Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

His grin broadens at the ping, and he calls the stewardbot over.

It is all manufactured. Erik, his location, his responses, are in fact all being cooked up by a simulacrum program running in a large processor kube on the arcology’s seventy-fifth floor. The same suite of abandoned rooms where Erik’s unconscious body is lying, fastened to a field-medical cot. But the program has fooled Imelda and she hurries on through the plaza.

Her route takes her out through one of the side paths before turning into a narrow opening between two buildings. The alleys here form a small maze as they link up to the rear of a dozen commercial buildings. But she’s perfectly safe. The walls might be high, and old, and dark; there may be rubbish scattered over the concrete, and there may not be any people about, but this is Kuhmo, and she remains linked to the cybersphere. Imelda is a thoroughly modern child of the Commonwealth, she knows that safety and the police are only the speed of a thought away.

A lustrous green regrav capsule descends into the alley ahead of her. It’s unusual, but she doesn’t hesitate. She’s mildly puzzled, because it’s a large capsule, and she sees it’s going to be difficult for her to squeeze round. Just how stupid and inconsiderate is the pilot program?

Her link to the cybersphere falls away. Imelda comes to an uncertain halt, frowning suspiciously at the capsule. She’s never been disconnected since the macrocellular clusters became active the year she reached sexual maturity. The cybersphere and beyond that the all-embracing Commonwealth unisphere are her eternal companions; they are her right , she thinks crossly. Even now, fear is alien to her. This is the Commonwealth.

A malmetal door expands on the regrav capsule. Paul Alkoff steps out. The Protectorate team’s chief is a tall man, over four hundred years old, and twenty years out of rejuvenation; like just about everyone with an Advancer genetic heritage his biological age is locked into his early thirties.

‘You’re in the way,’ Imelda protests. ‘And I think your capsule is messing with reception.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Paul says. A quick review of his exoimages shows him their kube is producing an optimum digital shadow of Imelda. Friends and family all think she’s still walking along the alley en route to the café. He holds his left hand up towards her, and the smallest weapon he’s wetwired with fires a stun pulse.

Imelda feels nothing. The world shifts round her, and she realizes she’s fallen to the ground. There is no pain from the impact, though she knows she hit her head and shoulder hard. She heard the crack they made. There is no sensation from anywhere in her body now. She can neither blink nor move her eyeballs. However, her neural hands are not physical, she moves them across icons, triggering every security alert she possesses. There is no response. Shapes appear above her. Men, but out of focus. There is more movement. She is carried into the capsule. It is dark inside. Her mind is screaming, gibbering for help. No one can hear, there is no linkage. She is alone.

The green capsule rises out of the alley and slips back into the designated travel path above the nearest thoroughfare. It is a brief journey to the base of the arcology which now lies deep in the monstrosity’s umbra, then the capsule rises up the side until it reaches the seventy-fifth floor and edges its way through a fissure in the outer wall.

At one time, in the decades after the arcology was built, the apartments up here on the upper levels were all packed to capacity, and the central malls buzzed with activity all day long. But that was seven hundred years ago, following the Starflyer War, when the entire population of Hanko was relocated to Anagaska. People were grateful for any accommodation they were given in the terrible aftermath of their homeworld’s destruction. Once they had recovered their equilibrium, they began to build out from the arcology, covering the fresh open landscape with new suburbs. Families started to drain away out of the arcology to live in the less confined homes springing up along the new grid of roads. The vision back then was for a town that would continue to grow and establish new industries. Growth, though, proved expensive, and investment on poor old sidelined Anagaska was never abundant. Much cheaper and easier for the town council to refurbish sections of the arcology to keep their community going. In later centuries even that philosophy stalled, and the whole edifice began to deteriorate from the top downwards. Now the giant city-in-a-building is a decaying embarrassment, with no one capable of providing a satisfactory solution.

Dank water from a slimed ceiling drips on the immaculate green skin of the regrav capsule as it settles on a cracked and buckled concrete floor. The cavernous hall used to be an exemplary mall, with shops bars and offices. Today it is a squalid embalmed memory of the comfortable times long gone. The only light comes from rents in the outer walls, while the ancient superstrength structural spars are sagging as they succumb to gravity and entropy. Not even the town’s bad boys venture up to these levels to conduct their nefarious affairs.

Paul and his team member Ziggy Kare carry Imelda from the capsule into one of the abandoned shops. Its walls are dry, if filthy, and the floor is reasonably level. The stun pulse effect is slowly wearing off, allowing Imelda to move her eyes slightly. She sees signs of the new occupants, plyplastic furniture expanded out to form tables and chairs; red-tinged lights, electronic equipment, power cells — all the elements of a sophisticated covert operation. In one of the small rooms they pass she sees a field-medical cot. Erik is lying on it. Her eyes widen in consternation, but her throat remains unresponsive as she tries to shout.

The next room contains a great deal of equipment which she doesn’t understand. There is however a face she recognizes. Only a face. Her gorgeous friend’s head is sitting inside a transparent bubble with various tubes and cables impaling its neck. The top of the skull has been removed, allowing an invasion of gossamer-fine filaments to penetrate the exposed brain.

A terrified whimper gurgles out through Imelda’s numb lips.

‘It’s all right,’ Paul says at the sound. ‘I know you probably won’t believe me, but we’re not going to harm you. And you’ll never remember any of this, we’ll give you a memory wipe.’

She is placed on a field-medical cot, where plyplastic bands flow over her limbs before solidifying, holding her fast. Tears begin to leak out of her eyes.

Ziggy brings over a sensor stick, and sweeps it above her abdomen. ‘Damnit,’ he grunts in disappointment. ‘She’s pregnant all right. Looks like that memory checks out.’

‘How long?’ Paul asks.

‘Couple of weeks.’

‘Can you tell if it’s Higher contaminated?’

Ziggy sighs in reluctance, the sound of someone who is forcing himself to do the right thing. ‘Not from outside, not with our sensors. We’ll have to run a detailed pathology scan.’ His hand indicates a clutter of equipment on a nearby table.

‘Okay,’ Paul says, equally sad. ‘Take it out, and run the exam.’

Ziggy turns to the collection of medical instruments, and picks up a disturbingly phallic device.

Imelda finally manages to scream.

Of all the memories Paul was able to extract, arrival was the clearest.

The angel clung to the starship’s fuselage as the big commercial freighter emerged from its wormhole a thousand kilometres above the bright blue expanse of Anagaska’s major ocean. Dwindling violet light from the wormhole’s exotic fabric washed across its face, revealing late-adolescent features that were carefully androgynous. With its firm jaw it would be considered a striking and attractive female rather than classically beautiful, while as a male people would think it inclined to the delicate. The baggy white cotton shirt and trousers it wore offered no clue as to its gender orientation.