THE TEMPORAL VOID by PETER F. HAMILTON

Author:PETER F. HAMILTON
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-30T16:09:33+00:00

* * * * *

It was a long way to her destination, an office over in the Salisbury district, which was on the other side of town from Tandra's place. Quickest route would be straight through the centre, but she avoided that, anxious not to encounter too many people. Besides, there were more street sensors in the centre. So she walked in a long curve away from the river, then back down the slope to the north of the docks.

Three hours after she started she was in Salisbury. The buildings here were nearly all commercial, interspaced with a few estates of cheaper housing that had been shipped in from the

Suvorov continent, prefab aluminium brick rooms locked together into bungalows in whatever configuration suited the landlord. Their gardens were marked off with chain link fencing, containing straggly lawns or big areas of gravel chip, with several parked ground vehicles and the odd broken capsule.

The metro line cut through the centre of the district, with a small number of branch lines splitting off. A few cabs hummed past. Trike pods were the preferred transport, though there weren't many zipping about today. Bicycles outnumbered them nearly two to one. There were enough pedestrians that she didn't feel too conspicuous. Even the Ellezelin capsules didn't use the skies above Salisbury.

Araminta had never been to the district before, so it took her another hour walking down the main roads checking the signs before she found Harrogate Street. A deserted stub of concrete ending five hundred metres from the intersection in a big field of rubble from some stalled redevelopment project. Amazingly, a metro line ran all the way up to the barrier round the waste ground. The buildings on either side were a mix of offices and industrial units and storage barns.

Now she was conspicuous, the only person on the pavement where weeds had started to lift the cracked concrete, and compacted rubbish clogged the gutters. A third of the way towards the redevelopment site she found the building she wanted, a medium-sized warehouse of composite panels and cheap solar roofing. The front had a single storey lean-to built on, housing the company offices. The company in question being Genuine Spanish Crepes, as advertised by a small orange sign on the security caged front door. The windows were all boarded up with sheets of armoured carbotanium, and the side walls covered in graffiti scrawls so old their glow had decayed to near invisibility.

Araminta walked down the side of the warehouse. Right at the end of the wall there was a small door. She pulled her cutter out, and removed the lock with a neat incision.

Inside the big enclosed space, light shone in through a row of misted glass along tin— roof's apex. There were five loosely piled pyramids of boxes on the bare concrete floor, all with the Spanish Crepes logo on the side. She ignored them and hurried back to the offices at the front. Getting inside was easy enough. The door was locked but not alarmed.

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