The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Greg and Morgan Walshaw exchanged a few words, and the squaddies waved them on. They had been guarding the approach to a field hospital, three inflated hemispheres of olive-green plastic. Land Rovers and ambulances stood outside, orderlies hurrying between the bloody figures lying on stretchers. The empty white plastic wrappers of disposable first aid modules littered the ground; the oddest impression of the day, a dusting of giant snowflakes.

  For the first time, Julia heard the sounds of the aftermath. The moans and screams of the wounded. Guilt sent icy spikes into her belly.

  "Morgan," she said in a small voice.

  He glanced back at her, and she saw the genuine worry in his face. Despite the forty years between them, she had always considered him one of her closest friends.

  "What?" he asked. There was an edge in his voice. He was ex-military himself. She wondered, belatedly, what sort of memories their visit must be raking up.

  "I'd like to do something for the survivors. They'll need proper medical treatment after the Army triage. Lawyers too, probably."

  "I'll get on to it when we're finished here." He dropped back to walk beside her. "You holding out all right?"

  "I'll manage."

  His arm went round her shoulder, giving her a quick comforting shake.

  "Tell you, this is the one," Greg said over his shoulder. He was indicating the high-rise block straight ahead.

  It was identical to all the others left standing. Twenty storeys high, covered in a scale of slate-grey low-efficiency solar cell panels. Most of its windows had blown out. Fires had been extinguished on several floors, she could see the soot stains, like black flames, rising out of the broken windows, Surrounding solar panels had melted and buckled from the heat.

  "Been one hell of a scrap here," Greg muttered.

  The burnt-out wreckage of an old-style assault helicopter was strewn on the ground fifty metres from the tower. She stared at it, bewildered. Assault helicopters? In a gang war? Three military microlights were crumpled on the limestone around it, wing membranes shredded by laser fire.

  There were several squaddies on sentry duty outside the tower, under the command of a young lieutenant who was waiting for them near the entrance. An intelligence officer, Julia knew; the Minister of Defence had assured her the lieutenant would be briefed about the need for total security.

  The lieutenant snapped off a salute to Greg, then his eyes widened when he saw the Mindstar Brigade badge on Greg's shoulder. If anything he became even stiffer. Julia wondered what he would do if she lifted up her own silvered vizor to let him see who she was.

  Greg returned the salute.

  "Nobody has entered the tower since the firing stopped, Captain," the lieutenant said. "But apparently some of the Blackshirts penetrated it on the first day. There was a lot of fighting around here, they seemed to think it was important. Do you want my squad to check it out?"

  Morgan Walshaw glanced up at the blank grey cliff in front of them. "No, thank you. Give us forty-five minutes. Then you can commence a standard securement procedure."

  "Yes, sir." The lieutenant had found the brigadier's insignia on Morgan Walshaw's uniform.

  "At ease, Lieutenant," Morgan Walshaw said mildly.

  Greg led them into the tower, leaving the lieutenant behind outside. He moved like a sleepwalker, eyes barely open. Julia knew he was using his bioware gland, neurohormones pumping into his brain to stimulate his psi faculty, espersense washing through the tower to detect other minds, seeing if anyone was lying in ambush. He always said he couldn't read individual thoughts, just emotional composition, but Julia never managed to feel convinced. His presence always exacerbated her guilt. Just knowing he could see it lurking in her mind made her concentrate more on the incidents she was ashamed over—losing her temper with one of Wilholm's domestic staff yesterday, twisting Morgan Walshaw's arm to come to Mucklands, the two boys she was currently stringing along—running loose in her mind and bloating the original emotion out of all proportion. An unstoppable upward spiral.

  The inside of the tower was stark. Bullet craters riddled the entrance hall walls, none of the biolum panels were on. A titan had kicked in the two lift doors, warping and tearing the buffed metal. The shafts beyond were impenetrably black.

  "Through here," Greg said reluctantly. He put his shoulder to the stairwell door. John Lees and Marryn Oakly had to lend a hand before it finally juddered open wide enough for them to slip through.

  There was a jumble of furniture behind it, and two bodies: Trinities, lads in their late teens. She looked away quickly. They had been trying to get out, pulling at the pile of furniture. Their backs were mottled with laser burns.

  By the time they reached the eleventh floor, Julia was sweating hard inside the heavy uniform, her breath coming in deep gulps. Nobody else was complaining, not even Morgan Walshaw who was over sixty, so she kept quiet. But she could see the difference between being genuinely fit like the hardliners, and her own condition, which was arrived at by following a Hollywood celebrity's routine to keep her belly flat and her bottom thin. It was damn embarrassing; she was the youngest of the group.

  Greg held an arm up for silence, he pointed to the door which opened on to the corridor. "Someone a couple of metres inside. They're in a lot of pain, but conscious."

  "What do you want to do?" Morgan Walshaw asked.

  "Bad tactics to leave a possible hostile covering your escape route."

  Morgan Walshaw grunted agreement, and signalled John Lees forwards. The hardliner drew his Uzi hand laser and flattened himself against the wall by the door. Greg tested the door handle, then nodded once, and pulled the door open. John Lees went through the gap with a quick professional twist.

  Julia was always amazed by how fast her bodyguards could move. It was as if they had two sets of reactions, one for everyday use, and accelerated reflexes for combat situations. One time, she had asked Morgan Walshaw if it was drugs, but he'd just laughed annoyingly and said no, it was controlled fear.

  "All clear," John Lees called.

  It was a boy in his early twenties, dressed in a poor copy of Army combat leathers. He was sitting with his back propped against the wall, helmet off. Both his legs were broken, the leather trousers ripped. A thick band of analgesic foam had been sprayed over his thighs. Blood covered the concrete floor beneath him. His face was chalk white, covered in sweat, he was shivering violently.

  "A Blackshirt," Greg said in a toneless voice.

  The boy's eyes met Julia's, blank with incomprehension. He was the same age as Patrick Browning, one of her current lovers. She had never been so close to one of her sworn enemies before. Blackshirt firebombing was a regular event at her Peterborough factories, the cost of additional security and insurance premiums was a real curse.

  "Don't hurt him," she said automatically.

  The boy continued his compulsive stare.

  "Your lucky day," Greg told him blandly. "I've gone up against a lot of your mates in my time." He pressed an infuser tube on the boy's neck, and his head lolled forwards.

  "The Army will pick him up when they comb the tower," Morgan Walshaw said. "He ought to live."

  They carried on up the stairs to the twentieth floor. Greg halted at the door which opened into the central corridor, his eyes fully closed. Julia could hear her heart yammering. Rachel caught her eye, and winked encouragement.

  "Is he alive?" Julia asked.

  Greg's eyes fluttered open. "Yeah."

  Julia let out a sob of relief. This hardly seemed real any more, it was so far outside her usual life. She thought she would feel anticipation, but there was only a sense of shame and despair. It had taken so many deaths to bring about this moment, mostly people her own age, denied any sort of future, good or bad. And all for an indecisive battle in a war which had ended four years ago. None of this had been strategic, it was basic animal bloodlust.

  The corridor was a mess. There were no windows, the biolum strip had been smashed. Greg and Martyn Oa
kly took out powerful torches.

  There was something five metres down the corridor, an irregular hump. At first she thought one of the tower's residents had dropped a big bag of kitchen rubbish, there was a damp meaty smell in the air. Then she saw the ceiling above had cracked open; three smooth dark composite cones poked down out of the gap. A battered helmet lay on the floor, alongside a couple of ammunition clips, and a hand. It still had a watch round the wrist.

  Julia vomited violently.

  The next minute was a blur. Rachel Griffith was holding on to her as she trembled. Everyone else gathered round, faces sympathetic. She didn't want that sympathy. She was angry with herself for being so weak. Embarrassed for showing it so publicly. She should never have come, it was stupid trying to be this macho. Morgan Walshaw had been right, which made her more angry.

  "You OK?" Rachel Griffith asked.

  "Yes." She nodded dumbly. "Sorry."

  Rachel winked again.

  Bloody annoying.

  Julia got a grip on herself.

  Greg turned the handle of room 206, the door opened smoothly. There was a hall narrower than the corridor outside, then they were in Royan's room.

  That was when she saw the flowers. It was so unexpected she barely noticed the rest of the fittings. Half of the room was given over to red clay troughs of flowering plants. She recognized some—orchids, fuchsias, ipomoeas, lilies, and petunias—a beautiful display, lucid colours, strong blooms.

  Not a dead leaf or withered petal among them. The plants were tended by little wheeled robots that looked like mobile scrap sculptures, the junked innards of a hundred different household appliances bolted together by a problem five-year-old. But the clippers, hoses, and trowel blades they brandished hung limply. For some inane reason she would have liked to see them in action.

  Past the plant troughs a wall had been covered by a stack of ancient vacuum-tube television screens, taken out of their cabinets and slotted into a metal framework. Julia ducked round hanging baskets of nasturtiums and Busy Lizzies. She saw a big workbench with bulky waldos on either side of it. The kind of 'ware module stacks she was familiar with from Event Horizon's experimental laboratories took up half of the available floor space.

  A camera on a metal tripod tracked her movements. Its fibre-optic cables were plugged into the black modem balls filling Royan's eyesockets. He sat in a nineteen-fifties vintage dentist's chair in the middle of the room.

  Julia smiled softly at him. She knew what to expect, Greg had told her several times. When he was fifteen, Royan was a committed Trinities hothead, taking part in raids on PSP institutions, sabotaging council projects. Then one night, in the middle of a food riot organized by the Trinities, he wasn't quite quick enough to escape a charge of People's Constables. The Constables' chosen weapon was a carbon monolattice bullwhip; wielded properly it could cut through an oak post three centimetres in diameter. After Royan had fallen, two of them set about him, hacking at his limbs, lashing his back open. Greg led a counter attack by the Trinities, hurling Molotovs at the People's Constables. By the time he got to Royan, the boy's arms and legs had been ruined, his skin, eyes, and larynx scorched by the flames.

  Royan's torso was corpulent, dressed in a food-stained T-Shirt; his arms ended below the elbows; both legs were short stumps. Plastic cups were fitted over the end of each amputated limb, ganglioti splices, from which bundles of fibre optic cables were attached, plugging him into the room's 'ware stacks.

  The bank of screens began to flicker with a laborious determination. The lime-green words that eventually materialized were a metre high, bisected by the rims of individual screens as they flowed from right to left.

  JULIA. NOT YOU. NOT YOU HERE.

  "'Fraid so," she said lightly.

  NEVER WANTED YOU TO COME. NOT TO SEE ME. SHAME SHAME SHAME. Royan's torso began to judder as he rocked his shoulders, mouth parting to show blackened buck teeth.

  Julia wished to God she could interface her nodes direct with his 'ware stacks here, they normally communicated direct through Event Horizon's datanet. Speedy, uninhibited chatter on any subject they wanted, arguing, laughing, and never lying; it was almost telepathy. But this was painfully slow, and so horribly public. "The body is only a shell," Julia said. "I know what's inside, remember?"

  OH SHIT A RIGHT SMART-ARSE.

  "Behave yourself," Greg said smartly.

  HELLO, GREG. I KNEW YOU WOULD COME. GOING TO HAUL ME OUT OF THE FLAMES AGAIN?

  "Yeah."

  HIDE ME UNTIL THE ARMY HAS GONE

  "No," Julia said. "It's over, Royan."

  NEVER. THERE ARE STILL THOUSANDS OF PSP OUT THERE. I'LL FIND THEM, I'LL TRACK THEM DOWN. NO ONE ESCAPES FROM ME.

  "Enough!" she stamped her foot. Tears suddenly blurred her vision. "It's horrible outside. You Trinities and Blackshirts, all lying dead. They're our age, Royan. They could have had real lives, gone to school, had children."

  STOP IT

  "I won't have it in my city any more. Do you hear? It stops. Today. Now. With you. You're the last of the Trinities. I'm not having you start it up again."

  I CAN'T HAVE A LIFE. I'M NOT HUMAN. BEAST BEAST BEAST

  Julia's resolution turned to steel. "And the first thing you can do is stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself," she said coldly.

  SORRY. YOU THINK THIS IS SORRY? BITCH BITCH BITCH. WHAT DO YOU KNOW? COSSETED PAMPERED BILLIONAIRESS BITCH. HATE YOU. VILE.

  "You're coming to the Event Horizon clinic," she said. "They'll sort you out."

  Royan began to twist frantically in his dentist's seat. NO. NOT THAT. NOT HOSPITAL AGAIN.

  "They won't hurt you. Not my doctors."

  WON'T WON'T WON'T GO. NO!

  "You can't stay here." Julia was aware of how unusually quiet Morgan Walshaw was, the other hardliners, too. But they didn't understand, deep down Royan wanted to be normal again, she'd seen his soul, its flaws, weeping quietly to itself. The fear barrier stopped him, the time he'd spent in the city hospital after the riot had been a living medieval hell, blind, voiceless, immobile. It had taken a long time for the health service to release funds for his ganglion splices and optical modems.

  STOP HER, GREG. YOU'RE MY FRIEND. DON'T LET HER UNPLUG ME.

  "Julia's right," Greg said sadly. "Today was the end of the past. There's no more anti-PSP war to be fought." He took an infuser out of his pocket.

  NO NO NO. PLEASE GREG. NO. I'LL BE NOTHING WITHOUT MY 'WARE. NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. BEG YOU. BEG.

  Morgan Walshaw moved to stand in front of the camera on the tripod. Royan was shaking his head wildly. Julia pressed her hand across her mouth, exchanging an agonized glance with Greg. He discharged the infuser into Royan's neck.

  The letters on the screens dissolved into bizarre shimmers of static. Royan worked his mouth, wheezing harshly. "Please, Julia," he rasped. "Please no." Then the infusion took hold, and his head dropped forwards.

  Julia found herself crying softly as Rachel Griffith hugged her. Greg and Morgan Walshaw hurriedly unplugged Royan's optical fibres from the 'ware stacks.

  They trooped up the service stairs to the roof, Greg and Martyn Oakly carrying Royan on an improvised stretcher. Julia held his camera, careful not to get the cables caught on anything.

  One of Event Horizon's tilt-fans, painted company colours, picked them up. It rose quickly into the overhanging veil of filthy smoke, away from curious squaddies, and the prying camera lenses of channel newscast crews. Julia looked down through a port at the broken landscape below, emotionally numb. The damage was dreadful, Mucklands Wood's desolated towers, Walton's smashed houses. So many bystanders made homeless, she thought; and this was the poorest section of the Peterborough, they didn't have much clout in the council chamber. She was going to have to do something about that, not just rebuilding homes, but bring hope back to the area as well. That was the only real barricade against the return of the miasmal gangs.

  Now, fifteen years later, she could allow herself some degree of comfor
t with the result. From her office she could just make out the heavily wooded park and prim white houses, there were schools and light manual industries, an open-air sports amphitheatre, a technical college, the artists' colony. The residents of Mucklands and Walton could believe in their future again.

  * * * *

  We can't find any reference to the flower, NN core one told her.

  She focused slowly on the presentation box in her hands, her mind still lingering on the showy array of blooms in Royan's room. He told her later he grew them for their scent; smell was one of the few natural senses he had left. He put a lot of weight on flowers.

  Are you sure? she asked.

  Absolutely, it's not in Kew Gardens' public reference memory cores. They are the most comprehensive in the world.

  Access all the botanical institutes you can. It has to be listed somewhere.

  She frowned at the delicate enigmatic mauve trumpet. Why, after eight months without a word, would he send an unidentifiable flower?

  Chapter Four

  For ten months of the year Hambleton village slumbered tranquilly under the scorching English sun, the rural idyll of a nineteenth century that existed only in wishful daydreams and apocryphal historical dramas. It was nestled at the western end of a long whale-back peninsula which jutted out into the vast Rutland Water reservoir, surrounded by a quilt of lush citrus groves which had sprung up in the aftermath of the Warming. Through those quiet ten months the groves were maintained by a handful of labourers who lived locally. But twice a year the trees fruited, and the peninsula played host to an invasion of travellers which quadrupled the population overnight. Such an influx could never be anything other than a rumbustious fiesta, awaited with a mixture of trepidation and delight by the residents.

  This July the convoy of travellers hunting work at the groves stretched the entire length of the road which ran along the peninsula spine. There were genuine horse-drawn gypsy caravans, brightly painted in primary colours with elaborate trim; twentieth-century vans with long strips of bright chrome, bulky custom-built trailers towed by four-wheel-drive Rangers, converted buses, and sleek ultra-modern land cruisers. Kids screamed and ran among the stationary vehicles, playing their incomprehensible games. Dogs barked excitedly and tripped the children. Goats and donkeys added their querulous cries to the hullabaloo. Adults stood in groups round the cabs talking in quiet murmurs. Smells of cooking drifted through the stifling air.