The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Julia clasped her hands, and rested her chin on the whitened knuckles. “This military friend of yours, will he tell you the truth?”

  “He’ll be honest with me; either tell me, or say he can’t talk about it. He won’t lie. If he won’t talk, you’ll have to use the English Foreign Office to find out what’s going on in Russia.”

  “I’d be better off using Associated Press,” she muttered.

  “But what about the alien?” Rick asked. “If you’re going to spend tomorrow chasing after someone in Russia, when can we go after it? I mean, once we’ve met it, you can just buy a nuclear force generator blueprint from it and save all that research and development money.”

  “The lad’s got a point there, Juliet,” Philip Evans said. “If this alien’s parcelling out data you could save yourself a tidy packet.”

  “Unless the alien files a patent for itself,” Julia said.

  “Interesting legal question,” Julia’s NN core two image said. “Would the alien be legally able to file a patent?”

  “And what does it want our money for anyway?” Victor chipped in. “Repairs? Set up a base in the solar system? What? You’re the expert, Rick.”

  “Jesus.” Rick’s fists clenched and unclenched. “I don’t know. if we just go and ask it-”

  “I won’t be more than a couple of hours tomorrow,” Greg said smoothly. “I’ll go first thing, and after that we’ll find out where Charlotte Fielder was given the flower.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Greg watched the coast of Greenland sliding across the flatscreen on the cabin’s forward bulkhead. A stark slate-grey line of rocky cliffs with grimy water churning against their base. Away to the north a fast-flowing river was spurting into the sea, spitting out irregular lumps of translucent white ice.

  The Pegasus could easily have been the same one that he’d been using yesterday, the cabin had the same type of seats, same colour scheme, same tasteless air, the Event Horizon logo cut into each of the crystal tumblers behind the rose-wood bar. Except today there was only Melvyn Ambler sitting quietly beside him instead of Malcolm Ramkartra and Pearse Solomons.

  He thought he’d learnt to deal wth the memories of the dead. There had been enough in Turkey, and on Peterborough’s chthonic streets. Hold on to the names, treat them with respect, and remember they’d be cheering you on.

  He must have been out of practice, that or he’d softened down the years. The Pegasus had taken twelve minutes to reach Greenland from Listoel, and each lonely one had been spent thinking about the two security hardliners and Rachel. A sudden flare of light and heat swelling around them, penetrating the cabin. Maybe not even that. It had been very fast.

  The sun hadn’t risen yet, which made the dark undulating plains they were flying over seem even more forbidding, a barren expanse of grit and boulders, slicked with dew, features blurring as they lost height.

  He couldn’t work up any real enthusiasm about the meeting. It would be nice to see Vassili again, but talking about Event Horizon and the alien would sour the reunion.

  The handset on Greg’s armrest chimed. He picked it up.

  “We’ve just lost our escort,” Catherine Rushton said.

  Catherine Rushton was the pilot. The first thing he’d done after coming through the belly hatch was go into the cockpit to meet her. It was an overreaction verging on the childish, but it assuaged him, identifying her as a person.

  “We’re safe then, are we?” he asked with a hint of mordancy. Three Typhoon air-superiority fighters had escorted them from Listoel. It looked like he wasn’t the only one overreacting this morning. Julia had been worried about the kind of weapons which Clifford Jepson could supply to Leol Reiger; an arms merchant and a tekmerc was a real bastard of a combination.

  “Yes,” she answered. “The Russian zone Air Defence Regiment command is tracking us. We’ll be landing at Nova Kirov in two minutes.”

  “Fine.” He pulled his leather jacket off an empty seat.

  The flatscreen was showing a tract of emerald-green land below, marked off into square fields by wire fencing. Even with the high vantage point and anaemic light he could tell the vegetation wasn’t grass, too low, too uniform, almost like a golf course fairway. And it was lumpy; whatever the plant was, it flowed over boulders and rock outcrops like a film of liquid. There were sheep grazing on it, though.

  Nova Kirov was the Wild West reinvented for the twenty-first century, a frontier town in aluminium and pearl-white composite. There were no trees anywhere, Greg noticed. No timber for houses and barns. These pioneers weren’t as independent as the ones who’d hit the Oregon trail two hundred years earlier. To set up a homestead in Greenland you either needed to be rich, or have rich sponsors.

  The town was spread out over a kilometre along the rocky southern bank of a white-water river. He could see big lumps of glass-smooth ice bobbing about amid the spray and foam. A broad single-span bridge connected the town with a dirt road that ran parallel with the north bank.

  There was a large patch of ground on the east of the town which remained free of the vegetation mat. Five An-995 subsonic heavylift cargo planes were parked on it, fat cylindrical bodies with a rear wing and canard configuration, all of them in blue and white Air Russia colours. A long two-storey office block sat on one side of the makeshift airport. Satellite dishes were scattered along its solar collector roof, pointing south; a tall microwave antenna tower stood at one end, an array of horns covering the surrounding countryside.

  The Pegasus curved round the town and slid over the An-995s to land close to the office block. Greg caught sight of a small reception committee standing waiting. Dull grey dust swirled up, obscuring the camera image.

  The belly hatch opened, and Melvyn Ambler stood up, zipping his blue and red check woollen jacket up to his neck.

  “General Kamoskin and I will probably have a private talk in his office,” Greg said. “You’ll have to stay outside, OK?”

  “Sure thing,” the hardline captain said easily.

  Greg skipped lightly down the metal stairs. Powdery grey sand crunched below his desert boots. It was cool outside, a crisp clean humidity that came from morning ground frosts. Greg relished it for the sheer novelty value. His breath was turning to thin white vapour.

  One day he’d have to bring the kids here, give them just a taste of the wind from ages past, how the world used to be. It would be terrible for them never to know.

  General Vassili Kamoskin was standing at the front of the five-man reception committee, beaming broadly, his arms thrown wide. He was a solid stereotypical Russian, black hair receding from his temples, full face, thick neck. He wore his Russian Army uniform, dark green with scarlet epaulettes, knife-edge creases, five bands of medal ribbons. And they weren’t show decorations, Greg knew, Vassili had earned them. Three of them in Turkey where they had served together.

  He stepped into a bear hug, Vassili laughing in his ear.

  “Gregory, as always it is too long. How is Eleanor?”

  Greg released him. Vassili’s hair was thinner than he remembered. It must have been five years since he’d visited Hambleton, just before Ricky was born. They’d kept in touch because the kind of friendships formed in combat weren’t the ones you could let go. There was too much pain and effort invested. “Expecting again,” Greg said.

  Vassili clapped him delightedly on the shoulder. “You never sent word,” he accused. “How many is that now?”

  “This’ll be the fifth.”

  “You devil, you. Do you give lessons?”

  “How’s Natalia keeping?”

  “Bah,” Vassili waved a hand dismissively towards the town. “She’s an Army wife, she doesn’t complain. Sometimes I think she should.”

  Greg looked at Nova Kirov. There was a cluster of warehouses behind the airport office block, tractors were already moving round them, tugging flat-bed trailers loaded with bales of wool. The buildings of the town proper were mostly single storey, spaced well apart, made up
from standardized panels clipped on to a simple framework. An aluminium church stood by itself on a plateau above the river. Streets were wheel-rutted blue-grey mud. There were a couple of dogs running about.

  Even without his espersense engaged, Greg could detect the buzz of optimism running through the place. The settlement was creating its own future, that always inspired.

  “Looks pretty good to me,” he said.

  “Gregory,” Vassili shoved out his arms theatrically. “It’s a retirement posting. They pushed me out to grass, the bastards.”

  “Don’t tell me you’d prefer to be shuffling bytes in Moscow?”

  Vassili grunted. “No. No you’re right at that, Gregory. I have a responsibility here, some independence from our glorious knowledgeable Marshals. I’d never get the Defence Minister post anyway, I lack the politics. So here I am, tsar of sixty thousand square kilometres, even if three-fifths of it is still under the ice.”

  The glacier was visible on the western horizon, a pristine white line disrupting the fusion of land and sky. It was beginning to shoot out orange-pink reflections of the rising sun. The image had a dream clarity about it. Greg stared, fascinated.

  “Does it keep you busy, Vassili?” he asked.

  “Bah, we’re here to guarantee the zemstvo’s boundaries until it’s granted full independence by the UN. We’ve got the Indian zone to the north, and the French to the south. I don’t think either of them is going to invade us, do you, Gregory?”

  “No.”

  “All we are is a glorified police force, saving the zemstvo from paying for their own. Not that the colonists could afford a police force, anyway. My troops spend their evenings stopping fights between drunks. That’s all the farmers do, Gregory, plant their gene-tailored arable moss over this desolation during the day, and drink at night. They come out here with such high hopes, stars in their eyes. Then they see the true reality of Greenland. A desert of grubby shingle, and rivers of sterile water colder than yeti’s blood. This land they have bought will take a century to transform into the garden they were promised. They expected freedom, and they’ve found they’ve indentured their children. Of course they drink, but I forgive them for it. What else can I do?”

  “Dreams are never cheap, Vassili.”

  “I know. But it saddens me to see so much heartache. They are so naïve. Never trust a man with stars in his eyes, Gregory. Never.”

  Greg was still facing the distant glacier. There was a cool wind gusting off it, ruffling his hair. The air was so clear.

  He knew Event Horizon had funded a couple of settlements in the English zone. But Julia never mentioned them being a problem; Perhaps her smallholders had been equipped with drone planters. She did favour technological solutions to everything. But then colonizing Greenland was a very technical proposition. The idea behind the UN opening it up to settlers in the wake of the retreating ice was to turn it into a giant arable country. There was no ecology that would be destroyed by gene-tailored crops, no indigenous species to be usurped. Even the soil was devoid of bacteria. The farmers could use intensive cultivation techniques over every square metre with impunity.

  He rubbed his arms. “It’s cold here. I’d forgotten what real mountain air could be like.”

  “You English are wimps. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too wet. Never satisfied.”

  “Yeah, right,” Greg turned back to Vassili. “At least we’re allowed to complain.”

  Vassili made a farting sound. “Now we’ve found the glories of democracy, when do Russians ever do anything else?”

  Greg glanced at the four young officers standing blank-faced behind Vassili. “I need to talk with you, Vassili.”

  “Bah, one phone call telling me you’re coming. Then another from the Defence Ministry itself telling me to be vigilant this morning, there are to be no unaccountable accidents in my airspace. So I ask myself, all this for my old orange farmer friend?”

  “I’m not farming right now. It’s the middle of the bloody picking season, and I’ve been dragged away.”

  “They never leave us alone, do they, Gregory?” Vassili said soberly.

  “This isn’t the Army, the English government, Vassili. I’m doing this for another friend of mine.”

  Vassili’s bushy eyebrows rose. “This must be a tremendous friendship you have.”

  Greg jerked a thumb back at the Pegasus. “Julia Evans, the owner of Event Horizon.”

  “The Queen of Peterborough herself? What circles we two poor footsore soldiers move in these days, Gregory. Come then, come and tell me how a simple Russian general can be of help to the richest woman in the world.”

  Vassili’s office was on the second floor of the airport building, taking up the entire western end, which gave him three glass walls looking out over Nova Kirov, the embryonic farms, and the glacier. There was a desk and high-back chairs, several bookcases, a long table for staff officer briefings. All the furniture was made from hard Siberian pine, with simple geometric carvings; it was old looking, cracked and worn, polished a thousand times. A battered samovar bubbled away on a table in the corner, its charcoal glowing rose-gold, filling the air with wisps of arid smoke. Polished artillery shells were lined up on bookcases and the desk. One wall had a row of framed pictures, beribboned generals Greg didn’t recognize, Yeltsin, Defence Minister Evgeniy Schitov. One frame held a metre length of helicopter blade; there was a chunk missing, as though some animal had taken a bite out of it. It was from a Mi-24 Hind K. Greg had been in it, liaising with Vassili’s troops, when it was hit by AA fire from the Jihad Legion. Thankfully, the pilot’s autorotation technique had been flawless.

  Vassili poured two cups of tea from his samovar as Greg sat at the long table. The tap squeaked each time he turned it. “It’s been in my family since before the Bolshevik Revolution,” he explained. “I get the Air Force boys to fly my charcoal in. A general has some privileges.” He put the cup down in front of Greg. “Have you cut yourself shaving, Gregory?”

  Greg’s hand went to the scar by his eye. The dermal seal membrane had peeled off during the night, but the new flesh was pink and tender. “Did you hear about the Colonel Maitland crash?”

  Vassili sat opposite him, frowning. “The airship? Certainly, it was on the news channels last night. It caught fire somewhere over the Atlantic. Most of the crew got out. You were on board?”

  “Yeah. Tell you, it didn’t catch fire, by accident.”

  “Gregory, my friend, you are too old and too slow to be thinking of combat. Leave it to the stalwarts like that fine young man accompanying you. Please.”

  “Christ, don’t you start.”

  Vassili chuckled, and blew on the top of his cup. “So, what is it that Julia Evans wishes to know?”

  “Is the Russian government mounting a covert deal against Event Horizon? And if so, she’d like to negotiate a peaceful solution.”

  Vassili put his cup down without drinking any of the tea. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.” Greg didn’t like the way Vassili was looking at him, almost hurt. He hadn’t liked asking, either. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea.

  “You seriously think my government would do such a thing?”

  “I don’t think you would, Vassili. But someone inside the republic is going balls out against her. I need to know who.”

  “Tell me, Gregory. Start at the beginning, and tell me all of it.”

  Greg took a sip of tea, and started to talk.

  Vassili’s rounded face was thoughtful when he finished. “No, it is not the Russian government that is doing this,” he said. “I would know. I have been informed of this atomic structuring science. This Clifford Jepson you talk of approached Mikoyan two days ago with his development sharing proposition. Naturally as good Russians, Mikoyan informed the Defence Ministry. You’ll see that I’m telling the truth, Gregory.”

  Greg pushed his empty cup over the table to Vassili, meeting the general’s eyes. “I don’t need to use
my gland on you, Vassili.”

  “Bah, so morbid and serious you sound, Gregory. I have been of some help to you, have I not? Would you not do the same for me?”

  “You have my address, and I’m on the phone. I can’t offer you air defence cover, though.”

  Vassili slapped the table, laughing. “So, we now need to know who is dragging my country’s good name through the mud. Yes?”

  “Yeah.” He thought for a moment. “You said it was Mikoyan who informed your government. Didn’t Mutizen approach the Russian Defence Ministry with its generator data?”

  “No. I did not realize we owned a kombinate.”

  “Only thirty-two per cent. But, yeah, it’s as good as outright ownership.”

  “If the government has a controlling stake, they would have made sure the generator data was used to their advantage. It would never be offered to Event Horizon.” Vassili stood up and took the cups back to the samovar. “I don’t like this, Gregory. The briefing officer they sent over explained some of the possible defence applications of atomic structuring. There will be a terrible scramble to acquire it. All or nothing, Gregory. What country could afford to be without it? A shield which can protect whole cities against nuclear weapons and electron compression warheads. The citizens of the world would demand nothing less from their leaders. And I would venture that offensive capabilities will soon follow. People are so very good at that kind of thing. And now you tell me there are unknown players on the field seeking a monopoly. No, this is not good, and not just for Julia Evans.”

  Greg ran a hand across his forehead. Last night he had been too exhausted to give atomic structuring much thought. But Vassili’s comments were opening his mind up to possibilities, few of them good. “You think it’ll mean a new arms race?”

  Vassili refilled the cups and returned to the table. “Arms race, economic upheaval.” He gave Greg a sad smile. “And just when we were getting over the worse of the Warming.”