The Night's Dawn Trilogy (174 page)

“Have you a record of any being imported by a museum or a private vehicle collector?” Landon McCullock asked patiently.

“The AIs can’t find one.”

“Jenny Harris reported a phenomenon similar to this back on Lalonde,” Ralph said. “She saw a fanciful riverboat when I sent
her on that last mission. They’d altered its appearance so it seemed old-fashioned, something from Earth’s pre-technology
times.”

“Christ,” Landon McCullock muttered.

“Makes sense,” Diana said. “We’re still getting a correct identification code from its processors. They must have thrown this
illusion around the Longhound.” The hypersonic closed on the bus, sliding in over the motorway, barely a hundred metres up.
Below it, the omnirover was weaving from side to side with complete disregard for the lane markings. The ceaseless and random
movement made it difficult for the pilot to stay matched directly overhead.

Ralph realized what had been bothering his subconscious, and requested a visual sensor to zoom in. “That’s more than just
a holographic illusion,” he said after studying the image. “Look at the bus’s shadow under those lights, it matches the outline.”

“How do they do that?” Diana asked. Her voice was full of curiosity, with a hint of excitement bleeding in.

“Try asking Santiago Vargas,” Vicky Keogh told her sharply.

“I can’t even think of a theory that would allow us to manipulate solid surfaces like that,” Diana said defensively.

Ralph grunted churlishly. He’d had a similar conversation back on Lalonde when they were trying to figure out how the LDC’s
observation satellite was being jammed. No known principle. The whole concept of an energy virus was a radical one.

“Possession,” Santiago Vargas called it.

Ralph shivered. His Christian belief had never been that strongly rooted, but like a good Kingdom subject, it was always there.
“Our immediate concern is what do we do about the bus. You might manage to land AT Squad teams on the thing if they were equipped
with airpack flight suits, but they can hardly jump down from the hypersonic.”

“Use the SD platforms to chop up the motorway ahead of it,” Admiral Farquar suggested. “Force it to stop that way.”

“Do we know how many people were on board?” Landon McCullock asked.

“Full complement when it left Pasto spaceport, I’m afraid,” Diana reported.

“Damn. Sixty people. We have to make at least an effort to halt it.”

“We’d have to reinforce the AT Squads first,” Ralph said. “Three hypersonics isn’t enough. And you’d have to stop the bus
precisely in the centre of a cordon. With sixty possible hostiles riding on it, we’d have to be very certain no one broke
through. That’s wild-looking countryside out there.”

“We can have reinforcements there in another seven minutes,” Bernard Gibson said.

“Shit—” It was a datavise from the pilot. A big javelin of white fire streaked up from the bus, punching the hypersonic’s
belly. The plane quaked, then peeled away rapidly, almost rolling through ninety degrees. Bright sparkling droplets of molten
ceramic sprayed out from the gaping hole in its fuselage to splash and burn on the motorway’s surface. Its aerodynamics wounded,
it started juddering continuously, losing height. The pilot tried desperately to right it, but he was already too low. He
came to the same conclusion as the flight computer and activated the crash protection system.

Foam under enormous pressure fired into the cabin, swamping the AT Squad members. Valency generators turned it solid within
a second.

The plane hit the ground, ploughing a huge gash through the vegetation and soft black loam. Nose, wings, and tailplane crumpled
and tore, barbed fragments spinning off into the night. The bulky cylinder which was the cabin carried on for another seventy
metres, flinging off structural spars and smashed ancillary modules. It came to a jarring halt, thudding into a steep earthen
bluff.

The valency generators cut off, and foam sluiced out of the wreckage, mingling with the mud. Figures stirred weakly inside.

Bernard Gibson let out a painful breath. “I think they’re all okay.”

One of the other two hypersonics was circling back towards the crash. The second took up position a respectful kilometre behind
the bus.

“Oh, Christ,” Vicky Keogh groaned. “The bus is slowing. They’re going to get off.”

“Now what?” the Prime Minister demanded. He sounded frightened and angry.

“One AT Squad can’t possibly contain them,” Ralph said. It was like speaking treason. I betrayed those people. My failure.
“There are sixty people on that bus,” an aghast Warren As-pinal exclaimed. “We might be able to cure them.”

“Yes, sir, I know that.” Ralph hardened his expression, disguising how worthless he felt, and looked at Landon McCullock.
The police chief obviously wanted to argue; he glanced at his deputy, who shrugged helplessly.

“Admiral Farquar?” Landon McCullock datavised.

“Yes.”

“Eliminate the bus.”

Ralph watched through the hypersonic’s sensor suite as the laser blast from low orbit struck the fantasm vehicle. Just for
an instant he saw the silhouette of the real Longhound inside the illusory cloak, as if the purpose of the weapon was really
to expose truths. Then the energy barrage incinerated the bus along with a thirty-metre-diameter circle of road.

When he looked around the faces of everyone sitting at Hub One, he saw his own dismay and horror bounced right back at him.

It was Diana Tiernan who held his gaze, her kindly old face crumpled up with tragic sympathy. “I’m sorry, Ralph,” she said.
“We weren’t quick enough. The AIs have just told me the bus stopped at the first four towns on its scheduled route.”

Al Capone dressed as Al Capone had always dressed: with
style
. He wore a double-breasted blue serge suit, a paisley pattern silk tie, black patent leather shoes, and a pearl-grey fedora,
rakishly aslant. Gold rings set with a rainbow array of deep precious stones glinted on every finger, a duck-egg diamond on
his pinkie.

It hadn’t taken him long to decide that the people in this future world didn’t have much in the way of fashion sense. The
suits he could see all followed the same loose silk design, although their colourful slimline patterns made them appear more
like flappy Japanese pyjamas. Those not in suits wore variants on vests and sports shirts. Tight-fitting, too, at least for
people under thirty-five. Al had stared at the dolls to start with, convinced they were all hookers. What kind of decent gal
would dress like that, with so much showing? Skirts which almost didn’t cover their ass, shorts that weren’t much better.
But no. They were just ordinary, smiling, happy, everyday girls. The people living in this city weren’t so strung up on morality
and decency. What would have given a Catholic priest apoplexy back home didn’t raise an eyebrow here.

“I think I’m gonna like this life,” Al declared.

Strange life that it was. He seemed to have been reincarnated as a magician: a real magician, not like the fancy tricksters
he’d booked for his clubs back in Chicago. Here, whatever he wanted appeared out of nowhere.

That had taken a long while to get used to. Think and…
pow
. There it was, everything from a working Thompson to a silver dollar glinting in the hot sun. Goddamn useful for clothes,
though. Brad Lovegrove had worn overalls of shiny dark red fabric like some kind of pissant garbage collector.

Al could hear Lovegrove whimpering away inside him, like having a leprechaun nesting at the centre of his brain. He was bawling
like a complete bozo, and making about as much sense. But there was some gold among the dross, twenty-four-karat nuggets.
Like—when he first got his marbles together Al had thought this world was maybe Mars or Venus. Not so. New California didn’t
even orbit the same sun as Earth. And it wasn’t the twentieth century no more.

Je-zus, but a guy needed a drink to help keep that from blowing his head apart.

And where to get a drink? Al imagined the little leprechaun being squeezed, as if his brain were one giant muscle. Slowly
contracting.

A macromall on the intersection between Longwalk and Sunrise, Lovegrove squealed silently. There’s a specialist store there
with liquor from every Confederation planet, probably even got Earth bourbon.

Drinks from clear across the galaxy! How about that?

So Al started walking. It was a lovely day.

The sidewalk was so wide it was more like a boulevard in itself; there were no paving slabs, instead the whole strip had been
made from a seamless sheet, a material which was a cross between marble and concrete. Luxuriant trees sprouted up through
craters in the surface every forty yards or so, their two-foot sprays of floppy oval flowers an impossible shade of metallic
purple.

He spotted a few trashcan-sized trucks trundling sedately among the walkers enjoying the late-morning sunshine, machinery
smoother than Henry Ford had ever dreamed of. Utility mechanoids, Lovegrove told him, cleaning the sidewalk, picking up litter
and fallen leaves.

The base of each skyscraper was given over to classy delis and bars and restaurants and coffee shops; tables spilled out onto
the sidewalk, just like a European city. Arcades pierced deep into the buildings.

From what Al could see, it was the same kind of rich man’s playground setup on the other side of the street, maybe a hundred
and fifty yards away. Not that you could walk over to be sure, there was no way past the eight-foot-high glass and metal barrier
which lined the road.

Al stood with his face pressed to the glass for some time, watching the silent cars zoom past. Big bullets on wheels. All
of them shiny, like coloured chrome. You didn’t even have to steer them no more, Lovegrove told him, they did it themselves.
Some kind of fancy electrical engine, no gas. And the speed, over two hundred kilometres an hour.

Al knew all about kilometres; they were what the French called miles.

But he wasn’t too sure about using a car that he couldn’t drive himself, not when it travelled that fast. And anyway, his
presence seemed to mommick up electricity. So he stuck to walking.

The skyscrapers gave him vertigo they were so tall, and all you could see when you looked up at them was reflections of more
skyscrapers. They seemed to bend over the street, imprisoning the world below. Lovegrove told him they were so high that their
tops were designed to sway in the wind, rocking twenty-thirty metres backwards and forwards in slow motion.

“Shut up,” Al growled.

The leprechaun curled up tighter, like a knotted snake.

People looked at Al—his clothes. Al looked at people, fascinated and jubilant. It was a jolt seeing blacks and whites mixing
free, other types too, light-skinned Mediterranean like his own, Chinese, Indian. Some seemed to have dyed their hair completely
the wrong colour. Amazing.

And they all appeared so much at ease with themselves, owning a uniform inner smile. They had a nonchalance and surety which
he’d never seen before. The devil which drove so many people back in the twenties was missing, as if the city elders had abolished
worry altogether.

They also had astonishingly good health. After a block and a half Al still hadn’t seen anyone remotely overweight. No wonder
they wore short clothes. A world where everyone was in permanent training for the big game, even the seventy-year-olds.

“You still got baseball, ain’t you?” Al muttered under his breath.

Yes, Lovegrove confirmed.

Yep, paradise all right.

After a while he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He’d been walking for a quarter of an hour, and it didn’t
look as if he’d got anywhere. The massive avenue of skyscrapers hadn’t changed at all.

“Hey, buddy,” he called.

The black guy—who looked like a prizefighter—turned and gave an amused grin as he took in Al’s clothes. His arm was around
a girl: Indian skin, baby blonde hair. Her long legs were shown off by a pair of baggy culottes.

Cutie pie, Al thought, and grinned at her. A real sweater girl. It suddenly struck him that he hadn’t hit the sack with a
woman for six centuries.

She smiled back.

“How do I call a cab around here?”

“Datavise the freeway processors, my man,” the black guy said expansively. “City runs a million cabs. Don’t make a profit.
But then that’s what us dumb taxpayers are for, to make up the shortfall, right?”

“I can’t do the data thing, I ain’t from around here.”

The girl giggled. “You just get off a starship?”

Al tipped the rim of his fedora with two fingers. “Kind of, lady. Kind of.”

“Neat. Where you from?”

“Chicago. On Earth.”

“Hey, wow. I never met anyone from Earth before. What’s it like?”

Al’s grin lost its lustre. Je-zus, but the women here were forward. And the black guy’s thick arm was still draped over her
shoulder. He didn’t seem to mind his girl making conversation with a total stranger. “One city’s just like another,” Al said;
he gestured lamely at the silver skyscrapers, as if that was explanation enough.

“City? I thought you only had arcologies on Earth?”

“Look, you going to tell me how to get a fucking cab, or what?”

He’d blown it. The moment he saw the man’s expression harden, he knew.

“You want us to call one for you,
buddy
?” The man was taking a longer, slower look at Al’s clothes.

“Sure,” Al bluffed.

“Okay. No problem. It’s done.” A phony smile. Al wondered exactly what it was the man had actually done. He didn’t have no
Dick Tracy wrist radio to call for a cab or anything. Just stood there, smiling, playing Al for a sucker.

Lovegrove was filling Al’s head with crap about miniature telephones in the brain. He had one fitted himself, he said, but
it had packed up when Al possessed him.

“Going to tell me about Chicago now?” the girl asked.

Al could see how worried she was. Her voice, mannerisms, the way she had merged into her man’s encircling arm. They all telegraphed
it, and he knew how to read the signs. Fear in other people was wholly familiar.