The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  "Kiley?" Julia asked.

  "Yes. Royan chose the name. It's a kind of boomerang," Rick explained.

  "A boomerang? You mean Kiley was a sample-return mission?"

  "Yes."

  "Has it returned?" she demanded.

  "I couldn't tell you. That would depend on how long it stayed in orbit around Jupiter. But I will tell you this, it was built for speed. The probe itself only massed about two tonnes, the propulsion section came in at over forty tonnes. It filled a Clarke-class spaceplane payload bay. There were five stages, throwaway reaction-mass tanks and gigaconductor cells. That raised a few eyebrows at the Institute. Whoever heard of throwing away gigaconductor cells? Royan was certainly in a hurry for it to get on Jupiter."

  The corner of Julia's mouth turned down. "Nothing new in that, he was always in a hurry. So how long would it take to get there?"

  "Launched at an optimal conjunction, ten weeks," Rick said.

  "And presumably the same time to return?"

  "Yes, possibly a week or so less. The Sun's gravity field would accelerate it, you see."

  "Do you know when it was launched?"

  "Not to the day, no. But Kiley was rolled out of Building One eight months ago, last November."

  Julia gave him a long hard look, holding her body immobile.

  Victor knew her mood well enough, contemplative, but Rick was visibly wilting under such a direct contact.

  "Did he ever say why he was so keen to examine these microbes?" Victor asked. "What was so important about them?"

  "No," Rick said. "He never confided in me. Sorry."

  Victor glanced enquiringly at Julia.

  "Fraid not," she shook her head fractionally.

  "Care to guess?"

  "I don't think I could. I'm beginning to realize how little of him I ever did know."

  Rick cleared his throat cautiously. "Er, are we, the Institute, that is, in trouble for assembling the probe? Royan did have all the funding clearance, and we knew he's your husband—" He broke off miserably.

  Julia favoured him with a thin grin. "Oh, yes, he's mine all right. And no, I don't hold the Institute to blame. Royan has the authority to use whatever Event Horizon facility he wishes to."

  "Even if he can't be bothered to tell us," Victor said. It came out with more feeling than he intended, and Julia registered a flicker of pain. Julia's choice had always baffled him, although he and Royan had always been careful never to show any animosity towards each other. If anything, they'd always been scrupulously polite, to the point of excess, it became a ritual. Perhaps the mistrust he felt was just a security man's instinct. But he always considered Royan a flaw in Julia's otherwise meticulous life; it was always her devotion, her money. All Royan had brought with him were his hotrod programs. Love was never reasonable.

  "Something I'd like to ask," Victor said, evading Julia's critical eye. "Seeing as how I don't believe in coincidence: Royan builds a Jupiter probe to investigate alien life, then he turns up warning us about alien life. Would it make sense for our aliens to use Jupiter as a base?"

  "You mean, could their ship be in orbit around Jupiter?" Julia asked.

  "Just an idea," Victor said. It was one he'd had on the flight back to Wilholm. He had wanted to pursue it with Rick, but then Greg had called and he wound up getting sidetracked with safeguarding Andria Landon.

  "A good one," said Rick. "However advanced their technology, a starflight would deplete on-board resources, certainly on a slower-than-light ship. Jupiter would be an excellent resupply point. Minerals and metal in its ring, ice on Europa, He3 in its atmosphere."

  "Can you at least run a search of Jupiter for us?" Victor asked.

  "I keep telling you," Rick said irritably. "SETI is not a hardware-orientated department. All we have is an office, and access to the Institute's lightware cruncher. That's it, the total, what we are."

  "Not any more," Julia said. "As of now, I am placing every deep-space sensor facility Event Horizon owns under the control of the SETI department." Her eyes went distant. "Your role will mainly be co-ordination, but then that's what you're used to. Tell the visible- and radio-astronomy departments what you require, I'll see you have the clearance by the time you get back to the Institute. You can also get the visible-astronomy staff to interpret any recent visual records of Jupiter. There's our own Galileo telescope, as well as the IAP's Aldrin. Victor, you handle any image purchases from the Aldrin. Go through some fronts, I don't want anyone to know Event Horizon is the end user, not at this stage."

  "This is all very sudden," Rick said slowly. He kept glancing at Victor for confirmation of what was actually happening. "Funny, nothing like the contact scenarios we were prepared for. We always assumed it would be non-material contact, almost archaeological, digging through the electronic remains of a culture, signals broadcast before the human race had even learnt how to knap flints. Now this, a starship finally arrives, then it hides from us. Crazy."

  "I'm sure you can cope," Julia said, there was a line of steel in her voice.

  Rick jerked back out of his daydream. "Yes, of course, absolutely no problem."

  "Good. You're searching for two things. Firstly, any sign of an alien starship. Secondly, this Kiley probe of Royan's. I want to know if it's still in Jupiter orbit, or if it's en route back to Earth. Got that?"

  "Yes." Rick bobbed his head.

  "There's a third option on Kiley," Victor reminded her. "The most likely, that it's already returned."

  "How would we know?" Julia asked. "Royan's wiped or guarded any reference in the company memory cores. Even I can't find any traces," she added significantly.

  "We do it the old-fashioned way. Ask people instead of machines," he said with a slow smile. Investigative techniques, cross-indexing and correlating data, had been a part of his original training. Unused for well over a decade, ever since security simply became a question of correct data retrieval. It would be good to actually use his brain on a problem again, satisfying, that and being out in the field for a change. "We can start with Rick here?"

  "Me?" the startled SETI director asked.

  "Yes."

  "But I've told you everything I know about Kiley, every byte."

  "Not quite. For a start, which bay the Kiley was assembled in?"

  "F37, I think."

  "Right, Julia would you ask your team to access the records for that bay, see if they can work out how Royan glitched the cores to hide what he's been doing?"

  "Good idea," she said.

  "In the mean time, Rick and I will get back to the Institute, start talking to the team that assembled Kiley, and more important, see if we can locate the spaceplane crew that launched it."

  "What for?" Rick asked.

  "Because if it has returned, their familiarity with the system would make them the logical choice to perform the recovery flight."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Julia watched the study door close behind the two men. Rick Parnell had been more or less what she'd expected, except for his physical size; an intellectual, socially out of his depth. Wasn't royalty supposed to be able to put anyone at their ease? That was one trick she had never mastered. It always took three or four meetings with people before they started to relax around her. Apart from Victor, of course, she couldn't think of a time when Victor had been reticent around her. Always honest, that was Victor's big attraction. And loyal, which went far beyond professional integrity. Julia quickly put a brake on that stray thought.

  You shouldn't be so dishonest with yourself, Juliet, her grandfather said gently.

  She hadn't realized the NN cores were still plugged in.

  I wasn't being dishonest, just practical.

  Poor Juliet, so many problems, so many unknowns.

  You're getting quite dismally sentimental in your old age.

  Listen, my girl. I know this is immortality, but it's tasteless, odourless, and numb; and it isn't going to get any better. Maybe I should have gone for the angels and demons d
eal after all.

  You don't have glands, Grandpa, you don't need the outside world.

  No, but I like it.

  Oh, all right, anything for peace and quiet.

  Load OtherEyes. She felt the package squirt into one of her processor nodes, it was a fragment of her grandfather, a sub-personality, formatting her sensory impulses and relaying them back to his NN core. In effect, he was riding her nervous system, a tactual tourist.

  Happy now? Julia asked. She gave him access to her sensorium about once a week; he always claimed he needed to receive the physical sensations to stop himself going insane. Julia doubted it, her two NN cores never made the same request, and her grandfather had skipped the last four months of both her pregnancies.

  "Too bloody weird, Juliet," he had told her. "Remember this is a lad who grew up in the sixties—the Beatles, Apollo moonshots, and black and white telly—that's my stomping ground, simple times. Looking round this brain-wrecked world half of me thinks I'm in hell already."

  That's better, thank you, Juliet.

  His silent voice always sounded closer when OtherEyes was loaded, which was impossible. She stretched her arms, wriggling her fingers, then breathed in deeply.

  Oh, terrific, that grand old smell of chilly conditioned air. Can't beat it. You live in a bloody spaceship, you do, girl.

  She laughed. I'll take a walk out in the gardens for you later. Daniella and Matthew are in the pool, I could join them.

  An eerie wisp of pride slithered through her brain at the mention of her children. Not hers, not the usual background of paternal pride.

  They're good kids, they are, Juliet. My great-grandchildren. Even if they do keep taking Brutus into the pool.

  Oh, not again! I've told Qoi not to let them.

  There was a mental chuckle. Brutus doesn't harm anybody, it's not as if he's got fleas. Besides, I remember a little girl who would have stabled her horse in her bedroom if I'd let her.

  If you're going to get all asinine maudlin, you can go back where you came from.

  So cold and ruthless we are now, Juliet, how we've grown.

  The communication channel widened to incorporate her two NN cores.

  We've found Jason Whitehurst's airship, NN core one said. There was a brief impression of excitement. We didn't even have to go extralegal. Stratotransit PLC holds the Euro-flight Agency franchise for traffic control, and Event Horizon owns twelve per cent of Stratotransit, so our request for a memory squirt was perfectly legitimate.

  Good, so where are they?

  Stratotransit tracked the Colonel Maitland leaving Monaco and flying west across the Mediterranean, then out into the Atlantic over the Straits of Gibraltar. That's where radar coverage ends, so we've been relying on our Earth Resource platforms to track her from there.

  One of the terminal cubes in front of her lit up. Julia recognized the Iberian peninsula and north-west Africa, both glowing in various shades of red. The sea was a light green.

  You are seeing an enhanced infrared image, NN core one explained. The image expanded, centring on the Straits of Gibraltar. Julia could make out the drop flow, a tongue of emerald green that seemed to shimmer. A blue dot crept into the picture.

  There they are. They crossed at night, which is significant. It was the only time they were in sight of land after leaving Monaco.

  The image was expanding again, shifting west and south. The Colonel Maitland flew north of the Canaries, then out over the ocean.

  The Colonel Maitland is currently seven hundred kilometres due west of the Cape Verde islands, and holding station, NN core one said. That's the absolute middle of nowhere. For the last ten hours, all it's done is compensated for the wind.

  Julia stared at the blue dot, virtually equidistant from both landmasses, Africa and South America. You mean only someone with our resources could locate the Colonel Maitland right now?

  Yes, for all its size, the damn thing is tiny on an oceanic scale. Unless you have access to the same Stratotransit and satellite data as we do, there's no way you could find it.

  What about the usual communication links? she asked. Call Jason Whitehurst up and locate him via a transponder.

  Jason is too wily for that; pulling transponder co-ordinates out of Intelsat is an ancient hotrod trick. There's no transponder response to his number.

  You mean he's totally incommunicado?

  Far from it; one of security's ELINT satellites has an orbit which passes close enough to scan the Colonel Maitland. We waited until the latest results were squirted over to us before telling you we'd found Jason. It turns out the Colonel Maitland is operating some kind of localized jammer.

  Is that why we can't get any response from Charlotte Fielder's cybofax?

  Could well be, if she's on board. But Jason Whitehurst certainly hasn't been struck dumb. He's using his own comsat to squirt data about among his cargo agents, and the bit rate is approaching maximum capacity. And the uplink to geosync orbit is a very tight beam; but the ELINT intercepted a portion while it was overhead. Jason Whitehurst is receiving a vast amount of kombinate finance reviews which his agents have bought from commercial intelligence companies.

  Julia looked at the cube again, translating the blue dot into an airship drifting idly over the ocean. What had Victor said? No such thing as coincidence. And Greg said the same thing often enough.

  Grandpa, do you notice the similarity here? I'm looking for this Charlotte Fielder girl, and I've also initiated a search through kombinate finance records because of the offers Mutizen and Clifford Jepson have made to me. Jason Whitehurst has got Charlotte Fielder, and what's he busy doing?

  Spot on, Juliet. Notice something else as well?

  What?

  This atomic structuring technology cropped up more or less at the same time as Royan warned us about aliens. A technology that is so different it isn't even a breakthrough in the usual sense of the word, because nobody's even been working on it. A technology whose origins are bloody difficult to track down.

  "Bugger," she said out loud. He was right. Which was precisely what made him so indispensable, not just his experience, but an alternative viewpoint.

  We should've realized that, she said to her two NN cores.

  Yes, was the curiously hollow answer. A fragment of resentment.

  Right, let's make up for the lapse. One of you contact Peter Cavendish, tell him to start putting some pressure on Eduard Muller and Mutizen. Explain to them that we've had a counter-offer for a partnership in atomic structuring, and they'll have to put in a revised bid if they want Event Horizon as a partner. Then I want one of our Atlantic antenna platforms reprogrammed to plug into the Colonel Maitland's satellite circuits. I want to talk to Jason Whitehurst, get him to accept a visit from Greg and Suzi.

  No problem, said NN core two. I'm redirecting one of the dish foci now.

  Fine. What about Jason Whitehurst's profile?

  Interesting. I can find no reference to Fabian Whitehurst's birth certificate in any public memory core. The birth was simply not registered. However, I've been accessing recent gossipcasts, the boy has been to several society parties over the last nine months.

  The terminal's second cube came alive, showing her the image of a mid-teens boy with long, floppy dark hair. She could see some resemblance to Jason. The boy was a lively one, she thought, bright and sparky; years of trying to contain Matthew taught her the signs.

  I wonder why Jason never mentioned him to me? she mused.

  There was no need for him to tell you, her grandfather said. No reason why you should know.

  Grandpa, if anyone I know has a child I'm given their age, school record, told they adore dogs and horses, and get shown their hologram, all within fifteen seconds. Anything that'll get them invited to play with Daniella and Matthew. And this Fabian looks about the same age as Daniella.

  Jason Whitehurst isn't an arriviste.

  Maybe not. But why isn't there a record of Fabian's birth?

  Got me there,
girl.

  OK, I want a more detailed profile of Jason Whitehurst assembled, centred on his life sixteen, fifteen, and fourteen years ago. Finance, personal, the works, every byte. I don't know exactly how old this Fabian child is, but he's around that age. Find a trace of him. Look for unexplained payments to women, and possibly medical clinics as well. Given Jason's sexual orientation, I'd guess at an in vitro fertilization and a host mother.

  You got it, Juliet.

  I have established a link with the Colonel Maitland, NN core two said.

  Jason Whitehurst appeared on the study's phone screen. He was sitting at some kind of desk, wearing a white shirt, open at the neck to reveal an MCC cravat. There was a window behind him, showing nothing by sky.

  "Julia, this is a somewhat unexpected pleasure. I wasn't aware I was taking incoming calls."

  "I know, Jason, and I apologize for interrupting your communication circuits like this, but we do need to talk."

  "Certainly, I was going to call you today anyway."

  Julia felt a trickle of relief in her mind. At least they weren't going to play the euphemisms game. She tried to gauge his mood, which wasn't easy over a phone vid. But he was definitely riding an up.

  She thought for a moment, unsure of what to say. What exactly was she asking him for? Charlotte Fielder, or should there be something more?

  "I'm looking for someone, a Miss Charlotte Fielder. Apparently she left the Newfields ball with your son, Fabian."

  There was a slight tightening around Jason Whitehurst's mouth at the mention of Fabian. "She left with me, that is so."

  Interesting, her grandfather said. The old bastard's cagey about the tyke.

  Do you think I could use that? she asked.

  Bloody hell, girl, don't you ever listen to me? Don't ever ask a question unless you already know the answer. How would you use the boy? Tell me that, hey?

  Sorry, Grandpa. It was just that she was so used to negotiating from a position of strength. Spoilt.