A Quantum Murder

by Peter F. Hamilton

  "And to get inside the Abbey you have to be cleared by the security system," Greg murmured. "Neat." He turned to Vernon Langley. "English Telecom should be able to provide you with an itemized log for the datanet. Check through it and see if there were any unexplained datalinks established on Thursday night or Friday morning."

  "If it was a tekmerc operation, it was the best," Denzil said soberly. "The very best."

  * * * *

  The laboratory was virtually a caricature, Eleanor thought.

  Either that, or set designers on channel science fiction shows did more research than she had ever given them credit for. But it was a chemistry lab, not a physics one.

  The room was spacious, with a high ceiling, and the usual ornate mullioned windows, which helped to give it the Frankenstein feel. The glass-fronted cabinets were lined up along the walls. Three long wooden benches were spaced down the centre of the room. Each of them had a vast array of glassware on top, immensely complicated crystalline intestines of some adventuresome beast, plastic hardware units clamped around tubes and flasks, a spaghetti tangle of wiring and optical cable winding through it all. Small Ericsson terminals, augmented with customized control modules, were regulating each of the set-ups.

  Denzil led them to the middle bench. "Take a look at this." He was indicating one section of the glassware, spiral tubing and retorts surrounding what reminded Eleanor of an incubator. "We found it yesterday when we started classifying the equipment." He shot a wily look at Vernon Langley. "Recognize it?"

  The detective shook his head.

  "It's a syntho vat. High-quality stuff, too. Well above what you find on the street; this formula is similar to Naiad."

  "Were the students on it?" Greg asked.

  "Three of them were using it on Thursday night," Vernon said. We took blood samples as soon as they came into the station. Harding-Clarke, Spalvas, and Cameron. But the count was low, they're not addicts." He sighed. "Students experiencing life, it's a thrill for them, a little taste of adventure. I imagine bright sparks of that age could get bored very easily with this place."

  Eleanor thought he pronounced students with well-emphasized contempt.

  "And the other three?" Greg prompted.

  "Clean as newborns," Jon Nevin said. "Of course, all six of them had been drinking. They had wine at their evening meal, and then some more in their rooms later on."

  "But not enough to unhinge them?"

  "No."

  "Kitchener was taking the syntho as well," Vernon said. "It was in the pathology report. Expanding his mind, no doubt. Some such nonsense. He was always on about that, his New Thought ideology."

  Greg exhaled loudly. "At his age. Christ."

  "And he encouraged the students," Jon Nevin said disapprovingly.

  "Yeah."

  "And this," Denzil said theatrically. "Is something we found this morning." He rapped at another chunk of the glassware on the third bench. It had more hardware units than the rest. "You ought to know what this is, Greg, there's a smaller version in your head."

  "Neurohormone synthesizer."

  Well done. Themed neurohormones, to be precise. Makes your blanket educement look old fashioned."

  "Kitchener was using neurohormones?" Greg asked in surprise. "Psi stimulants?"

  "Yes," said Vernon. "Quite heavily, as far as we can determine. It's all in the pathology report."

  "What sort of psi themes?" Eleanor asked.

  "Ah, can't be as helpful there as I'd like," Denzil said. "There is a low-temperature storage vault full of themed ESP-educer ampoules. But those are a standard commercial type from ICI; he was a regular customer, apparently. However, there's also a small batch of unmarked ampoules which I'll send off for analysis, although we may have problems with identifying it, especially if it's something experimental. We don't have a large database on the stuff. As far as I know this is the first time it's ever cropped up in a police investigation."

  "We may be able to help you there," Greg said. "I'll find out if Event Horizon has any information on neurohormones."

  "Fine."

  "Do you know what he was using the ESP theme neurohormone for?"

  "Apparently it was part of his research, according to the students," Vernon said. "He wanted to perceive electrons and protons directly."

  "Get a meeting with Ranasfari set up," Greg told Eleanor. "I want to know if there's any connection between these neurohormones and the research work Kitchener was doing for Event Horizon."

  "Right." She flipped open her cybofax.

  "You will inform us, won't you?" Vernon said.

  "Yeah," Greg growled back.

  He tried not to flinch at the stab of animosity. Eleanor diplomatically busied herself with the cybofax file. That good old Mindstar reputation again.

  Greg ran a forefinger along a module on the top of the neurohormone synthesizer. "Is this the stuff in the unmarked ampoules?"

  "No idea," Denzil replied. "It would be the obvious conclusion, but the control 'ware has been wiped clean just like the Bendix. There's no record of the formula they were producing." He pointed at the dark grey plastic casing of the hardware modules which were integrated into the refining structure. "These units contained endocrine bioware. Very complex, very delicate. They are dead now."

  "How?"

  "Somebody poisoned them. They infused a dose of syntho into the cells. It was all quite deliberate."

  "The murder was tied in with his work," Greg said quietly.

  "If this was his work, then yes."

  Chapter Six

  The silver-white Dornier executive tilt-fan dropped through the cloud layer above the imposing condominiums and exclusive shopping arcades of Peterborough's New Eastfield district and banked to starboard, heading out over the Pens basin. Julia ordered her nodes to cancel the company's last quarter financial summaries which they were displaying behind her eyes. They would be landing soon.

  Another bloody ceremony. Wheel me on, point me at the cameras, and wheel me off again. Might as well use a cyborg.

  But it was important, a crux in company development, so she had to go.

  When isn't it important, vital?

  She was sitting on a white leather settee in the lounge at the rear of the little plane. Alone for once. Her staff were in the forward cabin. She imagined them swapping gossip, laughing; it would have been easy to go forward and join them, or invite them back. They weren't that inhibited around her. But it didn't fit her mood.

  Being alone was becoming a precious commodity these days

  It might have been her mood, the broodiness which came from anticipating the meetng later in the day, which had prompted her rather drastic image overhaul this morning.

  She had dressed up in full Goth costume, improvising with a three-thousand-pound velvet Deveraux skirt, a scarlet one, sweeping round her ankles, then black suede boots from Paris, five gold Aztec pendants hanging on thin leather straps round her neck, and a black web-like jacket from Toska's. Her maid had darkened her hair and given it a tangled arrangement. They had argued about make up; eye wings of black mascara on her complexion would have been criminal, so in the end they settled for some strategic highlighting. She was quite pleased with the effect; it was far less stuffy, and lots more fun, than yesterday's outfit at the spaceplane roll out. It would certainly make people take notice.

  She looked out of the window. All she could see ahead was mud; dun-brown supersaturated peat tinged with an elusive grey-green hue from the algae blooms. It came right up to the city's eastern boundary, slopping around the ruins of the Newark district, long regular silt dunes freckled with bricks and fractured timbers marked the outline of drowned streets.

  Newark had lacked that crucial extra metre when the tide of sludge came oozing and gurgling across the Fens.

  Three parallel green lines stabbed out from the southern end of the city, the Nene's new course, stretching into the gloomy heat haze which occluded the eastern horizon. It had been dredged deep enough
to allow cargo ships to sail right into the heart of the city where a flourishing deep-water port had been built. The banks were gene-tailored coral, covered with thick reeds, intended to prevent the mud from dribbling back in, although two dredgers were on permanent duty sailing up and down the channel, scooping out the sludge which did build up, and flinging it back over the banks.

  The Nene would have to be widened soon, she knew, the volume of traffic it could carry was approaching its limit. Just like everything else in Peterborough these days. The city's own success was turning against it, stalling further development.

  Ninety per cent of the Fens refugees had retreated to Peterborough, establishing a vast shanty town along the high ground of the western perimeter. They'd found dry, high land, and a working civil administration; it was enough, they were through with running, they sat there and refused to budge.

  The PSP was faced with a nightmare of relief work at the worst possible time, when every resource in the country was being deployed against the ecological destruction and economic collapse. The refugees needed work and housing. The Treasury certainly couldn't fund the kind of massive schemes necessary, so the Party was forced into making an exception to its ideological golden rule of repudiating any form of foreign investment, the bogeyman of economic imperialism.

  Peterborough was declared a special economic zone, and huge concessions granted to any investors, planning regulations became virtually nonexistent. Money began to pour in, and new housing estates rose up to replace the shacks of plastic and corrugated iron. They served as dormitory villages for the fast-growing industrial estates occupied by kombinate subdivisions and the supply companies which sprang up to provide them with specialist services. Their products were exported, duty free, all over the globe, helping to pay off the loans for the housing. A self-contained micro-economy, free from the decay and chaos rampant throughout the rest of the country. Peterborough was unique in the PSP decade, prospering while every other English city declined. After the PSP fell Philip Evans selected it as his headquarters when he moved Event Horizon back to England. With its plethora of modern industries to supply the company's cyber-factories with components it was an ideal location.

  But now, four years later, Event Horizon was suffering from space restrictions inside the city boundaries. New cyberfactories were being parcelled out around the rest of the country, easing the load. But they were subsidiaries, noncritical; what Julia wanted was a nucleus, a focal point for administration, research, finance, security, and the strategically important giga-conductor manufacture. The data age notwithstanding, distance brought control problems, exacerbated by England's shoddy transport links. It all added up to reductions in efficiency that even her grandfather's NN core couldn't compensate for. They needed the major installations in one area, under their collective thumb.

  She sighed lightly, shifting in her seat. Management problems were like a fission reaction, each one triggering a dozen more. And if they weren't dealt with swiftly and correctly, they would soon multiply beyond her ability to solve.

  Still, at least she'd circumvented the expansion problem. For a price.

  The communication console bleeped for attention. The call was tagged as personal, Eleanor's code. Julia leaned over the leather settee's arm rest, pecked the keyboard to let it through, and Eleanor's face appeared on the bulkhead flat-screen. She was sitting at some kind of table, scratched wooden surface piled with printouts. Her forehead was damp with perspiration, she looked irked.

  "That bad?" Julia said quickly. Get in fast, and be disarming. Eleanor was more big sister than a friend, she could tell her anything without ever having to worry about it being splashed by the tabloid channels. But at the same time she could be a trifle formidable. And not just physically; Eleanor was only three years older, but her adversarial background had given her self-determination in abundance.

  "No messing," Eleanor said.

  "Where are you?"

  "Oakham police station. We've just arrived back from taking a look round Launde Abbey." Eleanor shivered. "God, I hope we catch the killer soon."

  "Did Greg find anything out there?"

  "Several ambiguities."

  "So it wasn't one of the students?"

  "Can't say for sure; he's interviewing them now. We should know in an hour or so. But assuming none of them did it, I have some requests."

  "Sure, shoot."

  "First we want to talk to Ranasfari about these wormhole theories he had Kitchener working on. Tomorrow afternoon, we're both busy in the morning."

  Julia loaded a memo into her node's general business file. "He'll be at Wilholm waiting for you."

  "Fine. Second, I take it Event Horizon has a biochemical research division?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Anyone there conversant with neurohormones?"

  Access Biochemical Division Files, Research Facility Departments: Current Projects and Specializations. The list slipped through her mind, a cool jejune stream of bytes.

  "Yes," she said. "We have two projects running. After Greg's last case for us, Morgan decided it would be a good idea to introduce psychics into the security division. I thought it best that we weren't dependent on external sources."

  "Good. There were some ampoules of themed neurohormones at Launde. I want them analysed. The police forensic lab is good, but this is somewhat out of their league. No doubt that is going to bruise some pride ..." Stress lines appeared at the corners of Eleanor's mouth as she tightened her jaw muscles. Julia remained prudently silent. "Well, the hell with them," Eleanor said. "We need to know what the theme is as soon as possible, please."

  "Weren't they labelled?"

  "No. The endocrine bioware which produced them was deliberately killed, and its control 'ware was wiped. There are no records. It was one of Kitchener's private projects. But it's obviously an important one for the murderer to single it out like this. Nothing else in the lab was touched."

  "I see. No problem. I'll have a courier at Oakham within the hour."

  "Which brings us to the final point," Eleanor said with a baleful relish that had Julia squirming. "Greg and I have just become media megastars again. Julia, there are hundreds of bloody reporters here! They've already connected us with you, God knows what conspiracy theories they'll be producing by the evening bulletins."

  Julia closed her eyes, and let out a groan. "Oh, dear Lord." She should have foreseen it. Hindsight was so bloody wonderful.

  "A bit of intervention on your part wouldn't hurt," Eleanor said. "We're not circus performers, you know."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't know about the reporters. I'll do whatever I can, I promise."

  Eleanor gave her a quizzical look. "All right. But for God's sake, no strong-arm tactics, don't make it any worse."

  "I won't," she said meekly.

  "Sure. See you tomorrow."

  "Yah, unless one of the students did it," Julia said.

  "Don't hold your breath. Bye, Julia."

  "Bye."

  Eleanor's image blanked out.

  "Bugger!" Julia yelped. Why could nothing ever be simple?

  * * * *

  A pre-Warming map superimposed over the quagmire would have told Julia the Dornier was descending over Prior's Fen, six kilometres due east of Peterborough. Below the extended undercarriage bogies thick concrete groyne walls were holding back the mud from a hexagonal patch of land three hundred metres in diameter. Five large Hawker Siddeley cargo hovercraft were docked to raft-like floating quays outside; and a couple of saucer-shaped McDonnell Douglas helistats were drifting high overhead, their big rotors spinning idly as they waited for the ceremony to finish so they could start unloading.

  I wonder how much it's costing to keep them up there, she thought. The nodes would tell her, but somehow she didn't want to know. Everything to do with PR seemed such a folly. Yet all the experts swore by it, the God of good publicity, of customer relations, being and being seen to be a good corporate citizen.

  Fan nacell
es on the Dornier's canards and wings rotated to the vertical, and the plane touched down on one of the floating quays. There was only Rachel Griffith, Ben Taylor, her second bodyguard, and Caroline Rothman, her PA, in the cabin forward of the lounge. For once Morgan had stayed in his office. It must mean he trusts me, she thought, or more likely Rachel.

  She wished Patrick was there as she stepped out of the plane and into the most appalling humidity. Just someone who could hold her hand, in both senses; she always hated the way the crowds stared at her during these events. But Patrick was busy in Peterborough, helping to establish an office for his family company.

  Steeling herself against the incursive eyes, she smiled as her boots reached the rough metal grid of the floating quay. She put on a very foppish wide-brimmed hat of black suede, grateful for the scant relief it offered from the sun. There was a strong whiff of sulphur coming off the quagmire, mingling with brine.

  Stephen Marano, the project engineer, trotted up to greet her. He was in his mid-forties, stuffed into a light-grey suit which didn't really fit. He was a perfect choice to boss the labour crews, but completely out of his depth talking to her. His smile flickered on and off, words got tangled in his throat, he seemed taken aback by her Goth get-up.

  She wanted to tell him not to say anything, ease his suffering a bit, but he would only interpret that as a rebuke, so she let him struggle on and introduce her to the fifteen-strong management team of architects and site engineers. A long exercise in tedium and discomfort.

  Three channel camera crews followed the procedure from a distance. She recognized one of the teams from the Globecast logo on their jackets.

  After the introductions they all trooped down a long ramp to the foot of the excavation. Julia realized they were actually below the level of the mud outside. Yellow JCB diggers were parked on the black peat, crews standing around them. They whistled and cheered as she went past. She didn't actually hear any jeers, but there were plenty of wolf-whistles. Stephen Marano winced at each of them.