After Atlas: A Planetfall Novel - Softcover

Newman, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425282406 ISBN 13: 9780425282403

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Acclaimed author Emma Newman returns to the captivating universe she created in Planetfall with a stunning science fiction mystery where one man’s murder is much more than it seems—an Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee.
 
Gov-corp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos’s entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas’s departure, it’s got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room—and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation.
 
To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history. But the deeper he delves into the case, the more he realizes that escaping the past is not so easy. There’s more to Casales’s death than meets the eye, and something much more sinister to the legacy of Atlas than anyone realizes...

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emma Newman is the author of Planetfall, After Atlas, Before Mars, and the upcoming Atlas Alone and is also a professional audiobook narrator, narrating short stories and novels in all genres. She also cowrites and hosts a Hugo nominated podcast called “Tea & Jeopardy.” Emma is a keen role-player, gamer, and designer-dressmaker.

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1

It's times like these, when I'm hunkered in a doorway, waiting for a food market of dubious legality to be set up, that I find myself wishing I could eat like everyone else. I watch them scurry past, hurrying back to their warm little boxes with their bright lights and distractions, a hot meal just the press of a button away. They'll stand there in front of their printers, watching that artificial shit being spurted out of dozens of tiny nozzles with clinical precision to form lasagna or something, and their stomachs will rumble and their mouths will water and, oh God, just the thought of it is making me nauseous. As much as it disgusts me, I envy them.

It's cold and damp, the November sun is setting in the middle of the afternoon and I am beyond tired. The satisfaction of finishing my latest case didn't last long in the face of my hunger, and I just want the truck to arrive, to buy what I need, to get home and to shut the door on it all. I'll make a casserole, I promise myself, like a parent promising a grumbling toddler he'll get a toy if he behaves. There's some beef left in the freezer. And if there's flour (I try not to get my hopes up), I'll make dumplings, stodgy and crisped on the top like the Brits make them. I haven't eaten since an early and inadequate breakfast, and just imagining what that casserole could smell like makes me close my eyes and smile to myself, just for a moment. I turn my collar up and tuck my hands back into my pockets. I'm hoping that here in this little nook no one will see me and feel they're entitled to come and talk to me just because they've seen me on the news and docu-feeds.

A woman walks in front of the doorway and looks straight at me, pausing midstride as if she's listening for something I'm about to say. I pull back into the shadows when she laughs, worried that she's recognized me, before realizing she's talking to an avatar projected by her chip. She's experiencing walking with a friend, chatting and laughing away. When I shift to the other side of the doorway she blinks with a yelp, seeing me for the first time, and mutters an apology in Norwegian.

I rest my head against the door behind me, waiting for my pulse to settle again.

"Would you like to play a game while you're waiting?" Tia asks.

"No." Now I'm the one looking like I'm talking to myself. Not that it matters. Most of the people I can see in this dingy London backstreet are talking to either projected avatars or, like me, just the voices of their Artificial Personal Assistants, delivered directly into their brains via neural implant.

"We're next to a node for a new urban-enhancement game with a free trial to-"

"No."

"Would you like me to stop making urban-environment interactivity suggestions when you are off duty?"

"Yes. Why are you making them, anyway?"

"A recent change in the licensing agreement between-"

"Save it, Tia. I don't need to know." It's the first rule of any change to a licensing agreement: it's not for the benefit of the end user, no matter what they say.

Where the fuck is the van?

I check the time and it's only five p.m. It feels like two in the morning. There's a steady pounding throb at the back of my head, and my hunger has moved from gnawing, through occasional bouts of light-headedness, to making me want to kill someone. Then I hear the low whine of the van's engine and step out as it parks, pulling my small wheeled case behind me, ready to muscle my way to the front when it opens its back doors.

Everyone in the loitering crowd has their public profile set to private, as do I. I recognize some of them from other markets. There's the man with the tiny dog that bites anyone who goes near, the little shit. There's the woman with the umbrella that's almost taken my eye out several times, and she knows she's doing it but has no fucks to give for a rival consumer. There's the old dear who looks like she could be the sweetest grandma straight out of a department store Christmas mersive advert, but I know she's just as willing to grind her bootheels into someone else's toes if they push too much from the back.

The driver gets out, moves to the side of the van and slides the side door across just enough to pull out the folding table, while his passenger jumps out and scans the street. They've just made a delivery to a supermarket down the road, one that's-like all of them-too expensive for most people to shop in. It has aisles filled with perfect vegetables and a counter with the freshest meat-actual real meat cut from real animals-all sparkling and brightly lit. I only know about it because of the mersive adverts that weasel their way in every few months or so before Tia closes the loophole they've exploited to get to me. Cooking with real, fresh food is the province of the rich. Rich enough to buy it, or rich enough to have the space for dirt to grow it, or rich enough to hire space and equipment to have other people grow it just for them.

This impromptu market is a testament to mankind's ability to exploit every possible consumer niche. The driver has come from a wholesaler who has realized that there are people willing to pay good money for the stock that the supermarkets won't take. So all the rejects get put into boxes and loaded onto the last delivery of the day, to be sold in a backstreet that smells of piss and misery. Now it's filled with people who are doing well enough to spend money on food items considered luxuries, but not quite well enough to afford to do it in a nice building with beautiful staff and real champagne given at the door.

I'm not doing well enough to have the money to do this. I've made greater sacrifices to get this food. I doubt any of the others have given up years of freedom to be able to buy a few misshapen vegetables every week. I frown to myself, trying to stop thinking that way. I try to reframe it, the way Dee would. "It was a shitty choice," she'd say. "But at least it was one you got to make for yourself."

It doesn't have the same effect when she's not here with me. No matter how much I try to spin it into something else, it doesn't alter the sheer injustice of it all. But as much as I want it to, my sacrifice doesn't give me a place at the front of the jostling throng that is slowly, reluctantly morphing into a queue. In moments I find myself behind the old woman and take care where I'm putting my feet. The man with the dog is farther back, his irritation expressed perfectly by the tiny, vicious snarling of the overgrown rat in his arms. There's a sharp, painful tap on the top of my head and I twist to see the woman with the umbrella.

"So sorry," she says with a fake smile.

"It's not raining," I say through gritted teeth.

"Oh, has it stopped?" She pretends not to have noticed and still doesn't fold the damn thing away. There's a slight narrowing of her eyes as she stares at me and I face front again, worrying that she's thinking she's seen me somewhere before.

I turn my collar up as if against the wind, but it's more to cover as much of my face as possible. Crates of produce have been hauled out of the van and the driver has cranked one open already. He scoops out a few carrots, all huge, malformed things, looking like fetishes from some ancient magical ritual. He holds one up for the crowd, who laugh when they see how much it looks like a man running, with its split root and arm-like offshoots. Turnips are dumped next to them, then onions. It's as if the universe knew I wanted to cook a casserole.

"No need to push," the driver calls. "Plenty for sale tonight. Cooking apples too, when this doughnut"-he jerks a thumb at his assistant-"digs 'em out for ya."

Tia informs me that the seller's APA has made contact and the handshake has been successful. All I need to do is pick what I want and our APAs will handle the rest....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0425282406
• ISBN 13: 9780425282403
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: ACE; https://www.penguin.com/; ; Bachstelzenweg 10; Ibbenb?ren; 49479; Deutschland