10 - Transit_玖贝云文库

Transit

By Ben Aaronovitch

Prologue

The Doctor stood alone on a Devonian beach and tried to persuade the lungfish to return to the sea.

'You won't like it,' said the Doctor.

He noticed that the fish's fins had become short stubby legs. It had become an Ichthyostega, the first true

amphibian. The

Doctor checked his watch. About two million years early at that.

'You're making a big mistake,' said the Doctor.

The amphibian ignored him, its flat head fixed on the line of cool vegetation ahead. It had covered a quarter of

the distance

across the hot white sand.

'I know it's crowded in there,' pleaded the Doctor. 'I know the food chain is overstocked, I know it's a

fish-eat-fish ocean ...'

He trailed off. The gill slits had healed up, the legs lengthened. Claws sprouted from the feet. The panting

mouth was full of

teeth.

From across the sea came the sound of thunder.

'Don't do it," said the Doctor. But too late. The reptile was suddenly flushed with hot blood. Hair sprouted over

its body, it got

off its belly and surged up the beach, getting smaller all the time.

By the time the Doctor caught up with it, the mammal was five centimetres long and cowering behind a shell.

From the forest

ahead came the crash and roar of gigantic lizards.

The Doctor hunkered down and stared at the rodent. Its small eyes gazed over the half of the beach that

remained. The Doctor

felt that it should at least look terrified but it didn't. It looked expectant.

There was a sudden scream in the stratosphere and the earth bucked under their feet. 'Did that sound like a

ship full of

Cybermen to you?' asked the Doctor. The sky went black with dust, the temperature dropped, the forest

echoed with the

meaty thump of collapsing species. 'I was there, you know,' said the Doctor. 'I lost a good friend. Not that you

care.'

The dust cleared from the sky. The sun came out. The forest was silent. The rodent ran for the treeline. The

wind blew in from

the sea, bringing the smell of salt; from the horizon dark clouds raced towards the shore. When the Doctor

looked back the

animal was walking upright, flexing its new hands. As he watched the biped shed her fur. Breasts sprouted,

the cranium

ballooned backwards, the forehead lifted. Intelligence flared in brown eyes, the co-ordinated digits of her right

hand picked up a

stick and she looked around for something to hit with it.

The storm struck the beach.

The Doctor struggled through the rain and stepped in front of the human, blocking her path. 'Don't do it!' he

shouted over the

wind. But her eyes were full of fire and dangerous ideas. She raised the stick which became a club, a sword,

a gun, a hydrogen

bomb. Lightning fused the sand around them.

'Please,' said the Doctor.

The stick came down on his face.

PART ONE

'Are you sure,' asked his companion, 'that this is the nineteen-eighties?'

The Doctor looked around. 'Which nineteen-eighties did you have in mind?'

Conversations that never happened.

1: Oncoming Trains

Olympus Mons West

Credit Card took the call from Central but he had to shout to make himself heard. Dogface was arguing over a

game of

Damage with Old Sam. Only Dogface was crazy enough to pick a fight with an old veteran like Sam, but

Dogface always said

that even Old Sam got bored with pushing people about. It was good therapy, he said, to stand up to him

from time to time. At

the time the call came in, both were in full flight, Old Sam on his feet with his two-tone dreadlocks flailing

around his head,

Biondie edging towards the door while Lambada surreptitiously cleared any breakables from the table.

Dogface was leaning

comfortably back in his chair, arms across his chest, a big eastwood clamped in his mouth. Old Sam had

cranked up to full

volume, swearing in something that had been an Indo-European language about two hundred years ago.

Credit Card figured

that the military must have augmented his lungs along with the rest of his body.

Credit Card sighed, stuck his right index finger in the slot and jacked into the system direct.

'What the hell's going on down there?'

Credit Card winced. Talking to Ming the Merciless was a pain face to face, going direct was like rubbing his

brain on a cheese

grater. 'Keep it down,' he sent, 'I'm plugged in.'

Ming the Merciless had a problem, mainly a brown-out on the Central Line which was knocking fifteen

seconds off transit time

station to station. Ming was very democratic: if she had a problem she liked to spread it around.

'We're on a break.'

Ming didn't care. She wanted the problem sorted out - now.

Credit Card pulled his finger from the socket and watched Ming doing goldfish impressions on the screen, her

mouth silently

opening and closing.

'What's Ming want?' asked Lambada.

'Brown-out on Central.'

'Again?' said Lambada.

'It's the regulators,' said Old Sam. 'They're bloody antiques.'

'Twenty-bloody-five years old,' said Dogface.

Old Sam sat down opposite Dogface and chewed the end off a fresh eastwood. 'Got a light?' he asked

Dogface, who tossed

the lighter to him. Old Sam snatched it from the air, insect fast, just to show that forty years hadn't slowed

him down none.

Credit Card plugged his finger back in. 'It's the regulators,' he told Ming.

'I know it's the regulators,' screamed Ming, 'of course it's the bloody reg ...'

Credit Card yanked his finger out again. 'She says she knows that it's the regulators.'

'I hate that Ming,' said Lambada.

'Yamatzi series five,' said Dogface. 'It's the coupling on the field controller.'

'Always dropping out of line,' said Old Sam. 'Two, maybe three, angstroms.'

'Five angstroms,' said Dogface.

'Very dodgy workmanship,' said Old Sam.

'Not like the new Nigerian regulators.'

'Japanese got no idea how to make precision gear.'

'It's not in their culture.'

'Not like the Africans.'

'Now they understand interstitial dynamics,' said Dogface. 'All that mystical stuffs second nature to them.'

'You can't swear undying loyalty to your company and then build something that relies on the transient nature

of reality as a

basic operating principle,' said Old Sam and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling.

'Common sense, innit?' said Dogface.

'So what do I tell Ming?' asked Credit Card.

'Tell her we'll get round to it later,' said Old Sam.

'Much later,' said Dogface.

'Don't you ever worry about getting the sack?' asked Lambada.

'Nah,' said Old Sam. 'Me and Dogface are the only ones who know how the system really works.'

'I could fix them,' said Blondie.

'Shut up, Blondie,' said Dogface.

STS Central - Olympus Mons

Ming the Merciless decided that banging her head violently against the console was not an effective method

of stress

management and consoled herself by screaming at the next person she saw. Once the young technician had

fled into the corridor

she sat down and considered her position.

The duty office overlooked the master control room. Colour-coded holograms displayed the system in its

entirety. Red for the

mterWorld lines like the Loop, Central Line and Outreach, orange for the commuter networks, blue for the

feeders and yellow

for the branch lines. A three-dimensional tangle of colour, each subsystem descending into a fractal infinity

while data streams in

white light marked the passage of a hundred thousand trains, fifty-six million passengers at fifty thousand

stations.

It was an animal, Ming had decided a long time ago, a vast organism with a multitude of orifices that

swallowed people and spat

them out elsewhere. Grown up from an embryo over two centuries, it encompassed the solar system and

stopped the ancient

motion of the planets. In subspace all distances are the same distance so distance became meaningless.

Orbits became an

abstraction, the distance to Mars was a function of how far away the nearest station was. For most people

the map of the

system was the map of the universe.

And now the system was ready to eat up the light years between Sol and Acturus. Amongst the tangle of

light, a new thread,

picked out in silver, and a new station - Acturus Terminal, a new line, the Stella Tunnel, the Stunnel. The

beast had yawned and

stretched out to annihilate another frontier.

The trouble is, Ming thought, the beast is sick.

Lunarversity

Kadiatu was watching The Bad News Show on English 37, lying on her back with the TV projected on to the

ceiling. It was hot

and her bare back kept sticking to the plastic skin of the mattress. The campus administration had promised

that the

environment would be fixed soon, but what with recent cutbacks students weren't holding their breaths. Bad

News was showing

a jumpy video of a security raid in Melbourne, intensified images shot over the shoulder of the lead policeman.

Yak Harris, the

Bad News anchorman, was making a big deal out of the way the camera operators wore full combat armour,

'Better than the

real cops'. Yak chortled ruefully as one of the policemen went down with a bullet in the face. 'Just goes to

show, you can't be

too well protected,' Right on cue they ran a twenty-second advert for personal armour - 'How safe are you?' -

and Yak was

back with the latest body count over a slowmo action replay of the cop's death. Vivaldi in the background as

the body toppled

lazily downwards. 'Let's see that from another angle,' said Yak Harris and smiled his perfect

computer-generated smile.

Kadiatu's stomach rumbled.

She turned off the TV and rolled to her feet. At head height the air was hotter and smelt of zinc. Kadiatu

wrapped a sarong

around her breasts, pushed her moneypen through her braids and opened the door. Some of the students had

pulled their

mattresses out into the corridor to take advantage of the slight breeze that blew down its length. By the time

she reached the

refectory sweat was trickling down between her shoulder blades and thighs, and the cotton of the sarong

stuck to her skin as

she moved. The refectory was deserted, dark and even hotter than her room. On the far wall, opposite the

entrance glowed the

drink dispenser. 'Solar Cola' in cool blue neon letters. Kadiatu paused at me door and looked round the

cavernous interior.

Granny bashers sometimes infiltrated the campus. They'd take you apart with their own hands just to get

enough for the next fix.

Some poor bastard from Sociology had been jumped a week ago and was spending the rest of the year in a

vat growing a new

spinal column. The entrance cast an aisle of light fifteen metres across the floor to the drinks dispenser -

'Cool Refreshing Solar

Cola'. On either side she couid make out the flat shadows of tables stretching away into the darkness.

Squaring her shoulders,

Kadiatu set out with studied nonchalance. It was silent except for the hum of the dispenser's refrigeration unit

and the slap of her

bare feet on the vinyl floor,

She was halfway across when she heard the noise, a muffled whirring, snorting sound, somewhere off to her

right. She stopped

and slowly turned towards the sound. It was low down under the tables and coming towards her, snuffling like

a dog.

Except you didn't get dogs on Luna. Or only in restaurants. There were rules. Kadiatu saw movement, just a

shape, low slung

with close-set red eyes, a prehensile snout weaving from side to side as it advanced. You didn't run from

animals, she knew

that. She just wished she knew what the other options were. It was too late, the animal was there, darting out

between the

tables, its snout whipping round to strike at her legs. Kadiatu jumped out of the way and watched the

cleaning robot zip past.

The two red laser sensors mounted above its suction hose probed for obstacles as it vacuumed the floor.

'Piss off,' shouted Kadiatu as the machine vanished into the shadows again.

I come from six generations of fighting men and women, thought Kadiatu, and I get freaked out by a domestic

robot. They'll be

doing orbits in the family vault tonight.

Kadiatu walked the last few metres. She was sure that the air was getting hotter in the refectory. She

pressed her cheek against

the cool plastic of the Solar Cola machine and slotted in her moneypen. Nothing happened. 'Please,' she said

softly trying all the

combinations. 'I'll drink anything, as long as it's cold and wet.' Kadiatu slid slowly down on to her knees.

You'd think, she thought, that since we were an intelligent species we'd have attended to the details. That

we'd build an

air-conditioning system that can deal with the two-week lunar day, that we'd at least remember, when the

temperature was up in

the thirties, to refill the bloody Solar Cola machine.

She turned round and pressed her back against the cool flank of the dispenser. You'd think, thought Kadiatu

as the

condensation trickled down her back, that I could make a student loan last the whole term.

The cleaning robot sidled up and sniffed her feet to see if she were rubbish.

'I've got to get out of this place,' said Kadiatu.

Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)

Ming stepped out of a VIP shuttle on to the new Central Line platform. The terminal complex was being built

into the bedrock

under the permafrost of the Martian pole, half the world from Olympus Mons - one stop up the line and three

minutes by

Transit. Only half the light fittings had been installed and a team of artificers were still laying the red and

green ceramic finish on

the platform walls. Ming called up the building schedule on her clipboard: the platform should have been ready

for over two

days. Most managers had a data projector chipped direct into their retinas but Ming liked to see where she

was going and

besides, you could hit people with a clipboard. A big silver arrow pointed at a wide exit. At least the direction

holograms were

up.

The galleria was filled with noise and dust. Both walkways were in place but the consumer outlets were still

big gaps in the

walls. Here and there, messages in spray paint indicated that the space had been leased in advance. A

Kwik-Kurry franchise -

'Service in thirty seconds or your money back!' -was already doing trade off portable stoves, and the smell of

spices mingled

with the cement dust. Off-shift workers squatted in little groups eating curried goat with their fingers.

When the complex was operational passengers would pass through the galleria on their way to the Stunnel

terminus. It was

hoped that it would generate enough profit to cover the Stunnel operating costs. Only the Central Line would

run direct trains

through to Acturus and then only two an hour. The Acturans were still bargaining to up the number of through

trains but STS

had put its foot down. They talked about smuggling, criminals and terrorists escaping from justice, even the

chance that some

stupid Vrik would try free-surfing the Stunnel, but Ming knew it was really a question of money. The Stunnel's

R&D costs had

almost bankrupted the network, with Reykjavik talking about another fare freeze. If they didn't recover the

operating costs

through the ancillary income then STS would suffer a financial collapse, the knock-on effect would sink the

rest of Sol's

economy, chaos would stalk the land and billions would starve. At least that's the way thc-board of directors

told it. Hectares of

office space and housing were being lasered out of the rock to the north and south of the galleria. The total

investment was

staggering, it would be the biggest single below-ground complex of its type in personspace. It was being said

that the STS

financial comptroller was visiting his acupuncturist so often he looked like a pin cushion.

The actual terminus was something else again.

Lowell Depot (Central Line Terminus)

Dogface and Blondie were heading for the end of the line riding a maintenance engine up the Central Line's

freight tunnels. The

engine was open-decked and Blondie, who'd been a floozie for less than a month, kept his eyes narrowed

down to slits. Unlike

the enclosed and shielded passenger trains, the engine was rendered insubstantial by the boundary effect.

Only the field

controller, a black sphere that pulled the ghost train towards the tunnel's vanishing point, retained any

solidity. Lambada said

that looking too closely at infinity could turn your brain inside out. Dogface slouched in the cockpit, staring

around him at the

hallucinatory patterns of the tunnel wall with studied nonchalance. Lambada called that 'bad acid macho', but

Blondie noticed

that she went up front just the same when she rode the flat tops. The shifting streams of colour were

punctuated by blasts of

reality as they flashed through the stations on their way to Pluto and the edge of the system.

Lowell Depot was stuck in the middle of a low-rent housing project known to the media as 'Aryan Heights' and

locally as 'the

Stop'. Dogface coasted the engine into the freight dock just ahead of a cargo flatbed. Blondie watched as the

robot handlers

unshipped plywood crates of food and drink, all of them the cheapest possible generic brands. With eighty

per cent of the

Stop's inhabitants on welfare, even the crates would be cannibalized for furniture and firewood. The flatbed

would run back

empty. Nothing of any value came out of the Stop.

Dogface grabbed his kit and they walked down the narrow connecting corridor towards the passenger

platforms. It terminated

in a security door to keep people from hitching free rides on the flatbeds. Dogface unlocked it with his index

finger and the door

hissed open. The platform beyond was clean. Platforms for the InterWorld lines usually were. It was the

feeder lines that got

knee-deep in garbage. A small group of people in dowdy overwashed clothes waited with quiet resignation for

the next train.

They were body servants, cooks, cleaners, the Stop's second biggest export. Further up the platform stood

young men and

women with feet jammed into high-heeled boots, thighs into fishnets, breasts overflowing bra cups, buttocks

wrapped in lycra,

the white flesh crammed into the selling clothes - the Stop's principal export waiting to go to work. As they

walked past Blondie

tried keeping his head down but it didn't work. Someone called his name, his real name, and he turned to

look without thinking.

'Hey Zak, wait up!'

He almost didn't recognize Zamina as she clicked towards him, face hidden under a layer of skin tone.

Blondie looked at

Dogface who shrugged and walked on - he could catch up in a minute.

'Well, look at you,' said Zamina, looking him up and down, her tongue clicking on her teeth. 'Pretty drab.'

'Not like you,' said Blondie. He could see faint lines on her pale skin running over the neckline of her halter

top. An implant job,

he realized, and a sloppy one at that. Zamina caught him looking and adjusted the top a bit to cover the

scars.

'They said you'd got out, but I figured you for catfood by now.'

'I got lucky,' he said.

Zamina licked her lips. Stop protocol said you didn't ask questions but they'd been friends once, lovers even

in a mindless

adolescent fashion. Blondie could feel her need to escape as an almost physical force dragging at him. How

long did Zamina

have? Two, three years? You got old fast in the Stop.

Dogface whistled at him from the far end of the station.

'Gotta go, Zimmy,' he said.

'Give us a call sometime,' she said as he turned away.

'Sure,' he said but he knew he wouldn't. When you got out of the Stop you never went back. You never called

and you tried

not to think about the people you left behind.

Dogface had the access panel open and was probing inside with his finger sensors. 'When's the next train?'

Blondie checked the hologram hanging over the platform. 'Two minutes.'

'We'll see how the next one runs through,' said Dogface, 'and take it from there. See if you can get

Lambada.'

Blondie plugged into the maintenance link. The implants still itched when he did it but he'd been told that was

normal for the first

six months or so. Some of the Stoppers on the platform were watching them. Blondie could make out Zimmy

standing with her

back to him.

'Wake up, Blondie,' said Lambada on the link from Mercury

'We're just waiting for a train,' sent Blondie. At this distance there was a timelag even with the signal going

through the tunnels.

'Get a move on,' said Lambada, 'me and Sam are freezing our arses off down here.'

Blondie felt a breeze lift the hair on the back of his head. A murmur came from the people on the platform and

the hologram

changed to 'Train Approaching'. With a sudden rush of warm air and an ozone stink the train shot from the

tunnel into the

station.

'Everybody stand by,' said Dogface.

Blondie took a deep breath and accessed the system.

'I can taste something.'

'What?'

'Cinnamon, I think.'

'Relax, Blondie,' said Lambada, 'that's just static.'

'She's loading up,' said Dogface.

Blondie could see the train through the link. The train, designation IW56 series 2 class B, mass 14,000

kilograms at 1 gravity.

Sensors in the carriage floor counted the footsteps as the passengers boarded. Thirty-one passengers adding

2,325 kilograms,

under the average for the station and well within safety parameters.

The door-closing hooter sounded in the real world and almost snapped Blondie out of the link.

The train's field regulator charged up, and the gateway field flickered and strobed as air molecules were

sucked into the tunnel.

Then with ponderous grace fourteen tonnes of metal, ceramic, copper and human flesh surged forward to start

its journey

through subspace.

'Did you get that?' asked Dogface.

'I saw it,' said Lambada, 'but what was it?'

'We lost fifteen seconds on that transfer,' said Old Sam.

'Was it the regulators?' asked Blondie.

'Screw the regulators,' said Dogface. 'Somebody's stealing power from the tunnels.'

Lunarversity

Max had his place in an unfinished side tunnel off Yeltsin Plaza. The entrance was blocked off with a

repeating hologram of a

crate shack, complete with a family of destitute Australians. To get in Kadiatu had to step through the

pot-bellied girl who

endlessly came to stand in the doorway every two minutes or so. Max called it his taste barrier. Inside Max

was kneeling half

naked in front of a fan, his nose pressed against the grill, dirty blond hair blowing over his scrawny shoulders.

'Lend us some money,' said Kadiatu, moving behind Max to catch the breeze from the fan.

'What have you got?' said Max.

Kadiatu was stuck. Max would take anything. His shelves were piled with junk, ring pull cans, software, sim

tapes, litre jars of

preserved fruit, packets of suspicious pharmaceuticals. If it could be sold, bartered or used. Max did.

'Nothing,' said Kadiatu. 'I want a loan.'

'Go to a bank.'

It was a tough opening move and Kadiatu, haggling from a position of weakness, played for time. 'There's a

recession going on,'

she said, 'or hadn't you noticed?' Important to find what he wanted from her, he must want something or the

bargaining wouldn't

have started.

'Things are tough all over,' said Max.

The dismissive tone was a bad sign; whatever he wanted Kadiatu wasn't going to like it. 'If you can't help, you

can't help.'

Kadiatu went to leave, and the bastard let her get right up to the edge of the hologram before speaking.

'Your body, six hours,' said Max.

Big mistake. Max, thought Kadiatu, should have named the price and let me sweat. Now I know what you

want. But how

badly do you want it?

'No chance,' said Kadiatu and stepped forward.

'You haven't asked how much?' said Max quickly, too quickly.

Kadiatu turned with deliberate slowness, let him see the merchandise, all those muscles, all that grace. Bad

weakness, that,

wanting to be what you're not. Max had twisted to stare at her, making the tendons stand out on his thin

neck; he was trying to

hide the hunger in his eyes. No mercy, though; Kadiatu, it's a dog-eat-dog world and the richer you are, the

more dog you eat.

"You couldn't afford the price.'

'Nothing kinky,' said Max. 'I just want to walk around in it for a while.'

'Just to walk around in?' said Kadiatu, and then, just to show willing: 'How much?'

'Piece of a deal,' said Max.

'What's the deal worth?'

'Twenty thousand.'

'And I get?'

'Fifteen per cent.'

She squatted on her haunches so that their eyes were level. 'Tell you what we'll do,' she said. 'I get the fifteen

points as a loan,

you get six hours walking-around time in my body if I don't pay back within three months.'

She could see Max fighting himself. It was a terrible deal for him, but he wanted it. Wanted to spend six

hours wrapped up in

her skin. His weakness, her strength.

'Deal,' he said.

When they shook hands on it, his palms were damp. Max straightened up, walked over to a shelf. He picked

up a small oblong

package and handed it to Kadiatu. It felt like a wooden case wrapped in rice paper, quite heavy. She didn't

ask what was

inside. 'You take this to STS maintenance, ask for Old Sam, get the money, skim your percentage and bring

the rest back.'

Kadiatu tucked the package under her arm and left.

She got as far as the next intersection before the deal unwound in her stomach and she vomited onto the

floor.

10 - Transit

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