of hardly anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to him, not if he makes her happy. Nothing I want more than to see her smiling, she’s my world. It’s just that I don’t want her hurt. Now, I know you can’t expect eternal commitment, not at that age, and he seems pleasant enough. But make sure she’s not just another tick in his stud diary. Life’s going to be tough enough for her, being my heir, she surely doesn’t deserve bad-news boyfriends as well.’ CHAPTER FOUR T here was a dinner jacket waiting for Greg in the guest suite after he’d finished bathing. It fitted perfectly. He put it on, feeling foolish, then went out to find his host. At least he had remembered how to do up his bow tie. The lights throughout the majority of Wilholm’s rooms were old-fashioned electric bulbs, drawing their power from solar panels clipped over the splendid Collyweston slates. He had to admit that biolums’ pink-white glow wouldn’t have done the classical decor justice. Evans had obviously gone to a lot of trouble recreating the old building’s original glory. The ageing billionaire chortled at the sight of Greg as he waited for his powerchair on the east wing’s landing, flushed and fingering his starched collar. ‘Almost respectable looking, boy.’ The powerchair stopped in front of him. Evans cocked his head, taking stock. ‘I hope you know which knives to use. I can hardly pass you off as my aide if you start savaging your avocado with a soup spoon, now can I?’ Greg wasn’t sure if the old man was mocking him or the marvelously doltish niceties of table etiquette, so religiously adhered to by England’s upper-middle classes – what was left of them. Probably both. ‘I was an officer,’ Greg countered. Not that he’d graduated from Sandhurst, nothing so formal. It was what the Anny had called a necessity promotion, all the Mindatar candidates were captains – some obscure intelligence division commission. A week of learning how to accept salutes, and three months’ solid slog of data interpretation and correlation exercises. ‘Course you were, m’boy; and a gentleman too, no doubt.’ ‘Well, I always took my socks off before, if that’s what you mean,’ Greg said. Evans laughed approvingly. ‘Wish I had you on my permanent staff. So many bloody woofter yes-men–‘ The chair took off towards the main stairs at a fast walking PITER P. HAMILTON 44 pace. The old man looked much improved since the afternoon. Greg wondered how he’d pay for that later. The three teenagers were heading for the stairs from the manor’s west wing. Evans waited at the top for them. The taller girl bent over and gave his cheek a soft kiss, studying his face carefully. There was genuine concern written on her features. ‘Now, you’re not going to stay up late,’ she said primly. It wasn’t a question. ‘No.’ Evans was trying hard to make it come out grumpy, but fell miserably short. Her presence resembled a fission reaction, kindling a fierce glow of pride in his mind. ‘Greg, this is Julia, that wayward grandchild I’ve been telling you about.’ Julia Evans nodded politely, but didn’t offer her hand. Apparently her grandfather’s employees didn’t rate anything more than fleeting acknowledgement. In silent retaliation Greg tagged her as a standard-issue spoilt brat. Actually, he acknowledged she was quite a nice-looking girl. Tall and slender, with a modest bust, and her fine, unfashionably long hair arranged in an attractive wavy style that complemented a pleasant oval face. She wore a slim plain silver tiara on her brow, and a small gold St Christopher dangling from a chain round her neck. He thought her choice of a strapless royal purple silk dress was sagacious; she had the kind of confident poise necessary to carry it well, and not many her age could claim the same. The boys would look twice, sure enough. Because she was sparky in that way that all teenage girls were sparky. It was just that she hadn’t developed any striking characteristics to lift her out of the ordinary. And right now that was her major problem. She was a satellite deep into an eclipse. Her primary, the girl she stood beside, was an absolutely dazzling seraph. Her name was Katerina Cawthorp, introduced as Julia’s friend from their Swiss boarding school. A true golden girl, with richly tanned satin-smooth skin, and a thick mane of honey-blonde hair which cascaded over wide, strong shoulders. Her figure was an ensemble of superbly moulded curves, accen MINDSYAR RISING 45 mated by a dress of some glittering bronze fabric which hugged tight. A deliciously low-cut front displayed a great deal of firm shapely cleavage, while a high tight hem did the same for long elegant legs. Her face was foxy; bee-stung lips, pert nose, and clear Nordic-blue eyes which regarded Greg with faint condescension. He’d been staring. Katerina must have been used to it. That sly almost-smile let the whole world know that butter would most definitely melt in her mouth. Julia wheeled her grandfather’s chair on to a small platform which ran down a set of rails at the side of the stairs. ‘That father of yours, is he coming down?’ Evans asked her sourly. ‘Now don’t you two start quarrelling tonight.’ ‘Probably skulking in his room getting stoned.’ She slapped his wrist, quite sharply. ‘Behave. This is a party.’ Evans grunted irritably, and the platform began to slide down. Julia kept up with it, skipping lightly. Naturally, Katerina’s descent was far more dignified. She glided effortlessly, an old-style film-star making her grand entrance at a blockbuster premiere. It left Greg free to talk to the boy, Adrian Marler; he didn’t have to ask anything, Adrian turned out to be one of nature’s gushers. He launched into conversation by telling Greg how he’d just begun to study medicine at Cambridge, hoped to make the rugby team as a winger, complained about the New Conservative government’s pitifully inadequate student grant, confided that his family was comfortably off but nowhere near as rich as the Evans dynasty. Adrian was six foot tall with surf-king muscles, short curly blond hair, chiselled cheekbones, and a roguish grin that would send young – and not so young – female hearts racing; be was also intelligent, humorous, and respectful. Greg felt a flash of envious dislike for a kind of adolescence he’d never had, dismissing it quickly. ‘So how did you meet Julia?’ he enquired. ‘Katey introduced us,’ Adrian said. ‘Hey listen, no way was PETER F. HAMILTON 46 I going to turn down the chance to crash out at this palace for a few days, meet the great Philip Evans. Then there’s gourmet food, as much booze as you want, clean sheets every day, valet service.’ He leaned over and gave Greg a significant betweenus-men look, before murmuring, ‘And our rooms are fortuitously close together.’ ‘She seems a nice girl,’ Greg ventured. Adrian’s eyes tracked the slow-moving, foil-wrapped backside in front of them with radar precision. ‘You have no idea how truly you speak.’ His mind was awhirl with hot elation. ‘Are we talking about Julia or Katerina?’ Adrian broke off his admiring stare with obvious reluctance. ‘Katey, of course. I mean, Julia’s decent enough, despite her old man being a complete arsehole. But she couldn’t possibly match up to Katey, nobody could.’ He dropped his voice, taking Greg into his confidence. ‘If I had the money, I’d marry Katey straight off. I know it sounds stupid, considering her age. But her parents just don’t care about her. It’s a scandal; if they were poor the social services would’ve taken her into care. But they’re rich, they sit in their Austrian tax haven and treat her as a style accessory. To their set it’s fashionable to have a child, the more precocious the better. That’s probably why she and Julia are such closeheads. Near-identical backgrounds; both of them ignored from an early age.’ Greg suddenly experienced a pang of sympathy, prompted by his intuition. Adrian was a regular lad, one of the boys, likeable. He deserved better than Katerina. Although he didn’t know it, his infatuation was doomed to a terminal crash landing. His rugged good looks and lack of hard cash marked him down as a passing fancy. Naпvety preventing him from realizing that the teeny-vamp sex goddess whose footsteps he worshipped was going to chew him up then spit him out the second a tastier morsel caught her wandering, lascivious eye. Still, at least it meant Greg could start the evening by giving Evans one piece of news which he wanted to hear. Though whether it was good news was debatable. To Greg’s mind, Julia would be hard pushed to find a better prospect for prince consort. MIND$TAR RISING 47 Philip Evans received his guests in the manor’s drawing room. Its arching windows looked out on to the immaculately mown lawns where peacocks strutted round the horticultural menagerie along the paths. Maids in black and white French-style uniforms circulated with silver trays of tall champagne glasses and fattening cheesy snacks. A string quartet played a soft melody in the background. Greg felt as if he’d time-warped into some Mayfair club, circa nineteen-thirty. The men were all dressed in immaculately tailored dinner jackets, while the women wore long gowns of subdued colours and modest cut. It made Katerina stand out from the crowd; not that she needed sartorial assistance for that. A stunning case of overkill. Greg saw that despite his blunt Lincoinshire-boy attitude Philip Evans made a good host. He slipped into the role easily. A lifetime immersed in PR had taught him how. Julia stuck by his side; officially the hostess, being the senior lady of the family. The guests treated her with a formal respect not usually directed at teenagers. They must know she was the protйgйe, Greg realized. She accepted her due without a hint of pretension. Greg hovered behind the pair of them, maintaining a lifeless professional smile as he was introduced as Philip Evans’s new personal secretary. The old billionaire had assembled an impressive collection of top rankers for his party – a couple of New Conservative cabinet ministers, and the deputy prime minister; five ambassadors; financiers; a sprinkling of the aristocracy; and some flash showbiz types, presumably for Julia’s benefit. Lady Adelaide and Lord Jiistin Windsor, Princess Beatrice’s children, were also mingling with the guests, two tight knots of people swirling gently round them the whole time. Greg had managed to exchange a few words with Lady Adelaide; she was in her early twenties, and as politely informal as only Royalty could be given the circumstances. He gave way to the press of social mountaineers well pleased; Eleanor would love hearing the details. PETER F. HAMILTON As he left, he saw Katerina moving with the tenacity of an icebreaker through the people around Lord Justin. She wriggled round an elderly matron with gymnastic agility to deliver herself in front of him, blue eyes hot with sultry promise. For one moment, watching Lord Justin’s quickly hidden guilty smile, Greg allowed his cynicism to get the better of him. Could the young royal be the reason Philip Evans was unhappy about Adrian? Lord Justin was only five years older than Julia; a union between them was the kind of note an ultra-English traditionalist like Philip Evans would adore going out on. He eventually decided the thought was unworthy. Philip Evans might be devious, but he wasn’t grubby. The new arrivals seemed endless. Greg wanted to undo his iron collar, he wasn’t used to it. But all he could do was smile at the blur of faces, sticking to form. The guests weren’t a nightstalker crowd, he realized grimly, not the ones who cruised the shebeens searching for pickups and left-handed action. This was dass, the real and the posed. Their conversation revolved around currency fluctuations, investment potential, and the latest Fernando production at the National Theatre. Nobody here would be looking for a quiet moment to slip upstairs with someone else’s escort. Greg steeled himself for hours of excruciating boredom. There was one guest for whom Julia abandoned all her decorum, rushing up and flinging her arms round an over-loud American. ‘Uncle Horace, you came!’ She smiled happily as he patted her back, collecting an over-generous kiss. The man was in his late fifties, red-faced and fleshy, his smile seemingly permanent. The name enabled Greg to place him: Horace Jepson, the channel magnate. He was the president of Globecast, a satellite broadcasting company which had multiple channel franchises in nearly every country in the world; screening everything from trash soaps and rock videos to wildlife documentaries and twenty-four-hour news coverage. The PSP had refused Globecast a licence while they were in power, although the company’s Pan-Europe channels could always be picked up by Event Horizon’s black-market flatscreens, complete with a MINDSTAR RISING 49 dedicated English-language soundband. The PSP raged about imperialist electronic piracy; Globecast calmly referred to it as footprint overspill, and kept on beaming it down. Greg had never watched anything else in the PSP decade. Horace Jepson gave Philip Evans a hearty greeting, while Julia clung to his side. Then she steered him adroitly away from a cluster of the celebrities who’d begun to eye him greedily, introducing him to one of the New Conservative ministers instead. It was an interesting manoeuvre: if those manic self-advancLug celebrities had sunk their varnished claws into Jepson he would’ve had little chance of escaping all evening. So Julia Evans wasn’t quite the airhead he’d so swiftly written her off as, after all. In fact, her thoughts seemed extraordinarily well focused, fast-flowing. He couldn’t ever remember encountertng a mind quite like hers before. She returned and took her grandfather’s hand. They shared a sly private smile. It was a rapport which was quickly broken when Philip Evans spotted a couple making their way towards him and muttered, ‘Oh crap,’ under his breath. Julia glanced up anxiously, and gave her grandfather’s hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. He studied the advancing couple with interest to see what had aroused the sudden concern and antipathy in both Julia and Philip. They were a handsome pair. She was in her midtwenties, draped in at least half a million pounds’ worth of diamond jewellery, and wearing a loose lavender gown which showed almost as much cleavage and thigh as Katerina. The man, Greg guessed, was forty; he had a dark Mediterranean complexion, and obviously worked hard to keep himself fit. Each strand of his thick raven-black hair was locked into place. Greg’s espersense sent a cold, distinctly prickly sensation dancing along his spine as they approached. Beneath those perfect shells something disquietingly unpleasant lurked. Philip. Wonderful party,’ the man said, his accent faintly continental. ‘Thanks so much for the invite.’ Philip returned the smile, although Greg knew him well 50 PETER F. HAMILTON enough by now to see how laboured it was without resorting to his espersense. ‘Kendric, glad you could come,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to meet my new secretary. Greg, this is Kendric di Girolamo, my good friend and business colleague.’ Kendric smiled with reptilian snobbery. ‘Ah, the English. Always so eager to do down the foreign devil. Actually, Greg, I am Philip’s financial partner. Without me Event Horizon would be a fifth-rate clothing sweat-shop on some squalid North Sea trawler.’ ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ Evans said in a tight flat voice. ‘I can find twenty money men bobbing about any time I look into a sewer.’ ‘You see,’ Kendric appealed to Greg, ‘a socialist at heart. He has the true Red’s loathing of bankers.’ The knuckles on Julia’s hand were blanched as she gripped her grandfather’s shoulder, holding back the tiger. The sight of someone as ill as Evans being deliberately provoked was infuriating. Greg allowed the neurohormones to flood out from the gland and focused his mind on ice – hard, sharp, helium cold. A slim blade of this, needle-sharp tip resting lightly on Kendric’s brow, directly above his nose. ‘Don’t let’s spoil the party atmosphere,’ he said gently. Kendric appeared momentarily annoyed by a mere pawn interrupting his grand game. Greg thrust his eidolon knife forwards. Penetration, root pattern of frost blossoming, congealing the brain to a blue-black rock of iron. It felt so right, so easy. The power was there, fuelled by that kilowatt pulse of anger. Kendric blinked in alarmed confusion, swaying as if caught by a sudden squall. The hauteur which had been swirling triumphantly across his thoughts flash-evaporated. His knees nearly buckled, he took an unsteady step backwards before he regained his balance. Greg’s own unexpected flame withered, sucked back to whatever secret recess it originated from. Its departure left a copper taste filming his suddenly arid throat. He turned to the woman. ‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’ MINDSTAR RISING ‘My wife, Hermione,’ Kendric said warily; and she held her gloved hand out, the jewels of her rings sparkling brightly. Her eyes swept Greg up and down with adulterous interest. She seemed mildly disappointed when all he did was shake her long-fingered hand. He found himself comparing her to Eleanor, Only a few years separated them, and put in a dress like that Eleanor would be equally awesome. Except Eleanor would laugh herself silly at the notion of haute couture, and she’d never be able to mix at this kind of party – Ashamed, he jammed that progression of thoughts to a rapid halt. ‘Married, Mr Mandel?’ Hermione enquired. Her voice was the audio equivaletit of Katerina’s dress, husky and full of forbidden promise. Now why did he keep associating those wo? ‘No.’ ‘Pity. Married men are so much more fun.’ Temptation had never beckoned so strongly before. She ~vas one hell of a woman, but there was something bloody ~reepy scratching away behind that beautiful faзade. ‘We will talk later,’ Kendric said to Philip in a toneless voice. ‘Scotland needs to be finslized. Yes?’ ‘Yes,’ Philip conceded. Satisfied with this minor victory he moved on to give Julia a light kiss. Hermione followed suit, then wafted away with a ftnal airy, ‘Ciao.’ But not before she winked at Greg. Julia stood rigidly still for the embrace. Greg’s espersense Lnformed him she was squirming inside. She had good reason, there was a burst of unclean excitement in Hermione’s mind as their cheeks touched. ‘Who the hell are they?’ Greg asked as soon as they were DUt of earshot. Julia was kneeling anxiously by her grandfather’s powerchair. The old man had sagged physically. His mind was grey. She looked up at Greg with shrewdly questioning eyes. ‘Thank you for making Kendric back off,’ she said. He detected her thoughts flying at lightspeed, never losing coherence. Odd. Unique, in fact. ‘You have a gland,’ she said after a few seconds. 52 PETER F. HAMILTON Philip’s low chuckle was malicious. ‘Too late, Juliet, you’ve had your three.’ ‘Oh, you,’ she poked him with a finger in mock-exasperation. But there was an underlying current of annoyance. ‘Di Girolamo is moneyed European aristocracy,’ he explained. ‘And he’s right about us having financial ties; although being my partner is a complete load of balls. Did you ever buy any of my gear when the PSP was in power?’ ‘Yeah. A flatscreen, and a microwave too, I think. Who didn’t?’ ‘And how did you pay for ’em?’ ‘Fish mainly, some vegetables.’ ‘OK. The point is this: at the local level it Was all done by barter. There was no bard cash involved. I would fly the gear in, and my spivs would distribute it, sometimes through the black market, sometimes through the Party Allocation Bureau. So far a normal company production/delivery set up, right? But none of your fruit and veg is any use to me, I can’t pay the bankers with ten tonnes of oranges. So that’s where Kendric and his team of spivs comes in; he makes sure I get paid in hard currency. His spivs take the barter goods and exchange them for gold or silver or diamonds, some sort of precious commodity acceptable internationally – New Sterling was no good, it was a restricted currency under the PSP. They lift them out of the country, and Kendric converts them into Eurofrancs for me. It was a huge operation at the end, nearly two hundred thousand people; which is partly why the PSP never shut us down, you’d need a hundred new prisons to cope. Since the Second Restoration I’ve been busy turning my spivs into a legitimate commercial retail network – they’re entitled to it, the loyalty they showed me. But now New Sterling has been opened, there’s no need for Kendric’s people any more,. not in this country.’ ‘Kendric also used to make himself a tidy profit while he was arranging the exchange,’ Julia put in coldly. ‘I would’ve thought you could have arranged the exchange by yourself without any trouble,’ Greg said. ‘Nothing is ever simple, Greg,’ Philip replied. ‘Kendric’s MINOSTAR RISING 53 management of the exchange was part of my original arrangement with my backing consortium. I needed a hell of a lot of cash to fund Listoel, and I didn’t have the necessary contacts with the broker cartels back in those days, not for something that dodgy. Kendric did. His family finance house is old and respectable, well established in the money market. And he offered me the lowest rates, a point below the usual interest charges in fact. We got on quite well back then, despite his faults he is an excellent money man. The trouble is, he’s been getting a mite uppity of late, thinks he should have a say in running Event Horizon. Involve the consortium with the managerial decision process. Bollocks. I’m not having a hundred vice-presidents sticking their bloody oars in.’ ‘So why are you still tied in with him? You’re legitimate now.’ ‘Scotland,’ Julia said bitterly. “Fraid so,’ Philip confirmed. ‘The PSP is still in power north of the border so my arrangement with Kendric is still operating up there. Our respective spivs are virtually one group now, they’ve worked together for so long. It’d be very difficult to disentangle the two, not worth the effort and expense, especially as the Scottish card carriers aren’t going to last another twenty months. ‘And of course the di Girolamo house has an eight per cent stake in Event Horizon’s backing consortium. And guess who their representative on the board is.’ ‘I still don’t get it,’ Greg complained. ‘Why should a legitimate banker offer an illegal operation like yours a low rate in the first place? At the very least he should’ve asked for the standard commercial rate. And there are enough solid ventures in the Pacific Rim Market without having to go out on a limb here.’ ‘It’s the way he is, boy,’ Philip said quietly. ‘He doesn’t actually need to get involved in anything at all. The family trust provides him with more money than he could ever possibly spend. But he’s sharp. He sees what happens to others of his kind – they party; they ski, power glide, race cars and boats, take nine-month yachting holidays; they get loaded or stoned PETER F. HAMILTON 54 every night; and at age thirty-five the police are pulling them out of the marina. Half of the time it’s suicide, the rest it’s burnout. So instead of pursuing cheap thrills, Kendric gets his buzz by going right out on the edge. He plays the master-class game, backing smugglers like me, leveraged buyouts, corrupting politicians, software piracy, design piracy – I bought the Sony flatscreen templates Event Horizon uses from him. It’s money versus money. His ingenuity and determination are taxed to the extreme, but he can’t actually get hurt. I might not like him personally, but I admit he’s been mighty useful. And he’s exploited that position to grab his family house a big interest in Event Horizon. Clever. I like to think I’d have done the same.’ ‘I’ll get rid of him,’ Julia whispered fiercely. Her tawny eyes were burning holes in Kendric’s back as he chatted up a brace of glossy starlets. Philip patted her hand tenderly. ‘You be very careful around him, Juliet. He eats little girls like you for breakfast, both ways.’ Greg could sense her raw hostility, barely held in check by her grandfather’s cautionary tones. He sat next to Dr Ranasfari for the meal, an exercise in tedium; the man seemed to be a sense of humour-free zone. Ranasfari’s doctorate was in solid-state physics, and his conversation was mostly of a professional nature; it all flew way over Greg’s head. Although, curiously enough, Ranasfari loosened up most when he was talking to the ever-jovial Horace Jepson. In the event, dogged perseverance finally enabled Greg to check him out as clean. He couldn’t believe Ranasfari even knew what duplicitous meant. The Doctor had a very rarefied personality, perfectly content within the confines of his own synthetic universe. A genuine specimen of a head-in-the-clouds professor. Whatever project Philip Evans had him working on it was completely safe. Withoim’s library was a long, airy room on the ground floor, its arched ceiling painted with quasi-religious murals in rich, dark reds, greens, blues, and browns. Below this unchristian pantheon, glass-fronted shelves ran the length of the walls, illuminated from within by tiny biolum strips; there were matching marble fireplaces at each end of the room, an oriel window giving a view out across the rear lawns. Three tables spaced down the centre had genuine nineteenth-century reading-lamps at each seat. The air-conditioning was set to keep it degrees cooler than the rest of the manor. It was the room Julia preferred to work in: bringing Event Horizon data into her bedroom always seemed intrusive somehow. There had to be some distinction between private and working life, especially as she had so little of the former. She sat in a plain admiral’s chair behind a polished rose-wood table, wearing a hyacinth cardigan over a peach chambray button-through dress, watching interviews on a big wall-mounted flatscreen. The image was coming over the company datanet from Stanstead. Morgan Walshaw bad commandeered a whole floor in the company’s airport administration block, using it to keep the furnace operators in isolation while they were processed. He and Greg were doing the interviews in a modern office with a window wall overlooking the giant new freight hangar which Event Horizon used. Both of them sitting behind a chrome and glass desk, Morgan Walshaw in his usual suit; Greg in a red and white striped shirt with braiding down the placket, a black and white mosaic tie. It was a tedious way to spend the day, but she persevered. A penance for her earlier misdemeanour, that and a refuge, occupying her mind so that memories of Adrian couldn’t encroach in that sneakily persistent way they did whenever she had a spare moment. He’d left this morning, together CHAPTER FIVE 56 with Kats, the pair of them driving off on his Vickers bike, holographic flame transfers sparkling along the chrome gearmounting. Julia had watched them go, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel as they zoomed off down the drive, hard rock blaring from the speakers. It looked like a lot of fun. Now monotony and responsibility had closed in on her again. Alone in a room with a thousand leather-bound books, not one of which she would ever read. Neither would Grandpa, come to that. They were just part of the ritual of being rich. Put into warehouse storage abroad while the PSP ruled, and brought back here for glass-shelf storage. The tangibility of money. Stupid. Greg and Morgan Walshaw were stretching in their swivel chairs as they waited for the next furnace operator to come in. Julia poured herself another cup of tea from the silver service on the table, and munched a Cadbury’s orange cream from the plate of biscuits. She’d never really paid much attention to Event Horizon’s security division before, it was an alien sub-culture with its own language and etiquette and violence. Too much like an elaborate lethal game, freelance tekmercs and company operatives playing against each other at the expense of their employers. One of her bodyguards, Steven, had told her that once you were in security you never came out. She’d secretly hoped to see a bit of action, a few sparks fly, in addition to learning more about the investigation procedures Morgan Walshaw used. But the interviews Greg had been running seemed to be fairly straightforward: – Name – Sorry to interrupt your furlough, but it is urgent – We’re reviewing the contamination losses of memox crystals – Do you have any idea why it should be so high? – Have you ever been approached by anyone who wanted you to act against the company? Seven or eight questions then he’d say OK and Morgan Walshaw would dismiss them. So far they hadn’t uncovered anyone involved with the spoiler operation. The impression Julia got from the screen was remoteness. Greg never smiled, never frowned, his tone was scrupulously impartial, he hardly appeared to be aware of the interviewees. PETER F. HAMILTON MINDSTAR RISING 57 She wondered what she’d feel if she was sitting there in the office with him. A tingling in her head as his espersense teased apart her emotions for examination? Her grandfather bad said he couldn’t read individual thoughts. Julia wasn’t sure, he seemed so judgemental. Julia sipped her tea as the next furnace operator came in. The woman was the fifteenth to be interviewed, a forty-three-year-old called Angie Kirkpatrick, wearing a khaki sports shirt and Cambridge-blue tracksuit trousers; medium height, fitlooking, self-assured – but then all of them were. Angie Kirkpatrick sat on the other side of the desk from Greg and Morgan Waishaw, her expression of polite expectation carefully composed. Julia knew something was wrong straight away. Kirkpatrick probably wasn’t aware of it, she had nothing to compare her interview to. But Julia could see Greg was sitting straighter, more attentive. Morgan Walshaw had picked up on Greg’s state, too. Julia studied Kirkpatrick closely, still unable to see any evidence of culpability. ‘We’re investigating the high contamination level of memox crystals coming out of Zanthus,’ Greg said. ‘But then you guessed that, didn’t you?’ ‘The contamination has been quite high,’ Angie said. ‘Wrong answer,’ said Greg. ‘How long have you been working the spoiler?’ ‘What?’ ‘The whole eight months?’ ‘I don’t know-‘ ‘Seven months?’ ‘Listen!’ ‘Six?’ ‘Hey, you can’t just-‘ ‘Five?’ ‘Start accusing me-‘ Greg leaned back in his chair and smiled. Julia was very glad she wasn’t receiving that smile, it was predatory. ‘Five months,’ said Greg, a simple statement of fact. ‘This. . . What is this?’ Angie demanded. She was looking straight at Morgan Walshaw. 58 PETER F. HAMILTON ‘It’s word association,’ Greg said. ‘I say a word, and I watch ~o see how your mind reacts. Is there stress and guilt, or is there merely innocent confusion? It doesn’t matter what your verbal answer is, your thoughts don’t lie.’ Julia almost felt a pang of sympathy for the woman. Betrayed by her own soul. Greg’s ability was eerie, silent, ,uifelt, and devastatingly accurate. A whole heritage of fear was built around people who could divine thoughts. Quite ightly, surely everyone was entitled to some core of privacy. She pulled her cardigan tighter over her shoulders. ‘Stress and guilt, that’s what peaked at five months,’ Greg said. ‘You’ve got a gland,’ Angie said. Her defiance had gone. ‘That’s right.’ She flushed hard. ‘I. . . I hadn’t got any choice. They knew. Things. About me. Christ, I don’t know how they found out.’ ‘Just give us the details,’ said Walshaw, sounding bored, or perhaps weary. ‘What’!! happen?’ Angie asked. ‘To you? We probably won’t prosecute, if you’re being truthful about them blackmailing you. But you won’t ever work in orbit again, not for anyone, we’ll make quite sure of that.’ ‘I didn’t have any choice!’ ‘You could’ve come to us, we could’ve set a counter trap.’ ‘I don’t know. There’s no difference between you, any of you. People like me, well, it’s not fair.’ ‘Never is,’ Walshaw muttered. Watching Angie hunching in on herself, Julia realized the woman had already submitted, the fight had gone out of her. She was going to do exactly what Walshaw told her to. What an awesome reputation psychics had, that even their presence could sap the will like that. No wonder the PSP had been so troubled about the animosity of the Mindstar Brigade veterans. ‘How did they turn you?’ Greg asked. Angie flinched when he spoke. ‘Are you still looking into my mind?’ MINDSTAR RISING 59 ‘Yes.’ She nodded reluctantly. ‘OK. I was doing some uppers. Zanthus, it gets to you, you know? Four months in a dormitory can, everyone crammed together at night, recycled piss to wash with, can’t taste your food. It just gets to you. It’s no High Frontier dream, only sounds that way from down here. Anyway, it gets to the stage where you’ve really got to force yourself to turn up at Stanstead at the end of your furlough. I’ve got two daughters, see, they’re beautiful kids, really -smart, happy. I take care of them when I’m on furlough, my cx has them when I’m up there. I hate the idea of him having them at all, but some choice, right? So seven years of this shit is too much; my eldest, she’s fifteen, she’s got a boyfriend, she’s got exams this year. I should be there. Saying goodbye, it hurts like hell. So six months ago I’ve got to take something to ease the pain.’ ‘What about your pre-flight medical?’ Waishaw asked. ‘You must’ve known the drugs would show up.’ ‘Maybe I wanted it to,’ Angie said. ‘Deep down. You know how strict Event Horizon is about narcotics abuse. Give Philip Evans that, he wants us healthy. Others have been caught, they got transferred, they were given therapy, kept their pay grade. We get a good medical cover deal, you know? But they found me before the furlough ended.’ ‘Names?’ Greg asked. ‘Kurt Schimel. But he didn’t talk with a German accent.’ ‘That’s all?’ ‘No, there were a couple more with him, a man and a Woman. No names.’ She began to describe them. Access Company Personnel File: Kirkpatrick, Angie. Zanthus Microgee Furnace Operator. Julia stopped listening: Angie’s file was unfolding in her mmd. A data profile of names, dates, figures, promotions, training grades, personal biography, medical reports, biannual Security reviews, her ex-husband. Her daughters were called Jennifer and Diana, there were even pictures. Ordinary, she was so ordinary. That was what struck Julia most. It was a big disappointment, she’d wanted to understand the woman, 60 PETER F. HAMILTON her motivations. Knowing the enemy. But now she didn’t know whether to hate the she-demon who’d tried to wreck everything her grandfather had built, or pity the pathetic woman who’d screwed her own life beyond redemption. ‘They offered to flush my blood system clean,’ she was saying. ‘There’d be no trace of the drugs left when I went for the medical. They also smoothed out my bank account so the balance wouldn’t show all those cash purchases when security ran its six-month review. And I’d only have to fox the crystal furnace ‘ware for a year; their money would’ve been enough to let me get out afterwards. Just me and the girls, go and live quietly somewhere. God, you don’t know what kind of deal that was to me.’ / ‘I do,’ Greg said. Angie shuddered, hugging her arms across her chest. Greg was staring into space above her head. ‘You said fox the furnace ‘ware. I get some interesting implications from that. Would you elaborate on that for me, please.’ Julia returned her attention to the interview. She would never have picked up on that detail. What kind of an impression had Greg seen? She wanted to ask him: What do minds look like? Didn’t think she’d ever have the courage. ‘Nothing much to it,’ Angie said. ‘Schimel gave me a program to load into the furnace’s ‘ware, it adjusts the quality inspection sensor records.’ ‘The memox crystals weren’t actually contaminated, then,’ Greg said thoughtfully. ‘No. That wouldn’t have worked. The security monitors would trip if more than thirty-seven per cent came out bad, see? No way could we ever be allowed to go over the magic figure, that’d blow the whole gaff, right. Reconfiguring the injector mechanism each time you wanted to ruin a batch wasn’t on, you’d never get a fine enough control over the output. It’s not like flicking on a switch, you know. It takes time to make the blend perfect again, and the time varies. Some of those furnaces are a bitch to run. Then you’ve got the genuine duff batches to consider. What Schimel’s program did was start with the genuine percentage of failures then forge the rest.’ MINOSTAR RISING 61 Julia sat bolt upright, her tea forgotten. Frustration manifested as a surge of hot blood. She wanted to take Angie by the throat and shake the stupid tart till she rattled. Forty-eight million Eurofrancs’ worth of perfectly good memox crystals deliberately dumped into the atmosphere to burn up. It was an appalling thought. Event Horizon’s cash reserve reduced to incendiary molecules in the ionosphere. Waishaw was giving her an entomologist’s stare, deciding exactly how worthless she was. And it took a lot to get the coldly civil security chief riled. Greg was shaking his head in bemusement. ‘You mean you just chuck away good crystals?’ ‘Yes,’ she whispered dully. Walshaw opened his cybofax. ‘I want the names of all the other furnace operators you know that are involved.’ ‘Do I have to?’ she asked. ‘I mean you’ll find them anyway, won’t you?’ ‘Don’t piss me off any further,’ Waishaw said in a tired voice. ‘Names.’ Julia heard a metallic scrape behind her, and turned in the chair. The manor staff were supposed to leave her alone when she was in here. But it was her father, Dillan, who was opening the library door. She watched the wrecked man move dazedly into the room, hating herself for the pain she felt at the sight of him. He was wearing jeans and a bright yellow sweatshirt, with elasticated plimsolls on his feet. At least he’d remembered to shave, or someone had reminded him. There were a couple of male nurses on permanent call at the manor, for when he got difficult, and when he had nightmares. He wasn’t much trouble, not physically, spending most of his days in a small brickWalled garden that backed on to the kitchen wing. There was a bench by the fishpond for him when the weather was fine, and a Victorian summerhouse for when it rained. He would read poetry for hours, or tend to the densely packed flower borders, throw crumbs to the goldfish. And that was it, she thought, holding her face into that Well-practised expressionless mask. All he was capable of, read- 62 PETER F. HAMILTON ing and weeding. The nurses gave him three shots of syntho~ a day. If we were poor, she thought, they’d lock us all away a crazy, the whole Evans family, all three of us, three generations. A dying man with grandiose aspirations for the future,J a syntho addict, and a girl with an extra brain who can’t make friends with anybody. We probably deserve it. Dillan Evans smiled as he caught sight of his daughter. ‘Julie, there you are.’ She rose smoothly from the admiral’s chair, switching off the flatscreen and its images of treachery. Her father walked towards her, taking his time over each step. He was trying to hide a bunch of flowers behind his back. She couldn’t despise him, all she ever felt was a kind of bewilderment mingling with heartbreaking shame. For all his total syntho dependency, she was his one focal point on the outside world, his last grip on reality. He’d come with her to Europe, not caring about the location, not even caring about having to live in the same house as his father again, just so long as he was with her. Even the First Salvation Church had been glad to get him off their hands, and they recruited new bodies with the fervour of medieval navies. ‘For you,’ Dillan Evans said, and produced the flowers. They were fist-sized carnations – mauve, scarlet, and salmon pink. Julia smelt them carefully, enjoying the fresh scent. Then she kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Daddy. I’ll put them in a vase on the table, here look, so I can see them while I’m working.’ ‘Oh, Julie, you shouldn’t be working, not you, not when it’s a bright sunny day. Don’t get yourself tangled up in the old bastard’s schemes. They’ll leach the life out of you. Dry dusty creatures, they are. ‘fhere’s no life in what he pursues, Julie. Only suffering.’ ‘Hush,’ she said, and took his hand. ‘Have you had lunch yet?’ Dillan Evans blinked, concentrating hard. ‘I don’t remember. Oh, God, Julie, I don’t remember.’ His eyes began to water. MINDSTAR RISING 63 ‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s all right, Daddy, really it is. I’m going to have my lunch in a little while. You can sit with me.’ ‘I can?’ His smile returned. ‘Yah, I’d like you to.’ She held the flowers up. ‘Did you grow these?’ ‘Yes. Yes I did, up from tiny seeds. Like you, Julie, I grew you, too. My very own snowflower. The one stem of beauty in the frozen wilderness of my life.’ She put her arm in his, and steered him towards the library door. ‘I was looking for your friend,’ Dillan Evans said. ‘The pretty one. I had some flowers for her as well.’ He began to look around, his face tragic. ‘Katerina?’ ‘Was that her name? She had hair that shone so bright in the sun. I showed her round my garden. And we talked and talked. There’s so few do that. Did you know she can charm butterflies on to her finger?’ Julia winced at the thought of Kats talking to her father. Had Adrian been there as well? She closed the library door behind her, blocking out the worries of the present. But only so she could suffer in a different way, she thought blealdy. Typical. ‘Like an angel,’ her father said in a wistful tone. ‘Radiant and golden. CHAPTER SIX G reg had never been in an airship before. In fact the last time he’d been airborne in anything other than the ghost wing was in the Northern European Alliance’s retreat from Turkey. The experience had left him with unsavoury memories of air travel. As with all retreats it was chaos bordering on utter shambles. Only the RAF emerged with any credit, commandeering anything with wings that didn’t flap in one last ballbusting effort to get the squaddies out before the fall of eternal night. Greg wound up jammed between two bloodsoaked medevac cases in a severely overloaded Antonov-74M, watching pinpoint nova flares floating serenely through the air in a desperate bid to lure the Jihad legion’s Kukri missiles from the jet exhausts. There was a universe of difference. The Alabama Spirit was a Lakehurst-class ship on the Atlantic run; a leviathan, first-class passengers had individual cabins, three lounges, their own dining room, a casino, and twenty-four-hour steward service. He’d taken a Dornier tilt-fan shuttle up from Stanstead the previous evening, after he’d finished interviewing the furnace operators and the Zanthus managers. It had been dark when they embarked above the English channel, all he’d seen through the Dornier’s cabin window was an oval of darkness blotting our the wisps of pale moonlit cloud. The airship’s outer skin was one giant solar collector, providing electricity for the internal systems. Hydrogen-burning MHD generators powered a pair of large fans at the rear. He was looking forward to reaching Listoel in daylight and seeing the Alabama Spirit unmasked. Morgan Walshaw had sent six security personnel along with him. Five hardliners, Bruce Parwez, Evan Hams, Jerry Masefield, Isabel Curtis, and Glen I)itchett to handle the arrests, MINOSTAR RISING 65 they’d all had duty tours up at Zanthus before, knew how to handle themselves in free-fall. He’d checked them out, satisfied with what he’d found, tough, well-trained professionals. The staff lieutenant was Victor Tyo, a twenty-five-year-old Eurasian, who looked so fresh-faced he could’ve passed himself off as a teenager without much trouble. It was his third field assignment, first in an executive capacity, and he was determined to make it a success. Greg watched the approach to Listoel from the gondola’s Pullman observation lounge, right up at the prow. Two kilo-metres below the lounge’s curving transparent walls the deep blue Atlantic rollers stretched away to merge with the sky at some indefinable distance. The ride was unbelievably smooth. ‘Have you ever been up to Zanthus before?’ he asked Victor Tyo. ‘Yes, I went up last year. The company launched a new microgee module, a vaccine lab. I helped interface our security monitor programs with its supervisor gear. It’s my familiarity with the monitor programs which got me assigned to the case. Part of my brief is to upgrade them.’ ‘That and the fact you’ve been cleared yourself. I’m supposed to vet the security staff out at Listoel and Zanthus, too. Until then, they’re on the suspect list along with the furnace operators and managers.’ Victor Tyo shifted uncomfortably. ‘That’s some pretty powerful voodoo you’ve got there. Did you actually read my mind to clear me?’ ‘Relax, I can’t read minds direct. I sense moods readily enough, but that’s not quite good enough. For instance I can see guilt, but most people have something to be guilty about. Petty criminals are the worst for that – the bloke fiddling his lunch expenses, accepting payola. Simply because they are so petty it gnaws at them, becoming a dominant obsession.’ Victor’s mind began to unwind, relieved he wasn’t an open book for Greg to flick through at leisure. ‘Do I have much guilt?’ ‘More like anxiety,’ Greg reassured him. ‘That’s perfectly normal, pre-mission nerves. You must lead a commendably 66 PETIRP. HAMILTON sinless life.’ He turned back to the window; the ocean below was turning green. Most of the Alabama Spirit’s first-class passenger complement had been drifting into the Pullman lounge for the last few minutes. A flock of stewards descended, offering complimentary drinks to the adults, and explaining the docking procedure to the excitable children. The sickly green tint of the water was darkening, reminding Greg of over-cooked pea soup. Even the foam of the white horses was a putrid emerald colour. Listoel was straight ahead, a stationary flotilla of some forty-odd cyber-factory ships safely outside territorial waters, where hard-core ideological rhetoric wasn’t worth hard-copying, and there were no politicians demanding kickbacks. They were big, mostly converted oil tankers by the look of them, forming a cluster twenty kilometres across, with the spaceplane runway at their centre, a concrete strip three and a half kilometres long. Approach strobes bobbed in the water, firing a convergent series of red and white pulses at the end of the concrete. Four large barges, supporting cathedral-sized hangars, were docked to the other end. Another thirteen floated near by. Greg spotted five with the Event Horizon logo, a blue concave triangle sliced with a jet-black flying V, painted on their superstructure. Each of the cyber-factory ships was venting a torrent of coffee-coloured water from pipes at their stern. They were the outflows of the thermal-exchange generators. Every ship dangled an intake pipe right down to the ocean bed, where the water was ice cold and thick with sediment nutrients. The generators’ working fluid was heated to a vapour by the ocean’s warm surface water, passed through turbines, then chilled and condensed by the water from the bottom. The system would function with a temperature difference over fifteen degrees, although the efficiency increased proportionally as the difference rose. The nutrient-rich water between the cyber-factory ships churned with activity; nearly a hundred breeder and harvester ships followed each other in endless circular progression. Fish MINDSTAR RISING 67 were hatched, they gorged themselves on the rich bloom of algae, they were killed; the complete cycle of life embedded between two rusting hulls. Pirate miners were docked with some of the cyber-factories, distinguishable from ordinary cargo ships by the spiderwork crane gantries which lowered their remote grabs on to the ocean bed to collect the abundant ore nodules lying there. Riding high above the anchorage was a squadron of tethered blimps, reminding Greg of pictures of London during World War II. He stood up at the front of the gondola in the midst of a silently fascinated crowd of children and their equally intrigued parents, watching a long probe telescoping out of the Alabama Spirit’s tapering nose. The increasingly frantic whine of the small directional thrust fans was penetrating the gondola as they manoeuvred the bulbous probe tip into the docking collar mounted on the rear of the stationary blimp. They were close enough now for Greg to make out the blimp’s slender monolattice tether cables. A clear flexible pipe ran up one of them, refracting rainbow shimmers along its entire length. Hydrogen electrolysed from seawater by the thermal-exchange generators would be pumped up it, refilling the Alabama Spirit’s MHD gas cells. The probe shuddered into the collar, which closed about it with a loud clang, reverberating through the Alabama Spirit’s fuselage struts. Greg had seen those struts when he embarked, arranged in a geodesic grid, no wider than his little finger. The fibres were one of the superstrength monolattice composites extruded in microgee modules up at Zanthus or one of the other orbital industry parks. It was only after those kind of materials had been introduced that airships became a viable proposition once again. Greg and Victor Tyo took a lift up to the Alabama Spirit’s flight deck, a recessed circle in the middle of the upper fuselage. The other five members of the security team were waiting for them, along with a cluster of Event Horizon personnel who were beginning their three-month duty tour at Listoel. A handling crew were loading a matt-black environmentstasis capsule into the cargo hold of the tilt-fan standing in the PITIR F HAMILTON 68 centre of the flight deck. Greg could see radiation-warning emblems all over the cylinder. He knew it contained a Merlin, a small multi-sensor space probe riding a nuclear ion-drive unit, designed to prospect the asteroids. Philip Evans had been launching them at a rate of one a month for the last three years. Greg had listened to him explaining the programme at his dinner party, clearly in his element, with an audience which hung on every word. ‘Investing in the future,’ the old billionaire had said over after-dinner brandy. ‘I’ll never see a penny back from them, but young Juliet here will. I envy her generation, you know. We’re poised on the brink of great times. Our technology base is finally sophisticated enough to begin the real exploitation of space. My generation missed out on that; we were hopelessly stalled by the crises at the turn of the century – the Energy Crunch, the Credit Crash, the Warming, the disaster of the PSP. They all put paid to anything but the immediate. But now things are stabilizing again, we can plan further ahead than next week, set long-range goals, the ones with real payoffs. Unlimited raw materials and energy, they’re both out there waiting for her. Just think what can be achieved with such treasure. The wealth it’ll create, spreading down to benefit even the humblest. Fantastic times.’ Philip Evans’s corporate strategy had Event Horizon flourishing into one of the leaders in deep-space industry. And the Merlins were an important part of his preliminary preparations; prospecting the Apollo Amor asteroids for him, a class of rocks well inside the main belt and the most easily accessible from Earth. The Merlins sent back a steady stream of securely coded information on their mineral and ore content. When the consortium of German, American, and Japanese aerospace companies finally rolled their scramjet-powered spaceplane out, launch costs would take a quantum leap downwards. The single-stage launcher would open up a whole panoply of previously uneconomical operations. One of which was asteroid missions. And with its carefully accumulated knowledge of extraterrestrial resources Event Horizon would be in the vanguard MIND$TAR RISING 69 of the mining projects, so Philip Evans said. In a prime position to feed refined chemicals back to the constellations of microgee material-processing modules projected to spring up in Earth orbit. Greg had been aware of an undercurrent of dry humour in the old man’s mind as he expanded his dream, as though he was having some giant joke on his guests. But the Merlin was real enough. It was just that the whole enterprise seemed whimsical, or at best premature. There had been rumours about the spaceplane, now eleven years behind schedule; some said scramjet technology just couldn’t be made to work, and even if it could the cost savings would be minimal. Greg’s status earned him a seat at the front of the tilt-fan’s cramped cabin, looking over the pilot’s shoulder. She lifted them straight up for fifty metres then rotated the fans to horizontal and banked sharply to starboard. He’d been right. In the light of day the Alabama Spirit was spectacular. A huge jet-black ellipse framed by the dreaming sky, like a hole sliced direct into intergalactic night. It was four hundred metres long, eighty deep, sixty broad. Two contra-rotating fans were spinning slowly on the tail, keeping its nose pressed firmly into the refuelling blimp. Their descent in the tilt-fan was a long spiralling glide. Even here, where energy shortage was a totally redundant phrase, the pilot was reluctant to burn fuel. She must’ve been a European, Greg thought, obsessive conservation was drilled into EC citizens from birth. They flattened out at the bottom of the glide and lined up on one of the big cyber-factory ships, swinging over the bow and pitching nose-up as the fans returned to the vertical. Greg read the name Oscot painted on the rusting bow in big white lettering. The Dornier settled amidships with minimum fuss, its landing struts absorbing any jolts. Greg tapped the pilot’s shoulder. ‘Smooth ride. Thanks.’ She gave him a blank look. He shrugged and climbed out. Sean Francis, Oscot’s manager, nominally captain, was wait- PITIR F. HAMILTON 70 ing at the foot of the airstairs. He was tall and lean, dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, with canvas-top sneakers, broad sunglasses covering his eyes. Greg dredged his name up from Morgan Walshaw’s briefing file. Thirty-two years old, joined Event Horizon straight out of university, some sort of engineering administration degree, fully cleared for company confidential material up to grade eleven, risen fast, unblemished reputation for competence. He reminded Greg of Victor Tyo; the resemblance wasn’t physical, but both of them had that same hard knot of urgency, polite and determined. The security team spilled out of the tilt-fan to stand behind Greg, waiting impassively. Sean Francis looked at them with a growing frown. ‘My office was told you’re here to check on our spaceflight operations, yes?’ Sean Francis said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, the Sangers are a mature system. I rather doubt their flight procedures can be improved after all this time.’ Greg produced the card Walshaw had provided, which Francis promptly waved away. ‘It’s not your identity I’m questioning,’ he said, ‘merely your purpose. OK?’ ‘This is not the place,’ Greg said quietly. ‘Now would you please verify my card.’ Francis held out his cybofax, and Greg showed his card to the key. There was an almost subliminal flash of ruby light as the two swapped polarized photons. He took his time checking the authorization before nodding sadly. ‘I see. Perhaps my office would be a more suitable venue. Yes?’ The seven of them started down the length of the deck towards the superstructure, drawing curious glances from Oscoz’s crew. Instinct made Greg look up towards the south-west. There was a black dot expanding rapidly out of the featureless sky, losing height fast. It was a returning Sanger orbiter, curving in a long shallow arc, pitched up to profile its sable-black• heatshicld belly. Greg tracked its descent, working out that it would reach zero altitude right at the end of the floating runway. He held his breath. MINDSTAR RISING 71