Peter Hamilton - Fallen Fragon

She left first thing in the morning to join up with her friends. They were heading farther north, hoping to get some casual work in Port Douglas to pay for the next leg of their great middle-class adventure. By midday Lawrence had to think hard to remember her name.

That next night, it was another girl. She liked highballs instead of beer, and electric jazz rather than rock, but she was just as randy.

The whole of his first week passed the same way. Sleep during the day. Have a decent meal in midafternoon. Take a walk before the evening started. Hit the Strip after the sun went down. Some days he ran into other squaddies from the fleet, and they'd have a few rounds together, maybe shoot some pool or spend an hour in one of the game arcades. He never got drunk; there was no percentage in that, given his endplay. Once or twice he went out on a club's dance floor. Each time it was because the girl was keen to dance first.

Seven days after he landed, his bracelet pearl received a message from fleet administration ordering him to report to the base. His application for starship officer college had been processed. He was going to be forwarded to Amsterdam for entry assessment.

He sat up in bed, holding his glasses up in front of his face, reading the message again with a slow-growing sense of delight. His life was finally coming together the way he wanted. His father, Roselyn, Amethi, that was paying his dues. He'd earned his place on Z-B's starships.

The girl lying in the bed beside him lifted her head and peered around the hotel room in classic morning-after confusion. She blinked at Lawrence. Her expression changed to one of recognition. "Hi," she grunted.

"Morning."

"Good news?" She nodded at the glasses he was holding.

Lawrence considered the question. The obvious thing to do would be blurt out the assignment, tell her about what it meant to him. It was the kind of thing that should be shared, leading on to a happy day spent together, perhaps a good meal with a bottle of champagne. But, truthfully, the only person he could tell who'd appreciate what it meant was Ntoko. And he was pretty sure the corp wouldn't want his own family vacation interrupted by a babbling Lawrence Newton bragging how he was leaving the platoon behind.

That was when he admitted to himself just how lonely he'd become. There really was nobody to call. Nobody on this whole planet who knew him, nobody who cared about him.

He dropped the interface glasses back on the bedside table, then pulled the sheet back off the two of them. A few blades of morning sunlight had crept round the curtains, falling on the bed to illuminate their bodies. The girl gave him an uncertain little smile as he gazed at her. For all of their intimacy during the night, he felt nothing, no connection, no urge to try and make it work. The only reason she was here was for sex. He didn't even feel guilty about that. She'd been eager enough.

To think, after one night with Roselyn he'd been ready to spend the rest of his life with her. God, how stupid had he been back then? Talk about being straight off the farm. He could teach her a thing or two now.

As always, that treacherous little thought sprang up: I wonder what she's doing now.

"Nothing important," he said brusquely, angry with himself for the weakness. Then he rolled closer and put his mouth over the girl's ear, and in a throaty demanding whisper told her what he wanted from her. With a slight show of reluctance she positioned herself over the edge of the bed the way he instructed, so he could celebrate with her the only way it was ever going to happen between the two of them.

Lawrence took one of Z-B's twice-daily flights from Cairns to Paris, a big subsonic passenger jet that refueled at Singapore. From Paris he transferred to a train that whisked him across the heavily forested European countryside to Amsterdam. He arrived at the old Central Station that backed on to the harbor in the middle of the city.

Cairns with its eternal heat had made him forget it was only spring in the Northern Hemisphere. He pulled his full-length coat on as he walked out of the station, but didn't bother to do it up. The sun was shining out of a clear sky, wanning the air.

Outside, Prins Hendrik Kade seemed to be a twenty-lane road given over entirely to bicycles. He'd never seen so many of the machines in one place before. They were all the same silk-white color, with the city emblem embossed on the central spar. Bells rang all around him, making him twist his head about in alarm. Twice he had to jump sharply out of the way as cyclists sped toward him. They obviously weren't going to swerve.

Optronic membranes threw up a city map, and he set off down Dam Rak, the long broad road opposite the station. Trams trundled along rails embedded in the cobbles. He'd never seen machines that looked so ancient, although they were in perfect condition. It was good to be walking through a city and for once not have to be on guard. Quation had not given Z-B a joyful reception. But here, the citizens smiled warmly when they saw his mauve uniform.

He wasn't surprised. According to the briefing he'd downloaded from the company memory, Z-B was a heavy investor in Holland. And where their primary installations were based sprang up a host of smaller companies to provide support, both specialist and general. The country had a high prosperity index, even by European standards.

His first hint of disenchantment came right outside the officer college. Z-B's Amsterdam headquarters, containing the college, was a big five-story stone building that was eighty years old, though its exterior had been crafted in nineteenth-century bleak, with tall vertical slit windows. Squatting across a broad cobbled square from the fortresslike Royal Palace its architecture was more than appropriate.

A small group of demonstrators were clustered around some kind of stall twenty meters from the main entrance. Potatoes were baking in what had to be the most primitive oven on the planet, a cylinder made out of solid iron. Charcoal glowed behind a grate on the front end, while a black chimney stack at the rear made the whole thing look like the boiler from some kind of steam engine. The sign above the stall was offering the potatoes with a dozen different fillings. Very cheaply, too, Lawrence noticed. There was an emerald-green circle at one end of the sign, with a stylized white bird emblem in the middle, its wings swept wide.

None of the pedestrians filling the square seemed interested in buying the potatoes. The demonstrators, mostly young people, were singing in none-too-tight harmony, which was presumably putting off the prospective customers. Lawrence didn't know the song; it seemed to be some kind of folk chant, with the ragged voices rising defiantly for the chorus:

Give us back to ourselves

Take back your money

Give us back to ourselves

Turn back your starships

Give us back to ourselves

Several of them were carrying hologram panes on long poles, blazing with anti-Z-B slogans. A couple of bored police officers were standing fifteen meters away, watching over them. They catcalled and jeered anyone walking up and down the broad stone stairs to the entrance of the big headquarters building. Z-B personnel scurrying in and out studiously ignored them.

When Lawrence started up the stairs they directed several insults at him. He smiled and waved cheerfully, knowing how much that always annoyed their type. His gaze found a girl in the middle of the group, more attractive than any of her cause sisters, with compact dainty features amplifying her intent expression. She was wrapped up in an old-fashioned navy-blue duffel coat with wooden toggles, its hood down to show off raven hair that had been frizzled into a thick mass of short curls. Their eyes met, and he broadened his grin to a male-ape invitation. He laughed heartily at the angry scowl she fired back at him.