Mindstar Rising

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Strangely, even Greg had warned her about the danger. Greg the liar. Greg the betrayer. His name was the only one capable of piercing the wrap of numbness around her feelings. She'd believed in him like nobody before. Worshipped from afar, flirted. Opened her soul to him. Confessed the darkest, most shameful secret.

  And he'd lied to her.

  Just like all the rest. Men must look on her as some kind of victim waiting to be abused. Except for Adrian, a bleak inner voice said, Adrian adored her female side. He was immune to her money. So far. But knowing her luck . . .

  She still couldn't believe she'd been so mistaken about Greg. He'd said she was beautiful. And she couldn't be fooled by smooth talk any more, not after Kendric.

  Then why? Why the lie?

  Access BlitzCulmination. So called because it brought all aspects of the case together. The homogenised data packages unfolded within her glacial mind, rotating the bedroom and Katerina one hundred and eighty degrees from her cognisance. Her processor nodes marshalled it into precise channels once more, a construct that incorporated hard facts, assumptions, suspicions.

  She ran the logic matrix once more, the fifth time today. It produced a single diamond-hard conviction. No matter how many times she ran it, how much slackness and wishful thinking she incorporated into the matrix channels, the answer was always the same.

  Liar. Traitor. Thief. Heartbreaker.

  Cancel BlitzCulmination. One thing it never told her was why Greg would do such a thing. She didn't understand human nature well enough to guess. And now she'd probably never know.

  Katerina had sunk into an innocent dreamless sleep. Julia pulled the frilly snowdrop-pattern duvet up around her shoulders.

  Open Channel to NN Core. Load OtherEyes Limiter#Five.

  She felt her grandfather snuggle into her mind, welcoming his touch. The last person on the whole planet she still trusted. And what a sad comment on her life that was.

  How are we doing? she asked.

  Greg hasn't moved for three hours now. I think Wisbech must be their nesting ground. Clever that. So close, yet so far away. I'm not sure how they got across the Fens basin; too slow for a tilt-fan, possibly a hovercraft.

  I trusted him, Grandpa. Really trusted him. Everything he did and said was always right. He made me believe in him. I thought I was safe.

  I know you did, Juliet. It must hurt. I'm so sorry.

  It doesn't hurt. I don't feel anything. I'm not human any more.

  Course you are, girl. Don't talk nonsense. You're seeing Adrian again this weekend, aren't you? What you do with him is pretty bloody human. And I approve. He's a nice boy.

  If I'm still around by the weekend.

  Hey, that's no Evans talking. Wilholm is well protected, and I'm hooked into all the security sensors. Ain't nobody going to sneak up on you, girl.

  Suppose it's one of the staff, Walshaw even?

  No, Juliet, not Morgan. He's been with me for fifteen years, almost since you were born.

  Stake your life on it, huh? She let the irony filter back to him.

  That's my girl. Keep shining through. But don't you worry, I'm even watching Morgan. No strain on my capacity.

  Julia found herself looking down at the wood-panelled study, initially confused by the unusual perspective, a fly on the ceiling. Walshaw was sitting at the long table databasing with his customised terminal; the bald patch on his crown was larger than she'd realised before. Then the incoming squirt from Event Horizon's datanet bloomed in her mind. Walshaw was reviewing the Cray memories as they were being extracted by the security division programming team. All the memories had been run through search and classification programs as they came out, analysed and indexed. He was running through the categories, accessing every mention of Wolf and Event Horizon, double-checking.

  He's been doing that for hours, her grandfather said. Hunting down that clue Greg was talking about. Hardly the act of a turncoat, now is it?

  I suppose. It would be nice to believe in him at least, Julia thought. But this was her life she was gambling with now. And the list of her mistakes when it came to dealing with people was a long one.

  Suddenly she was inundated with a rapid-motion tour of Wilholm through the security sensors, visual, infrared, magnetic, electromagnetic, UV laser-radar. Millisecond slices of security division hardliners patrolling the corridors; sentinels prowling the grounds; Tobias in his stables; owls snapped in mid-flight, wings motionless; field mice twitching their tiny damp noses in the night air; deserted tracts of landscape, fields and woodland. A kaleidoscope of bright-hued luminous colours, and conflicting geometries.

  See, Juliet? All quiet on the western front.

  Her heart began to beat faster. Why is Walshaw bothering with the Crays? We know Kendric has plugged in with the PSP, that the card carriers organised the blitz.

  You and I know, yes, Juliet. But I don't think Morgan has put it together yet.

  But it's obvious! she exclaimed.

  To you.

  Oh, Grandpa! What if Greg hasn't worked it out, either? What if I was wrong about him? He was so tired, I mean totally run down. He's been through hell; and it was Kendric who had him beaten up.

  Relax, girl. First thing I thought of.

  What then?

  If he's innocent, why are the two of them in Wisbech? And why didn't Gabriel warn us about him? She's in it with him.

  Oh.

  Sorry, Juliet.

  The depression enveloped her again, its return total. She could see the world simply now, black and white, no right, no wrong, there was just survival which mattered. Instinctive self-preservation, primeval, the only complexity lay in method. The acceptance decided her.

  When can you hit them? she asked.

  Every hundred and eight minutes, starting in seventy-two minutes—mark.

  Do it. Her lips synchronised with her thoughts, but no sound emerged.

  OK, Juliet. Why don't you take a break? Katerina isn't going anywhere.

  No, I'll stay here; it wouldn't be right leaving her, not now.

  I'll give you a status check nearer the time.

  "Love you, Grandee."

  Wipe OtherEyes Limiter#Five. Exit NN Core.

  Julia sat down on the barrel-like Copenhagen chair beside the bed, hand automatically sliding down the side of the cushion. Her fingers touched the hard plastic casing, reassuring her. She drew out the weapon. An ash-grey cylinder thirty centimetres long and three wide, a thin grooved handle at one end. It resembled a fat, long-barrelled pistol, weighing about one and a half kilos. The discharge end was solid, with a small circular indentation, gritted with minute carbonised granules. ARMSCOR was printed along the side in black lettering.

  She'd stolen it from Greg after he'd brought Kats back to the finance division offices, slipping it off Walshaw's desk and into her bag as soon as the desolating revelation of his betrayal had sunk in. She'd been horribly afraid of him, what he might do.

  When she'd got back to Wilholm she'd accessed the manor library's memory core, looking up what she'd got. A stunshot, capable of immobilising an adult at forty-five metres. Four shots would kill.

  The power unit was charged to ninety-five per cent capacity, giving her almost two hundred shots. She'd spent the morning familiarising herself with it—safety catch, grip, aiming. Kept at it until she was satisfied she could do it by touch alone. It tended to wobble unless she used both hands. The library said there was no recoil.

  And nobody knew she'd got it, not even Morgan Walshaw. Her last line of defence. Its solidity and weight injecting a primitive kind of confidence into a badly demoralised psyche. She wished it would be Kendric himself who came. There'd be no inhibition holding her back then. Sending all ninety-five per cent into his jerking, burning body.

  But it would be some tekmerc hardliner, anonymous, a fast-moving shadow in the dark. Her one advantage was that he'd have to come to her; a slight advantage, but it might make the difference between life and death. The odds were imposs
ible for the nodes to compute, too many variables, thank the Lord. That sort of foreknowledge was something she could do without.

  Julia sat back in the Copenhagen chair, putting the Armscor on her lap, resting her chin on her hands. Looking at Kats she realised she'd even been emptied of envy, her friend's beautiful face meant nothing. In fact when Kats grew older she would've lost far more. You can't lose what you haven't got.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The water-fruit field stretched on for ever, a perfect example of perspective, parallel rows of creamy-white globes merging at some grey distance. Eleanor felt around underneath the next globe and cut the thick rope root with her knife. Inky sap puffed out, lost in the reservoir's slow current. She lifted the globe and steered it slowly into the neck of her net bag. There were another twenty water-fruit inside. Almost full. Turning back to the row.

  A dolphin snout pushed her hand. The knife missed the root. She looked at her hand, puzzled. Tried again. Two hard bumps on the back of her wrist, almost painful.

  Annoyance began to register in her sluggish thoughts. She held up her hand, palm outwards, pushing twice: back off.

  It was Rusty. He didn't budge, guarding the water-fruit. Dark shapes slithered effortlessly through the water behind her, churning up a small cloud of silt. When she turned she saw another pair of dolphins had got hold of the net bag, pulling it away.

  Angry now, her steady rhythm had been broken. Hanging a metre off the reservoir bed, motionless, trying to outstare a dolphin. How odd.

  Now the monotony of harvesting was broken she began to realise just how tired she was, muscles whispering their protest into her cortex—arms, legs, shoulders, back, all laced with fatigue toxins.

  Exactly how long had she been doing this? The soft green light was fading fast overhead, lowering visibility to less than fifty metres. A cold flash of realisation pinched her mind. She hadn't quite fallen into the trap of blue lost, but her soul had migrated, fleeing the memories of guilt and pain. Now they rushed back in to her empty brain, unmitigated.

  Greg calling, apologetic but firm, ruled by duty. Idiot, she'd answered; trying to disguise a jumble of secret worries and heart-wrenching concern with stiff resolution. He respected toughness. Both refusing to yield.

  He'd promised, she'd told him, promised solemnly. But he'd shaken his head, saying it wasn't like that. She'd cried herself to sleep, imagining terrible things happening on the di Girolamo yacht.

  How silly it all seemed now. Words spoken, never meant.

  Eleanor gave Rusty a submissive thumbs up and headed for the surface, too weary to rush, a few wriggles with her flippers every couple of metres keeping her ascent steady. Rusty orbited her laggardly.

  The hire boats had all returned to the fishing lodge at Whitwell, away down the other prong of the reservoir. Even the windsurfers had packed up. The Berrybut estate's bonfire was sending flames shooting into the neutral sky, a spectre-light swarm of sparks lingering above the rectangular clearing in the still air.

  Rusty insinuated himself between her legs, and she hugged his dorsal fin gratefully. The ride back to the shore was nothing like the usual turbulent dash. A slow smooth glide. Now why couldn't people be like dolphins—sympathetic, gentle, perennially happy. Magnificent creatures.

  The sun had fallen behind a pearl crescent horizon piled high with lacy clouds when Rusty let her off. She stroked his head and bent to kiss him. Rusty would understand. He chittered wildly and sank below the surface, suddenly leaping up again five metres away, twisting in midair and landing with an almighty splash. She laughed, first time all day.

  The pebbles on the drying mud cut into her feet as she walked out of the water, her skin like soft crinkled putty after such a long immersion. It'd been midday when she'd begun harvesting. Greg had sworn he'd be back by early morning. Eleanor had waited until lunchtime for him to return, then her tolerance had snapped, and she'd dived into the water, sulky and furious.

  Duncan was fire warden this evening. He lived two chalets down from number six. Eleanor stopped to say hello, letting the bonfire's ruddy furnace heat dry her puckered skin, welcoming the warmth permeating through her limbs. Duncan gave her a couple of baked potatoes out of the raw clay oven-tunnel which ran through the heart of the bonfire, eyeing her chest as the flames threw liquid orange ripples across the dull-sparkle nylon of her one-piece costume. She thanked him, straight-faced, and juggled the hot potatoes back to the chalet. Duncan was sweet. And his covert schoolboy glances started her thinking about how she and Greg could spend the evening making up.

  The Duo hadn't returned. Eleanor almost dropped the potatoes. Greg had been gone for thirty hours now. No matter how big their row he wouldn't have done that without telling her.

  She dumped the mirror lung and the potatoes on the porch, blipping the lock. Inside, and the snug familiarity of the little lounge offered no comfort at all. She activated the Event Horizon terminal, loading Greg's cybofax number.

  The delay warned her. Connections never took more than a second. After fifteen seconds the flatscreen printed: THE UNIT YOU HAVE CALLED IS CURRENTLY OUTSIDE EUROCOM'S INTERFACE ZONE.

  Now the dark worry she'd held back really began to mount.

  She didn't even hesitate before loading Gabriel's number.

  THE UNIT YOU HAVE CALLED IS CURRENTLY OUTSIDE EUROCOM'S INTERFACE ZONE.

  The heart flutter of panic didn't come from fear, it was not knowing what to do next. Instinct cried out to call the police. But snatching that Katerina girl was incredibly illegal. Eleanor wondered if they'd got caught, flung into prison. She could hardly ask. Then she remembered Gabriel had been with him all the time. Nothing could go wrong with Gabriel there to provide advance warning. A doddle, he'd said, a late, lame attempt to reassure her.

  Then why wasn't he back here, her cold mind screamed silently. The ludicrous notion of him running off with Gabriel intruded. Dismissed instantly. She thought for a second, then raced for the bedroom and her cupboard. The Trinities would know—maybe where he was, certainly what to do next.

  The card Royan had given her was still in her bag. She showed it to the terminal, praying. The flatscreen remained blank, but she heard scuffling sounds from the speaker.

  "Yeah?" The voice was male, flat and uninterested.

  "I want to speak to Teddy—Father."

  "No shit?"

  "Now!"

  Eleanor thought she'd blown it, there was only aching silence. Cursing her brittle nerves.

  The screen cleared to show Teddy's face. "Eleanor, right? What's up, gal?"

  She let out a sob of relief.

  Teddy's frown grew as she explained. She wondered if she was coming over like a hysterical jilted girl. He had to realise how important this was.

  "Greg didn't leave any message for you at all?" Teddy asked when she finished. And he was taking it seriously. Her confidence rose a fraction; she wasn't alone any more.

  "None."

  "That ain't right," Teddy said. "Greg would always cover himself, standard procedure. And Gabriel's cybofax is dead too?"

  "Yes; at least, English Telecom says both of them are outside the satellite footprint."

  Teddy paused for a moment. "OK, my people left 'em going into the Event Horizon finance division office. I can't believe the company would waste 'em. They knew they could trust Greg, and it ain't that sort've deal anyway. 'Sides, they let my people get clear. Thing that bothers me is Gabriel. She's like invincible, you know?" He started typing on his terminal keyboard, looking at something off camera. Unintelligible voices stuttered in the background. "OK, I want you to call that Morgan Walshaw guy for me. You'll get shoved around by secretaries and the like, don't take no shit. Insist on speaking to him. Him only. Ask him if he knows where Greg is. Then call me right back; you'll get straight through this time. I'm gonna see what I can find out about Gabriel, if she ever got back."

  "How?"

  Teddy's face melted into a fast keen grin. "I got friends everywhere."
/>   "Oh." She felt foolish asking.

  "Eleanor, you did good calling me, gal. We'll get him back for you."

  And he was gone before she could thank him.

  Eleanor tugged on a silk blouse before she called Event Horizon, respectable from the waist up, twisting damp hair into a ponytail. Morgan Walshaw's number was in the terminal's memory core.

  The screen lit with a polite-looking young man in a neat powder-blue business suit.

  Eleanor swallowed. "This is Mandel Investigative Services," she said. "I'm returning Mr. Walshaw's call on a case we're covering for him."

  He shrugged; friendly, she thought.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "We can't reach Mr. Walshaw at the moment."

  "If you check you'll see our company is cleared for direct access."

  "Hey, I'm not giving you the run-around, not someone as pretty as you. Mr. Walshaw really is out of touch."

  "Isn't that unusual?"

  "Very. There's some big glitch in our communications net right now, really shot it up. It's headless-chicken chaos around here at the moment."

  "I see." But she wasn't sure she believed.

  "Listen, if it's really urgent why don't I call you back as soon as the glitch has been debugged? We've got Mandel Investigative Services number on file. Who shall I ask for?"

  "Eleanor, Eleanor Broady."

  "Pleased to meet you Eleanor, I'm Bernard Murton."

  "That's very kind of you to offer, Bernard. Have you any idea how long it'll take to debug this glitch?"

  "Nope, sorry." He smiled ingratiatingly. She wondered if he'd have enough courage to ask her out for a drink. Struck by how bizarre this all was, being chatted up by a randy assistant while God knows what was happening to Greg. Sliding her mind back on to the problem.

  "This data package I've got for Walshaw is very important," she said. "I don't suppose you could tell me where he is, I could hand-deliver it."

  "Er, sure, no ultra-hush about that. He's with Miss Evans at her home. But you won't be able to get in. It's sealed up tight, something to do with the communication glitch. They don't tell me anything."