As midnight rushed across the globe the all-day parties started and one hour behind, the arteries that pumped life through the solar system quietly shut themselves down.
At 02:00 GMT they shut down the freight services on the parallel tunnels. The physical mail was going to be a day late. Branch lines were down to VIP shuttles and emergency services only; feeder lines were running one train in five. According to Ming's terminal they now had a thirty per cent power surplus ready for the Stunnel initiation. Verhoevan wanted seventy per cent - Ming had twelve hours left. Customer complaints were up to one and a half million negative calls and rising at a rate of a thousand every second.
Let them walk, thought Ming.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
Verhoevan was inventing new words to describe the PR executives who had started to swarm in the terminus. One of them was trying to persuade Verhoevan into a pair of white coveralls.
'Why?'
'Because,' said one man, 'it looks more scientific.'
Verhoevan noticed that the coverall had the 'Event Horizon' logo picked out in navy blue on the back. Event Horizon was the President's own public-relations firm. 'More scientific?'
'For the media,' said the man, waving vaguely down the station where the media ENG's buzzed through the air, jostling with the security monitors for the best viewing angles. 'After all, you are going to be on the podium with the President.'
'What podium?'
'The Presidential Podium, a bit of an honour for you really.'
Verhoevan realized that halfway down the station a podium was being assembled out of prefab teak blocks. 'You realize, of course,' said Verhoevan, 'that your podium is situated directly in line with the Stunnel gateway.'
'Is that a problem?'
Only if the train overshoots, thought Verhoevan.
'I'd hate to have to tell the President,' the man put some bite into his voice, 'that there was a problem.'
Verhoevan sighed and accepted the coverall. The PR executive gave him a halogen smile. 'I think you will find that it fits.'
After the man had gone Verhoevan turned to find his entire staff staring at him. 'I don't know what you're looking at,' he said, brandishing the coverall at them, 'you're all going to get one too.'
STS Central - Olympus Mons
By 10:15 GMT the second shift of controllers had taken over in the pit. These ones squinted blearily at their screens and tended to react badly to loud noises. Up in the duty office, Ming, who'd been awake for thirty-six hours, chewing zap for the last eight, was trying to stay awake by calculating her overtime. They were getting media and security feeds from Acturus Terminal. The media were still getting the best viewing angles, especially the
Bad News Show.
On the repeater screen the Sydney-Kyoto commuter line went dark. Ming touched her pin mike. 'What happened to TransCancer Three?' The zap side effects made her own voice echo uncomfortably inside her head.
'Sorry, Boss,' said the sector manager, 'wrong switch. Do you want us to put it back up?'
'Just one in three,' said Ming, who didn't like the Japanese, or Australians for that matter, and wasn't going to do them any favours. She started to search through the pile of empty Kwik-Kurry cartons on her desk, somewhere underneath was another packet of zap. Or had she swallowed them already?
'Big increase in VIP shuttle activity,' said a voice.
'Destinations?'
'Acturus Terminal.'
'That's the security detachments moving in,' said Ming. 'Where's Murphy One?' Murphy One was the President's private train.
'Still at Reykjavik.'
Ming glanced at her terminal, available power reserves were now 53 per cent, customer complaints were topping a billion.
Three and a half hours to go.
Beijing
Kadiatu woke up alone in Pei Hai Park. She lay still for a long moment, sprawled out on the yellow summer grass and watched the little mobile clouds watering the flowers. She closed her eyes and stretched, letting the grass prickle along her legs. When she sat up she wondered where her hangover had gone. The sun was rising, a pale gold light that turned the ancient city walls a dusty orange. The White Pagoda cast a shadow through the mist rising from the lake. Apart from herself the park was deserted. Kadiatu stared at the lake for a moment and thought, why not? She'd pulled the T-shirt off over her head when she realised it wasn't hers. It was made from white German cotton and when she touched it to her face it smelt of blond hair and rose petals. Dropping the shirt on top of her jacket she ran down to the lakeside.
There'd been eight of them, riding a flat-top with some crazy idea about chasing midnight around the world. The Brazilian woman Lambada had been driving, sitting on the front, cowling and whooping each time they went through a station. Blondie whispered in her ear that Lambada could drive in that position because she had an interface fitted in her big toe. She remembered asking him how he came to know that. Dogface, the one with the designer-ugly face, had overheard and made obscene comments until Old Sam told him to stop. Kadiatu had been around her parents' friends long enough to know that Old Sam was a full combat model. It showed in the speed of his reflexes, in the way his pupils slotted in low light, and in his strength. She knew what had been in the package she'd delivered, the one that Old Sam slipped quietly into his coat and transferred twenty thousand into her moneypen for. Augmentation carried a price tag, a metabolic tradeoff. The old soldiers walked through a world of pain as their bodies fell apart. Kadiatu had seen her own mother bite her hand until it bled. They got their prescription endorphins but for many it was not enough. They wanted the real juice, the combat drug, the one that turned them into gods in the Valles Marineris.
She reared out of the water, braids flying around her face, droplets flying off to crater the lake around her. She stood waist deep, the sun on her back, and flexed her shoulders. A pair of ochre-coloured swans cruised past with microtags pinned into their long necks, and she laughed and flicked her hair at them. The swans merely changed direction and disdainfully swam round her.
Blondie, she thought. What kind of a name was that? She climbed out of the lake and french-braided her extensions as she walked back to her clothes. There'd been an intensity about his lovemaking, something close to anger in the way he'd clung to her afterwards. She found the rose caught in a fold of her jacket, it was a deep purple, so purple as to be almost black. He'd bought it from a vendor by the Shen Wu gate of the Forbidden City when they were watching the dragons twitching past to the snap and bang of fireworks. She'd let him tuck the rose behind her ear and they'd kissed for the first time, their lips tasting of tequila and gunpowder. She pulled his T-shirt on over her wet skin, tucked it into her leggings and pulled her belt tight around her waist. Carefully smoothing out its bruised petals she tucked the black rose back behind her ear and threw on her jacket. As she turned to go her hand slipped into her pocket to check her moneypen, a small defensive habit picked up on Luna.
Her moneypen was gone.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
The PR executives were arguing with the security executives and the security executives were winning but only because they were armed. Judging from the number of security firms represented half the cabinet was going to attend the ceremony. Verhoevan could practically smell the power. The President's own security cliche, Viking Protection, were taking up positions around the finished podium. They were big grim Icelanders with dragonboat logos on their body armour, and people scrambled out of their way as they ran their checks.
Verhoevan was trying not to get his spotless coverall dirty as he made minute adjustments to the regulator. Behind the greasy shine of the gateway Lorenzo attractors were held in a precise pattern by a gravito-magnetic field. With just the carrier wave coming through they hardly moved, but once initiation started they would start to spin, drilling a hole through reality.
The KGB started ushering in the general public who'd been waiting in the unfinished galleria. A carefully selected ethnic and cultural cross section of the solar system drawn from Rent-a-Crowd's extensive books. A lot of the unemployed did Rent-a-Crowd work to supplement their welfare cheques but these looked like real professionals, ready to cheer their guts out on cue.
Twenty-six light years away, anchored deep in the bedrock of Acturus II, another set of attractors turned slowly, just enough to broadcast the carrier wave. Before the initiation could begin the attractors on Mars would have to be precisely tuned so that both sets turned in synergenic harmony. Verhoevan had initiated fifteen tunnels in his career, and not a single one had collapsed. If only the carrier wave would stop fluctuating on this one. He was sure it must be a function of the immense distance, like the gateway's colour, at least that's what he hoped it was.
'Got it,' he shouted as the regulator board went green. 'Tel! Ming we can start the final countdown any time she's ready.' He looked at his hands - they were shaking.
STS Central - Olympus Mons
Ming cowered behind the armchair as her father lurched towards her. In his hands was his broad leather belt which he snapped angrily as he advanced. Ming was choking on the cheap booze smell that issued from his gaping mouth. "No, Papa,' she whined as the beast loomed over her.
'Boss!'
Ming's neck cracked as her head came off her desk. Zap blackout, she thought, how many have I taken? The terminal screen was fuzzy, and she squinted it into focus - 71 per cent power availability.
How long had she been out?
'Boss!'
'What?'
'Verhoevan says he's ready.'
'Where's Murphy One?'
'On its way.'
'Verhoevan?'
On a media feed Ming saw Verhoevan plug Ids finger into a handy socket. 'Yeah?'
'What the hell are you wearing?'
'Don't ask.'
'The President's on his way.'
'I never would have guessed, have we got the power?'
'Yes, but get on with it.'
'Guess what?'
'What?'
'I'm going to be on the podium with the rest of the high and mighty.'
Ming cut the connection. Her head was beginning to throb. The customer complaints mainframe had crashed, the negative calls display was filled with gibberish. The main display had zoomed in on the Acturus Terminal schematix, the Stunnel had become a thick silver cable, the terminus a cone in semi-opaque green, the offshoot of the Central Line a thinner cable in red that trailed off screen. White lines were overlaid on the image, the room temperature superconductors that would cany the power from all over the system to the Stunnel gateway. Junction markers were picked out as blue triangles clustering around the open end of the green cone; on the master board the power conduits were highlighted, the beast's nervous system laid suddenly bare.
Ming stood up, stepped over to the rail and leaned over. Down in the pit the controllers all turned to stare up at her.
'All right children,' said Ming, 'let's crank it up.'
Kings Cross (Central Line)
Kadiatu came running out of the Paris Axis platform. Behind her the wasp whine of the ticket drone followed. It had picked her up when she changed at Manderlay, tracking her by pheremone and heat signature. She could have lost it in a crowd. but today there weren't any crowds. The ECM crystal plaited into her hair was useless: this close any interference pattern would light her up like a shop display. Somewhere behind the drone was an inspector, by law a human being, slowly closing in to arrest her.
Kings Cross was an old station from the time when train tunnels were just long horizontal holes in the ground. An evolved station not a planned one, a ganglia that gathered up half the transcontinental feeder lines that quilted Europe, a messy disorder of physical tunnels and a good place to lose a ticket drone.
She jumped into a lift marked Krakow in blue letters, breathing hard as the field snapped her two hundred metres up the shaft and on to the platform. The indicator hologram said the next train was in three minutes, not soon enough. A couple of men were standing underneath the sign, not enough of them either. They looked wary as Kadiatu ran towards them, two respectable English guys in topknots and linen kaftans. 'Lend us fifty,' she said as they backed away. 'I just need it for the fare home.'
Too late. She could hear the ticket drone again, its engine whine echoing in the lift shaft. 'Shouldn't be allowed,' said one of the men as Kadiatu dashed for the exit.
She should have known better than to get cosy with some low life from the Stop. Now she was gatecrashing the transit system with no moneypen and twenty grand in debt to Max That wasn't going to be six hours walking-around time with no kinky stuff. Max was going to invent new perversions to pay off twenty thousand. Except it wasn't going to come to that. because she was going to catch up with Blondie, get her money back and then some.
First she had to ditch the ticket drone.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
Power fed into the gravitic induction field, and the attractors started to whirl. Biting into the soft stuff of reality like drill teeth into sandstone. It was silent work, an operation on a level far away from human senses, but in his mind Verhoevan thought he heard the space-time continuum groaning under the assault. Data flowed past the peripheral vision of his left eye. The alarming fluctuations in the carrier wave had ceased, the signal was good and strong.
'Citizens,' a voice boomed, 'I give you the President of the Union of Solar Republics.'
Verhoevan was seated six seats along and one row back from the President. He had an excellent view of the famous bull neck as the fount of all political power rose to his feet. The Rent-a-Crowd started cheering and the President grinned with pleasure, waving his left hand to calm them down. Verhoevan wondered if the man got real satisfaction from such a crowd, knowing that the cheers came on the precise cues of the Event Horizon stage managers.