Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

Finally , she thought, a plus point. That’ll hold all my gear .

“Here you go,” he said with the kind of miserabalist cheer exclusive to night-shift workers on very basic pay.

Araminta was fairly sure Ranto didn’t have an Advancer heritage. Too many spots on his glum teenage face, his long nose made sure he wasn’t handsome, and even though he was already tall, he was still growing, producing long gangling arms and legs from a torso that seemed oddly thin. From her point of view that was good; he wouldn’t have macrocellular clusters. He couldn’t connect directly to the unisphere.

Araminta took the carton from him. “Thanks.” She held up her cash coin. “How much for the bike-thing?”

Ranto’s slightly awkward smile turned to incredulity. “What?”

“How much?”

“It’s my bike,” he protested.

“I know that. I need it.”

“Why?”

“That’s not important. I just need it. Now.”

“I can’t sell my bike! I fixed it up myself.”

“It’s yours, so you can sell it. And it’s a seller’s market. You’ll never get another chance like this.”

He looked from her to the bike, then back again. Araminta was sure she could hear his brain working, little cogs clicking around under unaccustomed stress. His cheeks colored.

“You could buy a new one,” she said with gentle encouragement. For a moment she visualized Ranto riding around on some massive glowing scarlet sports bike with floating wheels. Come on, focus! If he didn’t want to part with it, there were unarmed combat routines in her lacuna she could use, loaded a long time ago when the whole divorce mess started and she had to go into districts of Colwyn City that had a bad rep. She really didn’t want to. For a start, she didn’t quite trust them, or herself. Besides, hitting someone like Ranto was just naked cruelty. But I will. If I have to. This is far more important than his pride . She brought the lacuna index up into her exovision, ready to access the routine.

“Five thousand Chobamba francs,” Ranto announced nervously. “I couldn’t let it go for anything less.”

“Deal.” Araminta shoved her cash card toward him.

“Really?” Her immediate agreement startled him.

“Yes.” She authorized the money.

Ranto blinked in surprise as his own card registered the transfer. Then he grinned. It made him look quite endearing.

Araminta slung her backpack into the open pannier and turned back to the dazed teenager. “How do I drive it?” she asked.

It took a couple of minutes on the broad road outside the StarSide Motel, with Ranto running about after her shouting instructions as his long arms waved frantically, but Araminta soon got the hang of it. The handlebars had a manual throttle and brake activator. She really had to concentrate on using the brake; all her life she’d driven vehicles with automatic braking. After the first couple of semi-disasters she began to overcompensate, which nearly flung her forward out of the saddle.

“Doesn’t it have any safety systems?” she yelled at Ranto as she curved around again.

He shrugged. “Drive safe,” he suggested.

After another three practice circuits on the street she did just that and set off for the one road out of Miledeep Water. Ranto waved goodbye. She could see that in the little mirrors sticking up from the handlebars. There was no three-sixty sensor coverage-actually, there were no sensors. His lanky frame was backdropped by the green-lit motel reception building, one hand held up and an expression of mild regret on his face.

Araminta concentrated on the route out of Miledeep Water, retracing her walk in not a day before. The bike’s headlight produced a wide fan of pink-tinged light across the road ahead. It was okayish, but she couldn’t see much outside of its beam, and the streetlights grew farther apart as the road climbed the crater wall. She quickly activated every biononic optical enrichment she had, bringing analysis and image resolution programs on line to help. The resulting vision was a lot better, taking away her total dependence on the headlight.

Once the last building was behind her, and she hadn’t fallen off or crashed, and nothing mechanically disastrous had happened, she eased the throttle up, and her speed increased. The axle motors were quite smooth, and the suspension kept her a lot more stable than she’d expected. It was just the wind that was a problem, flapping her fleece about and stinging her eyes. She really should have worn glasses of some kind. There was a pair of big shades in her backpack, but somehow she preferred the discomfort to stopping and fishing them out. The unknown woman’s blanket warning on the unisphere had unnerved her.

Five minutes after leaving the motel behind, she reached the crest of the crater. The last streetlight stood on the side of the road, not far from where she’d dumped her flagon harness. She was almost tempted to pick it up again, but sentiment at this point translated to blatant stupidity. Araminta gunned the throttle and zoomed off down the slope into the desert.

As soon as she was past the field of illumination thrown out from the streetlight, she switched the bike’s headlight off. Her image resolution routines produced a reasonable gray-green view of the long straight road ahead, enough to give her the confidence to keep going at the same speed. After all, there was nothing else traveling along it. She could see all the way to the horizon, where the intensifiers showed the stars burning brightly behind a wavering curtain of warm desert air.

It was a six-minute ride to the bottom of the crater wall. By the time she reached the desert floor, the bike’s tiny display panel told her she was doing close to a hundred kilometers an hour. It felt more like five hundred. The wind was a constant blast in her face, and her clothes felt like they were being pulled out behind her. She bared her teeth into the airstream, actually starting to enjoy the experience.

Did Ranto and his friends come out here in the evenings and race along the empty road? She knew if she and her friends had had these kind of machines when she was growing up on the farm, she would have had a whole lot more fun.

And I can have them. In the Void .

She grimaced. Actually, no, I can’t. Stop thinking like this. It’s weak, and anyway, the Void won’t allow technology .

Not that she really counted this bike as technology. The battery under the saddle actually hummed as the axle motors drew power. Something in the left rear wheel clicked as it spun around (which should be impossible with frictionless bearings). And the tires made a low growling sound as they charged along the gritty concrete. Maybe it’ll actually work on the Silfen paths .

There were no landmarks out on the desert road, nothing distinctive on the side of the road. She wasn’t sure where the side track was. Not that it had been much of a track, just a couple of tire ruts across the hard ground. Even with the headlights she wasn’t going to see those in the night. Instead she reached for it with her mind, nervous that spreading her thoughts in such a fashion might allow Living Dream to find her once again. But the difference between the gaiafield and the Silfen community was clear enough to her, allowing her to avoid the former studiously.

The Silfen path felt her as much as she felt it. And somewhere up ahead and to the side of the road it opened fully like a flower whose time had come to bloom. Araminta slowed the bike and gingerly turned off the road. The uneven desert was littered with small stones. Their impact kept shunting her front tire off the track, leaving her to wrestle the handlebars back. It was difficult, taking her full strength. Her arms were soon aching from the constant struggle. Sweat built up on her shoulders and forehead.