The path-manager faded back on-screen and said, “Yes.” He looked at Astrid more closely, but not impertinently. “Too little business, I think, so far, if you notice,” said the path-manager. “It’s OK to me if it is not too quiet.”
Astrid said, “Good luck.” She cleared her throat. “With your fares and all.” The cab was speeding somewhat, and Astrid grabbed the safety handle above the window. It was flimsy, cool, nuplastic—a toy door knocker without a door.
She tried to roll down the window, but it only came down a few inches—broken.
The cabcab was barreling forward now, bucking Astrid from side to side. It somehow careened around a rough-looking Indigent pushing a cart in the street.
“Oh!” Astrid said.
“Sorry!” said the path-manager, blinking back on the screen.
“It’s fine,” she said.
The driver’s recklessness seemed part of a larger wildness in her life.
The cabcab shook and its bosonic color-charge engines shrieked as the glider encountered a bit of LST, or low-speed turbulence, a mysterious phenomenon that occurred with gliders in parts of the old City.
“Right,” Astrid said. “I’m in no absolutely life-or-death rush.” It was her subtlest way of saying “slow down.”
AT GREAT PORTLAND STREET STATION, Astrid asked the path-manager to turn right and get onto Regent Park’s Outer Circle road. She saw at least two solarcopters quietly warbling in the sky above the zoo area, their spotlights roving irritably. One was indeed a Red Watch frightcopter. Its rotors were made of living black feather-like blades that gave off a distinctive hornet whir. (They retracted in overlapping layers on the ground, where the rarely seen frightcopters could reputedly be driven as easily as gliders.) Its two powerful neural-cannons, spiking off its nose, could turn—and had turned—a crowd of people’s brains to gray soup in a matter of seconds. The other solarcopter was a small autonewsmedia drone. She also saw the towering white dish of an autonewsmedia glider truck Atwell had mentioned. She hadn’t quite believed it could all be possible.
“Dagenham,”* she said.
At that moment, two things happened: first, Astrid felt a mild, unexpected easing of second withdrawal. Simply being close to the zoo had done something. Her muscles and tendons were weirdly freer of tightness. She could think again. Even the taloned craves ripping in her gut had softened a bit.
The other thing was that she understood that lives, possibly even her own, were in peril. She wasn’t sure how or why. Am I going to top meself? she wondered. No—I won’t do that. That the Watch and autonews might arrive at an incident in advance of the police wasn’t in itself all that unusual in 2052, such was the feral alacrity of the WikiNous rumor mill. Unfortunately, because of this, it also wasn’t uncommon for ride-along autonewsmedia producers and camera operators—often not the sharpest blades on the fan—to get injured and worse at incidents along with gawking rubberneckers. Autonews solarcopter drones regularly scanned for photo-anomalies from the skies of London, and they darted instantly to the scene of anything unusual. And if the Watch were on hand, well, anything could happen. The Watch always neuralpiked first and asked questions later.
“Make us go faster, but careful,” she said. “Please.”
They drove north for a minute or two until they came upon, to the left, lavish Chester Gate. It was a Victorian shambles of ornate wrought iron painted glossy black and metallic gold. The gate itself was open, as usual, and they drove into the park a few meters, into the two-lane thoroughfare called Chester Road, paved with the characteristic pink asphalt of the park’s interior byways.
“Right here,” said Astrid.
“Yes,” said the path-manager. “We’re off the operating grid now, ma’am. You may notice.”
“I know. It’s OK, right?”
“It is no problem for you, ma’am.”
Immediately, on the right, appeared the locked gate to the Broad Walk, through which one could access all the interior of the northern part of the park. Virtually all the gates and locks of Regent’s Park were little more than psychological deterrence, meant not just to keep vagrants and kids out at night, but also to suggest forcefully that something of worth stood beyond reach. The truth was, except for the zoo itself, and the park’s Inner Circle, Regent’s was a perfect sieve.
Chester Road led to the Inner Circle, which in turn held the rose gardens and the furtive nests of mute swans and Egyptian geese. The Inner Circle was all locked down tight for the night, per usual procedure. It was the Broad Walk Astrid needed to open. Unless in hot pursuit, PC Atwell would have followed procedure and locked it after herself. How the autonews got in was anyone’s guess, but it didn’t surprise Astrid.
Atwell was supposed to be parked a quarter mile or so up the path, beside the zoo.