The Mandel Files, Volume 2: The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Pure shark shit,’ said Josh Bailey, the crash team member who was with them. ‘We have to live with it the whole time. I’m almost immune by now.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ Charlotte knew she ought to show an interest. ‘Establish a minimum rapport with everyone you meet,’ Baronski had told her. ‘Try to understand where they fit into life, how they relate to you.’ Except it all seemed a little pointless now.

  Fabian leant on the rail and stared silently at the three waterfalls staining the green ocean. It was green, she saw, because of the minute algae flecks floating in it. Like thick soup.

  She put her hand over his. ‘He wouldn’t have felt anything, Fabian.’

  ‘You saw that gondola! He burnt to death. It’s a horrible way to die.’

  ‘He would have been unconscious from the smoke long before the flames reached the study.’

  His head twisted round, eyes frantic for a moment, wanting to believe. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Whenever houses catch on fire, that’s always the reason people don’t get out; overcome by smoke.’

  ‘Oh.’ He dropped his head again to stare at the sloppy water. ‘I’ve never lived in a house.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose …’ He stiffened, speaking with brittle dignity. ‘I suppose you’ll be leaving me now.’

  ‘No, not unless you want me to.’

  He glanced up, too frightened to believe. ‘But you’re not being paid any more. And I heard them tell you Baronski is dead.’

  ‘Fabian.’ She turned him to face her, putting her hands on his cheeks so he couldn’t look away. ‘Your father’s money never bought you the time we spent together.’

  He started crying as his mouth parted in a smile.

  ‘Oh, Fabian.’ She cuddled him to her, kissing the top of his head. His arms tightened round her with desperate strength.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ he croaked.

  ‘So am I. But it isn’t so bad if you’ve got someone to share it with you.’

  They embraced for a long time. Being that close, wordless but knowing, wasn’t something she wanted to break. And she had told him the truth, fear was easier to weather this way.

  She saw the Pegasus slide out of the western sky, three sharply pointed fighter planes enclosing it in a tight formation. It was heading straight for the platform. Charlotte watched it knowingly, a little twist of tension rising.

  Josh Bailey’s cybofax bleeped.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she told him. ‘That’ll be for me.’

  Fabian tagged along automatically behind her. It could have been a problem when they reached the conference room, Josh Bailey looked like he was about to object, but Charlotte sent him a silent plea, and he shrugged, waving them both through the door.

  That was when she finally met Julia Evans, in the flesh, shaking hands, actually saying hello in a voice that quavered alarmingly. The back of her legs trembled slightly, as if she’d run a marathon. But Julia Evans only smiled weakly, murmuring a few encouraging words. Charlotte virtually fled to her seat at the table in relief. There were none of the expected allegations, no hostility. Julia Evans didn’t blame her for any of the trouble.

  She watched unobtrusively as Julia Evans said something to Fabian, her finger tracing the shrinking bruise round his eye where the maid had struck him. The clinic medics had reduced the swelling to virtually nothing. Fabian just blushed and looked at the floor.

  Charlotte was sitting next to Suzi who had come in ahead of them. The small hardline woman was in one of the Event Horizon security team tracksuits. There was a slight bulge in the fabric round her knee; but her stride had been natural enough.

  Rick Parnell introduced himself, and promptly sat in a chair at the end of the table, just beating Greg to it. Greg seemed momentarily put out, but settled for the next chair down. Victor Tyo sat opposite her, activating the terminal in front of him.

  Fabian took his chair beside her, fumbling for her hand below the table. She gave him a quick squeeze of reassurance.

  The three flatscreens on the wall lit up as Julia Evans sat at the head of the table. One of them showed the face of an old man, the other two were of Julia herself, none of them had any background.

  ‘They are synthesized images,’ Julia explained. ‘My grandfather and I have our memories stored in neural network cores.’

  Philip Evans; Charlotte remembered him, Event Horizon’s founder. She’d heard enough after dinner talk to know he had played a large part in the downfall of the PSP.

  The whole concept was amazing. Julia could be in two places at once, three, four— No wonder Event Horizon worked so perfectly. Charlotte felt a smile of admiration building. It really was true, nobody could beat Julia Evans. Reality was actually greater than legend.

  ‘That’s how you burned into the Colonel Maitland’s ’ware,’ Fabian said. He sounded impressed.

  ‘Yes. And I’d be obliged if you two treated the knowledge of the NN cores’ existence, and anything we discuss here today, as completely confidential, please.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Charlotte said. She nudged Fabian.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘Good. Now then, I understand Nia Korovilla was asking you about the flower, Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes, she wanted to know who gave it to me.’

  ‘A lot of people do,’ Greg said softly. ‘Will you tell us?’

  This was where she had planned on doing her bargaining; a trade, money, and guaranteed safety for what she knew. But she didn’t know what sort of price to ask for, and some hard little core of anger inside wanted something to be done about Baronski, wanted justice. She strongly suspected that the kind of people who killed the old man weren’t the kind who ever sat in courts to be tried. And Fabian would need protecting as well.

  Julia Evans was the only person who could sort out those kind of loose ends for her. It would be for the best if she wasn’t antagonized.

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte said. ‘He never told me his name, just that he was a priest.’

  ‘Describe him, please,’ Greg said.

  ‘I suppose he was at least fifty-five, probably sixty; medium height, four or five centimetres shorter than me, very pale face, flabby neck, greying hair in a pony tail. He had a great smile, I mean, you just looked at him and knew you could trust him,’ she trailed off limply. It sounded silly said out loud, but his smile had been the reason she agreed to deliver the flower.

  ‘Not Royan,’ Julia said.

  ‘Would you recognize him if you saw him again?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said. ‘He was wearing a dove-grey jumpsuit, an old one, but it was clean. All the Celestials were clean.’

  Victor looked up from his terminal. ‘You mean this happened in New London?’

  ‘Sorry, didn’t I say? Yes. It was during my holiday.’

  Julia and Greg were both grinning at each other. ‘You went up to New London after New Zealand?’ Greg asked.

  ‘How did you—?’

  ‘Tell you, Charlotte, you’re a very important person. Victor here has a big profile on you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘I took a flight from Mangonui spaceport.’

  ‘With your patron?’

  ‘No. I said it was a holiday. I went by myself.’

  ‘How did you pay for it?’

  ‘I didn’t. It was a farewell gift from my last patron, all expenses paid. Baronski let me keep it. I normally have to hand the gifts over, but he could hardly sell it, so he let me go ahead.’

  Victor let out a groan. ‘No wonder we couldn’t trace you through Amex. What was this patron’s name?’

  ‘Ali Murdad.’

  ‘Did he send you up there to collect the flower?’ Greg asked. ‘Or any other kind of favour?’

  ‘No. It was a genuine holiday for me.’

  ‘I have confirmed the ticket,’ one of Julia’s images said. ‘A regal-class package with Thomas Cook, booked by Aflaj Industrial Cybernetic
s – Ali Murdad listed as a director. A fortnight at the High Savoy, with a universal club and resort access card.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  ‘Tell us about this priest,’ Greg said. ‘Are you certain he was a Celestial Apostle?’

  ‘Yes. There was a group of them working round the tourists at the fall surf beach. A couple of them spoke to me, they were about my age, they explained what the Celestials were. They were very devout, I don’t mean silly like the Hare Krishnas or deadly dull like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they had a sense of humour, but they really believed our destiny lies out among the stars. They asked me if I wanted to stay up in New London permanently; they said it wouldn’t be a hard life, not like the cults that exploit children down here, but it was fairly basic. That didn’t seem to bother them, they believe it’s only temporary, when this divine event of theirs finally occurs everything will change. I think they expect to receive a higher blessing than everyone else, or be the first people admitted into heaven, or something along those lines. Being a Celestial Apostle was certainly supposed to be a step up the ladder towards God.’

  ‘But you turned them down?’

  ‘Hell, yes. I can go up to New London any time I want. I’m not spending the rest of my life boring the pants off tourists with nutty creeds. Besides, they seemed a bit simple, you know? Dreamy types.’

  ‘And was this priest one of the pair which spoke to you?’

  ‘No, he came over when they left. He knew my name, though, that was the funny thing. I got the impression he was waiting for the other two to finish. He said he was sorry they had failed to show me the light, then he asked me if I’d do a friend of his a favour.’

  ‘What was the friend’s name?’ Victor asked.

  ‘He said he couldn’t tell me for obvious reasons.’

  Julia smiled as if she already knew. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He asked me to deliver something to you. He said it was a gift from your lover, but that no one must know. I thought – well, you already have a husband, you see, so there was this other secret man in your life. It was romantic and exciting, me being asked to be a go-between for you. I couldn’t say no. You’re … well, you’re Julia Evans, aren’t you? I would have been involved in something delicious, I might even have been asked to do it again. So I cut short my holiday and flew back. Dmitri Baronski got me the ticket for the Newfields ball.’ She stared determinedly at her finger nails, mortified. Whatever would Fabian think of her, acting like a schoolgirl.

  ‘He knew your name,’ Greg said in the silence that followed, ‘he knew you had the contacts necessary to get into Monaco’s social event of the year at a day’s notice, and he knew you had the savoir-faire to deliver the flower. Some Celestial Apostle.’

  ‘You think that’s him, boy?’ Philip Evans asked. ‘The alien?’

  ‘Alien?’ Charlotte gasped. Fabian lurched upright in his chair, staring at Philip Evans’s image.

  Nobody said anything, they were all looking at Greg, waiting for him to speak, like he was some sort of guru or something, she thought. He blinked slowly, and focused on her. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling Fabian’s hand in her own, the damp smooth skin tightening its grip silently. Greg didn’t just look at you, she decided, he judged you. A psychic. The realization didn’t make her any more comfortable. There were stories—

  ‘You said you broke off your holiday to deliver the flower?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Her throat was contracting.

  ‘How much of it did you miss?’

  ‘Four days, Ali’s package was for a fortnight. But I changed my ticket for an earlier flight. The agent said there was no problem. I landed at Capetown then caught a connecting flight.’

  ‘Ah.’ A smile spread across his face. ‘I think we’d better fill you in on a few points.’

  26

  Suzi sat dumb while everyone had their say. First Charlotte telling how some Celestial Apostle handed her the alien flower. And just what the fuck was a Celestial Apostle anyway? Then Greg on his Russian general mate, and how the Dolgoprudnensky were probably plugged in somewhere down the line. At least she knew about the Dolgoprudnensky, tough bastards. Julia started rapping about her starship supertechnology, and the heat she was getting from kombinates and microbes, and Royan being his usual monomaniac self. Royan always had to take apart anything new; split it open, figure it out, and put it back together so that it worked smoother. If Julia didn’t know that about him then they weren’t as close as she thought.

  All heavy duty shit.

  Charlotte and Fabian were sitting up straight like a couple of kids at school who’d been lumbered with the toughest master for a lesson, hanging on to every word. Charlotte’s gorgeous face was crinkling from the effort of following details. Suzi glanced casually at the girl’s profile. Not bad at all. Which reminded Suzi of Andria, who she hadn’t phoned since the airship.

  The rap went on relentlessly around her. It was something she hated, and she couldn’t let them know. Silence implied wisdom, some bullshit like that. Let them think she was lost in deep thoughts, fully plugged in. This was Greg’s scene, not hers. She could plan ahead, sort a deal down to the last detail. Good at it, too. But she could never pin the past down the way Greg could. He listened to what people said they believed had happened, thought about it, then explained what had really been going on. And it all made sense, like he was fitting a big jigsaw of events together in his mind, a map through what had been. Him and his warlock intuition.

  She grinned at him.

  He gave her a knowing look, then broke away. ‘You see, Charlotte,’ he said, ‘you didn’t know it, but you’ve actually been working for the Dolgoprudnensky since you left the orphanage. According to General Kamoskin, Baronski was plugged into them at a high level. That’s why he always sent you and the other girls looking for financial gossip. He made some money out of it, certainly; but all the really smart data was squirted back to this Pavel Kirilov character. He’s in a position to make a lot more use of it than Baronski ever could.’

  The girl looked crestfallen. Suzi could see Fabian’s hand locked in hers under the table, his thumb stroking gently.

  ‘And you think it was the Dolgoprudnensky who asked Jason Whitehurst to lift her from Monaco?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Father did business with them,’ Fabian said unexpectedly. ‘It was sneaky stuff. Made us a heck of a lot of money, though.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Julia asked.

  The boy grimaced. ‘Absolutely. Father explained it to me.’ He smiled at Charlotte, flipping a lock of hair from his eyes. ‘I said he told me everything.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Charlotte said. ‘So how did it work?’

  ‘It was the Dolgoprudnensky who made sure we were granted all our import-export licences with the Eastern Federation states. Licences are really tricky to get most of the time, unless you know the right people; those Eastern European states are still lumbered with huge civil service bureaucracies. All we had to do in return for the licences was use ships which the Dolgoprudnensky owned to carry our cargoes in and out of Odessa. It’s simple really, most of our trade with Russia involves exchanging their timber for household gear and industrial cybernetics. So say if a Russian company comes to us and asks us for a particular piece of foreign hardware, we look round the global timber market and come back with a weight of wood which is equal to the cost of that hardware. Next, the Russian government’s Timber Export Directorate authorizes the release of that weight from their stocks. They have millions of tonnes of dead deciduous trees left over from the Warming, it’s a big national resource for them. The timber is shipped out of Odessa at ten per cent above the normal commercial carriage rate, and in return the company gets its hardware. Nobody queries the amount of wood being sold abroad which pays for that extra ten per cent in the shipping costs, because the Dolgoprudnensky have consolidated their control of the Timber Export Directorate. From the Director herself right down to the offic
e cleaners, the entire staff is made up of Dolgoprudnensky members; it’s like a closed shop, the personnel department will only employ their nominees. And the only merchants who are admitted to the Directorate’s approved list to barter timber are the ones in on the deal. Like Father.’

  ‘And timber is bulky,’ Julia said. ‘You need a lot of ships to transport it.’

  ‘That’s right. Only father didn’t just supply single pieces of hardware to Russia, he shipped in entire factories.’

  Charlotte reached out and smoothed the remaining strands of hair from Fabian’s forehead. They both smiled at each other.

  ‘OK,’ said Greg. ‘That confirms it. Jason Whitehurst was working for the Dolgoprudnensky, at least to start with. When he began to realize how valuable Charlotte was he decided he didn’t need them any more. It explains why Nia Korovilla was on board, to keep a close watch on the Dolgoprudnensky’s most valuable timber deal partner. And they were also the ones who mounted the observation on Baronski’s apartment after the Colonel Maitland failed to show at Odessa.’

  ‘But how did they know I was carrying the flower for Julia?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘They wouldn’t have known it was the flower specifically, not at first,’ Greg said; he pursed his lips, gazing at the ceiling. ‘Let’s see. How long had it been since your last genuine by-yourself holiday?’

  ‘I’m not sure, a couple of years at least, maybe longer.’

  ‘OK, and where were you when you asked Baronski to get you in to the Newfields ball?’

  ‘I was still up at New London. If he couldn’t get me a ticket there wouldn’t have been much point in coming back to Earth early.’

  ‘And you specifically told him it was Julia you wanted to see?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. That would make Baronski very suspicious. You break off a pre-paid holiday of a lifetime, all because you want to physically meet the woman who owns one of the largest companies in the world. There must have been a compelling reason, yet you didn’t tell him, which is not only out of character, it goes against your whole arrangement with him. If I was Baronski, someone who lived off the kind of byte scraps dropped by people like Julia, I’d want to know exactly what you were up to.