Greg took an iron grip on his nerves. ‘Say nothing. At least this way we’ll take Armstrong and Kendric with us.’ ‘Is that all you can think of?’ ‘Well, what the hell else is there?’ Greg snapped back, suddenly furious. Despising his own fear, because it would be so easy to let it win. ‘You want to shout a warning?’ he asked, ‘Is that what you want to do? Is it? Wake them up, tell them what you can see, let them get clear? Silence is all we’ve got left, Gabriel, our vengeance weapon. This way we get our revenge. It doesn’t matter that we don’t get to see it, we’re dead anyway.’ Gabriel bit her lower lip, trembling. He caught a glimpse of moisture glinting in her eyes as she hugged the railings hard, CHAPTER FORTY E leanor sat on a hard wooden chair in Wilholm’s study. Someone had put a bone china breakfast cup of tea in front of her. She hadn’t drunk any. The air was warm and stuffy from too many people breathing it. Six Event Horizon security hardliners were standing watching her and Teddy, four on the other side of the table, two behind them. Stupid. Farcical. But Eleanor hadn’t complained. Didn’t have the energy. Her belly was cold now, colder than ice. A harassed Dr Taylor had broken off attending to Suzi long enough to give Eleanor au infusion that’d taken her down to a state where peripheries, like injuries and the manor’s fabulous wall-to-wall glitter, didn’t register much. Then some kind of bioware dressing had been stuck over the claw wounds, and a salve was sprayed over skin that was red raw where the maser had leaked through the dissipater jumpsuit. Dr Taylor wanted her to lie down for a more elaborate treatment. She refused point-blank. Eleanor had to know about Greg, persuade the Evans girl and Morgan Walshaw to help find him. Except they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. She was wrapped in a jade towelling-robe, sitting beside Teddy who was also in a robe, one which was too small for him. Julia Evans and Morgan Waishaw sat opposite them, Matched contrasts. Julia was quiet, sticking to Walshaw wherever he went. Mouse timid. Nothing like the way Greg had described her. Further up the table a man called Piers Ryder had opened up the squat cylindrical message laser, much to Teddy’s impotent fury. Ryder had plugged a cybofax into the laser’s hardware with optical cable, looking for bugs on Walshaw’s orders. There was no trust in the study. And after all the horror they’d endured; Eleanor could’ve wept, except it wouldn’t have changed anything. Teddy and Walshaw were doing all the talking. Arguing, .4 MINOSTAR RISING 405 actually. All down to Waishaw’s totally unbelievable statement that Greg had gone somewhere with Kendric di Girolamo. ‘You think Greg’s sold out, you outta your bailsed-up mind,’ Teddy said; loud but not shouting, his anger a dangerous undercurrent. ‘Even I find it difficult to believe,’ Walsbaw said. ‘But none the less, he did leave with di Girolamo on the Mirrwm.’ ‘Going where?’ ‘Does it matter? The complicity exists.’ ‘Fucking right it matters. He ain’t with that arsehole di Girolarno ouna free will. Once we find him my troops gonna snatch him back.’ ‘You can’t,’ said Julia. It was the first time she’d spoken. ‘Why not, gal?’ Teddy asked. He wasn’t quite so abusive to her. ‘I’m not quite sure of his exact position any more.’ ‘Way they was headed will do. We’ll pick ’em up soon as they put into port.’ Julia consulted Walshaw silently. The security chief shrugged. ‘Last time I checked, Greg was in Wisbech,’ Julia said. ‘Wisbech?’ Teddy asked. ‘Yah.’ ‘What, Wisbech in the basin? How the fuck did he get there?’ ‘I’m not sure. It wasn’t fast enough to be a plane, we thought perhaps a hovercraft.’ Teddy narrowed his eyes. ‘How come you know that? You weren’t following him.’ ‘I gave him my St Christopher. It’s got a transmitter in it, a very complex frequency hopper. Event Horizon’s Earth Resource satellite platforms are equipped with sensors which can pick up the signal anywhere on the planet. I wear it in case I get kidnapped.’ ‘And you gave it to Greg? Why, for Christ’s sake?’ ‘1 wanted to know what he was doing, where he was. You see, Kendric has done a deal with the PSP and Greg didn’t tell me.’ 406 PETER F. HAMILTON ‘PSP?’ Teddy half rose from the chair. ‘You telling me PSP is plugged in on this?’ ‘Yah,’ Julia said. ‘Then, gal, you are way, way outta line saying Greg ain’t on the level. While rich bitches like you were living it up abroad, that rat-prick Armstrong was screwing us into the ground. Me and my troops, we were fighting his Constables. We fucking died so you could swan back here and make money outta us. Eight years Greg was out on those streets. Hardest there is, and they nearly broke him. But he stood and fought. So don’t you ever sit in front of me and tell me he’s gone and done a deal with no fucking Armstrong relics. You ain’t good enough to shovel up his shit. You hear me!’ Julia shrank back in the seat, her tawny eyes wide. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ she pleaded. ‘That’s why I gave him the transmitter. Because I didn’t understand.’ ‘Understand what?’ She swallowed hard, looking round the room in desperation. ‘Victor. You were there at Ellis’s flat. Ellis told you that the Cray which Greg crashed was loaded with millions of personal files. Everyone important in England, that’s what he said.’ ‘Yes,’ Victor agreed cautiously. ‘See?’ Julia asked Teddy. ‘See what?’ Julia covered her face in her hands, veiling the sting of misery in her eyes. ‘Nobody sees. It’s me. Those bloody nodes. I kept looking at it until I had the answer,’ Her hands dropped to the table, palms down, fingers wide. ‘Who? Who~ in this whole wide world is going to compile millions of files on people living in this country?’ ‘God damn,’ The anger fled from Teddy; his chair creaked as it took his full weight again. ‘PSP.’ ‘The amount of data in even one of the Crays was far too much for anyone to snatch from a mainframe, the squirt would last for days. Ellis had to have direct access to the Ministry of Public Order mainframe at some time before the circuit hotrods crashed it and the PSP fell. The one explanation which MINDSTAR RISING 407 fits is that he was an ex-apparatchik; and only a high ranker would have an authority code that’d clear duplication copying on that scale. And he was running a team of hackers that are disrupting the English economy. That’s the oldest trick in the political book; cause dissatisfaction with the current government, and people always turn to the opposition. It had to mean that Ellis was still actively working for the PSP.’ ‘OK,’ Teddy said. ‘So maybe Greg ain’t so fast these days, didn’t see the connection straight off. Don’t mean he’s turned.’ ‘I know that,’ Julia shot back. ‘I didn’t want to believe he’d do that to me, not Greg. I trusted him, like nobody else. That’s why I slipped him the St Christopher. To find out what he was doing. Then he went with Kendric, and I had to believe.’ ‘It’s all down to Gabriel Thompson,’ Waishaw said. ‘Her precognition ability would suggest it is impossible to snatch or even surprise her. Therefore she and Greg went with di Girolamo out of their own choice.’ ‘Christ, man, I don’t know about that. Gabriel is one hotshot gal, but that psi gland messes her about something serious. You’ve only ever seen her on the up. In Turkey I seen her down, and you just can’t get any lower and still be human.’ Teddy made a fist and rapped on the table with it. ‘OK, listen; you count Gabriel and her precog outta all this, you gotta scene where Greg’s in deep shit. Right? Ain’t I right?’ Julia turned to Waishaw, face tilted up with hope. ‘Yes, all right,’ said the security chief. ‘Psi was always looked on as a wild card when I was in active service. I just thought they’d improved it since my day. Greg and Gabriel seemed to have it down pat.’ Teddy gave a fast grin. ‘Now we are getting somewhere.’ He looked at Julia. ‘OK, gal, you work your magic spy trick on Greg again, tell us exactly where he is, and we’ll squirt the co-ords out to my troops.’ He glared at Ryder. ‘That’s if you ain’t screwed my laser. And maybe Event Horizon can loan the Trinities a couple of Prowlers to jump ’em out to wherever Greg is now. I wanna get this settled soon as.’ Julia became fluttery with concern, ‘I can’t find out where 408 PETER F. HAMILTON Greg is now. Grandpa was plugged into every piece of gear Wilholm has. It’s all glitched by the virus. We have to wait until the company security people outside write an antithesis.’ Teddy’s face wound up with pain. ‘Jesus. They’ve had Greg for hours. You got any idea what they could’ve done to him by now? That bimbo friend of yours wasn’t the half of it. They were being nice to her.’ ‘The situation is hardly Miss Evans’s fault,’ Walshaw said smartly. Julia had closed tortured eyes. ‘Yeah, OK,’ said Teddy. ‘So let me use the message laser, plug it into the man’s NN core. I got someone who can write an anti-thing in zero time.’ ‘There is nobody better than our experts,’ Waishaw said. ‘Bullshit! Son is the best there’s ever been. Melted through your security core guardians like butter to get at the manor defence specs, didn’t he? We wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for him. How the hell do you think Greg found Ten- : times? Who backtracked Ellis for you?’ ‘You expect me to allow some kind of super hacker to plug directly into Philip Evans’s NN core?’ Waishaw asked. ‘The heart of the entire company? Not a chance. I’m more than willing to do whatever I can to help Greg, once the virus is broken. But that is out.’ ‘You owe us, man. You owe us so bad it’s gonna take you a couple of centuries to kick your debt. You are responsible for Greg being where he is now. You hired him, you put him there.’ Eleanor watched Walsbaw stare up at the ceiling, brows knotted with furious concentration. Greg’s life was being decided inside his skull, she realized. It was obvious that Julia would follow his decision. The girl looked dreadfully unhappy. ‘Miss Evans?’ Eleanor said. She was distantly bemused by how such an awfully reedy voice as hers had become could attract everyone’s rapt attention. They all wanted someone to produce a miracle, blow away their dilemma. She couldn’t, of course. ‘You don’t know me, Miss Evans, but I live with Greg, and I love him. He would never betray you. I suppose you MINDSTAR RISING 409 think of him as a hard man, never showing much feeling. He is in a way. I have only ever seen him let emotion overrun common sense on one occasion. That was when he found out what di Girolamo had done to your friend, Katerina. All he could think about was getting her out. He cared about her, a girl he’d only ever met for a few minutes before. Does that tell you anything about him? I have also met Royan, the hacker Teddy wants to plug into your grandfather’s NN core. I was sick to my stomach for a day alter I met him, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink. Royan doesn’t even have any legs, Miss Evans. He doesn’t have any arms. He doesn’t even have eyes. To look at him you wouldn’t even believe he was a human being. Physically he is a lump of flesh with a digestive system and a brain which is plugged into some gear. The PSP did that to him, their People’s Constables, But I’ve talked with him, had coffee with him, he’s one of the most decent, bravest people in the world. He knows what pain really is; he isn’t about to harm you or your grandfather.’ Julia might’ve been carved from stone, staring at Eleanor with fascinated revulsion, unable to look away. ‘Right now there are two people lying dead in your grounds,’ Eleanor went on. ‘The only reason they caine to Wilholm was to help Greg. I’m going to wake up screaming every night for the rest of my life remembering that trip. But I’m glad I will, because I thought coming here meant there would be a chance of getting Greg back. All of us, Miss Evans, we all believe in Greg. Even you did once, I think. He’s just an ordinary man, nothing special in the way of the world. But I’d be very grateful if you could do what you can to bring him back to me. Thank you.’ The speech exhausted the last of her strength, she withered back in the chair, spent. Someone gripped her freezing.hand in a vice-like hold, which verged on the painful. She knew it must be Teddy. Julia turned to Ryder. ‘Plug it in.’ CHAPTER FORTY-ONE hat are you doing?’ Gabriel asked tersely. Greg had crouched down, squashing his face against the cold banister, trying to bend a wrist double to reach his dinner jacket’s breast pocket. ‘~Vhat I should’ve done hours ago. Getting us out of here.’ ‘How?’ she squeaked. ‘Tell you, it’s not going to be easy, all right? At the moment, we’re already dead, so a bit of damage now isn’t going to make a whole load of difference, Handcuffs are a bureaucrat’s fallacy to the condemned. Especially the condemned fitted with cortical nodes.’ ‘Oh.’ Gabriel’s eyes widened in comprehension. ‘Yeah,’ he said, suddenly disquieted. ‘Besides, you should’ve thought of this too; you went to the same tactics courses as me.’ ‘Tactics courses! Christ, Greg, I was a flaming nurse before Mindstar dragooned me.’ Greg’s scrabbling fingertips found the top of the handker- I chief sticking out of his breast pocket, and he tugged the ~ square of white silk out into the air. It wasn’t as big as he’d have liked, but it would have to do. ‘Listen, this is going to look bad, OK? But self-mutilation is a damn sight better than dying. If you’ve got a different solution, now’s the time.’ She shook her head silently. Very pale now. Greg outlined what he wanted her to do and stretched out to give her the handkerchief. Her hands were shaking when she took it. She leant forwards to press her face into a gap between the stair rails and bit into the handkerchief, chewing it into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged out. ‘Bite hard,’ he instructed. She ducked her head in acknowledgement. ‘OK. Now let’s get into position.’ MINDSTAR RISING 411 They faced the tower’s curving wall, as though they were praying at an altar, Greg thought. He held Gabriel’s eyes as she knelt on the floorboards, willing her on. She pulled the cuffs right up to the railing and rested her hands on the ten-centimetre lip of solid oak planking. Her fingers stuck out over the edge, but her knuckles remained on the wood. Greg went the other way, sliding his arms right up to the banister and standing on his left foot. He pushed his right leg through the gap in the railings above Gabriel’s left hand. ‘Fist your right hand,’ he told her. ‘Then disengage all the nerves below the left elbow.’ She looked up at him, her shoulders quivering, dry weeping. The sight nearly broke his determination. Slowly her right hand clenched into a fist, leaving the left open. ‘Can you feel your left hand?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘Are you sure?’ He was worried about the stunshot charge they’d both been hit with; if there was any damage to the cortical node there’d be no chance of pulling this off. She glared at him. ‘Look away,’ Greg said. Her head turned. ‘Right away,’ he said, deliberately harsh. He couldn’t risk her flinching. She jerked her head forcibly aside. He concentrated on the leg he’d stuck through the railings. He had to get it perfect first time. If he didn’t, he doubted she would ever allow him a second go. He was wearing sturdy leather shoes. Grubby and scuffed now, but with a hard, flat sole. Lining the heel up in the funereal glimmer of light. Greg pushed up with his hands, as though he was trying to lift the banister off the top of the railings. Bunched muscles tightened the jacket fabric across his shoulders. His left foot was pressed hard on to the floor. I-ic could even hear a feeble groan from the oak as it adjusted to the new stress pattern. Praying the strength he’d built filling up the chalet’s water tank would be sufficient. 412 PETER F. HAMILTON Ready. He stamped down. The heel smashed down on to the top of Gabriel’s knuckles, giving. Bone snapped, a liquid-dulled crack. She convulsed, slumping forward into the railings, her puling muted by the ball of silk. Greg tugged his leg back out of the railings, and hooked the back of his calf inside Gabriel’s left elbow. Her head twisted round, there was a small tail of cloth sticking out of her mouth. Shock-wide eyes screamed up at him in pure terror. He jerked his leg back savagely. Her arm moved with sickening slowness. Then suddenly there was no more resistance, and Greg was swinging wildly, left foot slipping, backside coming down fast. The cuffs made an excruciatingly loud racket scraping down the railing. He sat heavily, his coccyx trying to punch its way up into his throat. But Gabriel was free. She lay face down on the floor, right hand still through the railing, left arm curled limply at her side, its pulped hand brushing her hair. Her whole body was quaking softly. The handkerchief had begun to emerge out of her mouth like some vile glistening imago escaping from its chrysalis. She rolled over, gulping, a hall-choke. A trail of thin vomit ran down her chin. She wore the expression of the torturer’s victim, an utter incomprehension of how one person could do this to another. Frightened eyes found her left hand. She drew it up to her face, mesmerized, and began to cry. ‘Gabriel?’ She was curling up into a foetal ball, sucking down air in shallow gulps. ‘Gabriel, did the cortical node work?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Gabriel, you have to get up.’ A shiver ran down her spine. ‘I want to go home,’ she whispered through clenched teeth. ‘We are going home. Now get up.’ Gabriel rocked back on to her knees, cradling her left hand. Tears streaked her cheeks. ‘Oh, (hrist, Greg.’ MINDSTAR RISING 413 ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Now look round and find something you can use as a club.’ ‘No. No, I can’t do that. Don’t make me do that. Please, Greg. Please.’ ‘You can’t leave me here.’ Greg deliberately let a note of desperation filter into his voice. Bullying her with guilt. ‘There’s only about thirty minutes left before the tower blows.’ She clambered to her feet in slow-motion stages, never allowing her arm to leave her side. He could see the film of sweat on her forehead, and felt clammy apprehension rise. The grisly snap of cracking bone seemed to be echoing around the room. She tottered off behind~ him, rummaging through the stacks of food crates. He didn’t look, keeping still, eyes on the ancient worn brickwork on the other side of the stairs. ‘Will this do?’ she asked. She couldn’t think for herself. Shock numbness had set in. The length of wood she’d found was a metre long, four or five centimetres wide. Three rusty screws jutted out of the middle. It ought to be heavy enough, he thought. ‘It’ll do.’ With grim horror he realized that after she’d smashed his hand, he’d have to yank it free through the handcuff himself. She could never manage that. ‘Gabriel, you must be hard. Swing the club real hard, no messing. Imagine it’s Armstrong’s hand, or something. Don’t do it to me twice. Promise?’ ‘Right.’ He put his left hand on the ledge of wood, then instructed his cortical node to disengage the nerves of his left arm. From the elbow down he could feel nothing, not even the dead meat coldness of anaesthetic, the buoyant release of morphine. His forearm and hand had ceased to exist. ‘OK,’ he said, finding out just how much it’d cost Gabriel to say that. Gabriel pushed the handkerchief into his mouth. It was disgusting. Soggy, tasting of sour acidic stomach juices. Good. Focus on the revulsion, Shutting out the sight of Gabriel steadying herself on the second step. Knuckles whitening as she clenched the makeshift club. Her face mimicking the PETER F. HAMILTON 414 intense concentration he’d once seen on a golf pro’s face as he lined up his putter for an albatross. Greg heard the swish of air. Shock was worse than pain in its own way. His brain seemed to expand time, letting him see the full horror of his flesh being triturated, every detail slamming into his mind. The sight flushing away the intention to pull with all his strength. It took the animal fear of impending death to twist his mind back, overriding reluctance. Greg pulled. He felt the scream rising inside him as he watched his ruined hand squeezing through a metal circle that was two centimetres too small. It was obscenely malleable, damp cracking sounds marking its progress. His hand came free, and a lungful of air blasted the handkerchief from his mouth. There was nothing to stop the scream that would vent some of his anguish. He hovered on the brink for one eternal second. Closed his gaping mouth, contracting the throat muscles that would’ve formed the blissful release of sound. Gabriel: laughing, crying, whimpering. ‘We’ve done it.’ Wiping tears from her face. ‘We’ve fucking done it.’ Greg drank down litres of fresh clean air. His right hand was still on the other side of the railing. He turned it slowly and brought it and the cuff through the gap. His left hand was something from a butcher’s stall, crushed, sweffing with blood, pussy fluid leaking from the graze where the club had struck. Greg shared a long glance with Gabriel, a love that wasn’t physical, didn’t need to be. They were blood siblings, a far stronger bond. ‘Time to go,’ he said. It broke the spell. She went to work on the store room’s central biolum panel, easing it away from its clips. He started on the Harrods hampers and found a case of three-star brandy. He clamped the first bottle between his knees, and unscrewed the cap with his right hand. The aroma set up a satanic craving in his maltreated stomach. After opening five bottles, Greg tiptoed around the room, soaking the kelpboard cases with the liquor. ~l’aking care not to spill any on the floor with its wide cracks. MINDSTAR RISING 415 ‘The window’s behind this lot,’ Gabriel whispered, poking a tall stack of cases. ‘It’ll take an age to shift them.’ ~Forget shifting them. Our exit isn’t going to be stealthy. You got the biolum?’ ‘Yeah.’ She’d cracked the back open, exposing the activation trigger. A finger-sized pewter cylinder with enough charge to activate the motes’ bias. There was also enough charge to spark – two, maybe three times if their luck was in. He impaled a wad of paper on the screws of Gabriel’s club, sloshing brandy over it. She put it on the desk, eagerness animating her features, dulling the pain. He put his shoulders to the stack of crates, tensing. Nodded. Two idiot smiles. A minute blue spark sizzled between the cylinder electrodes and one of the screws. The paper caught at once, a bright yellow tongue of flame that left sharp purple after-images on his retinas. Gabriel picked up her torch and thrust it against some of the cases he’d doused. Flames bloomed wherever it touched. She carried it round in a triumphal circuit. The room was becoming dazzlingly bright to Greg’s gloaming-acclimatized eyes; but he waited until the fire began to crackle noisily before heaving at the cases. The stack toppled with a crash which seemed deafeningly loud in the small room. Cases burst open, scattering tins of meat with Brazilian labels across the oak floorboards. Greg jumped on to the two remaining cases below the window, kicking out the glass. It shattered into wicked ice daggers, scything off into the galactic-deep night outside. ‘Out,’ he yelled, and used his good hand to haul Gabriel up on to the cases. She balanced on the narrow dirt-ingrained windowledge, crouching down for the jump. There were shouts coming from the basement. The fire had really taken hold now. Greg could feel its heat on his face and his right hand, Gabriel had already gone. And someone was pounding up the stairs. Greg flexed his knees and leapt into the cool damp air. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Processor Node One Status: Loading Basic Management Program. Julia’s head jerked up. She hadn’t actually been sleeping, just allowing her rattled, abused thoughts some peace. Processor Node Two Status: Loading Basic Management Program. ‘What?’ asked Waishaw. Memory Node One: File Codes Loaded. The huge black man, Teddy, was giving her that eagle-eyed stare again, as if he was examining her soul. Finding it flawed. Memory Node Two: File Codes Loaded. ‘Lord Jesus,’ she clapped her hands in excited delight. ‘He’s done it. Royan. He’s in the ‘ware.’ Memory Node Three: File Codes Loaded. The fabric of the nodes’ artificial mentality rose out of nowhere to fortify and enrich her own thoughts. Dictionaries, language and technical lexicons, encyclopedias, logic matrices, all returned to their warm familiar places. Neural Augmentation On Line. Walshaw was leaning over his terminal, hands reaching for the keyboard. The cubes were full of crazed graphics, slowly returning to equilibrium. Hello, Juliet. ‘Grandpa!’ Her view of the study was suddenly riddled with cracks, it fragmented and whirled away. She was looking down on Earth from a great height. But the picture was wrong, there were no half-shades, the colours were all primary; an amorphous Jigsaw of emerald, crimson, turquoise, and rose-gold oil patterns, It was overlaid by regular grid lines. False-Colour Thematic Image, supplied the nodes. There was a town at the centre of the image, one which was curiously blurred around its outskirts. MINOSTAR RISING 417 Wisbech, Julia said, intuitively. There was no sound to hear, no tactile sensation present in this flat universe which had captured her, only the image itself. She could sense her grandfather’s presence by her side, They weren’t alone. Juliet, I’d like you to meet a very smart young lad. Goes by the name of Royan. Pleased to meet you, Miss Juliet. I’ve never met an heiress before. Thank you for unlocking my grandpa, Royan. It was a breeze; whoever wrote the virus was dumb. It didn’t seem that way when I was on the receiving end. I’m not surprised. You know, you ought to load some proper protection into your nodes. They’re terrific pieces of gear, wish I had some. But the guardian bytes you’re using leave them wide open. I used to think I had proper protection. / could write you some. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you, you’re a friend of Greg’s. And the PSP hates you. That makes you an A-one person in my book I’d take him up on that, Juliet, if I were you. Royan and I have been having a long chat. Boy knows what he’s talking about. Long? she asked. You’re operating in ‘ware time now, Miss Juliet. Fast fast