Peter Hamilton - Great North Road

“Good stuff, cy-tech. I’m sure you’ve got better today.”

“We have.”

“I’ll remember that for next time.”

“Angela.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He tried to smile again, but a glob of blood spilled out of his mouth. “You have to see the end of this. I trust you, Angela. The Lord has shown me your true self. You are worthy of His love. Finish this properly. For me.”

“Elston.” Her e-i was questing Coniff, for the others, for help. It reported that a file was being sent to her on a secure link from Elston’s bodymesh.

“I understand now,” he said. “She’s wonderful. A surprise, just like you. You did the right thing.”

“Hold on,” she urged, and squeezed his hand.

A large spurt of blood gushed out of Elston’s mouth. “My Lord is calling. I will wait for you, Angela. We will meet again in His grace.”

“Vance—”

“Ha, first time…”

Angela watched a small smile lift his lips. Then he was staring at something beyond her, an expression of relief and hope filling his pained eyes at the last. In her grid, all his physiological readouts turned red, then bleached down to white. Her head snapped around to the monster, which was standing passively beside Rebka. “You son-of-a-bitch.” She brought her hands up—and fuck the broken insulation.

“He tried to destroy my world, everything I am,” the monster sent down the link.

“You killed him. You killed everyone.” Confronting her nightmare of twenty years was chilling her far more than any blizzard ever could. She wasn’t sure how long she could restrain herself.

“Examine the file he sent you. Examine the genocide weapon you have in the biolab. Tell me then who is evil, who is the murderer.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Angela regarded the urbane monster in dismay as she hugged her hands to her chest to shelter them from the subzero wind. She couldn’t even feel the pain from the talons anymore. Drops of her blood had frozen into lumps around the small tears where they’d punctured her fingertips.

“You were so full of life, Angela. Once. The most delightful human I ever knew; the most human human, despite the deception you were living. Your soul is not something you can disguise. Have you lost that zest? Is it only ever to be the coldhearted who judge me?”

“What the fuck are you?” she bellowed against the blizzard.

The monster’s shape changed—softening.

Angela swayed backward. Of all the things she’d braced herself for, a North in a parka and quilted trousers wasn’t one of them. “You’re not Bastian North,” she said to the thing, forcing herself to believe it. “So what are you?”

“I speak for this world.”

“Zebediah North.”

“I was. For a long time.” And amid the thick snow and treacherous gloaming illumination the humanoid shape lost cohesion, as if the North had only ever been a specter. Angela even doubted her brief memory.

“Yet you couldn’t be,” she told the monster. “Because he was never Barclay North to begin with. You murdered Barclay back at the mansion. So what are you? A different kind of clone?”

“I mirror Barclay North. In one respect I still am him, for I retain his essence. You loved me once, Angela, or so I thought. Even in my rage at what your kind had done to me, I cherished that thought.”

“You hesitated,” she said in astonishment. “That night twenty years ago, when you came out of Bartram’s bedroom, you hesitated. That’s why I survived.”

“Just like humans, I make mistakes. That and you do pack quite a punch. Who knew?”

“Why did you kill them all? The Norths, those poor helpless girls… Why?”

“Why do you kill me? You slash, you burn, you poison; and now you bring a weapon that will destroy all my life on this world.”

“I… didn’t know that.” She told her e-i to open Elston’s file.

Angela went in first. Four carbines were aimed at her as she came out of biolab-1’s door compartment. Jay, Roarke, Omar, and Paresh who were holding them had hyped themselves up on fear and adrenaline. It wasn’t a good combination, not if you were facing that many muzzles, all of which were shaking to some degree.

“Come on, guys, it’s only me,” Angela said as she carefully unwound the scarf from her face. As soon as she came into contact with the cabin’s warm air her frozen blood droplets began to melt, mingling with the ice clinging to her hands. Sensation was creeping back into her extremities, as if she’d been stung by a wasp on each finger.

But they weren’t listening to her, they were looking at the other two figures in the door compartment: Rebka in her metamolecule armor and the hulking Barclay-avatar with its five-bladed hands.

“Get down,” Paresh pleaded desperately.

“Stop it,” she told him. “There’s nothing to fear, this is Rebka and—”

“Who?”

“Madeleine. You know her as Madeleine.”

Rebka’s armor flowed away from her face, and she smiled out stoically. “Hi.”

Paresh kept looking at Angela along the carbine’s barrel. “Down,” he whispered.

“Listen to me,” Angela said slowly. “All of you. Put your weapons down. There is to be no more violence. We agreed to that.”

“It killed Elston,” Jay said. “And you’re part of this, you’re its partner.”

“A part of what?” Angela studied the fear on Jay’s face, and knew she’d never win him over. “Paresh. Omar. Listen to me, the time for killing and weapons is over. We have to salvage this another way, we have to think and act like rational creatures. Now, please put the weapons down. We all know they’re no good against the avatar. The only thing you’ll damage with bullets in here is us and the bulkheads.”

Omar glanced at Paresh for a lead, as she knew he would. She kept eye contact with her devoted puppy boy, smiling encouragement. “It’s me, Paresh,” she said. “I’m telling you this is the only way we’re all going to get out of this. And you know I wouldn’t lie to you. You know that, don’t you? Please. Trust me.” She could see the uncertainty building, his need to believe in her. “It’s me. Okay. Me!”

“What’s going to happen if we put the weapons down?” Paresh asked.

“Corporal!” Jay yelled. “You keep that fucking thing covered.”

“Until you have a chance to launch the missiles?” Angela asked sharply. “That’s not going to happen. Not without Elston’s codes.”

“How did you know…”

She gave Paresh an expectant glance. “It’ll be all right. Really it will.”

Paresh let out a long sigh, and raised his weapon, engaging the safety. “Stand down,” he told Omar.

“No,” Jay said.

Paresh put his hand on the barrel of Jay’s carbine and forced it down. “This is over. You and I don’t get to decide this.”

“Thank you,” Angela said. She turned to face the decontam air lock door at the back of the compartment. Her e-i told her it was locked, and not even Elston’s code could open it. She quested a link to Antrinell. “Open it up, please.”

“I always knew you were part of whatever was going on,” Antrinell replied.

“Then you were always wrong. I am not a part of anything. I never have been. Even Elston knew that in the end.”

“Why have you brought that creature here?”

“Because we have to finish this,” she said. “We have to destroy the zero metavirus.”

“That’s the only leverage we have. It’s been trying to get in here since the start, so it must fear the weapon. That’s all we have left to use against it.”

“No, Antrinell, we have our humanity. We can show St. Libra what we really are. That we are mature enough to venture out into the galaxy and take our rightful place in God’s creation.”