Salvation

“She’s talking to Boynak executives. And we’re on an open channel to the EEA in case they order intervention.”

Callum’s screen lens showed him the Boynak file: the owner of the Gylgen plant, in turn owned by a tangle of interlocked holding companies, registered in a scattering of independent asteroids. He grunted in contempt. “Fucking typical.”

“Boss?”

“Can their in-house team handle it?”

“Best guess: no. They’re shouting ‘nobody panic’ quite loud. And we’re not seeing any cleanup equipment on its way through the hubs.”

“All right, I’ll be with you in ten.”

“I welcome that.”

Callum grinned, then looked down at the frying pan. The rashers were overcooked, and the yoke had turned solid. “Aww, bastard.”

—

The huge old trees in Moray Place were all budding early thanks to the unseasonable winds that had been blowing in from the southwest for most of February. With the low morning sun striking them, it looked like an emerald frost had materialized overnight to coat the circular park. What had been the cobbled road surrounding the verdant urban isle was now broken up by two lines of raised circular troughs with cherry trees planted in the center of each one. Callum smiled up at the cherry blossom glowing a luminous pink in the bright sunlight. Savi had enjoyed the blossoms on her last visit.

He walked around the troughs, keeping a wary eye out for cyclists. Ever since Connexion had started establishing its hubs across the globe, civic authorities had been pedestrianizing cities and towns, starting with the centers and gradually expanding out as the hub network coverage increased. There was still room for taxez, delivery bugez, and emergency vehicles to maneuver along Moray Place and the neighboring streets, but even the taxez were few and far between these days. The only time Callum really saw them was during one of Edinburgh’s not infrequent rainstorms. Cyclists, though—cyclists were very intense about their right of way, which seemed to include every flat surface in existence.

Callum turned down Forres Street. “Any emails from Savi last night?” He didn’t know why he asked. The inbox was on his screen lens and had nearly two dozen emails pending, most of them work related, with one from his mother.

“No,” Apollo replied.

“What about everything you sent to the junk archive? She might be using a one-time address. Check them for a personal message.”

“There are none.”

“Calls? Ordinary phone calls or a sightyou?”

“No.”

“Calls made but no answervoice recorded?”

“No.”

“Has she made any social posts?”

“Not since she posted her Barbuda videos the night before you left. Her parents and sister have both left messages on her MyLife site in the last thirty hours, asking her to call them.”

“How about…have I been tracker pinged?”

“None since you lost your smartCuff last November. You left it at Fitz’s apartment after his party.”

“Yeah, yeah. Can you ping Savi’s mInet?”

“Yes.”

“Do it.”

“Her mInet is not responding.”

“Ping it again.”

“No response.”

“Fuck.” She’s super smart, so why isn’t she doing something to let me know she’s all right? Anything?

—

Like every city, Edinburgh’s Connexion hubs were arranged in a spider web pattern. On a map, it registered as concentric loops intersected at right angles by radial spurs. Commuters could walk in both directions around the loops, clockwise or counterclockwise, and inbound or outbound along the radial spurs. A simple mInet app called Hubnav told everyone the quickest route to their destination. Callum never bothered with it in the morning; his route to work was so familiar it had become simple muscle memory.

He walked into the metrohub on the junction with Young Street. It was a loop hub, with five pay barriers across the entrance leading to a drab gray-and-green tiled lobby. Apollo gave the barrier his Connexion code, and he went straight through. As in every hub lobby, portal doors faced each other on opposite sides. Standing between them was like staring at the infinity image when you stand between two mirrors, except it wasn’t himself he could see in all the identical lobbies stretching out ahead. Looking through the portal doors, he could see his fellow commuters walk between a few lobbies then turn off.

He automatically turned right to go through the clockwise circuit portal door that led to the Thistle Street hub, which in turn opened into the St. Andrew’s Square hub, which was an intersection hub, so turn right and through the inbound portal door of the radial spur directly to the Waverley hub.