The Mandel Files, Volume 1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘OK, don’t look.’

  Startlingly bright blue-white light glared out, buzzing and sizzling. Eleanor saw sparks skipping along the paving slabs around her feet. She could feel its warmth on the back of her neck.

  ‘Here it comes.’ The light dimmed, and there was a loud resonant clang, smashing glass. A fan of milder biolum light spilled out across the grass.

  Eleanor kept looking over the lawn. Her nerves raw-edged. She expected to see a mass charge of sentinels coming at her. They’ll never let us get in. Not those devils.

  There was grunting and shuffling from behind her. ‘Don’t touch the edge,’ she heard Teddy warning. He was shoving Suzi through the hole. ‘Got her? OK, for Christ’s sake go easy. You next, Nicole.’

  Eleanor began to back towards the window, shivering uncontrollably.

  ‘You make it with that leg, Victor? OK, I’ll boost you.’ Silence. Eleanor knew she was alone. Sweeping the AK in wild arcs. Nothing moved on the lawn.

  ‘Move it, Eleanor.’

  The jagged hole was roughly square, one and a half metres high, its lower rim a metre off the ground. She put a leg through.

  ‘All right, lady, hands where we can see them, and moving real slow.’

  The room inside was huge, its floor an intricate mosaic of olive-green and cream tiles; there were chandeliers hanging on gold chains, pastel frescoes of waterfowl on the walls, Regency furniture, a grand piano. Smoke layered the air, two people were using fire extinguishers on the windowframe, glass crunched under her foot. A small army was pointing Uzi hand-lasers at her.

  Standing in the middle of the room was a dignified grey-haired man whose face was stiff with tension and suspicion. Had to be Walshaw.

  Suzi was lying on the floor, chest a mass of gore, blood pooling on the shiny tiles. There was a woman kneeling beside her, working frantically. Medical gear modules were scattered round, red and amber LEDs flashing, their needle sensors jabbing through the remnants of the jumpsuit. The woman slapped a bioware mask over Suzi’s face, a rubbery sac concertinaed out of it and began palpitating.

  Nicole was slumped motionless against a wall. Two of the security people were covering her with Uzis while a third wrapped fluffy aquamarine towels around her shredded arms, blood staining them brown.

  Victor was standing, hands on head, eyes red with pain. A grim-faced woman was frisking him with expert thoroughness.

  Three security people surrounded Teddy. He was facedown on the floor, spread-eagled, his hood thrown back, an Uzi pressed against the back of his bare neck.

  Right at the back of the room Eleanor saw a tall teenage girl with a pretty oval face, and long straight chestnut hair, wearing an expensive black dress. Julia Evans; shouldering her way past a big man and an imposing woman, arm rising to point a rigid accusing forefinger straight at Eleanor.

  ‘SIT!’ Julia barked in a voice so commanding that Eleanor’s nerves went dead.

  She heard a quiet sighing sound at her back, and turned to see a sentinel folding on to its haunches not a metre behind her. It licked its muzzle with a long pink tongue.

  ‘Good girl,’ Julia enthused warmly. ‘Who’s a good girl, then?’

  Eleanor’s legs gave out.

  39

  ‘Greg!’

  ‘Huh, yeah?’

  Monastic silence had enveloped the tower, the light diffusing into their makeshift prison reduced to the minutest candle glimmer from above. The basement was inky black.

  Gabriel’s strained face was ghostly pale. ‘Greg, we’re going to die.’

  ‘Come on, Gabriel. Don’t give the bastards the satisfaction.’

  ‘Screw you, Mandel,’ she hissed. ‘I’m not cracking up. I’ve got it back again, thank Christ. The future. It’s all fuzzy. But I can see it, and it all comes to an end in about forty minutes.’

  Greg’s cuffs clanged loudly against the rail as her words penetrated. He squirmed round to look at her, trepidation and hope heating his blood. Psi meant crushing Armstrong’s mind inside his skull, raping every thought with obscene distortions, drowning him in his own agonizing insanity. Making him love his own death.

  Greg hadn’t known he could hate someone that much. But he could do it. For Armstrong, he could do it. No messing.

  The gland: quavering like a cardiac victim. He waited in a funk of anticipation for the tower to fade from sight, for his thoughts to levitate, liberating him from the confines of his own skull. But there was nothing, only the bitter sense of frustration.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he hissed back testily. ‘I still can’t sense your mind.’

  ‘Sure? Course I’m fucking sure,’ Gabriel raged. The old Gabriel. Fabulous. But why hadn’t his own ability returned?

  ‘Can you see a Tau line which has us escaping?’ Greg demanded.

  ‘It’s not like that. Not my usual ability. No Tau lines. There’s only the one vision. Christ, Greg, the whole tower’s just going to blow. Like an atom bomb, or something.’

  ‘A nuke?’ he asked incredulously. He was picking up on the rising panic pulling at her thorax. He believed without the espersense. An event so powerful it’d burst through the twins’ nullifying blockade. Which meant it was all too real.

  There was the weirdest tickle at the back of Greg’s throat. He knew if he opened his mouth it would burst out as a giddy laugh.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gabriel protested. ‘There’s no details, just a bloody great bang.’

  ‘Electron compression,’ Greg said, half to himself. ‘Has to be.’ Doubt rotted the upspring of bold conviction. Philip Evans had been given a warhead once. For one specific task. The American government wouldn’t hand them out like sweets. And yet … the original warhead had been intended for Armstrong. Could Julia or Walshaw have got hold of another one from Horace Jepson? They would have to prove Armstrong was still alive, first. Concrete proof.

  ‘Ellis,’ Greg said excitedly. ‘Lord bless that skinny little fart. He came through.’ But uncertainty still nagged malevolently. Even if Ellis had left details about Armstrong in the Crays, someone had moved bloody fast to mount a strike by tonight. Perhaps it was just a colossal conventional bomb. Julia had Prowlers, maybe she’d got a B5 stashed away somewhere, too. Or a Hades. Or a Tochka. Now that was an interesting way to spend your last half-hour, he mocked himself. See how many tactical weapon systems you can name which could blow you out of existence.

  At least anything powerful enough to take out the entire tower promised to be quick. Not for Gabriel, though. She had half an hour of mental torment left. Better than being beaten to a pulp for his heroism, or thrashing about in the mud’s embrace.

  ‘This attack must mean Armstrong and Kendric aren’t having it all their own way,’ he said with a barely suppressed excitement. ‘Maybe Julia survived. Yeah. And Walshaw interrogated the mole. They’re hitting back, Gabriel.’

  Gabriel’s breathing was coming in ragged gasps. ‘But what do we do?’ she whined.

  Greg took an iron grip on his nerves. ‘Say nothing. At least this way we’ll take Armstrong and Kendric with us.’

  ‘Is that all you can think of?’

  ‘Well, what the hell else is there?’ Greg snapped back, suddenly furious. Despising his own fear, because it would be so easy to let it win.

  ‘You want to shout a warning?’ he asked. ‘Is that what you want to do? Is it? Wake them up, tell them what you can see, let them get clear? Silence is all we’ve got left, Gabriel, our vengeance weapon. This way we get our revenge. It doesn’t matter that we don’t get to see it, we’re dead anyway.’

  Gabriel bit her lower lip, trembling. He caught a glimpse of moisture glinting in her eyes as she hugged the railings hard.

  40

  Eleanor sat on a hard wooden chair in Wilholm’s study. Someone had put a bone china breakfast cup of tea in front of her. She hadn’t drunk any. The air was warm and stuffy from too many people breathing it. Six Event Horizon security hardliners were standing watching her and Teddy, four on the othe
r side of the table, two behind them.

  Stupid. Farcical. But Eleanor hadn’t complained. Didn’t have the energy. Her belly was cold now, colder than ice.

  A harassed Dr Taylor had broken off attending to Suzi long enough to give Eleanor an infusion that’d taken her down to a state where peripheries, like injuries and the manor’s fabulous wall-to-wall glitter, didn’t register much. Then some kind of bioware dressing had been stuck over the claw wounds, and a salve was sprayed over skin that was red raw where the maser had leaked through the dissipater jumpsuit. Dr Taylor wanted her to lie down for a more elaborate treatment. She refused point-blank.

  Eleanor had to know about Greg, persuade the Evans girl and Morgan Walshaw to help find him. Except they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. She was wrapped in a jade towelling-robe, sitting beside Teddy who was also in a robe, one which was too small for him. Julia Evans and Morgan Walshaw sat opposite them. Matched contrasts.

  Julia was quiet, sticking to Walshaw wherever he went. Mouse timid. Nothing like the way Greg had described her.

  Further up the table a man called Piers Ryder had opened up the squat cylindrical message laser, much to Teddy’s impotent fury. Ryder had plugged a cybofax into the laser’s hardware with optical cable, looking for bugs on Walshaw’s orders.

  There was no trust in the study. And after all the horror they’d endured; Eleanor could’ve wept, except it wouldn’t have changed anything.

  Teddy and Walshaw were doing all the talking. Arguing, actually. All down to Walshaw’s totally unbelievable statement that Greg had gone somewhere with Kendric di Girolamo.

  ‘You think Greg’s sold out, you outta your ballsed-up mind,’ Teddy said; loud but not shouting, his anger a dangerous undercurrent.

  ‘Even I find it difficult to believe,’ Walshaw said. ‘But none the less, he did leave with di Girolamo on the Mirriam.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘Does it matter? The complicity exists.’

  ‘Fucking right it matters. He ain’t with that arsehole di Girolamo outta free will. Once we find him my troops gonna snatch him back.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Julia. It was the first time she’d spoken.

  ‘Why not, gal?’ Teddy asked. He wasn’t quite so abusive to her.

  ‘I’m not quite sure of his exact position any more.’

  ‘Way they was headed will do. We’ll pick ’em up soon as they put into port.’

  Julia consulted Walshaw silently. The security chief shrugged.

  ‘Last time I checked, Greg was in Wisbech,’ Julia said.

  ‘Wisbech?’ Teddy asked.

  ‘Yah.’

  ‘What, Wisbech in the basin? How the fuck did he get there?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It wasn’t fast enough to be a plane, we thought perhaps a hovercraft.’

  Teddy narrowed his eyes. ‘How come you know that? You weren’t following him.’

  ‘I gave him my St Christopher. It’s got a transmitter in it, a very complex frequency hopper. Event Horizon’s Earth Resource satellite platforms are equipped with sensors which can pick up the signal anywhere on the planet. I wear it in case I get kidnapped.’

  ‘And you gave it to Greg? Why, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘I wanted to know what he was doing, where he was. You see, Kendric has done a deal with the PSP and Greg didn’t tell me.’

  ‘PSP?’ Teddy half rose from the chair. ‘You telling me PSP is plugged in on this?’

  ‘Yah,’ Julia said.

  ‘Then, gal, you are way, way outta line saying Greg ain’t on the level. While rich bitches like you were living it up abroad, that rat-prick Armstrong was screwing us into the ground. Me and my troops, we were fighting his Constables. We fucking died so you could swan back here and make money outta us. Eight years Greg was out on those streets. Hardest there is, and they nearly broke him. But he stood and fought. So don’t you ever sit in front of me and tell me he’s gone and done a deal with no fucking Armstrong relics. You ain’t good enough to shovel up his shit. You hear me!’

  Julia shrank back in the seat, her tawny eyes wide. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ she pleaded. ‘That’s why I gave him the transmitter. Because I didn’t understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  She swallowed hard, looking round the room in desperation. ‘Victor. You were there at Ellis’s flat. Ellis told you that the Cray which Greg crashed was loaded with millions of personal files. Everyone important in England, that’s what he said.’

  ‘Yes,’ Victor agreed cautiously.

  ‘See?’ Julia asked Teddy.

  ‘See what?’

  Julia covered her face in her hands, veiling the sting of misery in her eyes. ‘Nobody sees. It’s me. Those bloody nodes. I kept looking at it until I had the answer.’ Her hands dropped to the table, palms down, fingers wide. ‘Who? Who, in this whole wide world is going to compile millions of files on people living in this country?’

  ‘God damn.’ The anger fled from Teddy; his chair creaked as it took his full weight again. ‘PSP.’

  ‘The amount of data in even one of the Crays was far too much for anyone to snatch from a mainframe, the squirt would last for days. Ellis had to have direct access to the Ministry of Public Order mainframe at some time before the circuit hotrods crashed it and the PSP fell. The one explanation which fits is that he was an ex-apparatchik; and only a high ranker would have an authority code that’d clear duplication copying on that scale. And he was running a team of hackers that are disrupting the English economy. That’s the oldest trick in the political book; cause dissatisfaction with the current government, and people always turn to the opposition. It had to mean that Ellis was still actively working for the PSP.’

  ‘OK,’ Teddy said. ‘So maybe Greg ain’t so fast these days, didn’t see the connection straight off. Don’t mean he’s turned.’

  ‘I know that,’ Julia shot back. ‘I didn’t want to believe he’d do that to me, not Greg. I trusted him, like nobody else. That’s why I slipped him the St Christopher. To find out what he was doing. Then he went with Kendric, and I had to believe.’

  ‘It’s all down to Gabriel Thompson,’ Walshaw said. ‘Her precognition ability would suggest it is impossible to snatch or even surprise her. Therefore she and Greg went with di Girolamo out of their own choice.’

  ‘Christ, man, I don’t know about that. Gabriel is one hotshot gal, but that psi gland messes her about something serious. You’ve only ever seen her on the up. In Turkey I seen her down, and you just can’t get any lower and still be human.’ Teddy made a fist and rapped on the table with it. ‘OK, listen; you count Gabriel and her precog outta all this, you gotta scene where Greg’s in deep shit. Right? Ain’t I right?’

  Julia turned to Walshaw, face tilted up with hope.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said the security chief. ‘Psi was always looked on as a wild card when I was in active service. I just thought they’d improved it since my day. Greg and Gabriel seemed to have it down pat.’

  Teddy gave a fast grin. ‘Now we are getting somewhere.’ He looked at Julia. ‘OK, gal, you work your magic spy trick on Greg again, tell us exactly where he is, and we’ll squirt the co-ords out to my troops.’ He glared at Ryder. ‘That’s if you ain’t screwed my laser. And maybe Event Horizon can loan the Trinities a couple of Prowlers to jump ’em out to wherever Greg is now. I wanna get this settled soon as.’

  Julia became fluttery with concern. ‘I can’t find out where Greg is now. Grandpa was plugged into every piece of gear Wilholm has. It’s all glitched by the virus. We have to wait until the company security people outside write an antithesis.’

  Teddy’s face wound up with pain. ‘Jesus. They’ve had Greg for hours. You got any idea what they could’ve done to him by now? That bimbo friend of yours wasn’t the half of it. They were being nice to her.’

  ‘The situation is hardly Miss Evans’s fault,’ Walshaw said smartly.

  Julia had closed tortured eyes.

  ‘Yeah,
OK,’ said Teddy. ‘So let me use the message laser, plug it into the man’s NN core. I got someone who can write an anti-thing in zero time.’

  ‘There is nobody better than our experts,’ Walshaw said.

  ‘Bullshit! Son is the best there’s ever been. Melted through your security core guardians like butter to get at the manor defence specs, didn’t he? We wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for him. How the hell do you think Greg found Tentimes? Who backtracked Ellis for you?’

  ‘You expect me to allow some kind of super hacker to plug directly into Philip Evans’s NN core?’ Walshaw asked. ‘The heart of the entire company? Not a chance. I’m more than willing to do whatever I can to help Greg, once the virus is broken. But that is out.’

  ‘You owe us, man. You owe us so bad it’s gonna take you a couple of centuries to kick your debt. You are responsible for Greg being where he is now. You hired him, you put him there.’

  Eleanor watched Walshaw stare up at the ceiling, brows knotted with furious concentration. Greg’s life was being decided inside his skull, she realized. It was obvious that Julia would follow his decision. The girl looked dreadfully unhappy.

  ‘Miss Evans?’ Eleanor said. She was distantly bemused by how such an awfully reedy voice as hers had become could attract everyone’s rapt attention. They all wanted someone to produce a miracle, blow away their dilemma. She couldn’t, of course. ‘You don’t know me, Miss Evans, but I live with Greg, and I love him. He would never betray you. I suppose you think of him as a hard man, never showing much feeling. He is in a way. I have only ever seen him let emotion overrun common sense on one occasion. That was when he found out what di Giroiamo had done to your friend, Katerina. All he could think about was getting her out. He cared about her, a girl he’d only ever met for a few minutes before. Does that tell you anything about him? I have also met Royan, the hacker Teddy wants to plug into your grandfather’s NN core. I was sick to my stomach for a day after I met him, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink. Royan doesn’t even have any legs, Miss Evans. He doesn’t have any arms. He doesn’t even have eyes. To look at him you wouldn’t even believe he was a human being. Physically he is a lump of flesh with a digestive system and a brain which is plugged into some gear. The PSP did that to him, their People’s Constables. But I’ve talked with him, had coffee with him, he’s one of the most decent, bravest people in the world. He knows what pain really is; he isn’t about to harm you or your grandfather.’