Mindstar Rising

by Peter F. Hamilton

  "I feel sorry for that girl, you know," Gabriel said. She was looking out of the window at the clumps of hermes oak scrub along the side of the road. Beyond the bushes was a near-vertical drop to the ruffled waters of the estuary. In the distance were the dark shapes of the hydro-turbine islands, moon-glazed foam rumbling round them.

  "Katerina? Who wouldn't?" Greg said.

  "No, Katerina is pure survivor breed. I meant Julia; she has no real family, few friends her own age. And you're on the borderline yourself, now, despite her token of esteem."

  "How do you figure that?"

  "If Ellis hasn't left anything in the Crays, or whatever, about Kendric or the organiser, how do you think she'll feel about you? You've managed to be right all the way so far. She trusts you because of that. Implicitly. Screw up now and it'll all end in tears."

  "Not a chance. I know Ellis's type down to his last chromosome. A hyper-worrier. He's a little-man intermediary who's lucked into a real super-rank underclass operation; elated and terrified all at once. He'll have taken precautions. That means a way of pointing his finger from beyond the grave."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yep. Ellis's major problem was that he never got round to telling his paymasters he was insured." Greg slowed as the car in front turned off on to the sliproad for the bridge ahead, then accelerated again as the cutting walls rose on either side.

  Gabriel said: "I still don't think Ellis would take such—"

  The front nearside tyre blew out.

  The Duo veered violently to the left, straight towards the near-vertical slope of the cutting. Greg saw sturdy grey-white saplings, impaled in the headlight beams, lurching towards him. The steering wheel twisted, wrenching at his hands, nearly breaking his grip. He jerked it back as hard as he could, with little or no effect. The Duo's three remaining tyres fought for traction on the coarse cellulose surface. It was slewing sideways, screeching hard. A flamboyant fan of orange sparks unfolded across the offside window. That alpine-steep incline was sliding across the windscreen, rushing up on the side of the Duo. Horribly close. They'd spun nearly full circle and Greg could feel the tilt beginning as the car began to turn turtle. Then there was a boneshaker impact, a damp thud, and they were disorientatingly, motionless. Silence crashed down.

  Soon broken.

  "Shitfire," Gabriel yelped. She was staring wild-eyed out of the windscreen, drawing breath in juddering gulps. "I didn't know!" She whipped round to look at him, frantic, frightened, entreating. Which was something he'd never ever seen in her before. And that alarmed him more than the blow-out.

  "I didn't know, Greg! There was nothing. Nothing, flick it! Do you understand?"

  "Calm down."

  "Nothing!"

  "So what! You're tired, and I'm knackered. It's only a bloody tyre gone pop, small wonder you didn't see it. Non-event." Even as he spoke he could feel some submerged memory struggling for recognition. Something about the tyre performance guarantee. Puncture-proof? That bonded silicon rubber was tough stuff.

  Thankfully, Gabriel subsided into a feverish silence; eyelids tightly shuttered, mind roaming ahead. Did she suffer visions of her gland pumping furiously? He'd never asked.

  Greg concentrated on his hands, still clenching the wheel, white-knuckled. They wouldn't let go.

  What appeared to be a eucalyptus branch was lying across the windscreen. Its purple and grey leaves shone dully in the waning rouge emissions from the office block's sign.

  Looking out of his side window he could see the bridge nearly directly overhead. They'd only just missed crashing into the concrete support wall.

  "Greg—" Gabriel said in a low frightened moan.

  Upright shapes were moving purposefully through the dusky shadows outside the sharp cone of light thrown by the Duo's one remaining headlight.

  Greg stared disbelievingly at them for one terrible drawn-out second. "Out!" he shouted, His door opened easily enough and he was diving out, racing for the back of the Duo. A mini-avalanche of loose earth and gravel had digested the rear of the car. His hands flapped across his dinner jacket, hitting every pocket. Panicking. Trying to remember where the fuck he'd left the Armscor stunshot.

  There were three of them approaching; two men, one woman. Walking down the middle of the road with a glacial panache, cool and unhurried. A confidence that'd tilted over into sublime arrogance.

  The Armscor had gone, swept away by the tide of pitiful sloppiness he was screwing his life with. Given it to Victor? Suzi? Left it in Walshaw's office?

  He stuck his head above the Duo's roof, ducking down quickly. The ambush team was closing in remorselessly, empty silhouettes against that idiotic phallic sign and its happy floating Disney projections. They were still carefully avoiding the headlight beam.

  Gabriel's door was jammed up against the earth of the cutting; her frantic shoving couldn't budge it more than halfway open. The gap wasn't nearly large enough for her bulk.

  One of the men levelled a slender long-barrelled rifle at her. Greg squirreled away his profile: leather trousers tucked into calf-high lace-up boots, last-century camouflage jacket, blind plastic band of a photon amp clinging to his face, designer stubble, small pony tail.

  "Mine," the man said.

  A narrow streak of liquid green flame spewing from the end of the rifle, and Gabriel was jerking about epileptically.

  Greg turned and ran for the slope of crumbling earth, clawing at the dense treacherous scrub lassoing his legs, keeping low. The eucalyptus saplings were neatly pruned, a bulbous flare of foliage on top and bare slim boles, providing a meagre cover. He grabbed hold of them in a steady swinging rhythm, hauling himself upwards, feet scrabbling for purchase. The embankment seemed to stretch out for ever. It was an animal flight. Blind instinct, equating the sliproad at the top of the embankment with the grail of sanctuary. Pathetic, some minute core of sanity mocked.

  "There," came the triumphant shout from below.

  The shot caught him three metres short of the summit, where the saplings and scrub had given way to a bald mat of grass which bordered the sliproad. The pain seared down his nerves like a lava flow. He saw his arms windmilling insanely, fingers extended like albino starfish.

  As he fell there was just one question looping through his brain. Why hadn't Gabriel known?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Greg woke to find he couldn't move. His toes and fingers were tingling, not so much pins and needles as pokers and knives; the aftermath of a stunshot charge. Arms and legs ached dully. Guts knotted tight, rumbling ominously. A livid collection of aggravated bruises and scrapes.

  His cortical node prevented the worst peaks of neural fire from stabbing into his brain, but the cumulative effect was atrocious.

  He opened his eyes, seeing greyness distorted by octagonal splash patterns. His whole body was quivering now, drumming against whatever hard surface he was lying on. The tingling bloomed into a sandpaper rasp which the cortical node hurriedly muted.

  Consciousness seemed like nothing but constant suffering. He instructed the node to disengage his nerves altogether. Sensation fell away, leaving him alone in grey nothingness. He closed his eyes and slept.

  At the second awakening his thoughts were clearer. He'd stopped bucking, still on his back and unable to move. Genuine tactile sensation had replaced the tingling. The surface he was lying on was vibrating faintly. Heavy machinery, somewhere not too far away. A stifled monotonous hum backed the supposition.

  He opened his eyes again, focusing slowly.

  Gabriel was lying beside him, shuddering, in the throes of stunshot backlash. Her mouth gaped, drooling beads of saliva.

  Greg tried to reach out to her, found his hands were immobilised under his back. There was a rigid bracelet about each wrist, bolted to the floor; it was the same for his ankles.

  Bloody uncomfortable.

  They were in a small empty compartment, metal walls, metal floor, metal ceiling. Painted grey. The only light was coming through a grille i
n the door.

  Greg blinked at that door, haunted by its familiarity. It was rectangular with curved corners, fastened by bulky latches. The last time he'd seen that particular arrangement was on board the Mirriam. "Oh, shit." And under way too, by the sound of it.

  Thinking logically, they'd have to be heading down the Nene. Or up? No, the river wasn't deep enough to take the Mirriam west of Peterborough. The Wash and the open sea, then.

  Next question: Why?

  Not just to dump them overboard. There were far simpler ways to dispose of bodies. Besides Kendric had gone to a great deal of trouble snatching them alive.

  Nothing pleasant, hundred per cent cert.

  "Greg?" Gabriel's voice was tiny, fearful. "Greg, it's gone."

  "What has?" His own voice wasn't much better. "No, wait, think before you speak. Remember they'll probably be listening."

  "Bugger that. My precognition won't work. I don't know what's going to happen to us."

  "You really gave your gland a workout snatching Katerina, remember? We all have to throttle back occasionally, nature never intended our brains to take the psi strain."

  "Shut up and listen, arsehole. There is absolutely nothing. I can't see a second into the future. I don't even know what you're going to say!" He could hear the fright bubbling through her voice. She was holding back a long, terrified scream.

  Hear it, but not sense it.

  The corrosive throb of overdriven synapses had faded, he must've been out for several hours. He'd recuperated enough to use the gland again. It began to discharge a murky cloud of neurohormones. But that secret gate into the psi universe remained firmly shut. He couldn't even perceive the glow of Gabriel's mind, not fifty centimetres from his own. Impossible. His skin crawled, goose bumps rising at the black sense of deprivation. Mortal again. After fifteen years it was hard.

  "Me too," Greg said. "Not a peep."

  The breath came out of her in a woosh. She let her head rest on the decking, staring into a private purgatory. "What have they done to us, Greg?"

  "They haven't done anything to us. You were using precognition right up until the Duo crashed. We didn't eat anything dodgy we certainly weren't infused with anything."

  "What then?"

  "Must be something which affects psi directly."

  "What?" she shouted.

  "I don't fucking know. Ask Kendric, he's the one into pilfering new discoveries before they even make it out of the laboratory."

  Gabriel closed rheumy eyes in anguish. "Funny, I always thought I didn't want to see the end coming. Now I'm sure it is coming I'd like to see it. Not knowing is too much like cold turkey."

  "Silly girl. You just want to see which of our escape plans works the best."

  "Escape plans," she snorted in a resigned amusement which nudged disapprobation. "Sure, Greg. Sure." After a while she asked, "What do you think they want us for?"

  "Information. They want to know what we've discovered of their operation, how much of that we've told Walshaw. Once they know that they'll see what they can salvage. Hopefully that isn't going to be much, we've done a pretty good job up to now."

  "Great. That makes me feel one hell of a lot better." She lapsed into sullen silence.

  Greg guessed they'd been lying in the blank metal cell for a couple of hours before the hatch swung open.

  It was Mark who drew the latches, accompanied by two more of Kendric's bodyguards. A biolum came on above them. After hours of dusk, the glare sent Greg's tear ducts into frantic action.

  "Still on your backs?" Mark gloated. "I thought I'd be pulling you off each other by now. Or aren't you up to that? Maybe fancy something different, animals and the like? I heard you gland freaks are kind've warped."

  Gabriel glared at him silently, realising just how nasty things could turn if she started antagonising him.

  Mark bent down and released Greg's legs with a complex-looking mechanical key.

  Greg was jerked roughly to his feet. Every ache and pain suddenly doubled in intensity. His legs nearly collapsed as a wave of nausea hit him. He saw the front of his dress shirt was stained by a long ribbon of dried blood; his nose had been bleeding again while he'd been unconscious.

  One of the bodyguards supported him as he stumbled out into the corridor. It didn't possess anything like the ostentation of the upper decks. Pipes ran along the walls, red letters were stencilled across small hatches. The engine noise was more pronounced.

  Another three bodyguards were waiting for him outside. Including Toby, who glowered with unconcealed menace.

  "Christ," Greg croaked. "I must scare you lot shitless."

  "Gonna have you, white boy," Toby whispered dangerously. "Gonna take you a-fucking-part."

  "Not yet, Toby," Mark said, pushing a shaky Gabriel ahead of him. "When the Man has finished with him."

  Greg was marched up and out on to the afterdeck. The sun was nearly full overhead. Well over six hours since they'd been snatched from the Duo. Would Walshaw have noticed? He'd told the security chief he would help to analyse the data in the Crays, but he hadn't given a specific time. Of course, Eleanor would be frantic, but would she ring Walshaw? And even if she did there was nothing to make him look here.

  At least he'd been right about 'here'. The Mirriam was sailing sedately down the Nene.

  The course the Nene took for the first thirty kilometres east of Peterborough was a new one. The PSP's delay in authorising construction of the city's port meant that the old river course had been lost at the start of the Warming, disappearing beneath the water and silt which laid siege to the city boundaries. A couple of years later, when the wharves' foundations were being laid, the dredgers cut a straight line from the port right out to the old estuary at Tydd Gote.

  Mirriam was following a huge container freighter out towards the Wash. There was another freighter trailing a couple of kilometres behind. They were the only things moving in a very confined universe. All Greg could see was river, sky, and high gene-tailored coral levees, covered in tall stringy reeds.

  The tide was full, just beginning to turn, showing a thin line of chocolate mud below the bottom of the reeds.

  Mirriam seemed to be losing ground on the freighter in front. Greg glanced over the taffrail to see four crewmen inflating two odd-looking craft on the edge of the diving platform. They were blunt-nosed dinghies with a couple of simple benches strung between the triplex tubing that formed the sides. A loose surplus of leathery fabric ran round the outside. It was only after a big fan, caged in a protective mesh, hinged up to the vertical at the rear of one of the dinghies that Greg realised they were actually hovercraft.

  Gabriel nudged him and he turned to see Kendric approaching. Mirriam's owner was wearing olive-green track-suit trousers and a light waterproof jacket. Hermione was at his side, as always; dressed in natty designer equivalents of her husband's attire. But it was the woman keeping a short distance behind who held Greg's attention.

  She was in her late twenties with a second chin just beginning to develop; her dumpy face was framed by straight jet-black hair, cut in a fringe along her eyebrows, falling to her shoulders at the sides. Her skin was dark and leathery, heavily wrinkled from excessive sun exposure.

  He was convinced that she was the woman he'd seen at the ambush. He could still see her slightly bulky frame in that trio walking calmly down the road.

  Kendric's gaze swept across Greg and Gabriel, utterly unperturbed. A cattleman checking his stock.

  "Put them in with Rod and Laurrie," Kendric said to Mark, "You and Toby come with us."

  "Yes, sir," Mark replied.

  "Postponed," Toby muttered in Greg's ear. "That's all."

  "Right, get them down there," Mark was saying.

  Kendric and Hermione began to descend the ladder to the diving platform. The crewmen were holding the fully rigged hovercraft steady in Mirriam's wake.

  "You'll have to take our cuffs off," Greg pointed out.

  "Maybe we'll just throw you down," sai
d Toby.

  "Take 'em off," Mark said. "And you two, don't think about jumping."

  Greg just managed the climb down the ladder, frightened his weak, trembling hands were going to lose their grip. He flopped down in the bottom of a hovercraft, exhausted and horribly woozy.

  Gabriel sat on a bench next to him, breathing heavily. One of the crewmen cuffed them both again.

  "Are you all right?" Gabriel asked, her face anxious.

  "Yeah."

  He heard the fan start up, an incessant droning whine. There was a surge of motion, then the deck tilted up as they climbed the levee wall. The dizziness returned.

  When they were down the other side, he struggled into a sitting position against the tough plastic of the gunwale, trying to take an interest in the journey. The sour-faced woman was perched on the rear bench, her waterproof zippered up against the occasional scythe of spray. Her hair was blowing about in the slipstream.

  One of the Mirriam's crewmen was up front, steering from behind a little Perspex windshield. A bodyguard was sitting behind him, giving Greg and Gabriel the occasional impersonal glance. At least Toby wasn't on board. He managed to get his eyes above the gunwale.

  It'd taken centuries to drain the original fenland marches and turn them into farmland; generations had laboured to liberate the rich black loam from the water, rewarded with the most fertile soil in Europe. The polar melt drowned them in eighteen months. The Fens basin wasn't a sea, it was mud, tens of metres thick with a tackiness gradient that varied from a few centimetres of weed-clogged salt water on the surface down to near-solid treacle.

  An ex-Fenman living in Oakham had once told Greg that it was possible to tell the age of a Fens house by looking at its doorstep. The older it was the more the loam would've dried out and contracted beneath it, leaving the doorstep high and dry. Really ancient cottages had a gap below the bottom of the stone and the ground.

  Greg couldn't see any doorsteps; on the few lonely farmhouses still visible he was hard pushed even to see the doors.