Peter Hamilton - Great North Road

They had a lot of takers.

“There it is,” Ian Lanagin said, pointing through the symbols scrawling across the windshield as they rolled into Mosley Street.

Up ahead, at the junction with Grey Street, the blue and green ambulance strobes were shimmering over the fractured ice, casting weird shadows across the walls as they competed with the light-haze seeping out of club doorways and shop windows to illuminate the scene. The big vehicle was parked at an angle, blocking half of the street. Sid nudged their car left, aiming to park behind the ambulance. Proximity radar sketched red caution brackets across the windshield as the front bumper came to a halt a couple of centimeters from the mound of snow thrown up by the plows. He pulled his woolen hat down over his ears, zipped up the front of his quilted leather jacket, and stepped out into the bitter air.

The cold triggered a tear reflex that he blinked away rapidly, trying to focus on what he could see. Temperature didn’t affect the ring of smartcells around his iris that shone minuscule laser pulses down his optic nerves, overlaying the street with sharp display graphics, correlating what he looked at with coordinate locations for the visual log he was running.

As per protocol, Sid’s bodymesh—the interconnective network produced by all his smartcells—quested a link with Ian, making sure they remained in contact. Ian was represented by a small purple icon at the corner of his sight. The bodymesh also downloaded the visual log through the car’s cell and into the police network.

It was a NorthernMetroServices agency constable who’d responded to the distress code. Sid didn’t recognize him, though he knew the type well enough. His private Electronic-Identity (e-i) running inside his bodymesh performed a face capture image, logging a man barely into his twenties—and walking about with a swagger that was immediately depressing. Give him a uniform and a gram of authority and he thought he was running the city.

The agency constable’s e-i identified him as Kraemer. It immediately quested Sid’s e-i, which responded by confirming his own rank as well as activating the badge woven into his jacket, which now glowed a subtle amber. “You caught this?” Sid asked.

“Aye, sir. On scene fifty seconds after the report was logged.”

Well inside the agency’s contracted response period, Sid thought, which would help their stats at renewal time. Of course, it depended when the call was officially logged. NorthernMetroServices also ran the Newcastle emergency response center. It wasn’t unknown for the center to alert an agency constable a minute or so before they entered the call into the log, so one of their people could always beat the response time.

“Aggravated thirteen-five. Culprits ran off before I arrived.”

“Fast runners,” Sid muttered. “Seeing as you were here so quick.”

“Thump and grab, man,” Kraemer said.

“Victim name?”

“His e-i responded with Kenny Ansetal when I quested it. He was barely conscious; buggers gave him a good kicking. The paramedics have him.”

“Okay.” Sid walked around to the back of the ambulance, where the paramedics had sat the mugging victim on its egress platform to perform triage. The man was in his early thirties, with facial features that Sid’s best estimate placed as a mix of Asian and southern Mediterranean origins—which was going to play hell when he came to filling out the ethnicity section of the case file. Of course that opinion’s validity was slightly skewed by the amount of blood pouring out of the large gash on the victim’s brow. There were deep lacerations on his cheeks, too, which Sid guessed had been caused by ringblades. That much blood tended to obscure the finer features of a person’s skin.

“Hello, sir,” he called. “We’re city police. Can you tell me what happened?”

Kenny Ansetal glanced up at him and promptly vomited. Sid winced. The splatter just missed his shoes.

“I’ll go gather some witness intel,” Ian said, already backing off.

“You’re a shit,” Sid grunted.

Ian grinned, winked, and turned away. Even with the biting cold, the mugging had drawn a small crowd, who were still hanging around. What for, Sid never did understand. After all this time in the police it was about the one aspect of human instinctual psychology he could never get a handle on: People simply couldn’t resist watching someone else’s misfortune.

He waited for a minute while the paramedics managed to spray clotting foam onto Ansetal’s forehead wound; then one was sorting out his cheeks while the other performed a quick body check, acting on the information coming out of Ansetal’s bodymesh, fingers probing where smartcells were reporting damage. Judging by Ansetal’s responses, he’d taken some blows to the ribs and a knee. Kicked when he was down, Sid decided. Common enough for a thirteen-five.

“Sir, can you tell me what happened?”

This time Kenny Ansetal managed to focus. “Bastards,” he hissed.

“Try not to move your jaw too much,” the paramedic warned as he sealed up a cheek wound.

Sid recognized the anger and murmured commands to his e-i, which obediently paused the police log using an unauthorized nondepartment fix he just happened to have in a private cache. “Did you recognize your attackers?”

Ansetal shook his head.

“How many of them?”

A hand was raised, two fingers extended.

“Male?”

Another nod. “Fucking Chinese. Kids it were.”

Sid shook his head fractionally, pleased with himself for predicting Ansetal’s answers. Of course, they were common enough. Ansetal didn’t know it, but an expletive-linked ethnic identification was legally classified as a racist indicator. That would have opened up a whole world of misery for Ansetal in court if defense council got hold of a log with that on it.

“Did they take anything, sir?”

Ansetal juddered as some more sealant was applied to his cheek. “My Apple—an i-3800.”

New model personal transnet cell, Sid recalled, and top-end. He was an idiot for carrying it around the city center at this time of night. But idiocy wasn’t a crime in itself. “I’m just going to recover your visual records, sir.”

“Whatever.”

Sid held his hand close to Ansetal’s forehead and told his e-i to recover the visual memory. His palm had several smartcells configured for mesh reception, with fixes to handle most formats. The short-term memories from Ansetal’s iris smartcells downloaded into the police network. Sid watched what Ansetal had seen, closing his own eyes so he could study the images in the grid. The recording was a blur of motion. Two shadowy figures suddenly appeared, hoods drawn against the cold. Then everything degenerated into smears of motion as the beating began.

His e-i ran a capture, which showed him both assailants had the same face. Sid grunted at the familiar features: Lork Zai, the Chinese zone star who featured heavily on tabloid show hot lists these days.

“All right,” Sid said. “Now, Kenny, I’m going to give you some unofficial advice. Best if you don’t speak again.”

Ansetal gave him a puzzled look. Sid could almost see the middle-class thought processes clicking around behind his blood-painted skin. I’m the victim here, why are the police giving me warnings? The answer was simple enough, though they never got it: Never say anything that a lawyer could gain traction on in court—so just don’t say anything at all.

“Have you got full-comp crime insurance?” Judging by the relatively expensive clothes, that was a rhetorical question.

A cautious nod.

“Good. Use it. Call their emergency address. They’ll dispatch a duty lawyer to your hospital. Now, the agency constable is going to accompany you there to take a full statement. Refuse to do so until your lawyer is present. You have that right. You also have the right to refuse blood composition analysis. Understand?”