“I can give you a short-term localized prediction, but you must remember that you possess the ability to alter that future. Nothing is a certainty. For instance, I could tell you what I see you eating for dinner tonight; but it would be singularly pointless as you could order the cook to prepare something else just to prove the prediction wrong.”
“So make it something I won’t alter.” She glanced at Greg to see if he approved of her badgering. He must’ve understood how intrigued people would be.
Eighth time you’ve looked at him.
Wipe OtherEyes.
The abrupt silence was like an empty hole, torn out. She felt a fragment of guilt, this was Grandpa she was punishing. But he shouldn’t abuse the privilege, he had to learn that.
Gabriel’s eyes had that distant focus, just like Greg. As though the gland lifted them out of this universe for a while.
“This afternoon, four o’clock, you’ll get a call from your precision cybernetics division in London. The manager will submit the last quarter returns; and he’ll keep emphasizing the efficiency figures, they’re up by five per cent.”
“All right,” Julia said enthusiastically. Four o’clock, an hour and a half, she could wait that long. Typical of regional managers to fish for compliments.
“Unless you call him first and ask for the report,” Gabriel pointed out.
“I won’t. I think I believe anyway. You’d never be so bold if you weren’t certain.”
Greg and Gabriel both seemed content with her answer. She showed them into the study, walking straight to her seat at the head of the table.
“Look, Grandpa, Greg’s come to visit us, and he’s brought a friend.”
Julia noticed Gabriel’s reticence as she sat down. The woman’s gaze never left the black column on the table as she perched on the front edge of the wooden seat. If she really could see the future how could anything shock her?
Julia listened to her grandfather saying hello in a civil tone, giving away nothing. Then Greg started to report on his progress to date. Her eyes wandered while he was speaking and she saw Gabriel was using the gland again.
“Bugger,” Philip Evans exclaimed when Greg had finished. “That fucking Ministry of Defence, more bloody trouble than it’s worth. I never knew it leaked that badly. The whole hacker circuit, you say?”
“Fraid so, they all know you’ve cracked the giga-conductor, and been awarded development contracts.”
“So it could be any of the kombinates,” Julia said. “You’ve no leads.”
“A lot of negatives, which is cutting down the field considerably. At the moment my personal suspicion is Kendric di Girolamo and a highly placed mole. Place as much emphasis on that as you wish.”
“Vengeance.” Philip Evans sounded sceptical. “If he’s that twisted why not try to assassinate Juliet here? Got to be cheaper than buying eight hotrod hackers, and their silence. She’s well protected, but no security is proof against a professional hardliner tekmerc, not when he’s striking out of the blue.”
She shrank a little inside, compressed by steely arctic fingers. It’s only theory, she told herself, don’t let it bother you. But there was no need for him to say it quite so bluntly.
“I don’t know,” said Greg. “I still don’t understand why Kendric allowed Julia to buy him out. Even if he didn’t know about the giga-conductor when he started the memox-spoiler operation, he certainly did by the time she confronted him.”
“I see what you mean,” Julia said. “We filed the patent on November the fifteenth, and informed the Ministry of Defence on the seventeenth. Even assuming Kendric doesn’t have a mole feeding him data, he ought to have known it existed by the end of the year at the latest, like your contact did; which would’ve given him months to work out the implications before I hit him with the buyout. He should’ve held on for all he was worth, risked family displeasure over Siebruk Orbital. For those stakes they would’ve forgiven him anything. In fact, now he has withdrawn the di Girolamo house, they’re going to be furious with him when I go public with the giga-conductor and they realize what they’ve lost out on.” The idea of Kendric giving up bothered her deeply. Kendric was smart and crafty. That bastard would have something in reserve. She knew he would.
Gabriel stirred, blinking rapidly. “Wilholm’s staff are clear,” she announced.
“From what?” Julia asked.
“From knowing your grandfather is stored in this NN core. They hadn’t put it together like your father.”
Julia knew her cheeks were reddening at the reminder, and didn’t care, not any more. “How do you know?”
“I scanned the possible futures where Greg interviews each of them this afternoon, he wouldn’t find any culpability. Oh, except that your gardeners are flogging ten per cent of Wilholm’s vegetables on the village market.”
“Little buggers,” Philip squawked.
“Oh shush, Grandpa, I know all about that.”
“How come?”
“I’m mistress of the manor, remember? It’s my job to know.” She turned back to Gabriel. “I thought you said nothing about the future was certain?”
“Not in the future, no,” said Gabriel. “But if the staff had known about the NN core and passed on the data, that would mean they’d pieced the knowledge together in the past, it’s already happened, an immutable fact.”
“Yah…right.” It sounded kind of screwy, but the nodes confirmed the logic. Providing you believed in precognition in the first place.
“That just leaves Dillan, then,” Philip said, and Julia knew that tone of voice well enough. They were heading for another blazing row once Greg and Gabriel left. She wondered if Gabriel had seen it already? The woman’s alleged ability was disturbing. It might be a good idea to be out on Tobias at four o’clock.
“Not quite,” Greg pointed out. “We still have the whole NN core team to interview tomorrow, as well as the security division headquarters staff.”
“I know all the NN core team, they’re good people, boy. No worries on that score. It’ll be Dillan, or someone in security, or even this mole of yours, you’ll see.”
“The NN core team still have to be checked off,” Greg said, polite but unyielding. “Process of elimination; old procedure, but it can’t be improved on.”
“Don’t interfere with the experts, Grandpa. Isn’t that what you always say?”
“Juliet, you’re impossible!” Even with his construct voice he managed to convey affection.
A truce. She pulled a face at the NN core.
“What about you, Gabriel?” Philip asked. “Can’t you see the results of these interviews Greg is going to hold?”
“Sorry. That’s tomorrow morning, and several kilometres away. Can’t stretch that far.”
“Well, what about if Greg was to interview Dillan? Today, here?”
Gabriel stiffened. “Your son has no idea whether or not he told anybody. He is only aware of your translocation on odd occasions,” she said reproachfully. The implication for responsibility hovered almost tangibly in the air.
Julia realized that Gabriel was more redoubtable than her appearance suggested. Like Greg, the gland gave her total access to a soul’s weakness. Did Grandpa have a soul? That old-style-April chill closed around her.
Primate Marcus was preaching to her again, hand on Bible, scorning hubris and human greed. Temptations that would result in your ultimate downfall. Sweet Jesus had shown people the way by rejecting both.
And Grandpa certainly hadn’t abandoned anything.
“What about the NN core?” Greg asked.
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Though it could go either way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, m’dear?” Philip Evans asked.
“As I explained to Julia, the future is never definite,” Gabriel said. “There are a multitude of alternate possibilities. The best indicator of certainty is when a lot of those futures hold a common theme. You understand? It’s like gambling. If two-thirds of the possibl
e futures which I see have it raining tomorrow, then it will most likely rain. But it isn’t an absolute. The further into the future, the more hazy my predictions.”
“So what’s going to go both ways?” Julia asked raptly.
“A second attack on your grandfather’s NN core. I’d say there was a sixty per cent probability it will happen.”
“Does this attack succeed?” Philip asked.
“Not if you take simple preventive measures,” Gabriel said. “Forewarned is forearmed. Do you believe me?”
“Damn right I do, m’dear. What sort of attack, a data-squirt blitz like last time?”
Gabriel paused, frowning. Ice-maiden formidable. Julia had the impression a lot of it was theatre, like a gypsy’s crystal ball. Overawing the superstitious peasants.
“A Trojan program. It’s indexed as an ordinary factory-quota update, but once inside your filters it multiplies like a hot rabbit, expanding to take up all the available memory capacity.”
“When?”
“If it happens, it’ll be some time on Tuesday morning. Of course, the nearer we get to the event the more specific I can get; and I can also give you more accurate odds.”
“I want to know every change, m’dear. No matter what time of the day or night, you get in contact with me whenever those odds shift.”
“Can’t you tell us who sends the Trojan?” Julia asked plaintively.
“I’m sorry. Wherever the origin of the attack is, it’s not close to Wilholm.”
Julia sat back and sighed wanly.
“Whoever they are, they seem determined,” Greg said thoughtfully.
“It has to be a personal vendetta,” Julia said. “That means Kendric’s behind it, and the mole exists, doesn’t it?”
“Possibly,” Greg said. He seemed strangely reluctant to commit himself. But she knew. It was Kendric. She’d always known. There was almost a feeling of contentment accompanying the conviction.
“I’d like you to get some of your security programmers hooked into the Event Horizon datanet,” Greg said. “See if they can backtrack the hotrods if this second attack does happen.”
“Good idea, boy. I’ll get Walshaw on it.”
Greg and Gabriel rose. He gave Julia an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, it’s just a question of waiting to see which lead takes us to the organizer. After tomorrow’s interviews our options should be clear enough to start making some headway.”
She couldn’t draw as much comfort from his words as she would’ve liked. The promises were too vague. But at least he was trying to help her, some part of him cared.
The two of them departed, leaving her alone in the study with the feverishly active memories of a dead man, and the hot rain swatting the window.
CHAPTER 22
Half-past two in the morning found Greg lying on his back, hands behind his head, staring up at the blackness which hid the bedroom ceiling. He could hear the reservoir’s wavelets swishing on the shore outside.
The deer had come to drink under cover of the night, venturing out of the new persimmon plantation at the back of Berrybut spinney. His fading espersense perceived their minds as small cool globes of violet light, timid and alert. Eleanor had been entranced with them for the first couple of weeks after she’d moved in, waiting up each night to see them slip furtively out of the trees.
The afternoon rain had lowered the temperature appreciably, but sleep was impossible. Intuition was running riot inside his cranium, even though he’d ended the gland’s secretions. Swirling random thoughts clumped together, producing an image. It didn’t matter how many times he told himself to forget it, the image just kept reforming. The same one, over and over.
Eleanor let out a soft hum, and wriggled slightly. He hoped he featured in that dream.
No good. He wasn’t going to sleep.
Greg went through the usual mincing motions as he slid gingerly out of bed, making far more noise than if he’d just done it properly. Eleanor sighed again. He pulled the duvet up round her bare shoulders, then put on his towelling robe and went into the lounge.
Through the chalet’s front windows he could see the moonlight painting the checkerboard pattern of Hambleton peninsula’s meadows and orange groves in mezzotint contrasts. Silent and serene. Strange how remote it seemed from the kind of global-class corporate battles fought only a few kilometres away in Peterborough. He sometimes wondered if a day would come when he wouldn’t be able to leave, giving up on the external world and all its conflicts. And who would really be hurt if he did let go? Certainly not Eleanor.
Greg closed his eyes, but instead of Rutland Water’s landscape there was only the taunting image.
Not this time, then.
He disconnected the Event Horizon terminal’s voice input, opting for the silence of the touchpad keyboard so Eleanor wouldn’t be woken. That done, he began to set up a link to Gracious Services.
Even Royan wasn’t clear on where the circuit’s name originated, but under its auspices England’s hackers would pull data from any ‘ware memory core on the planet-for a price.
Greg logged into Leicester University’s mainframe and entered a cut-off program that’d disengage the instant anyone tried to backtrack his call. Royan had written it for him years ago. He couldn’t afford to be anything but ultra-circumspect dealing with Gracious Services. He didn’t want any of its members uncovering his own identity and selling the information in turn-the ultimate irony. The average hacker had a moral code which made an alley tomcat a paragon of virtue by comparison. After confirming the cut off’s validity he routed the link through another cut off in the Ministry of Agriculture on to the Dessotbank in Switzerland, crediting it with a straight ten thousand pounds New Sterling direct from Event Horizon’s central account.
After that it was just a question of establishing two more cut offs, one in Bristol city council’s finance mainframe, then on through the CAA flight control in Farnborough, and dialling the magic number.
Gracious Services had a nonsense number, there was no phone on the end of it. But every English Telecom exchange computer in the country had been infiltrated with a catchment program that would ‘slot the caller directly into the circuit.
Never, not once, in all the years they were in power, did the PSP manage to tap the Gracious Services circuit, nor expunge the catchment program from Telecom’s exchange computers. They tapped individual phones, and caught people using Gracious Services that way, but that was all. Rumour had it the card carriers used the circuit themselves on occasion.
The terminal’s flatscreen snowstormed for a second then printed:
WELCOME TO GRACIOUS SERVICES.
WE AIM TO PLEASE.
DATA FOUND, OR MONEY RETURNED. NO ACCESS TOO BIG OR TOO SMALL.
JUST REMEMBER OUR CARDINAL RULE: DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT!!!
PLEASE ENTER YOUR HANDLE.
Greg typed THUNDERCHILD, his old Army callsign.
GOOD MORNING THUNDERCHILD. YOUR UMPIRE IS WILDACE. WHAT SERVICE DO YOU REQUIRE?
PHYSICAL LOCATION OF INDIVIDUAL.
OK THUNDERCHILD, I’VE GOT SEVEN HOTRODS RARING TO BURN FOR YOU. IS THIS GOING TO BE A GLOBAL SEARCH?
I BELIEVE THE INDIVIDUAL TO BE IN EUROPE, QUITE POSSIBLY IN ENGLAND.
THIS IS THE WAY IT IS, THUNDERCHILD. A EUROPE-WIDE SEARCH WILL COST YOU FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NEW STERLING. IF WE GET A NEGATIVE RESULT, THAT MEANS YOUR TARGET ISN’T IN EUROPE, IT’LL ONLY COST YOU TWO THOUSAND. IF YOU WANT US TO RUN A GLOBAL SEARCH IT WILL COST YOU SEVEN THOUSAND, OK?
RUN A EUROPEAN SEARCH FOR ME, WILDACE.
YOU GOT IT. I HOLD THE MONEY. I DECIDE HOW IT’S SPLIT.
SOUNDS GOOD.
DEPOSIT FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS NEW STERLING INTO TIZZAMUND BANK ZURICH, ACCOUNT NUMBER WRU2384ASE.
Greg entered Wildace’s number, authorizing the transfer from his Dessotbank account.
OK THUNDERCHILD, YOUR CREDIT IS GOLDEN. WHO IS THE TARGET?
The image coalesced in his brain
, rock solid, grinning arrogantly; and he typed: KENDRIC DI GIROLAMO.
Greg’s imagination painted the picture for him; seven people scattered across England, dark anonymous figures hunched over their customized terminals, mumbling into throat mikes, touchtyping, watching data flash through cubes. It was a race, the first one who satisfied Wildace they had the correct answer would get the money, less Wildace’s commission. Reputations were made on the circuit. It took twenty or thirty runs, successful runs, before anyone could even think about going solo.
Royan had trained himself on the Gracious Services circuit. He could’ve gone solo, running data snatches against koni bin-ales for the tekmercs. But, of course, he had a different set of priorities.
Greg sat back, wondering if he had time for a drink. He didn’t have a clue how long the run was going to take. He didn’t use the circuit often; the last time had been almost a year previously, tracing a money sink set up by Simon White’s accountant.
Whatever he asked for, Gracious Services invariably produced an answer. Their only failure to date had been confirming whether or not Leopold Armstrong had died the day the PSP was overthrown. They weren’t alone. New Conservative inquisitors had drawn a blank. Even the combined ranks of the Mindstar Brigade vets had been stumped. Most people thought he was dead, including the surviving top-rank apparatchiks. Possibly trying to create a martyr, Greg thought, two years was an impossibly long time to remain hidden if he was alive.
There had been very little of Downing Street left after the electron-compression warhead had detonated. The explosion created a deep glass-walled crater one hundred metres across, flattening every building for five hundred metres beyond its rim. Hundreds of silver rivulets scarred its slopes, molten metal which had solidified as it trickled downwards. The only human remnants were individual carbon molecules, mingling with the oily black pall clotting the air overhead.
Some said the warhead was American, others Chinese. Both had denied involvement. But it had to be one of the two superpowers, they were the only nations who had mastered the technology.
Neither had seemed a likely candidate to Greg. There had been talk in Turkey of the Northern European Alliance buying some electron-compression warheads from the Americans. The weapon that would turn the tide, was the squaddies’ camp rumour. It could’ve been deployed to take out entire airfields or tank battalions, megatonnage blasts without the radiation and fallout of fission weapons. Rich man’s nuke.
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