Read Online Phase Space by Stephen Baxter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Baxter
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castle. Further down the river he could see the city’s newest bridge, a gaudy, over-familiar M-shape curve in bright corporate yellow: an eyesore for traditionalists, but welcomed by Londoners as a painless hit against the ad quota … The view was neutrally interpreted. Evidently he was seeing through a dumb camera, a simple imager with little more sentience than a cockroach.
Tower Bridge’s road span was lowered right now, and Morhaim was looking down at a ribbon of colourfully clad pedestrians and smart-trams, weaving their complex paths across the Thames. And among those crowds – gazing up, perhaps, at the big aerostats floating across London pumping out ozone, or down at what was left of the Thames, a sluggish, carefully managed trickle a quarter of its former size, or just staring at the people – was Cecilia Desargues, forty-three years old, entrepreneur, founder and chief executive of Glass Earth, Inc. – Cecilia Desargues, about to meet her death.
Subject is stepping onto the Bridge roadway. From the south side.
‘Let’s go see her.’
The pedestrians froze. His pov descended smoothly, like a swooping bird. The pov reached an adult’s eye level, and Morhaim was in the crowd.
People, their lives freezeframed in the sunshine like photographed billows of smoke: a family of fat Nigerians, a huddle of Asiatic businesswomen – Korean or Thai probably – against a background of evidently British faces, many of them bearing that odd blend of Asian and Anglo-Saxon that characterized so many Londoners now. No Europeans, of course, since the French had shut down the Chunnel following the prion plagues, and no Americans, scared away by the activities of the Wessex Liberation Front. All of them wore their sunhats and Angel headsets – smart glasses – mostly draped with corporate logos: everyone working to hit their one-hundred-thousand-a-day ad quota as painlessly as possible.
But this was sparse, compared to the crowds Morhaim remembered from his youth. And most of the tourists were old, with very few middle-aged – that generation would be watching from a Room somewhere, like himself – and, of course, hardly any kids. Nowadays, the dwindling numbers of young humans were too precious to be risked outdoors.
But there was, he noticed, a clutch of teenagers, leaning against the rail, peering out at what was left of the river – oddly hard to make out, just skinny outlines around blurred patches, coated by softscreen tattoos.
‘Play.’
The images came to life, and a bustle of voices washed over Morhaim.
The kids came out a little clearer; the softscreen tattoos that coated their flesh, turning them all but transparent, had some trouble processing their images when the kids moved, and every so often a softscreen would turn black, an ugly patch against young skin, an arm or leg or shoulder.
These were the Homeless.
The kids, without speaking, left the rail and walked away from the pov. They moved like ghosts, Morhaim thought.
‘Damnedest thing.’
Yes.
‘There but for the grace of God –’
– goes Bobby in a couple of years, the Angel completed for him. I understand.
Morhaim’s pov moved forward, through dissolving crowds. And there, in the middle of the tableau, was Cecilia Desargues herself: a compact, stocky Frenchwoman, her face broad, cheerful and competent, her hair uncompromisingly grey. On the breast of her jumpsuit she wore a Day-Glo flashing 1/24 symbol, the logo of her company, Glass Earth, Inc. One twenty-fourth of a second: the maximum signal time lag between any two points on the globe in the future, beating the pants off the satellite operators. So promised Glass Earth, Inc., anyhow.
Desargues was standing in the middle of the pavement, looking at the crowds. Evidently waiting.
‘She has an appointment.’
Yes.
‘With her killer?’
Not as it turned out. Do you want me to freezeframe ?
‘Not this first time. Let’s just watch …’
Rob Morhaim thinks about children
Tower Bridge’s road span was lowered right now, and Morhaim was looking down at a ribbon of colourfully clad pedestrians and smart-trams, weaving their complex paths across the Thames. And among those crowds – gazing up, perhaps, at the big aerostats floating across London pumping out ozone, or down at what was left of the Thames, a sluggish, carefully managed trickle a quarter of its former size, or just staring at the people – was Cecilia Desargues, forty-three years old, entrepreneur, founder and chief executive of Glass Earth, Inc. – Cecilia Desargues, about to meet her death.
Subject is stepping onto the Bridge roadway. From the south side.
‘Let’s go see her.’
The pedestrians froze. His pov descended smoothly, like a swooping bird. The pov reached an adult’s eye level, and Morhaim was in the crowd.
People, their lives freezeframed in the sunshine like photographed billows of smoke: a family of fat Nigerians, a huddle of Asiatic businesswomen – Korean or Thai probably – against a background of evidently British faces, many of them bearing that odd blend of Asian and Anglo-Saxon that characterized so many Londoners now. No Europeans, of course, since the French had shut down the Chunnel following the prion plagues, and no Americans, scared away by the activities of the Wessex Liberation Front. All of them wore their sunhats and Angel headsets – smart glasses – mostly draped with corporate logos: everyone working to hit their one-hundred-thousand-a-day ad quota as painlessly as possible.
But this was sparse, compared to the crowds Morhaim remembered from his youth. And most of the tourists were old, with very few middle-aged – that generation would be watching from a Room somewhere, like himself – and, of course, hardly any kids. Nowadays, the dwindling numbers of young humans were too precious to be risked outdoors.
But there was, he noticed, a clutch of teenagers, leaning against the rail, peering out at what was left of the river – oddly hard to make out, just skinny outlines around blurred patches, coated by softscreen tattoos.
‘Play.’
The images came to life, and a bustle of voices washed over Morhaim.
The kids came out a little clearer; the softscreen tattoos that coated their flesh, turning them all but transparent, had some trouble processing their images when the kids moved, and every so often a softscreen would turn black, an ugly patch against young skin, an arm or leg or shoulder.
These were the Homeless.
The kids, without speaking, left the rail and walked away from the pov. They moved like ghosts, Morhaim thought.
‘Damnedest thing.’
Yes.
‘There but for the grace of God –’
– goes Bobby in a couple of years, the Angel completed for him. I understand.
Morhaim’s pov moved forward, through dissolving crowds. And there, in the middle of the tableau, was Cecilia Desargues herself: a compact, stocky Frenchwoman, her face broad, cheerful and competent, her hair uncompromisingly grey. On the breast of her jumpsuit she wore a Day-Glo flashing 1/24 symbol, the logo of her company, Glass Earth, Inc. One twenty-fourth of a second: the maximum signal time lag between any two points on the globe in the future, beating the pants off the satellite operators. So promised Glass Earth, Inc., anyhow.
Desargues was standing in the middle of the pavement, looking at the crowds. Evidently waiting.
‘She has an appointment.’
Yes.
‘With her killer?’
Not as it turned out. Do you want me to freezeframe ?
‘Not this first time. Let’s just watch …’
Rob Morhaim thinks about children
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