‘Don’t try so hard, girl. You’re not exactly a frump, you know.’ Her smile widened, becoming coquettish. ‘And Adrian isn’t just a lump of muscle, either. He’s very bright, and kind. And [like him a lot.’ ‘Then I’m happy for you. See you later.’ He didn’t rate a wave this time; she simply stood watching him drive off, looking small and sad. He folded the rear-view mirror’s image up and tucked it away in a corner of his mind. The last thing he needed now was any more guilt rattling round inside his skull. CHAPTER THIRTY G reg drove into Peterborough. under a sky which the sun had transformed into a bitter saffron hemisphere raked with the occasional static pillar of cloud. He turned up the windscreen’s opacity, muting its eye-smarting intensity. There was a taut thread of pain running through his cortex, the neurohormones’ legacy. It wasn’t helped by wondering how he was going to square what he was doing with his promise to Eleanor. And then there was tonight’s snatch looming large. Another unforeseen. Events were ganging up on him, dictating his actions. The conspiracy was unnerving, tenaciously eroding any sensation of control over his life. He was a squaddie back in Turkey, utterly dependent on the wisdom of hidden enigmatic generals and the throw of God’s dice. Never again, he’d sworn. Easy to say. He blended the Duo into the arterial flux of traffic flowing through Peterborough’s outlying suburbs; a dawn to dusk convoy hauling the city’s lifeblood of goods from the industrial sectors to the port and the railway marshflhling yard. Hendaly Street was the same as all the rest in New Eastfleld, a long straight gorge of white buildings with grand arched entrances, wide balconies, dark windows, and ranks of flags fluttering on high. Pagoda trees thrust up out of the pavements in the centre of brick tubs; people sat on the benches round them, pensioners soaking up the sun, youngsters with VR bands plugged into gamer decks. Eleanor would enjoy living here. He had to stamp hard on the brake as the red light came On ahead of the Duo. Its meaning had almost been lost down the years. Working traffic lights, by God! The frontage of the Castlewood condominium was eighty metres long, standing back from the other buildings along the street, and screened with a discreet row of tall caucasian elms. MINOSTAR RISING 293 The entrance was below ground level, served by a private loop of road with card-activated barriers at each end. Greg parked a hundred metres further down the street and showed his card to the meter, punching in for six hours. ‘Six hours?’ a voice queried. ‘I wish I had an expense account like that.’ Greg turned, and smiled. ‘Victor. You’re looking good.’ Victor Tyo’s babyfaced good looks smiled back. ‘Riding high, thanks to you. I was promoted up to captain after our Zanthus excursion, got assigned to the command division down by the estuary. I guess Walshaw must approve of me.’ ‘You’re my contact today?’ ‘Yes. Again. I was at the office when the call came in.’ He tipped a nod at the Castlewood. ‘We’ve had it under observation for twenty-five minutes now.’ – ‘We?’ ‘The rest of my squad. They’re covering all possible exits. We wouldn’t want our man to filter out without us knowing. I’ve already checked with the concierge, Ellis is at home right now. A human concierge, by the way, this place is definitely for premier-rankers. I couldn’t afford to rent the broom cupboard in there.’ Waishaw hadn’t actually mentioned anything about a squad, but Greg could appreciate his reasoning. Ellis wasn’t the end of the line, but he was near. His confidence rose a fraction. Backup wouldn’t come amiss, not if they were as on the ball as young Victor. Will this be a long operation?’ he was asking. ‘Some of the observation positions are improvised, temporary.’ ‘It shouldn’t take more than an hour, two at the outside.’ ‘Fine, Did you fall down some stairs?’ Greg’s hand went to the stiff white mould over his nose. ‘Not exactly. A run-in with a friend of Mr Ellis.’ ‘I see. Do you want a weapon before we go in?’ ‘Are you carrying?’ ‘Yes. A Lucas laser pistol.’ ‘That ought to be enough. You keep it.’ (ireg began to walk towards the Castlewood’s nearest barrier. 294 PETIR F. HAMILTON ‘Fine.’ Victor showed a card to the gate beside the barrier. ‘Concierge’s pass,’ he explained. Greg lifted an appreciative eyebrow. And only a twenty-minute head start. Morgan Waishaw ought to start worrying for his job. ‘Will it open the apartment doors as well?’ Victor did his best not to appear smug. ‘Of course.’ The Castlewood was built in a U-shape. The two wings had a conservatory-style glass roof slung between them, curving down to form a transparent wall at the open end. The glass was tinted amber, cooling the sunlight which shone down on a bowling green, tennis courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a separate diving pool. Four tiers of balconies made a giant amphitheatre of the enclosure. Their long strips of silvered sliding doors staring down on the athletically inclined with blank impersonality. Charles Ellis owned a penthouse apartment on the fourth storey, at the tip of the east wing. One of the most expensive in the condominium. Victor stood outside the door, glancing at Greg for permission. He held his hand up for the young security captain to wait, and probed with his espersense. There was only one mind inside, a muddled knot of everyday worries and conflicts. Not expecting trouble. ‘He’s alone,’ Greg said. ‘To the right as we go in.’ He pointed through the wall. ‘Fine,’ Victor acknowledged respectfully. He showed the concierge card to the lock. There was a soft click. The apartment was five large rooms laid out in parallel, with a hail running along the back of them. Surprisingly, the d6cor was old-fashioned throughout. Uninspiring, sober prints and dingy Victorian furnishings, all black wood and thick legs draped in cream-coloured lace. The internal doors were heavy varnished hardwood, with brass hinges and handles, opening into rooms with dark dressers and tables. Chairs were gilt-edged, upholstered in plain shiny powder-blue fabric, marble-top tables with bronze legs. The lounge where they found Charles Ellis had six glassfronted teak wall cabinets exhibiting hundreds of beautifully MINDSTAR RISING 295 detailed porcelain figurines. There was a profusion of styles, with animals predominating; whoever owned them was obviously a dedicated collector. Rich, too, though Greg was no real judge, but money had its own special tell-tale radiance. And it haunted those shelves. He could feel the love and craftsmanship which had been expended in the fashioning of each exquisite piece. Ellis was a small man in his early fifties, barely over one and a quarter metres tall. His body and limbs didn’t quite seem to match, his torso was barrel-shaped, going to fat, but his legs and arms were long and thin, spindly. He had a narrow head, with tight-stretched skin, thin bloodless lips, and a prominent brow overhanging nicotine-yellow eyes. Lank oily hair brushed his collar, leaving a sprinkling of dandruff. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, his stubble patchy and grey. His imbalanced frame was wrapped in a paisley smoking jacket with a quilted green collar. He was sitting in a high-backed Buckingham chair watching a news channel on a big Philips flatscreen, thick velvet drapes hung on either side of it, like theatre curtains. The flatscreen was showing a rooftop view of some desert city, indefinably Mrican; its streets were awash with refugee trains, twisters of black smoke rising from shattered temple domes. A chrome-silver fighter flashed overhead, discharging a barrage of area-denial submunitions; tiny parachutes mushroomed in mid-air, lowering the shoal of AP shrapnel mines gently on to the beleaguered city. Charles Ellis turned his head towards Greg and Victor, disturbed by the draught as they opened the lounge door. His facial muscles twitched, pulling the skin even tighter over his jaw-bone. The flatscreen darkened as he rose from the chair, curtains swishing across it; he had to push hard with his bandy arms to lift himself. ‘How did you get in?’ he asked. ‘Door was open,’ Greg said. ‘You’re lying. What do you want?’ ‘Data.’ His expression was thunderstruck. llow did you know? Nobody knows I deal in data.’ 296 PETER P. HAMILTON Greg gave him a lopsided apologetic smile. ‘Somebody does. Cover him.’ Ellis swayed backwards as Victor produced his Lucas pistol. ‘No violence, no violence.’ It was almost a mantra. Greg walked across the room and looked down on the Castlewood’s dark blue diving pool. The lounge was on the corner of the building, two sides of it were glass. The balcony ran all the way round, one-third of it under the condominium’s weather-resistant covering. ‘Whoever you are, you’re an idiot,’ Ellis said, ‘You have absolutely no conception of what you’ve gone and walked into. The. kind of people I associate with can tread you back into the mire that gave you biith.’ Greg smiled right back at him, baring his teeth. ‘I know. That’s why we came, for your top-rank friends.’ Whatever Ellis was going to say died on his tongue. ‘Wolf,’ Greg said. Naked alarm rocked Charles Ellis’s already fraught mind. ‘Medeor.’ It produced the same response. ‘Tentimes.’ ‘Never heard of them.’ ‘Wrong. I’m psychic, you see.’ Ellis’s face hardened, forestalling the onrush of fear and ;uspicion kindling behind his eyes. ‘In fact, you are Wolf, aren’t you?’ True, the mind before him blurted helplessly. ‘Thank you,’ said Greg. Ellis looked at him with revulsion and hatred. ‘Do you know what these are?’ Greg asked Victor casually. He rested a hand on one of the three grey football-sized globes that were sitting on a leather-topped Edwardian writing desk. A Hitachi terminal was plugged into each of them with flat rainbow ribbons of optical cable. ‘They’re Cray hologram memories. You can store half of the British library in oiie of these.’ Greg tapped the Hitachi’s power stud. LCDs flipped to black across its pale-brown surface, forming a standard alphanumeric keyboard. The cube lii with the Crays’ data storage management menu. ‘You’ll note that they’re kept in isolation, UINDSTAR RISING 297 not plugged into the English Telecom grid. So nobody can hack in. After all, bytes are money, especially when you know how to market them as well as Medeor here.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ Effis’s voice was a grizzled rasp coming from the back of his throat. ‘Whatever I have to.’ Greg read the menu codes and accessed the first Cray. ‘Sixty-two per cent capacity used up,’ he observed. ‘That’s one fuck of a lot of data. Now I could go through a whole list of names I’m interested in and see which your mind flinches at, but that would be very time consuming. So I’m just going to ask you to tell me instead. Who paid you to organize the blitz on the Event Horizon datanet?’ Ellis shook his skeletal head, jaw clenched shut. ‘No.’ Greg showed his card to the Hitachi’s photon key, using his little finger to activate it. The percentage figure began to unwind at an impressive speed as Royan’s data-crash cancer exploded inside the Cray. He hadn’t been totally sure it would work on lightware. Admitting now he should’ve had more faith. The percentage numerals vanished from the cube, sucked away down some electronic black hole. The cube placidly reverted to showing the menu. ‘No!’ Ellis howled, an unpleasant high-pitched wheezing sound. He ignored Victor’s unwavering Lucas pistol to stumble frantically across the lounge to the antique writing desk, looking down in consternation at the cube display. ‘Oh my God! Do you know what you have done?’ His hands came up to claw at Greg, stopping impotently in midair. His face was contorted with fury. ‘There were seven million personnel files in there, everybody of the remotest interest in the country. Seven million of them! Irreplaceable. God curse you, gland ~eak.’ ‘Kendric di Girolamo,’ Greg said calmly. Stark horror leapt into his mind at the name. It was very strange; a circle of bright orange flame suddenly burst from Ellis’s head to crown him with a blazing halo. For ne fleeting moment his mind inveighed utter incomprehen;ion, wild eyes beseeching Greg for an answer. Then the flick- 298 PETER F. HAMILTON ering mind was gone, extinguished in an overwhelming gale of pain. The corpse was frozen upright, steaming blood spewing fitfully out of its nose and ears. Its corona evaporated, there was no more hair to burn; the skull blackened, crisping. He – heard the iron snap of bone cracking open from thermal stress. Realization penetrated Greg’s numbed thoughts as the reedy legs began to buckle, pitching the body towards him. ‘Down!’ he screamed. And he was dancing with the corpse, slewing its momentum to keep it between himself and the silvered balcony door as he flung himself on to the fringed Wilton rug. They crashed on to the worn navy-blue weave together. There was a drawn-out sound of glass smashing as Victor tumbled to the floor behind him. Greg was flat on his back, the throat-grating stench of singed hair and charred flesh filling his nostrils. A wiry hand twitched on his thigh, not his. Ellis’s dense curved weight pressed into his abdomen. ‘Jesus,’ Victor bawled. ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ ‘Shut up. Keep still.’ The air heaved, alive with raucous energy; creaking and groaning as it battled to stabilize itself. A pile of paper forms took flight from the Edwardian desk, rustling eerily as they fluttered about the invisible streamers of boiling ions. The end of the discharge came with an audible crack which jumped the carpet fibres to rigid attention, dousing them in a phosphorescent wash of St Elmo’s fire. Greg sent his espersense whirling, perceiving the star sparks of minds swilling through the concrete beehive maze of the Castlewood. Seeing the galvanized ember of victory fleeing. ‘OK, they’ve gone,’ he croaked through the backlash of neurohormone pain. Even that sliver of sound seemed distant. Victor was kneeling beside him, a rictus grimace on his face, rolling Ellis’s body off. The back of the skull had cleaved open, a fried jelly offal spilling out. Victor wrenched aside and vomited; coughing, dry retching, and sobbing for an age. When his convulsions finished he was on all fours, his hair hanging in tassels down his forehead, skin sallow and filmed with cold sweat. ‘Jesus, what did that to him?’ MINOSTAR RISING 299 Greg looked at the wall opposite the balcony door; it was criss-crossed by narrow black scorch marks. Glass fragments from the cabinets were heaped on the carpet, figurines glowed a faint cherry pink on smouldering shelves. ‘Maser,’ he said. ‘Probably a Raytheon or a Minolta, something packing enough power to penetrate the silvering on the glass.’ ‘Bloody hell. What now?’ Greg wriggled his legs from under the small of Ellis’s back, and propped himself up on his elbows, gulping down air. Looking anywhere but at the ruined flesh at his feet. The world was a mirage, wavering nauseously. ‘Cover up. Call your squad, this apartment has got to be scrubbed clean, there must be nothing left to prove we ever visited. You’ll have to take the body out tonight – cleaning truck, something like that. And get these Crays to Waishaw. Lord knows how long it’ll take to go through their contents, though.’ ‘No police?’ ‘No police. We need the Crays’ data. Besides, I’d hate to try and explain what we were doing here. Let Ellis become another unperson, nobody’s going to ask questions.’ ‘Oh. Yes.’ Victor was dazed, moving and thinking with a Saturday night drunk’s shellshocked apathy. ‘Call your squad now.’ ‘Right.’ He tugged his cybofax out of an inner pocket. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’ Greg dabbed at the flow with some of Ellis’s tissues while Victor yammered out increasingly urgent instructions. Flies were beginning to feed on the open skull. Greg pulled a white lace tablecloth over Ellis, and collapsed into one of the low chairs, exhausted. ‘On their way,’ said Victor. ‘You want to flit, find a doctor or something?’ ‘No. I think I’ll just sit here for a minute. Oh, and be sure to have this place swept for bugs.’ His nose had stopped bleeding. Victor hovered anxiously, head swivelling round the apartment, missing the body each time. ‘Bloody hell, what a cockup.’ ‘Not your lault. But it proves one thing. P•TSR F. HAMILTON 300 ‘What’s that?’ Greg gave him a battle-weary smile. ‘I’m close.’ ‘Yeah, but Greg. . . What have you got left now?’ ‘A name. Confirmation.’ ‘That di Girolamo character you mentioned?’ ‘Yep. It was beautiful the way Effis’s mind funked out. You should’ve seen it.’ ‘If you say so. This is all way above my head. Surveillance and back up, Waishaw says. You sit there and take it easy for a while. I’ll see to the clean up.’ ‘Sure.’ Greg drew his cybofax out of his leather jacket’s inside pocket, taking care not to make any sudden motions. His brain sloshed from ear to ear each time his head moved. He ifipped the cybofax open, and keyed the phone function with difficulty. His fingers were stiff, devoid of feeling. The cybofax bleeped for an incoming call. Unsurprised, he let it through. Knowing. Gabriel’s face appeared on the little screen. ‘No,’ she said, with ominous resolution. ‘I’m sorry, but you have to. There’s no one else.’ ‘No, Gregory.’ ‘Look at me, a proper look. Right now I couldn’t even sense a tiger’s brain if it was biting me. Tell you, I’ve got to have psi coverage to get that girl out. You’ll be saving lives, Gabriel. The Trinities will bloodbath the Miriam without perfect intelligence information – where Katerina is, where the crew are, and what they’re tooled up with.’ ‘You’re a bastard, Mandel.’ ‘No messing. See you at the briefing.’ After that, it was the difficult call. Eleanor. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE T rue to prediction, one of the yachts docked at the same quay as the Miriam was hosting a party. A brassy, high-wattage rave; hysterical guests spilling out on to the quay itself, dancing, drawing syntho, swilling down chainpagne. Perfect cover. By two o’clock in the morning it still hadn’t peaked. At five minutes past two Greg walked down the quay with Suzi, the pair of them holding hands and laughing without a care in the world. He wore a dinner jacket that felt as though it was made of canvas, and reeked of starch. Suzi had slipped into a 1920s gold lamй dress, low cut with near invisible straps, a blonde bob wig covering her gelled-down spikes. With her size and figure she looked impossibly young – fourteen, fifteen, something like that. He reckoned that as a couple they fitted the scene perfectly. Anyone would think it was fathers and daughters night. Thank heavens for cafй society, immutable in a fluid world. They infiltrated the party fringes, anthropoid chameleons. Big Amstrad projectors were mounted on the yacht, firing holographic fireworks into the night. Upturned faces were painted in spicy shades of scarlet and green by carnation bursts of ephemeral meteorites. Suzi lingered to watch a girl dressed in a sequin bikini and dyed ostrich feathers limbo her way under a boat-hook held by two semi-paralytic Hoorays. Greg checked his watch and tugged Suzi’s arm with gentle insistence, steering her into the wrap of darkness at the end of the quay. Three minutes before they had to be in position. The snatch had to be performed with exact timing; one mistake, one delay, a hesitation, and they’d be heading down the wrong Tau line and all Gabriel’s planning would come to naught. He’d tried to emphasize that to the Trinities, drilling it in. 302 PIT!R F. HAMILTON The limbo girl failed to make it, overbalancing and winding up flat on her back. The flesh of her overripe body quivered with helpless laughter. One of the Hoorays poured champagne into her mouth straight from the magnum. She lapped at the foamy spray spilling down her cheeks, her mind light-years away. Greg and Suzi tottered away from the revellers. Nobody was paying them a second glance. ‘Lady Gee was right,’ Suzi said from the corner of her mouth. He could sense how tight her small body was wired, rigid with restless tension. The Trinities had been, to say the least, sceptical when Gabriel began outlining the evening’s events. Their agnosticism had been whipped in staggered increments as the prophecies unfurled with uncanny precision – the party, which crewmen would leave the Miriam for the evening, the exact time Kendric and Hermione left for the Blue Ball, the fact that Katerina had been left behind. Other couples had drifted into the seclusion of the quay beyond the party, exploiting the penumbra of privacy provided by covered gangplanks. Greg kept his eyes firmly on the Mirriam ahead; Suzi peeped unashamedly, chortling occasionally. Miriam looked deserted, lit only by the intermittent spectral backwash from the Amstrads. Yet Gabriel had said there were seven people on board, two of Kendric’s bodyguards, four sailors, and Katerina. She’d even reeled off their locations. Greg wished he could use his espersense to confirm, but that was a definite no-no. The anaemia which the neurohormones had inflicted on the rest of his body had lifted during the afternoon and physically he was shaping up, but another secretion would cripple his brain. They reached the Miriam’s gangplank and folded into the midnight shadows it exuded. He checked his watch again. ‘How about we go for total realism?’ Suzi whispered with a giggle in her voice as she twined her hands round his neck. ‘l~welve seconds,’ he answered. The gangplank was one long pressure pad according to Gabriel. ‘Oh, Daddy, give it to me good,’ she yodelled. MINDSTAR RISING 303 He could feel her shaking with laughter and a crazy burn of exhilaration. Right on time a voice said, ‘Hey, sorry folks, but you’re gonna have to move along.’ Greg was facing the quay so he couldn’t see the speaker, but he recognized Toby’s baritone rumble. Besides, Gabriel said it would be him. He carried on smooching with Suzi. There was a faint vibration as Toby walked down the gangplank. ‘I said~-‘ Suzi’s Armscor stunshot spat a dart of electric-blue flame. Greg heard a startled grunt and turned just in time to catch Toby before he hit the gangplank. Asking himself why the hell he bothered. Suzi was racing up the gangplank. Greg followed dragging Toby. The bodyguard’s breathing was ragged, slitted whites of his eyes showing in the fallout from the silent twinkling light-storm overhead. As always Greg experienced the conviction of operating under divine protection. With Gabriel’s guidance he’d become omnipotent. Suzi ducked into the darker oval of an open hatch, fumbling her photon amp into place as she went. Greg pulled his own photon amp out of the dinner jacket’s pocket. That reassuringly familiar pinching as the band annealed to his skin. Miriam resolved into cold hard reality around him, nebulous leaden shadows stabilizing into sharply defined blue and grey outlines. 02:12:29, flashed the yellow digits. ‘At two hours, twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds GMT the crewman will exit the cabin-lounge door on to the afterdeck,’ Gabriel had said, her voice raised above the Trinities’ scoffing. Greg dumped Toby on the glossy polished decking and ran for the afterdeck, black leather shoes squeaking. 02:12:35. ‘At twelve minutes and forty-one seconds GMT he’ll move into your line of sight.’ PITIR F. HAMILTON 304 02:12:38. Greg stopped and assumed a marksman stance with his Armscor, Lining it up one metre wide of the corner of the superstructure. 02:12:41. The crewman obviously knew something was amiss; he caine round the corner of the superstructure fast, crouched low. The photon amp showed a monster crab scuttling right at him, metre length of pipe instead of claw. He fired. ‘The crewman’s name is Nicky.’ Metallic clangour as the crab’s erratic momentum skated him into the railing, pipe skittering away anarchically. ‘Bye, Nicky,’ Greg whispered. ‘Radar cancelled,’ Suzi’s voice squawked in his earpiece. ‘God, this place is exactly like Lady Gee described it. Wild!’ Greg finished up at the stern, scanning the glum water of the marina and its flotsam carpet of decaying seaweed. Oily ripples slapped lazily at Mirriam’s hull. ‘On the taifrail you’ll find a control box with six weather-proofed buttons. Press the second from the left.’ The box was there. Rigid forefinger pressing. A stifled drone of a motor lowering the diving platform ladder. The inflatable dinghy surged out of the gloaming, four figures hunched down, muffled engine cutting a hazy wake through the seaweed. It turned a finely judged arc and rode its bow wave to a halt at the foot of the ladder. The first three figures swarmed up the ladder, dressed in combat leathers and helmets. Des and two of his troop, Lynne and Roddy. They ignored Greg and crossed the deck to the half-open cabin-lounge door. Des slid it right back and the three of them rushed in. Greg leant over the taffrail to see Gabriel puffing her way up the ladder. She was wearing a balaclava and a heavy nightcamouflage flak jacket, restricting her movements; it was the largest the Trinities had in stock. He put his hand down and diplomatically helped her over the railing. She tugged the balaclava off, wiping the back of her hand MINOSTAR RISING 305 across her perspiring forehead. ‘We’re too old for this Greg, you and I, believe me. If you weren’t such a bloody ignorant stubborn bugger.’ A resigned smile lifted her lips. Shaking her head. ‘Crazy.’ Greg smiled fondly. ‘Tell you, I have a horrible feeling you may be right.’ ‘That’s my boy.’ A sudden frown wrinided her plump features. ‘Damn.’ She thumbed the comm set in her breast pocket. ‘Lynne, it’s not that hatch, go to the next one. that’s right. The crewman is standing behind the cowling.’ ‘Come on,’ Greg said. ‘Time for you and I to rescue the damsel.’ ‘You know, Teddy’s done a good job with those kids,’ Gabriel admitted grudgingly as they moved into the lounge. Greg negotiated the unfamiliar obstacles and found the central companionway. A tube of impenetrably black air, which even the photon amp had difficulty discerning. ‘Are we all right for some light?’ he asked. ‘Yes. One moment.’ Greg heard her shut the lounge door, then the biolum strip came on. He peeled the photon amp off. Suzi slithered down a narrow set of stairs from the bridge. ‘Mega,’ she breathed, pulling off her wig and ruffing up her mauve spikes. ‘You got it spot on, Lady Gee. All of it. Where you said, when you said. It’s fucking incredible.’ ‘Thank you, my dear.’ The three of them headed for the lower deck. Thick vermilion carpet absorbed their footfalls down the stairs. One of the crewmen was lying on the bottom step, his limbs shivering spastically from the stunshot charge. Des was waiting for them outside the master bedroom’s door, helmet off, grinning broadly, his hair a dark sweaty mat. ‘All right!’ he whooped blithely. ‘We breezed it, no problem. You ever need a job, Gran, you come’n see me, OK?’ ‘You’re too kind,’ Gabriel said. Des missed the mounting testiness, but Suzi winiced at Greg, rolling her eyes for his denseness. Lynne and Roddy clattered up the stairs from the crew quarters below. 306 PITIR F. HAMILTON ‘Shall we get on with it?’ Gabriel said, hurriedly forestalling the compliment Lynne had opened her mouth to begin. She took an infuser tube out of her flak jacket and handed it to Suzi. ‘You’ll need this.’ Suzi turned it over, mildly curious. ‘What for?’ ‘She’s a big girl.’ Des and Roddy exchanged a glance. ‘Is she armed?’ Lynne enquired. ‘No.’ Greg knew that mood well enough, Gabriel at her most obdurate. There’d be no budging her now. He opened the bedroom door. There was a subdued pink light inside. ‘Hoo boy.’ Suzi groaned in pawky dismay. Des and Roddy piled in behind her for a look, Katerina was sprawled across a huge circular water-bed, wearing an Arabian harem slave costume; strips of diaphanous lemon chiffon held together with thin gold chains. It was a size too small, strained by the curves of her breasts and hips. The chiffon was so flimsy they could see her large areolas through it, dark purple-brown circles with aroused nipples. Katerina batted drowsy eyelids at the five faces staring down at her. ‘I’m ready,’ was all she said. Roddy let out a low admiring whistle. ‘Makes it all kind’ve worthwhile, doesn’t it?’ Des sniggered. ‘For God’s sake find something to wrap her in,’ Greg said. Annoyed at their abrupt lapse of discipline. Hardly surprised, though. The porno-starlet stage setting sapped any sense of urgency. He let out a hiss of breath, silently cursing Gabriel for not warning him. ‘Suzi, help me get her up.’ Katerina looked up with innocent bewilderment as they each took an arm and tugged her into a sitting position. ‘I remember you,’ she said to Greg. ‘Will you make it happen, too?’ ‘Not tonight.’ ‘But this is the paradise place. The hurt and the wonder always happens here.’ MINDSTAR RISING 307 ‘Bollocks, what’s she on?’ asked Suzi. ‘Phyltre. Stuff’s blowing her brain apart.’ Katerina turned her head to focus on Suzi. ‘Can you make it happen?’ ‘No way, girl. Come on, let’s get you out of here.’ Something in Suzi’s inflexible tone must’ve finally penetrated Katerina’s befuddled brain. ‘I don’t want to leave, not here, not the wonder. Not ever.’ Suzi brought up the infuser in a no-nonsense manner. Katerina’s bare foot lashed out, catching Suzi full in the stomach. She went down with a silent oof, curling around herself and fighting for breath. Greg was suddenly left holding a screaming, scratching, biting, kicking she-demon. Gabriel was right, Katerina was big, and strong, and utterly deranged. Tapering lavender nails slashed at his eyes, a knee thudded into his pelvic bone, a tornado of golden hair filled the air. He felt soft flesh, hard flesh. Hampered by not wanting to hurt her. An inhibition rapidly dissolving. Des made a grab for Katerina’s shoulders, succeeding only in ripping her mock slave-costume. All three of them tumbled to the floor in a frenziedly bucking heap. Then Lynne waded in, trying to pin Katerina’s arms down. Roddy managed to grab hold of one leg. Finally a wheezing Suzi slammed the infuser on Katerina’s neck with unnecessary force. For one horrendous moment Greg thought it wasn’t going to have any tffect, but a look of outright surprise shot across Katerina’s !nraged face and she subsided into a limp bundle shrouded in wispy scraps of lemon fog. ‘Goddamn. . . ungrateful. . . bitch,’ Suzi spat between thudders. Her face was chalk-white. Greg thought she was ~oing to kick the unconscious body. Probably wouldn’t have ;topped her. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing,’ he offered in apology. Hey, you all right?’ Her hands were stili clasped tight around her abdomen. Yeah. Bitch.’ Roddy wrapped a towelling robe around Katerina, and Des :arried her out in a fireman’s lift. 310 PETIR F. HAMILTON Julia stared at her old schoolfriend, humour and toughness leaching from her face. -Whatever zombie incarnation she’d been girding herself for, it wasn’t a match for the mental-husk reality provided. Katerina was lowered on to the settee, utterly uninterested in her environment. Julia sent Greg a silent desperate plea that this was some awful nightmare, not real. Walshaw frowned disapprovingly at the grubby rope wrapped round Katerina’s wrists. Greg pointed to the fresh scratches on his face. ‘See if you can find some padded cuffs,’ Walsaw told Victor. ‘And tell Dr Taylor to stand by. She’ll probably need sedating.’ Victor nodded crisply and departed, happy to be out of the office. Julia sank down on to the settee, peering timidly at the beautiful empty shell slumped quiescently beside her. ‘Kats? Kats, it’s me, Julia. Julie. Can you hear me, Kats? Please, Kats. Please.’ Katerina’s lost eyes swam round. ‘Julie,’ she sighed inanely. ‘Julie. Never thought it would be you. They bring so many others for me, but never you. It’s late, isn’t it? I can feel it. It’s always late when they come for me. We’ll be good, won’t we, Julie? You and I, when he watches? If we’re good then I can go to him afterwards.’ ‘Yah,’ Julia stammered. Her eyes had begun to brim with tears. ‘Yah, Kats, we’ll be good. The best. Promise.’ She pulled her shawl off and tucked it clumsily around her friend’s trembling shoulders. ‘I’d like you to leave us alone now,’ she said without looking round. Greg had known some officers who could speak like that. Commanding instant obedience. Rank had nothing to do with it, their voice plugged directly into the nervous system. As he left the office he saw Julia tenderly smoothing back Katerina’s dishevelled tresses. The corridor was narrow with a high ceiling, built from composite panels which cut up the original open-plan floor into a compartmented maze. A pink-tinged biolum strip ran MIND$TAR RISING 311 overhead, its unremitting luminescence showing up the threadbare rut running down the centre of the chestnut carpet squares. Waishaw closed the door behind him. Rachel moved down towards the lift, giving them a degree of privacy. ‘I’ve been doing some checking this afternoon,’ Waishaw said. ‘There’s a clinic on Granada which claims it can cure phyltre addiction.’ ‘Successfully?’ Greg asked. ‘Forty per cent of the patients recover. I was wondering. Miss Thompson, isn’t it?’ Gabriel was resting with her back flat on the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Greg recognized the state, he’d seen it in the mirror often enough. That relentless enervation which siphoned the vitality out of every cell. ‘Morgan, to someone of your age and ex-rank I’m Gabriel, OK? But no, I can’t tell if it works with Katerina. That’s too far into the future.’ ‘I don’t think Julia will give up,’ Greg said. ‘Not now.’ ‘No, I don’t suppose she will,’ Waishaw agreed, ‘You know Kendric di Girolanio is going to have to be eliminated, don’t you?’ Greg said. Waishaw reached up languidly and began massaging his neck. ‘Eventually, yes.’ ‘No. Not eventually. You’ve seen what he’s done to that girl; and that was just for fin. The guy’s an absolute loon. Tell you, I’ve seen inside his mind. Homicidal psychopath isn’t the half of it. Julia needs head of state level protection while he’s on the loose, no messing.’ ‘Julia has been badgering me to do the same thing. She is even more intent than you, if anything.’ ‘Hardly surprising, after what she went through with Kendtic. Paedophile shit.’ Walshaw turned his head very slowly until he was staring directly at Greg. ‘What?’ ‘Kendric and Julia; he seduced her. You didn’t know?’ ‘She hates Kendric.’ ‘Not always,’ Greg said. He couldn’t ever remember seeing 312 PETER F. HAMILTON Waishaw so thrown before, not even the blitz and the possibility of a leak in the giga-conductor project had upset him this much. Another of Julia’s secret admirers. ‘So that’s what is behind this sudden urge for blood,’ Waishaw said tightly. ‘It’s not just a wronged girl’s lex :alwms. Kendric is dangerous, believe me.’ ‘I do.’ For a second the security chief looked heartbroken. Greg was suddenly glad he didn’t have the use of his gland at that moment, there were some secrets people were entitled to keep. He guessed Julia had become a surrogate daughter to Walshaw over the years. That strange character flaw of his, the need to have someone to provide him with a purpose in life. ‘Kendric can’t be eliminated right now, dangerous though he undoubtedly is,’ Walshaw said. ‘Your episode with Charles Ellis at the Castlewood condominium confirms there is someone else involved, the organizer of the blitz. Kendric couldn’t have arranged for the sniper at Ellis’s penthouse, because he didn’t know Wolf. Which makes Kendric our last link with the organizer. And we have to find out who that is.’ ‘But Wolf knew Kendric,’ Greg said. ‘Weird.’ ‘Not really,’ said Gabriel. ‘The organizer is their link, a one-way databus who passes on all Kendric’s intelligence to Wolf. But there’s no return flow, Wolf has nothing Kendric needs to know. And Kendric would’ve told the organizer that you’d confronted him, that you knew about Wolf. So the organizer fixed for the sniper. Morgan here is right, Greg. We can’t get rid of Kendric, he’s your only H~rd lead left. In fact he ought to watch out, the organizer must realize that, too.’ ‘Shit,’ Greg muttered in frustration. ‘Kendric won’t take us to the organizer, not now. He’s too smart. They’ll never contact each other again.’ Gabriel opened her eyes. ‘Snatch him,’ she said flatly. ‘That’s your only option. Snatch Kendric. Interrogate him. Snuff him.’ ‘Risky,’ said Walshaw. ‘A quick clean kill is one thing, snatches have a tendency to get messy no matter how good the hardliners you use. Lots of questions asked.’ MINOSTAR RISING 313 ‘My precognition would make sure there’s no mess.’ ‘I’ll authorize it,’ Julia said firmly. Greg hadn’t seen her emerge from Waishaw’s office. But now she stood in the corridor, head held high, in complete control of herself, as if the bomb-blast of Katerina had never happened. No longer the ivory-tower habitue, but very much the Princess Regent. Some small part of him mourned the passing of the timid, sweet girl he’d first met on a sunny March day. Innocence was the most appealing of human traits. Morgan Walshaw shifted uneasily as Julia’s chillingly bright gaze turned on him, demanding. ‘If that’s what it takes to sort this out, then that’s what’ll happen,’ she said. ‘It’s bad enough having Kendric coming at me like this, but unknown enemies as well, that’s totally out. I’m not having it. And the snatch is the way to unmask them. That bastard Kendric has been banking that we won’t fight him on his own level. Well, his credit has just run out.’ ‘Julia-‘ Waishaw said. ‘No arguments, just do it!’ Greg could see how much effort it took Waishaw to retain control, no espersense needed for that. ‘It isn’t up to me, Miss Evans.’ Julia realized she might’ve overstepped the limit. ‘I’m sorry, Morgan. It’s Kats, you see, she keeps asking for him. Doesn’t say anything else. Bastard. I think she’ll have to be sedated.’ ‘OK.’ He raised a cybofax and muttered into it. ‘Doctor’s on her way.’ ‘Who then?’ Julia asked. ‘Who is it up to?’ Walshaw looked at Greg. ‘That’s you, Greg. If it’s to be done, it’s to be done properly. Would you interrogate him?’ Greg had seen it coming, ever since Gabriel blurted the idea of a snatch. It’d given him a few seconds to chew the proposition. He spread his palms wide. ‘Preparations wouldn’t hurt. Mind you, I’d be physically incapable of interrogating anyone for a couple of days anyway. That might give us enough time to analyse the Crays’ data. See if we can’t fInd some leads in them. Ellis should’ve left one.’ He noticed Julia’s face had gone blank, focusing inwards, Must be using her nodes, running their arguments through 314 PETER F. HAMILTON analysis, battling the pros and cons against each other, trying to reach the conclusions ahead of them. In a way it was a power similar to Gabriel’s. ‘We’re going through the Crays now,’ said Walshaw. ‘Although I don’t know what the hell you did to one of them, it crashed one of our lightware crunchers when we plugged it in, bloody thing is so much rubbish now. The other two Crays are clean, although it’ll take time to make sure there aren’t any concealed wipe instructions buried in them.’ ‘What have you got so far?’ Greg asked. ‘Ellis had quite an extraordinary accumulation of data, everything from minutely detailed personal dossiers through to industrial templates. Trivia and ultra-hush all jumbled together. It’s going to take some sifting, even with the light~ware crunchers hooked in.’ ‘What did you mean, Ellis should’ve left a lead?’ Julia asked. ‘Standard practice,’ Greg explained. ‘If you’re plugging into those kind of deals you cover your back. Benign blackmail, to make sure your partners don’t get any funny ideas afterwards. There’ll be a record of all the burns he arranged as Wolf; money, clients, the names of his hotrod team; data he bought and sold as Medeor, names, companies. Every damning byte. And it’ll be somewhere where it can be found after he’s dead. In the Crays, the Hitachi terminal’s memory core, his cybofax, public data core on a time delay, hell, even an envelope left with a lawyer.’ ‘Nothing else?’ Julia asked. ‘Pardon?’ ‘You don’t think there’s anything else important in the Crays?’ For some reason her slightly querulous attitude made him aware of how immensely tired he was. He was travelling on buzz energy, had been for hours, and it was running out fast now they’d got Katerina back. ‘I wouldnt know. I expect they’re a goidmine of illegal circuit activity.’ “Fhat’s all?’ Julia was leaning forward, studying his face MINDSTAR RISING 315 intently. He had the uncomfortable impression he was being judged. Crime unknown. And, frankly, he didn’t give a shit. ‘All I can think of, yeah.’ Dr Taylor stepped out of the lift, accompanied by Victor who was carrying her case. She was a young woman wearing a plain cerise trouser suit, her dark hair French pleated. She had a quick word with Morgan Waishaw and went into his office. Julia started to follow, but the security chief laid a light restraining hand on her arm. For a moment she looked like she’d rebel, then nodded meekly. Victor closed the door softly after he’d gone through. ‘Thank you for bringing Kats back to me, Greg,’ Julia said, abruptly all humble contrition. Greg gave up trying to find motives for her oscillating moods. She was on an emotional rollercoaster; depressed by Katerina, frightened by Kendric, trusting in him, Gabriel, and Walshaw to deliver her from evil. Poor kid. ‘It hurts so much just seeing her,’ Julia said. ‘Serves me right, I suppose.’ She reached round her neck with both hands and unhooked a slim gold chain. ‘For you. From me. And you don’t even have to give me a kiss for it.’ She favoured him with a sly weary smile. It was a St Christopher pendant, solid gold. ‘Well, put it on then,’ Julia said. He mimicked a grin, feeling itchy under Gabriel’s heartily bemused eye, and fastened it round his own neck. The little disk was warm on his skin as it slithered down beneath the open neck of his crisp dress shirt. ‘To keep the demons at bay,’ Julia said. ‘Even though you’re not a believer.’