‘It has to be a personal vendetta,’ Julia said. ‘That means Kendric’s behind it, and the mole exists, doesn’t it?’ ‘Possibly,’ Greg said. He seemed strangely reluctant to commit himself. But she knew. It was Kendric. She’d always known. There was almost a feeling of contentment accompanying the conviction. ‘I’d like you to get some of your security programmers hooked into the Event Horizon datanet,’ Greg said. ‘See if they can backtrack the hotrods if this second attack does happen.’ ‘Good idea, boy. I’ll get Waishaw on it.’ Greg and Gabriel rose. He gave Julia an encouraging smile. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a question of waiting to see which lead takes us to the organizer. Mter tomorrow’s interviews our Dptions should be clear enough to start making some headway.’ She couldn’t draw as much comfort from his words as she would’ve liked. The promises were too vague. But at least he was trying to help her, some part of him cared. The two of them departed, leaving her alone in the study ~vith the feverishly active memories of a dead man, and the ~ot rain swatting the window. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO H ALF-PAST two in the morning found Greg lying on his back, hands behind his head, staring up at the blackness which hid the bedroom ceiling. He could hear the reservoir’s wavelets swishing on the shore outside. The deer had come to drink under cover of the night, venturing out of the new persimmon plantation at the back of Berrybut spinney. His fading espersense perceived their minds as small cool globes of violet light, timid and alert. Eleanor had been entranced with them for the first couple of weeks after she’d moved in, waiting up each night to see them slip furtively out of the trees. The afternoon rain had lowered the temperature appreciably, but sleep was impossible. Intuition was running riot inside his cranium, even though he’d ended the gland’s secretions. Swirling random thoughts clumped together, producing an image. It didn’t matter how many times he told himself to forget it, the image just kept reforming. The same one, over and over. Eleanor let out a soft hum, and wriggled slightly. He hoped he featured in that dream. No good. He wasn’t going to sleep. Greg went through the usual mincing motions as he slid gingerly out of bed, making far more noise than if he’d just done it properly. Eleanor sighed again. He pulled the duvet up round her bare shoulders, then put on his towelling robe and went into the lounge. Through the chalet’s front windows he could see the moonlight painting the checkerboard pattern of Hambleton peninsula’s meadows and orange groves in mezzotint contrasts. Silent and serene. Strange how remote it seemed from the kind of global-class corporate battles fought only a few kilometres away in Peterborough. He sometimes wondered if a day would come when he wouldn’t be able to leave, giving up on the 218 PETER F. HAMILTON external world and all its conflicts. And who would really be hurt if he did let go? Certainly not Eleanor. Greg closed his eyes, but instead of Rutland Water’s landscape there was only the taunting image. Not this time, then. He disconnected the Event Horizon terminal’s voice input, opting for the silence of the touchpad keyboard so Eleanor wouldn’t be woken. That done, he began to set up a link to Gracious Services. Even Royan wasn’t clear on where the circuit’s name originated, but under its auspices England’s hackers would pull data from any ‘ware memory core on the planet – for a price. Greg logged into Leicester University’s mainframe and entered a cut-off program that’d disengage the instant anyone tried to backtrack his call. Royan had written it for him years ago. He couldn’t afford to be anything but ultra-circumspect dealing with Gracious Services. He didn’t want any of its members uncovering his own identity and selling the information in turn – the ultimate irony. The average hacker had a moral code which made an alley tomcat a paragon of virtue by comparison. After confirming the cut off’s validity he routed the link through another cut off in the Ministry of Agriculture on to the Dessotbank in Switzerland, crediting it with a straight ten thousand pounds New Sterling direct from Event Horizon’s central account. After that it was just a question of establishing two more cut offs, one in Bristol city council’s finance mainframe, then on through the CAA flight control in Farnborough, and dialling the magic number. Gracious Services had a nonsense number, there was no phone on the end of it. But every English Telecom exchange computer in the country had been infiltrated with a catchment program that would ‘slot the caller directly into the circuit. Never, not once, in all the years they were in power, did the PSP manage to tap the Gracious Services circuit, nor expunge the catchment program from Telecom’s exchange computers. They tapped individual phones, and caught people using Gracious Services that way, but that was all. Rumour had it the card carriers used the circuit themselves on occasion. MINDSTAR RISING 219 The terminal’s flatscreen snowstormed for a second then printed: