‘Me too, if I’d thought it would’ve done any good. Was Teddy being serious about the PSP still being active in Walton?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Well, why doesn’t the government do something?’ ‘Like what? We’re living under a judicial system now. The rule of law is paramount. Being a member of a political party isn’t an offence in this new, fair England. Being in the Trinities, doing what they do, now that is a crime.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘It’s all so wrong. Stupid.’ ‘Yeah. I know.’ CHAPTER TWENTY T he lift halted with knee-bending suddenness, and chimed metallically as the door slid open. The corridor outside was narrow, its walls unpainted breeze blocks; a greening biolum strip ran down the length of the ceiling. Greg and Eleanor walked down to the end, and he knocked on the familiar panelboard door of 206. There was a brief flicker of guilt; he hadn’t visited for weeks. Now he’d come ~6ecause he wanted something. Qoi opened the door. A thirteen-year-old Chinese girl dressed in a blue silk Mao suit with red and gold fantasy serpents embroidered on her sleeves. She bowed deeply. ‘He is expecting you,’ she said in a voice pitched as high as birdsong. 206 was a dole family’s accommodation module, three rooms and a cupboard-sized hail. It was on the corner of the tower, which gave it two windows. Being a bachelor, Royan wasn’t entitled to it; but as he wasn’t listed on the council’s occupancy register they were unlikely to insist he vacate it. The door to Royan’s room slid open and a gush of hot humid air, rich with the smell of humus, spilled out. The interior was a bastard offspring of a botanical garden and an experimenmi CAD-CAM shop. Thirty blue-white solaris spots shone down on four rows of red clay troughs which grew clumps of orchids, fuchsias, cyclamen, African violets, gloxinias, and jasmine; tall standard hyacinths towered over them, giving off a thick cloying perfume. A little wheeled robot scuttled along the alleys between the troughs. It was a patchwork of miscellaneous components, Something a surrealist sculptor might’ve built in a fit of hallucinogenic dementia. A droopy flexible hose which ended in a Copper watering-can spout hung out of one side, sprinkling milky water over the sphagnum moss that frothed across the Surface of the troughs’ loam. 198 PETER F. HAMILTON One wall was covered from floor to ceiling in TV screens, not modern flatscreens but the antique glass vacuum-tubes of the last century. They’d been taken out of their casings and stacked edge to edge, like bricks, in a metal frame. Some were showing channel programmes, some relayed images from cameras dotted around the tower, others had reams of green script unfurling in a constant cascade from top to bottom. An aluminium tripod stood in the middle of the floor, its camera silently tracking Greg as he ducked round the hanging baskets full of busy Lizzies and fleshy trailing nasturtiuins. Twin fibre-optic cables fell from the back of the camera, snaking across the abraded brown limo to Royan’s nineteen-sixties vintage dentist’s chair; they terminated in the black modem’~ balls filling his eye-sockets. Greg sensed the gag-reflex of Eleanor’s mind as she fought to control her revulsion and shock, barely managing to contain a phobic groan. He forced himself to grin and nod at Royan’s bloated, Tshirted torso. Royan didn’t have any legs; and his arms ended just below the elboWs, their stumps capped with grey plastic cups which sprouted fibre-optic cables, plugging him into various ‘ware cabinets about the room. All the screens went blank. Then words began to form, metre-high letters, phosphor green, strangely fragmented by the reticulation of black runs. HELLO, GREG. WHO’S THE LADY? Royan was fifteen that night six years ago, Greg’s last street light. Set up as a march on Peterborough’s council hall protesting about the latest protein rationing. The Trinities were infiltrating the crowd, thirsting for aggro. It was a big crowd, ugly. The Party called out the People’s Constables. People’s Constables: a replacement for Special Constables. Greg could just remember them from his youth; weekend policemen, who used to dress up in their smart dark uniforms ” and make an enthusiastic cock-up of directing traffic at the Rutland county fair. People’s Constables were in a different league. A different fucking universe, as far as Greg was concerned. Recruited MINDSTAR RISING 199 from the ranks of extreme-left shock-troops and black-flag warriors who’d kicked police and beat up press photographers at rallies and marches, it was the biggest case of role-reversal since Dracula turned vegan. The People’s Constables came under the direct authority of local PSP committees, employed to smash heads whenever people complained about the latest drop in living standards. Basic Party militia. Their favourite weapon was a bullwhip, with a lash of monolattice carbon. They were taught to go for the legs first. Royan, flush with the йlan of youth, was in the crowd’s front rank. He was caught in the first charge. The crowd retreated leaving their downed behind. People’s Constables clustered like angry wasps about each of the inert bodies, slashing with hot fury. It was the Trinities who retaliated, prepared by Teddy and him, driving the Constables back with a berserker bombardment of molotovs, lighting the night sky with a lethal fallout of fireballs. Greg had dragged Royan out of the flames, far, far too late. He often wondered if he’d have done the boy a bigger favour by going for a beer instead. ‘This is Eleanor,’ Greg said. H! ELEANOR. YOU ARE VERY PRETTY. ‘Go ahead,’ Greg told her. ‘Just speak normally, he can hear.’ Royan’s ears were the only sensory input he had, lying in hospital, his sole means of clinging to sanity. It was a month before he was given an optical modem, and another fortnight before he got his forearm axon splice. The axon splice gave hun the ability to communicate, the nerve impulses intended for his amputated hand feeding a computer input. Whenever he visited, Greg thought of ghostly transparent hands typing a keyboard in some incorporeal alien dimension. Eleanor cleared her throat self-consciously. ‘Hello, Royan. Glad to meet you.’ I LIKE YOU. YOU DIDN’T YELL, OR ANYTHING. ‘Hands off,’ Greg warned. ‘She’s mine.’ LUCKY. LUCKY. LUCKY. GREG IS VERY LUCKY. 200 PETER F. HAMILTON