but-empty motorway.

“So what other preparations have you made?” Hannah asked leadenly.

“I’ve got caches of useful items spread across Europe, as well as new identities I can assume. More in North Africa, too, in case things get really desperate.” He glanced at her. “But we definitely don’t want to go that route, as it would take us further away from where we ultimately want to go.”

“Minsk Spaceport,” she replied flatly.

***

The apartment Saul decided to use measured eight metres square. It possessed a small kitchen area, a combined toilet and shower, a motorized sofa bed and a home computer. One window overlooked the central megaplex of the residential block, and a screen window could run any view he selected, including ones from the numerous cams positioned on the block itself. Or at least it would if the screen was working. A single lighting array, also containing a community safety camera, was suspended from the ceiling. Generally, only complex computer programs kept watch on the inhabitant of this apartment, but if his behaviour strayed outside acceptable parameters, the visual and audio feed would instantly be diverted to a community political officer, for further assessment. Not everybody endured cameras like this one perpetually watching them, but then not everyone was considered a “societal asset” who needed constant supervision.

“Not
your
place, then?” Hannah remarked.

“Assigned to one of my reserve identities,” he replied. “Ownership is merely an anachronistic concept fostered by the anti-society dissident,” he quoted.

“So what’s your name now, citizen?” Hannah asked, as she paused by the door—holding it open, as he had instructed, with his altered keycard still in the slot.

“Kostas Andreas,” he replied, looking round.

“Very…Mediterranean,” she observed.

He nodded, pulled over a chair and stood on it to get at the safety camera, smearing the lens with a gobbet of rotten margarine he’d scraped from a pot in the fridge—which, in turn, had been automatically shut down by Block Control after its door hadn’t been opened for a specific time. Next he jammed a pen into the little microphone incorporated in the side of the camera and scrunched it around a few times. He then stepped down.

“Okay, you can close the door now.”

After doing so, she headed across to dump her holdall on the sofa and hand him back the keycard. “Are you sure that vandalism is not going to be a problem?”

“Cam service personnel are overstretched almost everywhere, but especially here.” He looked up at the device as the microphone spat out a spark—the cam now activating in an apartment that had registered vacant until Hannah removed the keycard. “They’ll detect the fault instantly, but then it’ll join a maintenance backlog over a month long.” He gazed at her steadily. “You have to understand that our masters are starting to give up on the whole idea of constant surveillance and ideological correction. They’ll only be reinstated when our numbers are sufficiently reduced for them to again be effective.”

She nodded, looking slightly sickened by the thought, then threw herself down on the sofa. He’d already told her about this Straven Conference, and the sectoring of ZA sink estates and other population areas. She’d wanted to disbelieve him, but he guessed the corpses she’d recently seen in the fields went some way towards convincing her. He suspected her doubts had lasted only until he abandoned the lorry in what he hoped was still a cam deadspot adjacent to a sector fence. He felt that the two corpses, one lying on the ground and one still clinging to the fence, must have finally persuaded her.

“I think,” she said, “that since you took me from the Inspectorate, this is the longest time in my life I’ve been without someone constantly watching me.” She reached up, pressing a fist against her chest, her shoulders hunched and a bewildered expression on her face.

“
I’m
watching you,” he said. “Are you in pain?”

“Panic attack.” She gave him a tight, forced grin. “They’re a constant with me but, as I’ve recently discovered, I don’t get them when there’s any real reason for panic.” She waved a dismissive hand and lay back, closing her eyes, deliberately pulling her hand away from her chest and resting it flat on the sofa beside her.

“You’re watching me,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re about to lecture me about squandering government resources, or deliver any completely inappropriate homilies.”

“Misuse of government property is theft from the people?” he suggested.

“Yeah, because all property belongs to the people, but is controlled by the Committee for the good of the people.” She opened her eyes and gazed at him. “Better then to say that all property and all people belong to the Committee, for
its
own good.” She looked up. “You know they gave me political prisoners who were scheduled for disposal to experiment with?”

Yes, he already knew that, but it seemed she wanted to repeat herself. She wanted to be certain he knew about the crimes she believed herself to have committed. Perhaps she wanted to revel in her own guilt.

“I saw one in your surgery,” he said neutrally. “And I released one from his cell. He seemed very self-possessed, so I wonder if he managed to escape.”

“Malden,” she said. “I hope so too, because, if so, he’s going to be a big thorn in the state’s side. He’s a revolutionary leader, maybe even
the
revolutionary leader. I put as much hardware in his head as I could, and used the organic interface and comlife they allowed me. He is a lesser version of what you yourself can become.”

He dropped onto the sofa beside her, saying nothing.

She eyed him sideways. “I had no choice, you know.”

“I know.”

“After Smith made us watch what happened to you, he kept us grouped together for a while longer. Once they brought in the first human subjects for experimentation, Aira objected.” She was staring at the floor again. “He didn’t even try to persuade her otherwise, just took her down to a cell and made us all watch while five enforcers raped her repeatedly. When they were done, he just shot her through the head—no attempt at adjustment.”

“I can pass judgement on you if you like,” he said. “If you consider a serial murderer’s judgement of any relevance. You, at least, have done the bad things you’ve done to survive. I don’t have that excuse.”

“I don’t want excuses.”

“What happened after Aira? Where’s the rest of the research team?”

“Smith had us separated—the only communication via comlink—and I got to stay in the cell complex. Smith himself got reassigned after that.” She gazed at him steadily. “He was made Political Director on Argus.”

Motives within motives, and now he had another motive to get himself up to that space station. “So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how willing you are to help me?”

She frowned. “I just want to be there when you see him again.”

“You will be. That’s a promise.”

“There must be…justice,” she said firmly.

It seemed likely to Saul that she would not enjoy his idea of justice.

“Yes, quite.”

She nodded, then turned away. “Does that shower work?” she asked, pointing.

He shrugged. “I think the water’s turned on, but whether it’s hot is another matter.”

“Do you have any fresh clothing here?”

“Yes, enough.”

Standing up, she stripped off her lab coat, kicked off her trainers, then began unbuttoning her blouse. He rose too, and began heading for the door.