Traffic: Part 5

Into the portal station

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: The body of a young woman washed up on the bank of the Thames. A chain link motif on her skin leads DC Yannick Clarke to The Palinor Express, a brothel specialising in extra-dimensional entertainment. One police raid later and there’s a new lead, pointing in the direction of the portal station at the heart of London. Meanwhile, DI Christopher Bakker is quietly pulling at loose threads from an earlier case…

Early Shift
On duty: DC Nisha Chakraborty and DC Zoltan Kaminski

London.
1972. August.

Working for the police wasn’t guaranteed to be an enjoyable experience, but Robin Cole did her best to make the SDC office as pleasant as possible. When the telephones weren’t ringing and there were no files to distribute to the desks or parcels to ship out the door, she busied herself with elaborate displays on the windowsills of green, leafy plants. Each desk had its own small succulent, adding bursts of colour between the folders and papers. She wasn’t a detective - wasn’t even a police officer - but she had her role to play, and she took it seriously.

After John Callihan had died she’d redoubled her efforts, trying to add something positive back into the office. A small reminder that life kept going, always, even when it was hard. She stood at the side of Nisha’s desk, looking into the waste basket at a pile of soil and greenery that had fallen from her discarded plant pot. Robin sighed. It was to be expected.

There was a knock from DI Bakker’s private office, partitioned off from the rest of the open plan space. She looked over to see Bakker staring at her through the glass, miming holding a cup of tea in one hand. He smiled gratefully and gave her a thumbs up, then the blinds flicked shut again.

The department did important work and helping the detectives to keep working made her feel like she was contributing to keeping the city safe. Doing her bit to make the world a slightly better place, one cup of tea at a time.

She knocked on Bakker’s door having made two mugs, aware that DS Collins had been in there for a half hour already. Andrew was a friend, someone that she knew valued her efforts and never took her for granted. As the DS, Andrew spent most of his time in the building, keeping everything operating smoothly and liaising with the teams out in the field, which meant they got to spend a lot of time together. If he wasn’t a decade older than her they might have had something.

“Ah, Robin, thank you,” DI Christopher Bakker said, his voice clipped and polite as ever. He wasn’t a warm man or known for giving effusive praise, but equally there was never any doubt about his opinion on matters. “Over here, please.”

She started clearing a space to the side of Bakker’s desk. As tended to be the case, the two men carried on speaking as if she wasn’t there.

“Do you want me to re-open the case?” Andrew was asking. He nodded appreciatively at her as she passed him his mug. “Thanks a bunch, mate.”

Bakker shook his head. “No, nothing formal. Just a simple walk-by. Send a bobby, someone who wasn’t involved in the investigation, and has no prior ties to us.”

Robin cleared away old mugs, placing them onto a tray.

“And you want them to stick their nose into the flat, see if the witness is in?”

“That’s right. Present it as a courtesy call. In the vicinity, making sure everything’s been alright since the incident. That sort of thing.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Robin excused herself, clicking the door quietly behind her. She rarely had the full picture - or even half the picture - of what was going on at the SDC. Andrew always said it was better that way - and the glimpses she caught on the evidence board and the snatches of conversation she did overhear were more than enough to give her nightmares.

The portal station was the pinnacle of British engineering and design. That’s what it said on the archway above the entrance. That always amused Clarke, as if they’d been nervous that people wouldn’t notice. A banner had been added to the entrance, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the portals opening. Clarke would need some convincing that it was something to celebrate.

A huge expanse hugging the south bank of the Thames, from Westminster to Tower Bridge, it was an architectural chimera, originally built in the late 18th century and then re-built and expanded every couple of decades since, reflecting the shifting design trends and construction capabilities of the time. To Clarke’s eyes, it was a mess.

Still, it served a purpose. The two enormous portals that had opened up in 1772 had been swallowed up by the portal station complex, encased in concrete and steel such that there was no traversing the portals without first passing through the station. Out of necessity the portal station was a trade port, a civilian destination not unlike Dover or an airport, and a flashpoint of political activity. The diameter of the portals, almost large enough to fly an airship through, had made it possible to artificially partition them such that cargo passed through the lower half of the elliptical void and people the top half. There were two portals, physically separated by a half mile, one leading to Palinor and the other to Max-Earth. Travelling between the two required several customs checks, significant paperwork and running the gauntlet of shops and restaurants. Perched on top of the entire complex was the Joint Council tower, where representatives from the three worlds convened to wrangle some sort of sense from the triverse.

Portal travel wasn’t as simple as jumping on a tram, or even booking an airship flight. There was a complex series of hoops to jump through, bureaucratic and financial, which made it impractical for most people. Disease screening, contraband searches, flora and fauna restrictions. Travelling between the dimensions was exclusive to politicians, business leaders and other such dignitaries. If you didn’t have a good reason to be making the trip, you’d better hope you had a deep wallet. If you weren’t a subject of the Kingdom of Great Britain, then good luck in getting approval for transit.

Clarke had been to the station exactly twice: once a long time ago on a uniform shift, and again when he’d been transferred into the SDC. Touring the facility was part of the ceremonial induction into the Specialist Dimensional Command, despite the squad rarely having a need to visit. Even when suspects and convicts were recommended for deportation, they would ultimately be processed by immigration services rather than the police.

Upon arrival he was met by Chakraborty, who was all business and led him immediately away from the cavernous public welcome foyer towards the security office. He looked sideways at her; Nisha looked like she was weighed down by something, her eyes red-rimmed and dark bags beneath them, but there was a fiery determination in there regardless. He needed a bit of that, to cut through his own weariness. Only then did he wonder if he should have called Styles to get her in - no, better to let at least one of them have some sleep. This one was for him and John. “What do we know?”

“The guy running the brothel, Malcolm Ellis,” Chakraborty said, “typical sleaze bag, acts like he’s the head of some multi-national in the city. All swagger, until he realises we’re there for murder. He turns over quick as that, gives up more than he needs to. His girls - and a few boys - are mostly illegals, but seems like he’s getting a ready supply. They get bumped around, moved from place to place, city to city, always off the grid. They brand them to keep track.”

“A ready supply? From where? Can’t be a portal leak, right?” The first leak had happened about forty years back, with a small tear opening in an Oxford Street shop, barely large enough to put a finger through. Tests had shown it to be fully functional, albeit practically useless. Half a dozen other leaks had manifested since, with each being isolated and contained after discovery.

“No,” Chakraborty said with a dismissive snort. “Ellis gave us a name and pointed the finger here.” She led him through a door and away from the main concourse, then down a series of corridors. “We might get lucky if the timing’s right.” Through glass, Clarke could see uniformed station guards in break rooms. He followed down several flights of stairs then out into a part of the station he’d never seen.

“This is bigger than I’d imagined,” he said. The lower part of the station was for cargo only: it was the import and export processing dock, filled with metal cargo containers being funnelled between portals and then out into the rest of the world. Approved food and livestock from Palinor, unique materials mined out of the ground near the Appilan Abyss, statues and art created by the aen’fa, or elaborate constructs by micrologist magic wielders. From Max-Earth came their simpler technologies that could be powered locally without being affected by the energy degradation, or art and historical items from their alternate past. The 1970s of Max-Earth’s past timeline had been similar yet markedly different to that of Mid-Earth’s present, providing a constant source of comparison for historians, cultural observers and those who had become obsessed with what could - or should - have been. Some containers passed straight through from one portal to the other, while others were unloaded for distribution out into the world. It was all extraordinarily expensive but there were always willing customers. There were thousands of the containers, row upon row of metal boxes, stacked high as well as long, travelling on conveyor belts, loaded onto trucks and carried on winches and scaffolds from one track to another. At opposite ends of the huge space were the portals - or the bottom halves of them, visible up to where they disappeared into the ceiling.

Clarke struggled with the scale of the place. There was a constant, echoing boom of containers being shifted about and the place smelled thickly of oil. Light came from hundreds of strips suspended high above, lending every surface a cold, colourless shade. “What are we looking for here?”

“Zoltan’s already on it,” she said, heading towards a group of red and blue containers. A group of people stood next to them, one gesticulating animatedly. “That is one Hugo Novak, head stevedore for incoming cargo from Palinor. His was the name that Ellis gave us.”

“The sleaze ball.”

“That’s the one.”

Kaminski was talking with several uniformed officers. The dock worker Novak’s eyes were bulging comedically, his face a bloated red. “I’m telling you,” he said, “you get me opening up any of these crates and you’re going to put back the schedule by hours. Hours! You know how tight the load and unload times are here? You know who’s going to get it in the neck?”

“You can take it up with the commissioner,” Kaminski said, no sympathy in his voice. He held up a plastic folder. “You’ve seen the warrant, now start opening them up.”

“There’s hundreds. You want me to just pick them at random, or what?”

“That’ll do for starters.”

The officers followed the miserable man as he started unlocking the nearest container. Kaminski nodded at Clarke. “Glad you could make it.”

Frowning, Clarke gestured at the size of the dock. “You sure this isn’t going to be a needle in a haystack job?”

“The guy at the Express said there was a new shipment coming in today. It’s here somewhere. Figure it has to be ground level, not any of the suspended or stacked containers. Needs to be easily accessed.”

That didn’t narrow it down much. Clarke wandered away from the rest of the group, down the rolling cargo track. He heard the clang of the container being opened, the repeated protests of innocence from Novak. Ignoring that, he continued walking, letting his eyes rove loosely over every surface, absorbing every detail. Felt like he hadn’t done that for years, not properly. He’d always got the feeling Callihan knew more about the missing person case then he did, that there had been something he was holding back for some reason. Maybe this was it. Maybe he had been onto something.

He reached a group of containers that were waiting in a darker area of the dock, where one of the overhead lights had blown a bulb. Large double-doors were set into the main wall of the dock, where containers could be extracted and moved into a different part of the station. Each container was emblazoned with logos and names and codes, proudly declaring the shipping companies or the entities conducting the trade. Rogers, Blackmore, Wedgewood, Barrindon, Boulton & Co. The exchange of goods through portals was carefully managed and restricted, with containers sent through from both ends without accompaniment; Palinese dockers stayed on their side, London dockers stayed on theirs, Max-Earth on theirs. Everything signed for, checked and approved.

Something scratched at the back of his mind, calling for attention. He’d missed something. Retracing his steps, examining each container in turn, his eyes finally settled on the name and logo attached to a group of them. Barrindon. It was a shipping company specialising in portal transit and global distribution. Clarke had seen their warehouses from the river. It was nothing unusual to find their containers in the portal station. Laryssa’s body had been found entangled in netting with the Barrindon label. A coincidence, surely.

He moved around the edge of one of the Barrindon containers, still not sure what he was looking for. Edge to edge, he went around all four sides without seeing anything of note. Moving on to the next container, also Barrindon, he examined the main doors to the container. Sealed and locked. The corrugated green metal was patchy and rusted around the seams. He walked the long side of the container, tapping idly on it. A hundred metres away the others were still opening one container after another.

Reaching the rear of the container, he ran his finger over the metal, picking up grease from the grooves. It was so small that he almost missed it, and probably would have if he hadn’t been stood so close. At the base, almost hidden in accumulated oily dirt, there was a small mark on the metal: a symbol of two connected chain links.

“Holy shit,” Clarke said, his voice long and low. Standing, he turned and put two fingers to his mouth and whistled. The sound barely cut through the background thrum of the station but it was enough to attract Kaminski and Chakraborty’s attention. He waved them over.

“Open it,” Chakraborty ordered, pushing Novak ahead of her.

After the man reluctantly wrestled with the lock, the doors swung open on their heavy hinges, revealing a stash of wooden crates. Kaminski flicked on a torch and entered, squeezing between the crates. Clarke and Chakraborty followed.

“I really gotta close these up and get the boys back working again,” Novak called from outside, his voice strained.

The three of them pushed and clambered their way to the back of the container. “It’s just crates,” Kaminski said. He prised open the lid of one of the crates, revealing an assortment of painted sculptures. “There’s nothing here.”

Clarke put his hand to the back wall of the container. It seemed to be made of a slightly different material to the rest: smoother, without the corrugation of the exterior, and less grimy. He felt around the edges, found a tiny finger-hold and tugged. At first it didn’t budge and he thought he was going to cut his finger on the metal edge. Removing his jacket and wrapping part of the sleeve around his hand, he pulled again, harder. The metal wall shifted, then he pulled it free entirely. It clattered forwards onto Kaminski, who grunted as he braced against its weight.

Where there was once a false wall, Clarke found himself staring into a darkened space. As Kaminski shifted the wall aside and the light of his torch bounced off the walls of the container, Clarke could see it reflected back in the eyes of at least a dozen people, mostly aen’fa but also a couple of koth. Some were stood, some were sat huddled together. There were far more than seemed likely to fit into such a tiny space. Every one of them appeared to be terrified. For a moment the horns and wings of the two koth flashed an unwanted memory across Clarke’s eyes. He forced it down, boxed it up and put it away.

“Hi,” he said. “Welcome to Earth.”

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Thanks for reading! If you have friends who you think may enjoy the book, please do let them know. They can get started with the prologue entirely for free.

Some author notes are waiting for paid subscribers below the fold…

Robin is one of those supporting characters who might never drive the story forward, but is nonetheless essential to keeping the scaffold of the fiction in one piece. In my head I have a less cartoonish version of Janine from The Real Ghostbusters, which probably says a lot about my 1980s childhood influences.

The real fun in the opening scene here is seeing an important exchange between Bakker and Collins, but from Robin’s POV. It would have been simpler and more normal to go with either of the men’s perspectives, but shifting it to Robin does a few interesting things:

1. It allows us to know more about her character, so that she isn’t just a convenient phone operator

2. It helps to create the sense of the SDC office being busy, and having multiple things going on, as well as establishing the geography of the space

3. It lends an air of mystery to the conversation, shifting it from a fairly procedural set of orders into something more characterful. Bakker giving Collins some instructions isn’t interesting: having that happen from Robin’s point of view, and with her observations and commentary, turns it into smoething worthwhile.

It also softens the blow of the following segment, which has a fairly chunky cut of exposition. There’s a certain amount of knowledge I needed to get across to readers about the portal station and how it worked, for this specific storyline and future ones.

Having Clarke be the POV character here is useful. His world-weariness is handy for undercutting the exposition, and interjecting his cynical, dismissive observations hopefully dilutes the info-dumpy nature of the first few paragraphs. I’m able to describe an amazing building, then have Clarke moan about it. It stops those paragraphs from being merely descriptive, and instead uses them as a way to poke at Clarke’s personality.

I think this is the second time we see the name ‘Barrindon’. Expect to see it more. Foreshadowing!

And, yes, ‘welcome to Earth’ is a reference to Independence Day. I was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s. It’s not my fault!