The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Going to catch you, Mandel. Real soon. And when I do it’s going to be worse than you could believe.”

  “I’m relying on it, Chad.”

  The voice was sensed rather than heard, desperately weary.

  “Shithead!” Chad used the armour’s speaker like a sonic cannon. He hit the door full on, composite crumpling under the impact. The corridor was barely fifteen metres long.

  Mandel was shutting the door at the other end.

  Chad sprinted for him, the armour’s muscle bands whining soffly. He was closer now, much closer, and Mandel was tiring. Past the door, so flimsy it was virtually unnoticeable. The next corridor, ten metres long. Five quick steps. Mandel’s mind so near he could feel sweaty skin, labouring heart, burning lungs.

  “Nowhere in this universe you can hide from me,” Chad crowed.

  “I’m not hiding from you, Chad, I’m inside you. You’ve been running through your own mind, an eidolonic reality.”

  Chad opened the door. There was a five-metre corridor in front of him. An armoured figure opening the door at the far end. What the fuck…? Mandel trying to fool him. “Not good enough any more, shithead!”

  “It’s powered by your own anger, Chad. This is what you yearn for. I grant it to you, I surrender to you.”

  The door behind Chad swung shut in tandem with the one he was looking at. He was alone in the corridor; walls shrinking, biolums dimming. “Think I’m falling for that? Your last mistake, Mandel.”

  “Stop hating me and you’re free. Can you do that, Chad?”

  Chad flung himself at the door ahead. Triumphant. “Die, shithead!”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  The door shattered. It was like being caught between two mirrors. Infinite multiples of a muscle armour suit jumping through the door, arms outstretched, legs bent, long composite splinters spraying out all around. The same ahead, the same behind. Slowing. Freezing-

  – reality flickered-

  – Greg staggered against a wall. A groan escaping from his mouth.

  “Bollocks, hey, you OK now?” Suzi asked. Her taut anxious face peering at him through blood-coloured mist.

  “Yeah,” he croaked.

  “Sure, you look it.”

  He swung his head about, focusing. A neurohormone hangover was burning like napalm inside his skull. They were at the end of a gondola corridor. The sign on the door ahead read DINING-ROOM. “Where are we?”

  “Upper deck, at the stern. I think. Jesus, Greg, I reckon I got corridor-phobia after that. Couldn’t hardly tell if what I was seeing was real or not. What happened?”

  “I suckered Chad into an eidoloscape, looped him in his own power fantasy. Think of it as cephalic judo.”

  “Yeah, right. So where is he now?”

  “No more hazard. You bring me up here?”

  “Yeah. Like steering a sleepwalker. Been some shots below. Loud.”

  “Rip guns, they’ve got bloody rip guns; Lockheeds, I think.”

  “Good old Leol, just what you need to snatch a major hazard like an unarmed whore.” She grasped the handle of a door marked FUSELAGE.

  Greg noticed the hesitancy in her hand as she turned the handle, afraid of what might be behind-a doorway into eternity. It was a narrow staircase leading up. A braid of thick ribbed hoses ran up the bare composite wall, a single biolum strip ran along the ceiling. The darkness above seemed to suck sound away. A gust of dry cool air blew down at them.

  Sun pointed her Browning up the stairs. “This it?” she asked without any enthusiasm. “Fielder’s up here?”

  “Guess so. At least Reiger doesn’t know she’s up here.” He paused. “Make that was up here.”

  “Can’t you check?”

  “Give me five minutes, Suzi, OK?”

  “Sure.” She started up the stairs.

  Greg drew his Tokarev, snicked the safety off, and went up after her.

  CHAPTER 18

  Fabian could actually play the guitar quite well. Discoveries like that didn’t surprise Charlotte any more.

  Whatever held Fabian’s attention long enough for him to develop an interest normally wound up being practised with a high degree of proficiency. The trick was getting him to notice something in the first place.

  After lunch, he’d put on jeans and a studded leather jacket, white silk headband with scarlet Japanese ideograms. Grinning slightly self-consciously. The den’s music deck was programmed to provide him with a support group, bass, rhythm, and drums. Unsurprisingly. Fabian favoured hard rock, one or two glam tracks. Thank heavens he didn’t sing too.

  She listened to him playing a couple of numbers, then walked over to the Yamaha piano.

  “I didn’t know you played,” Fabian said.

  She gave him a disdainful smile, running through the intro to the Sonic Energy Authority’s ‘Last Elvis Song.’ “Doesn’t everybody?” One of her first patrons had shelled out a small fortune on lessons for her. He liked what he called traditional evenings, no channels, no VR games, no nightclubs, just music recitals and poetry readings, sometimes a play or the ballet. She had enjoyed the piano lessons, one talent Baronski couldn’t implant or graft on in the Prezda’s little clinic.

  Although her knuckles had been reconfigured to give her fingers a greater dexterity, which was useful.

  Charlotte gave Fabian the opening bars of Bil Yi Somanzer’s classic ‘Dream Day Hi.’ She had fond memories of Bil Yi; his albums were the first music she’d ever really heard after being taken into care. He was in decline then, but still the greatest, no matter what anyone said.

  Fabian picked up the rhythm, strumming along in some private paradise. They cranked the deck up, and started jamming some Beatles and Stones, more Bil Yi, the two of them shouting the lyrics at each other over riffs that shook the den’s heavy thermal insulation panels and rattled her gullet.

  The fish were going berserk in their tanks. She hadn’t let her hair down like this for an age.

  They were thrashing the hell out of ‘Bloody Honey’ when Charlotte heard the bang, thinking they’d blown a speaker. It took Fabian a minute to realize she’d stopped playing.

  “What?” he asked. His face was flushed and sweaty. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him smiling so brightly before, a natural high. It was nice to see.

  “We’ve bust a speaker,” she told him, laughing. Her cotton top was damp and hot, contracting about her. There wasn’t much air conditioning in the den. Somehow she didn’t care.

  “Aww.” Fabian pulled a face. He bounced over to the music deck, the guitar hanging round him. LEDs winked green and orange as he flicked switches. “No, we haven’t.”

  “I heard something go pop.”

  “Not us, not guilty,” Fabian’s voice had a ragged euphoric edge.

  “Oh well, I needed the rest.”

  “Crikey, you were fantastic, Charlotte!” His eyes shone.

  “I’ve never played with anyone before, only the deck.”

  The breath was coming out of her in short puffs. “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Pretty damn good, you were.”

  “Really? Honest to God?”

  “Yep. You’ve got a definite talent there, Fabian.”

  His expression went all distant. “Know what I dream? That I get a slot on MTV’s garage access ‘cast.”

  Charlotte grinned. She’d seen that herself sometimes.

  Thrice a week MTV turned over about ninety minutes of the death hours between two and four in the morning to unsigned bands. Any bunch of kids with an amp stack and a camera could plug into the channel. Wishful rumour said music biz suits sat glued to it, searching for new talent. Charlotte thought that was a load of crap.

  Suddenly she had a vision of Baronski watching her and Fabian decimating ‘Your Coolin’ Heart.” She started giggling as Baronski’s jaw dropped in stupefaction, every one of his precious sensibilities overloaded and fused.

  “What?” Fabian asked.

  She waved
her hands helplessly. “One of my friends seeing me on that ‘cast.”

  Fabian’s nose twitched. “Father seeing us on that!”

  Charlotte whooped ecstatically, banging out a nonsense blast on the keyboard, aware of Fabian hooting wildly.

  The door opened. Charlotte saw the maid framed in the gloomy light of the fuselage biolums.

  “What do you want?” Fabian asked between gulps. “Unless you’ve come to audition for drums?”

  Charlotte laughed delightedly at seeing the sulky cow so thrown by the scene, which set Fabin off again. Although there was something peculiar about the maid’s face, squinting as though she was drunk. Charlotte had seen that expression before somewhere. Couldn’t quite place the memory.

  The maid took two steps into the room. Fast steps.

  “Hey-” Fabian began.

  The maid hit him. It was a backhanded blow, she barely aimed it. Her hand caught him on the side of his face, lifting him off the floor. There was a moment of dead silence as he fell back on to the pile of cushions. Then the guitar made a clattering noise as it caught on the deck, and Fabian let out a dull grunt.

  Charlotte yelled, “Fabian!” and rushed over to him.

  There was blood trickling out of his mouth, the side of his face where the maid had struck was bright red. He was blinking in numb confusion, his arms struggling limply. One eye was already swelling, the smooth skin discolouring. She went down on the cushions, scattering some, and gripped his wrist. Her other hand went on his forehead. “Don’t move,” she whispered. The guitar neck pressed awkwardly into her belly.

  “I-” he coughed. More blood sprayed out between his lips.

  Charlotte sucked in a breath at the sight. Utile specks of blood were staining her white cotton top. She stroked the side of his head anxiously, eyes watering. “Don’t…”

  Fabian caught sight of the maid behind her. His face twisted into rage, and he surged up.

  “No!” Charlotte flung herself on him, pinning him down on the cushions. “No, Fabian. She’s cleardusted.” That was the memory, the squint, the dazed crazed look. She’d seen some of her patrons’ hardline bodyguards take the stuff. Cleardust was a synthesized derivative of the old angel dust, giving the manic strength and immunity to pain without the hallucinogenic effect.

  “Very good,” said the maid. “You’re bright for a whore.”

  Charlotte was centimetres from Fabian’s face. Seeing pain and reflections of pain in his eyes.

  A hand that must have been made of metal closed around her upper arm, and she was yanked up, squealing at the sudden pain. She stumbled for her footing. “Please, Fabian, please stay down. Please.” It was all she could think of. He wouldn’t understand. The maid would kill him.

  He glared upwards, bloody lips parted.

  “Please, for me,” she pleaded.

  “Right,” his voice was distorted, as if he was chewing on something.

  The pressure on Charlotte’s arm increased, making her mouth part with the pain. She was turned to face the maid. The glazed eyes made her shiver inside. They didn’t see anything in this universe.

  “I will ask you some questions,” the maid said. “You will answer them for me, or I will start to snap all that expensive bonework of yours. Understand, whore?”

  “Let him go. I’ll tell you anything you want. But don’t hurt him.”

  Charlotte heard a muffled high-pitched crack from somewhere outside the den. She thought it sounded like some kind of weapon.

  The maid gave a cyborg smile. “You’re a very popular girl all of a sudden. Lots of people want to talk to you. But I’m first. And last.”

  The crack came again, then again.

  “Who gave you the flower?” the maid asked.

  It took Charlotte’s wild thoughts a moment to work out what flower she was talking about. “Let Fabian go.”

  “The flower?”

  “I don’t know who he was, not his actual name. Please.”

  “Liar.”

  Charlotte’s hand was grabbed. She screamed as two fingers were bent back. There was a pistol-shot snap.

  Strangely enough, there wasn’t any pain, not at first. She couldn’t feel anything below her wrist, then a red-hot ache spread up her fingers, biting hard into her knuckles. There was bile rising in her throat. Her head began to spin alarmingly; for a moment she thought she was going to faint.

  In horror she saw Fabian on his feet, lurching towards her and the maid. She lashed out with her free arm, knocking him back. His face was a mask of desperation and agony.

  “Oh God no,” she wailed, tears swelling up. He was regaining his balance, going to try again.

  “ENOUGH OF THIS. FABIAN, STAY WHERE YOU ARE.” The voice was an inhuman roar, loud enough to be painful. It was coming out of the music deck speakers, she realized.

  Fabian ducked his head down in reflex, hands halfway to his ears. Even the maid was frozen.

  The flatscreens came on, each one showing the same picture of a woman’s face. Charlotte let out a choked cry as she recognized her. “Julia Evans,” she gasped. It was her. Really her. Just like at the Newfields ball. That same compelling oval face.

  Julian Evans smiled thinly. “Hello, Charlotte. I think it’s about time you and I had a talk.”

  “Not a chance,” said the maid.

  CHAPTER 19

  Julia’s personality package was coded as a commercial intelligence summary, so the Colonel Maitland’s ‘ware network-management program automatically assigned it storage space in the lightware cruncher Jason Whitehurst was using to analyse kombinate finances. Once it was loaded, the personality package immediately reformatted the command routines of the processing structure it was running in, isolating itself from the lightware’s operating program and antiviral guardians. After it had confirmed its autonomy it sent out a series of instructions to the internal databuses, arrogating their handling procedures, shutting down the data flow.

  With the lightware cruncher’s processing operations suspended, the personality package began to wipe all the programs and files it found stored in the unit’s memory. Access codes were changed. A new sequence of operating routines were loaded. The package’s highly compressed data planes expanded into the empty lightware. Julia’s reconstituted mentality came on line.

  She started to assess the airship’s ‘ware architecture, spreading her presence through the datanet, burning into ancillary processor cores. The bridge’s ‘ware was her first priority, gaining complete command of her new domain. New channels were opened and safeguarded, data flowed back into the lightware cruncher.

  The Colonel Maitland’s flight control systems were plugged into a broad range of sensors and cameras distributed throughout the fuselage. Radar and the satellite uplinks were useless, swamped by the tekmerc’s jammer. She studied the optical circuits, pulling their codes out of memory cores, then started to look around.

  External camera, portside fuselage. The Messerschmitt hovered level with the gondola. A laser rangefinder pulsed every second, helping it to maintain its stand-off position exactly. Eight armour-clad figures were left swung out between it and the Colonel Maitland. Each of them identical, factory moulded; left hand controlling a jockey-stick, right hand holding a Lockheed rip gun. Two wavering columns of hot compressed air streamed out of the jetpack nozzles, behind and slightly below the shoulders. As she watched, one of them disappeared through a hole in the side of the gondola.

  Internal camera, gondola lower-deck crew lounge. The lounge had been ravaged by the rip bolt, loose chairs hurled at the walls, composite walls cracked and buckled, carpet smouldering. Glass lay underfoot, the door twisted in its frame.

  Two of the armoured figures were standing inside, Lockheed rip guns raised cautiously, covering the open doorway. Helmets blank bubbles of metal. A third swept through the hole, jetpack efflux stirring up a mini-hurricane of wreckage as he settled on the uneven decking.

  External camera, upper tail fin. The ruined landing pad, pi
tiful remains of the Pegasus spewing out thin plumes of smoke. Two of the Colonel Maitland’s crew, dressed in silvery fire-suits, were surveying the scene. They kept close to the edge of the pad, giving the Pegasus a wide birth as they shuffled along, testing the deck sheeting before each step.

  Julia called up a structural schematic and systems status review from the bridge’s flight control ‘ware. The central gasbag, below the landing pad, had been badly lacerated. Helium was escaping at a critical rate. The bridge crew had ordered a near-total ballast dump to compensate. Water from tanks and the swimming-pool was venting out of the gondola as fast as it could be pumped.

  The Colonel Maitland’s geodetic framework was drawn in fine blue lines, gasbag suspension rigging a jumble of green cobwebs. A large, roughly oval, area of fuselage struts around the landing pad and hangar had turned red, fringed in yellow. The landing pad itself was mostly black; a lot of the stress sensors’ optical cables had been cut in the explosions, leaving gaps in the picture. Maintenance drones were inching along the longitudinal frames, inspecting individual struts for fractures, supplementing and refining the data from the sensors, filling in the true status of the black zones.

  The damage assessment was reassuring. The basic framework was bearing up under the redistributed loading. Power to the contra-rotating fans was being reduced, relieving as much pressure as possible until the upper fuselage frames could be repaired.

  She accessed the bridge’s memory cores and discovered that the maintenance drones communicated with the flight control ‘ware via laser links; the entire geodetic framework was dotted with interface keys.

  Internal camera, gondola stairwell. Greg and Suzi were moving to the upper deck. Suzi was brandishing her Browning in one hand, pulling Greg along with the other. She looked as if she was walking directly into a hurricane blast, face furrowed with concentration, teeth bared, every step an effort. Greg was moving like an unplugged junkie. Julia recognized the thousand-metre stare; his gland was active, dissolving the real universe.

  Structural schematic. A patch of the gondola’s upper-deck hull changed to red, shooting out a ripple ring of yellow. The red centre snapped to black. Another rip-gun bolt. Electrical lines were cut, fibre-optic links severed. Compensator programs assigned priorities and rerouted power and data.