Hamilton, Peter F – Mindstar Rising

men who’d been left behind on the jetty arguing hotly with a pair of foremen. ‘They’ll be lucky,’ Greg murmured as the Duo drove past ‘~ the crowd milling aimlessly on the embankment. ‘Why?’ ‘Tell you, the eddy-turbine barrage is a council project, right. Unless you’re on the city council labour register, there’s no way you’li get to work on it.’ ‘Well, why don’t they sign on with the council, then?’ she asked. ‘A lot of people on the dole right now are ex-apparatchiks. And the New Conservative Inquisitors have got their hands full purging the administration staff of any that got left behind after the PSP fell. The government is nervy about them; what with inflation and the housing shortage, a few well-placed PSP leftovers could cause serious grief. So the last thing the council wants is to take them back, especially not on a project as important as this one.’ ‘Why don’t you apply to join the Inquisitors?’ she teased. ‘That’d be a regular job.’ Greg grinned. ‘They couldn’t afford me.’ He pointed ahead. This is the turn. We’ll park in Bretton and walk the rest of the way.’ She took a left through the old Milton Park golf club entrance. The Duo powered along the rough cinder tracks Lined by hemispherical apartment blocks that’d sprung up to replace the greens, tees, and bunkers. The three-storey buildings were self-contained Finnish prefabs, a burnished pewter for easy thermal control. Fast-growing maeosopsis trees dominated the estate, their long branches curved over the tracks, affording a decent amount of shade. There were small allotments ringing each of the silvery hemispheres, laid out with uniform precision. ‘Tidy,’ she ~emarked, approvingly. ‘They’ve got a different attitude here.’ ‘You’re not being fair. Think what this’ll be like in twenty years’ time. Just the same as Berrybut.’ ‘It might, then again it might not. These people are more in tune with the future, they believe in it.’ MIND$TAR RISING 187 They drove by a clump of mango trees in full fruit. She saw children playing around the trunks, seemingly immune to the ripe temptation dangling above their heads. ‘Whatever happened tO scrumping?’ ‘Do you want to move?’ Greg asked. ‘No.’ She grinned. ‘You couldn’t live here.’ They left the rustic eloquence of the Milton estate behind and slowed, slotting into the chain of vans and rickcarts trundling through the grid maze of the Park Farm industrial precinct. It was made up of blealdy functional sugar-cube factory units with coal-black solar-collector roofs. Nearly half of them sported the Event Horizon triangle and flying V emblem, she saw, most of the rest were overseas companies, some kombinate Logos. The foreign factories were anathema to the PSP, econDmic imperialism, but they had to let them in to pay off the massive investment loans which the Tokyo and Zurich finance artels had made in Peterborough’s new housing. ‘Do you mean you would move if it wasn’t for me?’ Greg isked. ‘Don’t be silly.’ She was still grinning. He looked like he had bitten something sickly. ‘You don’t have to come with me to see Royan, you know,’ he said. ‘It isn’t exactly a picnic at the best of times. It’ll only take me an hour or so.’ ‘Oh, no,’ she said loudly. ‘You don’t get out of it that easily, Greg Mandel. Do you realize I know practically nothing about the time between you leaving the Army and meeting me? This is the first glimpse you’ve ever allowed me into this section of your life.’ ‘You only had to ask.’ She shot him a quick glance. ‘If you’d wanted me to know, You would’ve told me. And now you’re starting to. I’m not Sure what it means, but I’m bloody pleased.’ ‘He takes some getting used to,’ Greg offered. She recognized the tone, regret for the impulse decision to invite her. Just how bad could his friend be? ‘You said he was hurt?’ ‘Very badly. Completely disabled, and burnt. It’s not Pretty.’ PETER F. HAMILTON housing. They represented the least successful aspect of city’s expansion programme. A throw-back to the worst of nineteen-sixties style of instant slums. They were twenty storeys high, identical in every right down to the cheap low-efficiency slate-grey solar-e’ clinging to every square centimetre of surface. Heat shun twisted the blocks’ harsh geometry, blurring edges; it wa~ though nature was trying to distort the inhuman ugliness wl~ their desolate lines delineated. The ground between them wasteland. Less than half of the estate’s intended emplo) workshops had been built, and those that the council had completeа were abandoned, either burnt out or gutted. The Trinities gang symbol was scrawled everywhere, brash and sharp, a closed fist gripping a thorn cross, blood dripping; She’d heard of the Trinities, even in the kibbutz. Anti-PSP ~ti a big way. Mucklands Wood could’ve been deserted. Nothing movec worse, there was no sound: there should’ve been something coming from those hundreds of grimed windows, music or shouting. Their footsteps crunched loudly on the badly nicked limestone path. She stuck close to Greg’s side, eyes darting about nervously. ‘Is this part of your past?’ she asked. ‘Briefly. I taught some of the people who live here.’ ‘I never knew you were a teacher.’ ‘Tell you, not your sort of teaching, school and such. I trained them in streetcraft.’ ‘Streetcraft?’ ‘Techniques to break police ranks, ambush their snatch squads, how to counter the assault dogs. That kind of thing. It’s a reversal of the counter-insurgency courses the Army gave me.’ You wanted to know, she told herself. Her eyes dropped to the crushed yellow stone fragments of the path. ‘Stay calm,’ Greg said quietly. She glanced at him, puzzled. His eyes had that distant look. He was using his gland. Then the ‘rrinities boy stepped out from his hiding place MINDSTAR RISING 191 behind a crumbling employment workshop wall, he did it fast and smooth, simply there. And it was all she could do not to yelp in surprise. He fitted her image of an urban predator perfectly, almost a stereotype. Asian, somewhere in his mid-twenties, with hair cropped close, wearing a filthy denim jacket with the arms torn off, slashed T-shirt, and tight leather trousers. Two bowie knives and a compact stun puncher were clipped on to his belt. There was some sort of gear plug in his left ear. A taut strap running round his neck held his throat mike. The Trinities emblem was painted on his jacket. He leered at her, and she knew he could read her fright. ‘What the fuck are you arseholes? Hazard junkies?’ There were more Trinities spreading out of the ruins behind her and Greg, dressed in a grab bag of camouflage jackets, jeans, and T-shirts. Faces hard, carrying weapons ranging from knives up to things whose function she couldn’t guess. They fanned out, forming a tight blockade. ‘Cool it, mate,’ Greg said levelly and put a bag down, holding out his right hand, very slowly.. The youth’s sneer faded when he saw the Trinities card Greg was holding. ‘Where you get that?’ ‘Same place as you.’ ‘No shit?’ He pulled out his own card and showed it to the one in Greg’s open palm. Confusion twisted his features as his card acknowledged Greg’s authenticity. ‘I don’t know your face.’ ‘I don’t know yours,’ Greg said. ‘Don’t smartarse me!’ he shouted. ‘Greg’s one of us, Des,’ a throaty female voice said from behmd Eleanor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a Small figure with spiky mauve hair, wearing tourniquet-tight leopard~skin jeans and a sleeveless black singlet. The girl’s age was indefinable; thin-faced, she could’ve been anywhere between fifteen and thirty. She was cradling a big gauss-pulse carbine casually across one arm. Bandolier straps crossed her flat chest, loaded with red-tipped slugs. Additional power magazines were clipped to her belt. Her face was one big smirk. 192 PETER F. HAMILTON good. her. good if you don’t I ‘Shut the fuck up, Suzi,’ shouted the boy confronting them. ‘Hear me? You could drive a fucking tank through that -of yours. This is my turf, I’m the Man here. These could be Party.’ Eleanor held on to Greg’s forearm with her free pinching. Suppose the card wasn’t good enough? Greg grinned faintly. ‘Hi, Suzi.’ The mauve-haired girl gave him an impish thumbs up. Des’s face darkened. ‘You know these?’ his jabbed at Greg. ‘Sure,’ said Suzi. ‘Greg’s been Trinity from way back.. Taught me all kindsa things.’ Her eyes met Eleanor. ‘Good, too, isn’t he?’ Eleanor kept her face perfectly blank, emotions frozen, just as they’d been for all those years in the kibbutz. ‘Depends on the material he’s got to work with, dear.’ Not the greatest :~ comeback in the world, but pretty bloody good, considering. Even Greg seemed vaguely surprised; approving, too, she suspected. Suzi started laughing. ‘So why the big reunion?’ Des asked. ‘I’m here to see Son,’ said Greg. ‘Christ, Des, let the man through.’ ‘Last fucking warning, Suzi, I’ll rip you shove it.’ ‘Just ask Father,’ Greg said. ‘He’ll tell you my credit is

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