The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Above all was the gentleness, time spent entwined, time spent floating above fresh landscapes, above sunsets and dawns, gourmet meals, idle chatter, laughter. It had been stately.

  He rued the day of the airship's passing, replaced with hypersonic planes powered by Julia's all-pervasive gigaconductor. The last commercial trans-Atlantic airship flight had rated half a column in The Times one morning; he'd passed the cybofax over the breakfast table to Eleanor who quirked her lips in remorse. They had always said they would repeat the trip, but then there had been the kids, the groves to tend, responsibilities. Now all it ever could be was a sunny memory.

  Greg had never really adapted to hypersonics, the second age of air travel; two-and-a-quarter hours to New Zealand from England; Japan a hundred-minute streak over the slushy remnants of the North Pole. Where could you escape in a world like that?

  Jason Whitehurst had found the answer the hard way. The Pegasus had broken away from the Italian mainland over Genoa, hitting Mach eight above the Ligurian Sea. They were passing over the Straits of Gibraltar fifteen minutes later without slowing down, curving round north-west Africa to line up on the Cape Verde islands. Total elapsed time from Julia sending him the co-ordinates to arrival at the Colonel Maitland was forty-seven minutes.

  "We've just been given landing clearance by the captain," Pearse called.

  "Fine," Greg said. "Take her down." He stood up as Pearse spoke into the handset. Suzi got to her feet beside him. He noticed she used her arms to push herself up out of the deep chair. "You OK?"

  She pulled a face. "Sod it, yeah, I'll do."

  The leg of her shellsuit was torn, stained with a ribbon of blood, blue dermal seal visible through the open fabric. And what would Jason Whitehurst make of that?

  Greg's face still stung, but he'd checked it in the toilet mirror. Appearance-wise it wasn't too bad. His leather jacket had deflected a lot of the glass splinters. Out of the three of them, he had come off best. Even his neurohormone hangover had run its course.

  Two converging lines of bright strobe lights were flashing along the top of the Colonel Maitland, leading them in towards the recessed landing pad. At the front edge of the pad a large blister rose out of the fuselage, which he guessed was a hangar for Jason Whitehurst's own plane.

  Greg walked forward as the Pegasus descended, compensating for the inclined deck. The chair at the front of the cabin had been straightened and tilted horizontal. Malcolm was lying on it; all he had on were jockey shorts, his brown skin mottled with big patches of dermal seal. Diagnostic probes were stuck to his torso and the nape of his neck, the medical unit's screen showing an écorché representation of his body, large sections coloured amber, two red pinpoints near his spine.

  "Is he going to be all right?" Greg asked Rachel.

  She looked up from the plasma bladder's LCD. "Yes. Nothing critical punctured or broken, just blood-loss trauma. But we got the plasma into him in time. He might need some skin replacement for his back, otherwise fine."

  "Thank Christ for that."

  "Never thought I'd be doing this again."

  "Yeah, you and me both," he said.

  The Pegasus touched down with a slight tremor.

  Greg shrugged out of his jacket. "Pearse, give me a Tokarev and shoulder holster."

  "Right." The hardliner went to one of the lockers. "Suzi, do you want a holster for your Browning?"

  "Nah, I stowed it."

  Greg glanced at her. The Puma bag had been lost in the Prezda's well. Her shellsuit wasn't all that baggy, though. He didn't ask.

  Pearse handed him the holster. "You want me to come with you?"

  "No," Greg said, velcroing the holster's straps. "The deal is for me and Suzi. We shouldn't be more than half an hour, forty minutes at the outside. Buy the girl and bring her back. After that we zip Malcolm here straight to a decent medical facility."

  "Buy the girl," Pearse repeated. "That sounds so. . . God, I don't know. Medieval?"

  "Something like that." Greg checked the Tokarev's charge before slotting it into the holster. "But it's preferable to the alternative, for her and us." He pulled his jacket back on, and pressed the belly hatch activation button.

  There were two people waiting for them on the pad. Hard-liners, dressed in dark grey trousers and light jade V-neck sweaters, as if they were cabin stewards.

  Greg ordered a small neurohormone secretion. The hardliners were cautious, but not hostile.

  They took a lift down to the gondola, riding in silence. A long windowless corridor, lit by a bright biolum strip, blank doors in either wall, and nobody else in sight. He thought the hardliners were leading them towards the prow, but it was difficult to be certain. A cleaning drone rolled past them going in the opposite direction.

  He sensed the background shimmer of the crew's minds, a continual whisper of emotions. Reassuring to know the Colonel Maitland wasn't actually the ghost ship it looked.

  The hardliners stopped outside one of the doors near the end of the corridor. It opened into Jason Whitehurst's clinically plain study. He was sitting behind his glass desk, playing with an old-fashioned gold Parker biro. The hologram display inside the desk top was angled so that it could only be read by him. From where Greg stood inside the door the symbology array was just an Expressionist laser frieze. Pretty, but meaningless.

  A grey rectangle on the floor in front of the desk began to bulge up, silently sculpting itself into a settee.

  "Please," Jason Whitehurst opened his hand, gesturing at the newly formed settee.

  Greg sat, sensing the two hardliners behind him withdrawing. Suzi plonked herself down beside him, her heels barely reached the floor.

  "Do you require medical attention?" Jason Whitehurst asked Suzi. He was looking at her knee, the torn shellsuit leg. "I have a doctor on board. Someone my age, it is advisable. . ." He trailed off with a dismissive wave.

  "I've already had it patched, thanks," Suzi said.

  "Of course."

  "A hazard on our way here," Greg said. He studied the mind before him. Jason Whitehurst put on a good front. Behind the bemused tolerance expression he was hiding a mix of fretfulness and expectancy. Greg recognized the mind set. Jason Whitehurst was a masterclass gambler, it was his out, his bang. He didn't merely play the game, he was part of the game.

  "You see, we're not the only people looking for you," Greg said. He wanted a reaction, see how Jason Whitehurst bore up under some pressure.

  "I am aware of this," Jason Whitehurst said. "After all, the delectable Charlotte is in some demand, a valuable commodity. I simply did what I always do in such a case, and trade on it."

  "A pity you didn't think to warn Baronski."

  "Is he in some sort of trouble?"

  "You judge. Suzi and I managed to escape the tekmerc team that was going to interrogate him about Fielder's location. That's where we picked up our little scratches."

  Jason Whitehurst pulled on his beard. Greg sensed the first traces of alarm rising into his mind, thought currents brightening.

  "Baronski knew the risks," Jason Whitehurst said bluntly.

  "Baronski was a cautious man. He didn't know what Fielder has got herself involved in; if he had, he would have stopped her."

  "You have come all this way, by dint of considerable effort on the part of your employer, simply to remonstrate with me, Mr. Mandel?"

  "No. All I came for was Fielder. Just telling you this deal isn't all cosy advantage trading, that's all. Maybe you don't know how valuable this Fielder girl is."

  "I believe I have a fair idea of her financial status, or more precisely, the price of the information stored in that pretty little head of hers. Dear Charlotte is unique. And like all monopolies, she does not come cheap."

  "How much?"

  "One hundred million Eurofrancs."

  "Bollocks," Suzi snorted.

  Greg had seen it coming, watching Jason Whitehurst nerve himself up. There was determination, but he was also testing, interested to see ho
w important Fielder really was. It fitted Greg's initial impression. Jason Whitehurst knew he had something, he just wasn't sure exactly what.

  Greg increased his neurohormone secretion. "Did you know first contact has been made?" he asked.

  Shadows of doubt flittered across Jason Whitehurst's mind. "Whatever are you talking about, Mr. Mandel?"

  "First contact, with aliens."

  Jason Whitehurst's face registered impatience. Suspicion rose, his thought currents racing, then a slow dawn of comprehension which brought cold fright. "That is the source of atomic structuring technology? Aliens?"

  "Yeah," said Greg.

  "My God, of course, her holiday." Jason did his best to recover his composure, physically he managed it, mentally his mind surged with phobic dread. "Is Julia Evans really sure she knows what she is doing dabbling in this affair?"

  "She's sure."

  "Very well. Then as I said before, if you are unwilling to pay the reserve price, dear Charlotte will be placed on the open market, available to the highest bidder."

  "Wrong," said Greg. "We will pay you sixty-five million for her."

  "Greg!" Suzi protested.

  "Julia has been most foolish sending you," Jason Whitehurst said. "All you have done is simply confirmed dear Charlotte's worth to me. The reserve price stands. I must say, it's most unlike Julia to make this sort of mistake."

  "I told you about the aliens as a favour," Greg said. "That's the second one today. I'm trying to make you realize that you're in way over your head. This whole deal frightens me very badly, and I'm ex-Mindstar. Charlotte Fielder will be removed from the Colonel Maitland today; either by us paying for her, or by one of the tekmerc squads the kombinates have employed to hunt her down. And they're not far behind us, a few hours at most. if she comes with us, you will receive your sixty-five million. Wait until they arrive, and you can kiss goodbye to a lot more than money. That's the bottom line, Whitehurst. No third favour."

  Sparkling blue eyes fixed on Greg. "The Mindstar Brigade?" Jason Whitehurst said it with reluctant admiration.

  "Yeah. You want my advice, then leg it out of here as soon as we take Fielder. Head back to Monaco, where it's safe, and where you're visible, in a crowd. Tell the other bidders that Fielder's gone. Best I can offer."

  "I was in the King's Own Hussars, myself."

  "I know, I've read your profile. Good troops, the King's Own; they were in Turkey."

  "After my day. Mexico was my last campaign." Jason Whitehurst sighed, dropping the Parker on the desk. "Didn't know you were a brother officer. Sorry if I sounded off."

  "I really would like you to leave the Colonel Maitland after us."

  "Yes, quite. Good idea. Sixty-five million, you say?"

  "Yeah, sixty-five."

  Suzi let out a disgusted hiss of breath, rolling her eyes.

  "Very well, Mr. Mandel. We have a deal."

  Greg fished around in his jacket pocket, and produced the ident card Julia had given him: pure white, except for the LCD display and a small triangle and flying-V logo filling the top right corner.

  "You have the authority for the transfer itself?" Jason Whitehurst asked.

  Greg scaled the card over the desk to him. "No messing. Julia and I go back a long way. I help her out now and then."

  Jason Whitehurst picked up the card, glancing at it briefly. "Event Horizon's central account, no less. You sound like a chap it would be a good idea to know."

  Greg stood up. "Charlotte Fielder, is she on board?"

  "Indeed she is, yes." Jason Whitehurst's fingers sketched hieroglyphic symbols on the smooth surface of the desk.

  Greg still couldn't make out the graphics, but they were changing below his hand.

  "You really gonna?" Suzi asked. She had risen to stand beside him. Her mind appalled and fascinated. "Sixty-five million?"

  Greg imagined his own thoughts must be similar. Sixty-five million. He knew there was a tingle of magic in his relationship with Julia, but this kind of money wasn't chicken feed, even for her. He wondered who he would trust with that much, not many. There were levels of trust; Suzi would be utterly dependable in a scrap, but hand her sixty-five million for safekeeping and it would be a goodbye that would last beyond the end of the world.

  "I have set up the credit transfer order," Jason Whitehurst said.

  The desk let out a piercing whistle. Greg saw a whole section of the incomprehensible graphics turn red and scurry into frantic motion. His cybofax bleeped, and he reached for it automatically.

  There was the unmistakable crump of an explosion, distant and muted. The hazy blue world outside the study's broad windows remained unchanged.

  Julia's face filled the cybofax screen, there was no background behind her, as if she was starless space. "Greg!" she called. "I'm registering an electronic warfare alert."

  Suzi was sprinting to the nearest window. The distinctive double thunderclap of a sonic boom rocked the Colonel Maitland. Greg could feel the vibration through his feet.

  "Nothing here," Suzi shouted. She was pressed up against the window, Browning in her hand. "Shit, it must be above us."

  An alarm was shrilling in the corridor outside. The two hardliners burst into the study, weapons drawn.

  "Put them down," Jason Whitehurst said sharply.

  They lowered the handguns reluctantly. Racal IR laser carbines, Greg noted absently, restricted to military sales only.

  "What's happening?" he asked.

  "Someone's thrown a jamming field around the airship," Julia's image said. "It's fluctuating, as if the source is moving. I can't get a message out."

  The desk stopped whistling. "The plane that flew over," Jason Whitehurst said; both his hands were pressed against the glass surface, almost as though he was communing with it. "It attacked your Pegasus." One of the homolographic maps on a wall-mounted flatscreen flicked off, replaced by a view from a camera on the Colonel Maitland's tail fin, looking down the fuselage towards the prow.

  Greg stared in horror at the ruined landing pad. The Pegasus had been ripped almost in two along the length of its cabin. It had collapsed on to the landing pad, spewing black oily smoke from its rear quarter. Intense flares of blue-white light writhed continually inside the buckled fuselage, the giga-conductor cells shorting out. As he watched, flames began to lick out of the gashes.

  No one could have survived that blast. Through the shock, all he could think of was that he never even knew the pilot's name.

  "The plane is returning," Jason Whitehurst said with deliberate calm. "Subsonic, and slowing."

  "Can the Colonel Maitland hold it oft?" Greg asked.

  "We have some ECM systems naturally," Jason Whitehurst said. "But this is not a warship. I consider my staff more than adequate to deter any normal kidnapping attempt."

  Greg was still gaping at the ruined Pegasus when a thin column of air above the landing pad seemed to sparkle for an instant. The hangar blister and whatever plane was inside disintegrated into a vivid plume of white fire. A shock wave thumped the wreckage of the Pegasus into the rim around the pad, flinging out a flurry of debris. The incandescent tumour of light swelling out of the ruptured hangar had turned the flatscreen image black and white. Large strips of the solar cell envelope all around the landing pad were curling up like autumn leaves, edges crisping, exposing the thin monolattice struts of the fuselage.

  The sound of the blast rolled around the airship's flanks and hammered against the study's windows a couple of seconds later.

  This time the Colonel Maitland shuddered perceptibly. There was a long drawn out series of agonizing creaks and groans reverberating through the geodetic framework.

  "Leol flicking Reiger," Suzi said. She flinched at a loud metallic twang. "Gotta be."

  "I think you might be right," Greg said. He turned from the flatscreen to see Jason Whitehurst slumped nervelessly in his chair, a vein throbbing on his temple. "Apart from the landing pad, how do you get on board?" he asked.

  "There a
re access hatches on the top of the fuselage," Jason Whitehurst said. "I suppose they could break in there. The plane would have to hover, though. It would be difficult."

  "Not to tekmercs," Greg said. He thought fast, no question that they were here for Charlotte Fielder, so there would be no indiscriminate shooting. Not until after they snatched her, anyway. "What about escape systems? Lifeboats? Parachutes? Something to bail out in?"

  "There's an emergency survival pod in every lower deck cabin."

  "It shouldn't come to that," Julia's image said. "My security crash team will be on the way."

  "You sure?" Greg asked.

  "The Pegasus was in constant contact with Event Horizon's security division. As soon as that jammer cut the satellite link the crash team launched. I promised I'd back you up."

  "How long till they get here?"

  "Twenty minutes, maybe a little less."

  "You hear that, Suzi? Twenty minutes' evasion and decoy."

  "Yeah. If these security people of Victor's are any use. So what do you wanna do about the girl, meantime?"

  "Where is she?" Greg asked Jason Whitehurst.

  "On board somewhere, with Fabian. Probably in his cabin. Get her away from him, Mr. Mandel, get her well away."

  "Are you coming with us?"

  Jason Whitehurst glanced round the study, blinking leadenly. His thought currents had slowed drastically; the attack had shaken him badly, fissures of insecurity were opening in his mind, allowing subconscious fears to rise and clog his thoughts. "Go where?"

  "Shit. OK, order your crew into the emergency pods. That plane might try to puncture the gasbags, force everyone out so they can pick up Fielder."

  Jason Whitehurst debated with himself for a moment, then acquiesced. "Yes, all right." He stretched a hand out over his desk, stirring the light patterns. "Fabian must get into a pod by himself; he'll be safe then. That's all that matters now."

  "Greg!" Suzi yelled frantically. She was pointing out of the window.

  The plane was descending into view about two hundred metres away, a delta planform with a long bullet nose. Not easy to see, an elusive light-grey stealth coating seemed to slither when he tried to focus on it, pulling the uniform blueness of sea and sky around the flat fuselage like a cloak.