WELCOME TO GRACIOUS SERViCES. WE AIM TO PLEASE. DATA FOUND, OR MONEY RETURNED. NO ACCESS TOO BIG OR TOO SMALL. JUST REMEMBER OUR CARDINAL RULE: DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT!!! PLEASE ENTER YOUR HANDLE.
Greg typed THUNDERCHILD, his old Army cailsign.
GOOD MORNING THUNDERCHILD. YOUR UMPIRE iS WILDACE. WHAT SERVICE DO YOU REQUIRE?
PHYSICAL LOCATION OF INDIVIDUAL.
OK THUNDERCHILD, i’VE GOT SEVEN HOTRODS RARING TO BURN FOR YOU. IS THIS GOING TO BE A GLOBAL SEARCH?
I BELiEVE THE INDIVIDUAL TO BE IN EUROPE, QUITE POSSIBLY IN ENGLAND.
THIS IS THE WAY IT IS, THUNDERCHILD. A EUROPE-WIDE SEARCH WILL COST YOU FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NEW STERLING. IF WE GET A NEGATIVE RESULT, THAT MEANS YOUR TARGET /SNT IN EUROPE, IT’LL ONLY COST YOU TWO THOUSAND. IF YOU WANT US TO RUN A GLOBAL SEARCH IT WILL COST YOU SEVEN THOUSAND, OK?
RUN A EUROPEAN SEARCH FOR ME, WILDACE. YOU GOT IT. I HOLD THE MONEY. I DECIDE HOW IT’S SPLIT. 220 PETER F. HAMILTON SOUNDS GOOD.
DEPOSIT FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NEW STERLING INTO TIZZAMUND BANK, ACCOUNT NUMBER WRU2384ASE.
Greg entered Wildace’s number, authorizing the transfer from his Dessotbank account.
OK THUNDERCHILD, YOUR CREDIT IS GOLDEN. WHO IS THE TARGET?
The image coalesced in his brain, rock solid, grinning arrogantly; and he typed: KENDRIC DI GIROLAMO. Greg’s imagination painted the picture for him; seven people scattered across England, dark anonymous figures hunched over their customized terminals, mumbling into throat mikes, touchtyping, watching data flash through cubes. It was a race, the first one who satisfied Wildace they had the correct answer would get the money, less Wildace’s commission. Reputations were made on the circuit. It took twenty or thirty runs, successful runs, before anyone could even think about going solo. Royan had trained himself on the Gracious Services circuit. He could’ve gone solo, running data snatches against koni bin-ales for the tekmercs. But, of course, he had a different set of priorities. Greg sat back, wondering if he had time for a drink. He didn’t have a clue how long the run was going to take. He didn’t use the circuit often; the last time had been almost a year previously, tracing a money sink set up by Simon White’s accountant. Whatever he asked for, Gracious Services invariably produced an answer. Their only failure to date had been confirming whether or not Leopold Armstrong had died the day the PSP was overthrown. They weren’t alone. New Conservative inquisitors had drawn a blank. Even the combined ranks of the Mindstar Brigade vets had been stumped. Most people POUNDS ZURICH, *
:1 MINDSTAR RISING 221 thought he was dead, including the surviving top-rank apparatchiks. Possibly trying to create a martyr, Greg thought, two years was an impossibly long time to remain hidden if he was alive. There had been very little of Downing Street left after the electron-compression warhead had detonated. The explosion created a deep glass-walled crater one hundred metres across, flattening every building for five hundred metres beyond its rim. Hundreds of silver rivulets scarred its slopes, molten metal which had solidified as it trickled downwards. The ‘only human remnants were individual carbon molecules, mingling with the oily black pall clotting the air overhead. Some said the warhead was American, others Chinese. Both had denied involvement. But it had to be one of the two superpowers, they were the only nations who had mastered the technology. Neither had seemed a likely candidate to Greg. There had been talk in Turkey of the Northern European Alliance buying some electron-compression warheads from the Americans. The weapon that would turn the tide, was the squaddies’ camp rumour. It could’ve been deployed to take out entire airfields r tank battalions, megatonnage blasts without the radiation md fallout of fission weapons. Rich man’s nuke. Nothing had ever come of it. So Greg reckoned that if the ~mericans wouldn’t hand them over to the Alliance, they were even more unlikely to give one to the urban predator gang which claimed to have smuggled it into Downing Street. Cerainly the New Conservative inquisitors never bothered to find )Ut. Greg had made his small contribution to the search for &rmstrong, but for once not even his intuition could say whether the President had survivзd, he had no belief one way or the other. He just wished Armstrong dead dead dead; burning in Dante’s hell for ever more. He gazed out of the chalet lounge’s window while the unbidden reflections drifted past, bringing the associated emotions back with them, the elation and the suffering. Flames and laughter. 222 PETER F. HAMILTON Seventeen minutes after Gracious Services began the search, his terminal’s flatscreen came alive again.