Zima Blue and Other Stories by Alastair Reynolds Read Free Book Online

Suzy. Suzy reacts, but she isn't quick enough. Greta pulls something from her pocket and touches Suzy on the forearm. Suzy drops like a puppet, out cold. We return her to the surge tank, plumb her back in and close the lid.

    'She won't remember anything,' Greta says. 'The conversation never left her short-term memory.'

    'I don't know if I can go through with this,' I say.

    Greta touches me with her other hand. 'No one ever said this was going to be easy.'

    'I was just trying to ease her into it gently. I didn't want to tell her the truth right out.'

    'I know,' Greta says. 'You're a kind man, Thom.' Then she kisses me.

    I remembered Arkangel as well. That was about where it all started to go wrong. We just didn't know it then.

    We missed our first take-off slot when customs found a discrepancy in our cargo waybill. It wasn't serious, but it took them a while to realise their mistake. By the time they did, we knew we were going to be sitting on the ground for another eight hours, while inbound control processed a fleet of bulk carriers.

    I told Suzy and Ray the news. Suzy took it pretty well, or about as well as Suzy ever took that kind of thing. I suggested she use the time to scour the docks for any hot syntax patches. Anything that might shave a day or two off our return trip.

    'Company authorised?' she asked.

    'I don't care,' I said.

    'What about Ray?' Suzy asked. 'Is he going to sit here drinking tea while I work for my pay?'

    I smiled. They had a bickering, love-hate thing going. 'No, Ray can do something useful as well. He can take a look at the q-planes.'

    'Nothing wrong with those planes,' Ray said.

    I took off my old Ashanti Industrial bib cap, scratched my bald spot and turned to the jib man.

    'Right. Then it won't take you long to check them over, will it?'

    'Whatever, Skip.'

    The thing I liked about Ray was that he always knew when he'd lost an argument. He gathered his kit and went out to check over the planes. I watched him climb the jib ladder, tools hanging from his belt. Suzy got her facemask, long, black coat, and left, vanishing into the vapour haze of the docks, boot heels clicking into the distance long after she'd passed out of sight.

    I left the Blue Goose , walking in the opposite direction to Suzy. Overhead, the bulk carriers slid in one after the other. You heard them long before you saw them. Mournful, cetacean moans cut down through the piss-yellow clouds over the port. When they emerged, you saw dark hulls scabbed and scarred by the blocky extrusions of syntax patterning, jibs and q-planes retracted for landing and undercarriages clutching down like talons. The carriers stopped over their allocated wells and lowered down on a scream of thrust. Docking gantries closed around them like grasping skeletal fingers. Cargo-handling 'saurs plodded out of their holding pens, some of them autonomous, some of them still being ridden by trainers. There was a shocking silence as the engines cut, until the next carrier began to approach through the clouds.

    I always like watching ships coming and going, even when they're holding my own ship on the ground. I couldn't read the syntax, but I knew these ships had come in all the way from the Rift. The Aquila Rift is about as far out as anyone ever goes. At median tunnel speeds, it's a year from the centre of the Local Bubble.

    I've been out that way once in my life. I've seen the view from the near side of the Rift, like a good tourist. It was far enough for me.

    When there was a lull in the landing pattern, I ducked into a bar and found an Aperture Authority booth that took Ashanti credit. I sat in the seat and recorded a thirty-second message to Katerina. I told her I was on my way back, but that we were stuck on Arkangel for another few hours. I warned her that the delay might cascade through to our tunnel routing, depending on how busy things were at the Authority's end. Based on past experience, an eight-hour ground hold might become a