Once again the Pintupi suffered a massively disruptive invasion. For the last five years Kintore had expanded exponentially as Connexion set up the C & GST portal linking it to Brisbane, turning the town’s abandoned airstrip into a huge cargo and civil engineering facility. Along with the heavy-duty earthmoving equipment pouring through the C & GST portal, truckez brought prefab cabins for the hardy site workers who didn’t commute in every day from the coastal areas. Bars and clubs and stores followed the money trail, along with other services—some legitimate, some otherwise, all bringing in their own prefabs. With such a population bump, the government started to expand its own infrastructure. And if Icefall was successful in transforming the desert, Kintore would double in size again within two years.
Truck 851 slowed down near the edge of the old airfield, and Savi jumped down. The walk into town wasn’t far, for which she was grateful. Kintore even had a tiny portal network of its own, but she didn’t want to use it. Everyone knew Connexion had sensors around each of its hubs, scanning for illegal substances such as drugs and weapons. The plastic explosives would have brought a whole platoon of urban suppression forces down on her, probably with drone support. Most of Kintore’s illegal drugs were brought in through the C & GST route by truck drivers. If she’d come through any other way, Akkar would have been suspicious.
She reached her digs—a new boardinghouse of silvered composite panels that’d been dropped down on the west side of town, identical to every other building on the street. There were still several hours until dawn, so she flopped down on her bed and turned the air-con up. Five minutes later she was asleep.
—
Breakfast was a croissant in the Granite Shelf, one of the new cafés on what was now a long Main Street. A limp oblong of pastry that’d been microwaved for too long. The little cube of butter that came with it was as cold as ice. But the orange juice wasn’t too bad. The waitress put it down with a semi-apologetic expression and hurried off to take an order from a group of digger drivers who’d just come off shift.
Savi gazed out of the window. The desert soil surrounding Kintore was rust-red, broken only by wispy tufts of petrified grass, bleached to a cream-white by the relentless sun. Today, like every day for the last two years, the air was stained with dust. Somewhere out across the desert, massive irrigation canals were being dug. Hundreds of kilometers long, they were destined to channel water across the parched lands, allowing the desert to bloom again. If Icefall worked, it would ultimately become an oasis more than a thousand kilometers across. Theoretically that would create its own new microclimate, changing wind patterns and luring in rain clouds from the coast.
But in the meantime, the powerful diggers working twenty-four/seven were kicking up dust that lingered for days in the tranquil air. A lot of people had taken to wearing plastic surgical masks when they were outside. What with the empty canals, the locals had started to call the whole enterprise Barsoom. The Mars reference wasn’t pleasantly ironic.
After she finished eating, Savi put on her own mask and tramped down Main Street for a kilometer before turning off onto Rosewalk. Akkar had a tiny store repairing air-conditioning units—possibly the greatest boom business in Kintore. The dust was forever clogging motors and filters across town, giving Akkar as much work as he chose to accept.
She knocked on the bugez garage door at the back, giving the camera on the frame above a mildly pissed look. It opened, and she walked through into the gloomy composite cave. First glance revealed a typical printer store operation with metal shelving holding cartons of liquid crudes, plastics, and metals, ready to feed the printers. One cabinet down the far end held vials of the more expensive crudes, those used to produce electronics or pharma. Medium-size printers were lined up along the back wall, their central glass hatches making them look for all the world like a line of washing machines. Eye-twisting violet light shone out through the glass as they chittered away, building up components molecule by molecule in their extrusion cores. A couple of long benches held broken down air conditioners and impressive racks of electronics.
Akkar was sitting in a battered office chair, using a small vacuum nozzle to clear a filter grid. He was a tall North African in his late thirties, with a shaved scalp and plenty of tattoos chasing up his neck from a muscular torso that was always wearing vintage t-shirts with the logos of long-departed gamer companies. The tails of those tattoos snaked out of his sleeves to coil around his arms. When he spoke, light would sparkle on the rubies embedded in his teeth. He was one of the few people who could make Savi nervous just by him looking at her. Like Yuri, he was perpetually judging everyone.