Hamilton, Peter F – Quantum Murder, A

The storm began to abate after midnight. Nicholas was back in his room watching a vermiform pattern of sparkling blue stars dance through his terminal’s cube like a demented will~’-the-wisp. The program was trying to detect the distinctive interference pattern caused by large dark-mass concentrations; if there was one directly between the emission point and Earth (a remote chance, but possible), the gamma rays should bend around it. Kitchener was always interested in the kind of localized spatial distortions such objects generated. His program was using up a good third of the Abbey’s lightware cruncher capacity. The kind of interference he was looking for was incredibly hard to identify. He had thought about making a start on the magnetosphere induction problem, but the dark mass project was much more interesting. It was worth enduring another of Kitchener’s tongue-lashings to be able to see the results as they came in from orbit. Dark-mass detection was well down the priority list of CNES’s in-house astronomers, it was exciting to think he might actually be ahead of them, up there at the cutting edge. Nicholas Beswick, science pioneer. He had been in Uri’s room for most of the evening after supper, along with Liz and Isabel. It had been a good evening, he reflected; they’d chatted, and the flatscreen had been tuned to Globecast’s twenty-four-hour news channel with the sound muted. And it really did look like the Scottish PSP was going A QUANTUM MURDER 33 to be overthrown at last. There was rioting in Glasgow and Edinburgh and the assembly building had been firebombed, the flames soaring impressively into the night despite the heavy rain. They had watched the text streamers running along the bottom of the flatscreen and talked, drinking another bottle of Sussex wine. The others never seemed to mind that he didn’t say as much as them, he was under no pressure to venture an opinion on everything. They had packed up around midnight, or at least, he and Isabel had left Un and Liz alone. He shut Uri’s door, thinking that for once he might find the nerve to ask Isabel into his room. She stood on the gloomy landing glancing at him expectantly. ‘It was a nice evening, thanks,’ he said. Pathetic. Her lips pressed together. It was her solemn expression, the one that made her look half-tragic. ‘Yes, I enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope there’s a new government in Scotland tomorrow. Liz will be over the moon.’ ‘Yes.’ Now, he thought, now say it. ‘Goodnight,’ he said meekly. ‘Goodnight, Nick.’ And she’d walked off to her room. Surely if a girl liked a boy she was supposed to show it: some small word or deed of encouragement? But she hadn’t actually discouraged him. He clung to that. If it hadn’t been for the fact he could never keep his mouth shut Nicholas might have asked Cecil for advice. Cecil never had any trouble chatting up girls when they visited the Old Plough. The clouds above the valley were disintegrating, pale beams of moonlight probed down through the tattered gaps. Nicholas looked up from the cube, watching them shiver across the undulating parkland. After the uniform darkness of the storm they seemed preternaturally bright. Trees and bushes imprinted on his retinas, ragged platinum silhouettes which Vanished almost as soon as they were revealed. A face looked back at him through the glass. It was a Woman, probably not much older than him; her features were 34 PETER F. HAMILTON slightly indistinct, misted somehow, but she was certainly attractive, with thick red hair combed back from her forehead. All he did was gawk for a second, his thoughts shocked into stasis, a gelid fingertip stroking his spine. Then he realized her spectral image must be a reflection. She was standing behind him! He yelped in panic, and jerked round in the chair, a thousand-volt current replacing his normal nervous impulses. There was nobody there. He twisted back to stare at the window. There was no face. Slowly, his shoulders were trembling faintly, he let out a long sigh. Idiot! He must have been dozing, dreaming. The clock on the bedside cabinet read quarter-past one. Too late, Nicholas, he told himself wanly. Besides, since when did beautiful women ever come stealing into your bedroom in the middle of the night? He cancelled the gamma ray search program. That was when he heard somebody talking on the landing outside, two people, voices murmuring softly. The chilly breath of static ~’~shed down his back again; but he was wide awake now. He frowned, concentrating, filtering out the intermittent patter of residual rain on the window. He knew one of them was Isabel, by now he could have plucked her voice out of hell’s bedlam. Curiosity warred with dread, he wanted to know what she was doing, he was terrified of making a fool out of himself. But if he didn’t go to the door quickly, the chance to do either would be lost. In the end it was the thought of having to live with not knowing, spending days wondering while his over-active imagination summoned up grotesque scenarios, which propelled him up out of the chair. He turned the brass door handle, already trying to think of an excuse. I was just going to fetch something from the library, my toilet’s blocked… Feeble. There was only a single biolum globe illuminating the landing, its weak pink-white lambency disfiguring the familiar corridors and twisting the proportions of the stark wooden chairs outside each door. Long serpentine shadows dappled the walls, veiling the vague figures depicted in the dusty hanging tapestries behind a crepuscular fog. A QUANTUM MURDER The two girls had their backs to him, walking with a measured compa~iionable pace towards the stairs. They stopped as soon as the bright fan of light from his room splashed out into the landing, and slowly turned towards him. Rosette was wrapped in a jade-green silk kimono, embellished with fantastical topaz griffins. She was obviously riding some kind of high, he’d seen enough of that at Cambridge to tell; black sun pupils, dawdling movements. Probably Naiad, a sophisticated derivative of street-syntho, guaranteed no bad trips, no cold turkey. The vat in the lab downstairs was elaborate enough to produce it. Isabel was still in her jeans, held up by a braided leather belt she’d fastened with a big loop tucked back into her waistband. She h~d taken off her blouse, leaving just a plain black bra to cup her high, exquisitely shaped breasts. Nicholas stared at her with lightheaded dismay, the kind of sensation he got whenever his father butchered spring lambs. The scene and all it implied was too macabre, too lascivious to take in. In the gloom behind the girls he could see the red-headed woman again, all of her this rime. She was tall and broad shouldered, wearing some kind of jacket with a long skirt. He blinked, dizziness forcing him to grip the door to stop ~unself falling. His skin was ice cold, needled with hot beads of sweat. He thought he was about to be sick. The world buckled alarmingly, sight and sound dissolving under a suffocating wave of heat. He was hallucinating, he was sure of it, the only explanation, trapped in a terrif~jing lOop of nightmare. When his vision shimmered back into focus the phantoiD woman had gone. But Isabel and Rosette were still solidly, nndeniably present. A corner of Rosette’s mouth lifted in a lazy chaffing smile, as if she was glad he’d interrupted them. ‘Adults only, Nicky, darling,’ she said in a throaty voice. ‘Sorry.’ He looked at Isabel, a long, anguished appeal that this Wasn’t happening. All she did was give a minute shrug, a gesture of almost total indifference. It was a blow which hit him harder than the first shock of discovery. He stared in abject misery as they continued silently down 36 PETER F. HAMILTON the landing, Rosette’s feet unseen inside the kimono, giving the impression she was gliding above the carpet. Isabel had her shoulders square, lean bands of muscle shifting pliantly below the flawless skin of her tapering back. They walked all the way past the stairs, along to the north wing, swallowed up in the gloaming. Then orange shone out of the door Rosette opened. Kitchener’s suite of rooms. She didn’t even glance back to see if he was watching before she closed the door behind them. Why? He couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t on drugs. She wasn’t suffering from delusions. She was always so levelheaded. Not like him, having fantasy women and the agony of sexual treachery running loose in his brain, twisting his mind up until he could barely think. Nicholas clawed at his sheets, petrified the red-headed woman would materialize again, hoping in some perverse way that she would. Nothing made sense any more. Why? Was it a price the female students had to pay for admission? But he would have heard, the ones that refused would have run screaming to the tabloid channels. The moon had set now, leaving cold starlight to kiss the valley. He could hear lost gusts of wind swirling round the eaves, gurgles of water from the overflowing lakes. Why? She didn’t have to do it. Not with Kitchener. Not with Rosette. So she must want to. Why? Why? Wky?

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