Recursion by Tony Ballantyne Read Free Book Online Page A

and started its final deceleration, and the other passengers began to collect their possessions. Some rose and made their way to the doors; Constantine simply gazed out of the window into the darkness of the tunnel. Two years of plotting and planning, all set to end in Stonebreak. The idea didn’t seem real. He took a sip of water from the glass and tried to think about his wife as the train drew to a halt, tried to summon up a picture of her in his mind that was more than a fading abstraction. It had been too long.
     
    It was the busiest time of the day at Stonebreak International. No doubt Constantine’s journey had been scheduled to arrive during the evening rush, amid the simultaneous arrival of several intercontinental trains. Constantine’s life over the past two years had been spent in an interminable bustle of crowds, one tree hidden in a never-ending forest.
    The station was old and shabby: the iridescent patterns of dead VNM bodies that had formed the halls may have looked cutting-edge twenty years ago, now they just seemed faintly embarrassing. Their interlinking shapes had been covered with hard-wearing transparent plastic; even so, the walls and the floors by the skylifts were scuffed and abraded by constant use. Constantine entered the elevator and asked for the roof. As he rose toward the high-vaulted ceiling, he looked down at the silver ribbons of the I-trains, curled in tight spirals around the central spoke of the terminus.
    “This place is a mess, huh? The new station can’t open too soon.”
    Constantine jumped at the sound of the voice. A woman was standing at the far end of the elevator.
    “I didn’t see you get in here,” said Constantine, checking his intelligences.
    —I did, said Red.—She slipped in just as the doors were closing. You were turning to look at the view.
    “You, of all people, shouldn’t be surprised at how I slipped in here.” She held out a hand. “I’m Mary Rye. That’s my name.”
    Constantine refused her handshake. Mary gave a sniff and withdrew it. She pointedly wiped her palm on the pocket of her green jacket.
    —She’s been drinking, said Red.
    “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t deserve that,” said Mary, head tilted forward. Her thick Australian accent made her sound old-fashioned in these days of standardized elocution. “How long have you been a ghost? Two years, I’d guess. So what the fuck do you know about it? Nothing. That’s what you know about it: nothing.”
    Constantine felt himself perspiring. Sweat was trickling down the small of his back, despite the air-conditioned freshness of the elevator.
    He spoke carefully. “A ghost? I don’t understand what you mean.”
    Mary gave an impatient shrug of her shoulders and waved her hand dismissively. Her green suit looked expensive but shabby. Two long strands of cotton trailed from the hem of her blouse. A brooch in the shape of three little cats was pinned lopsidedly to her lapel.
    “Sure you don’t,” she said with heavy sarcasm. She waved her hand in the direction of the doors. “Look, I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. I know what to look for. I know what I see. I wait on the platform and I look out for people like you arriving. A train pulls in and the crowd on the platform parts like the Red Sea? I look to see who’s walking along the path that forms. I see the cameras suddenly turn to look in one direction? I look in the other. I do that and I spot someone like you. The most ordinary-looking person in the building, and yet you never have to stop or step aside; your elevator is always waiting and your car always stops right by the exit. You never get stuck behind the person with the luggage and you’re always just ahead of the person stopping to ask directions. You’re one huge statistical improbability: your life is planned so that you will never be remembered. You’re a ghost. Just like me.”
    She finished speaking just as the skylift emerged from the ground into the red