‘You knew all along,’ Eleanor said, she was hovering between anger and bemusement. Undecided. ‘I guessed all along,’ Greg temporized. And Lord preserve us if she decides on anger. They were sitting on the circular bed in Nicholas’s room. Au the furniture was still in place, but swathed in plastic sheeting, embargoed by the forensic team, although there ~iad been no need for the wholesale dismantling exercise which had occurred in Kitchener’s room. Nicholas had claimed the chair behind the desk, the translucent plastic rustling at each tiny movement. He had shrugged off his reticence as Greg explained his hunch about the ghost and the retrospection neurohormone. Asking questions, making observations. Almost behaving like a regular person. Ranasfari was sitting on the window-seat in a virtual trance State. One hand stroked the stonework absently. Greg wondered what ghosts Launde had conjured up for him. Gabriel had listened to him explain with a smile blinking on and off. She had assumed that knowing air of elder Sister tolerance he remembered so well. Vernon, Amanda, and Denzil were grouped together in 236 PETER F. HAMILTON m’utual confusion, attentive but saying little, swapping moody, baffled glances. ‘You are saying this looking-back notion has already worked?’ Amanda asked. ‘No,’ Greg said. ‘Just that the retrospection neurohormone will work. I had some reservations at first, you see.’ Eleanor’s hand squeezed his leg playfully. ‘You wait till I get you home, Gregory.’ ‘But… Oh, I don’t know.’ Amanda’s arms flapped in expressive dismay. ‘You really think this drug is going to let you look back and see who murdered Kitchener?’ ‘She has pervaded the correct tau co-ordinates,’ Nicholas said. ‘I saw her. Dressed exactly as she is now.’ Amanda’s eyebrows shot up. Probably never heard him speak unless he’s been spoken to before, Greg thought. ‘So what would happen if Eleanor doesn’t take the neurohormone?’ Gabriel asked. Her whole attitude was pure wickedness. ‘We know it works, so why don’t we give it to someone else? Vernon here, he’s a likely lad, and it is his investigation.’ ‘Behave,’ Greg said. The others wouldn’t be able to tell how serious she was. Gabriel took some getting used to. He’d known her for close on sixteen years, through the good times and the bad, and he wasn’t sure he really understood her. Made for interesting company, though. ‘Perfectly legitimate question.’ She affected injured innocence. ‘Nicholas says he saw her, so what would happen if she doesn’t go?’ ‘You and your paradoxes,’ Eleanor muttered. ‘Nothing would happen,’ Ranasfari said. ‘As I explained yesterday, quantum mechanics eradicates any inconsistency. The ghost which Nicholas witnessed originates from a universe in which Eleanor will infuse the neurohormone. There are others in which she does not.’ ‘Another me,’ Eleanor said wonderingly. ‘This version does me fine,’ Greg said. But there was an image in his mind he couldn’t shake free; a million Eleanors saying yes and infusing the neurohormone, another million A QUANTUM MURDER 237 pandering to Gabriel’s whim, and refusing. Universes torn asunder. And never the twain shall meet. Eleanor smiled at him, hand gripping tighter. ‘Well what’s it going to be, then?’ he asked. ‘Oh, I’ll infuse it, of course.’ She looked at Nicholas, her smile turning impish. ‘I’m sorry I’m going to startle you last Thursday night.’ ‘That’s all right.’ His eyes shone adoringly. Greg had the uncomfortable thought that Eleanor and Nicholas were actually both the same age. Only chronologically though, an evil voice said inside his mind.
Eleanor lay down on the bed and let Denzil fit the somnolence induction loop round her head. A pearl-white tiara with a coil of cable connecting it to a slim oblong box of blue plastic. It reminded Greg of the neural-jammer collars at Stocken. The technology was the same. ‘You should be able to reach down the landing into Kitchener’s bedroom without any trouble,’ Gabriel said. ‘I could tell what was going to happen to a general area about a kilometre across. Or if I fixated on a person, I could track him three or four days into the future even if he went to Australia.’ ‘She used to fixate on a lot of men,’ Greg told the room at large. Nicholas started to giggle. ‘Bugger you, Mandel.’ ‘I’ll be happy if I can just manage to find the Abbey last Thursday,’ Eleanor said. ‘You did,’ Nicholas said. ‘Or you do, I don’t know which.’ ‘Shall we just get on with it,’ Eleanor said. Greg could feel the nerves building in her belly. ‘OK.’ He sat beside her, plumping up a pillow, then took her hand. Her grip was strong, in search of reassurance, of a rock of stability. Denzil handed him the somnolence induction box. There Were three buttons and a small liquid-crystal display on the front. A colunm of black numbers changed occasionally below a row of symbols he didn’t recognize. 238 PETER F. HAMILTON ‘I’ve preset it,’ Denzil said. ‘Press this button and she should be under in five seconds.’ ‘Right.’ He rested his forefinger lightly over the button. Hoping to God he wouldn’t have to use it. Gabriel held up an infuser tube. ‘You want me to do this?’ ‘Please,’ said Eleanor. Gabriel bent over her, face sober and professional, and pressed the tube to her neck, just over the carotid. ‘Keep your eyes dosed,’ Gabriel instructed. ‘You’ll be seeing enough visions without trying to untangle optical images as well.’ Eleanor’s eyes closed and she clamped her jaw shut, facial muscles hard as stone. Greg ordered a secretion – gland thudding away like a second heartbeat – and joined her in the country of the mind.