Mindstar Rising gm-1

by Peter Hamilton

  "I'd like you to get some of your security programmers hooked into the Event Horizon datanet," Greg said. "See if they can backtrack the hotrods if this second attack does happen."

  "Good idea, boy. I'll get Walshaw on it."

  Greg and Gabriel rose. He gave Julia an encouraging smile. "Don't worry, it's just a question of waiting to see which lead takes us to the organiser. After tomorrow's interviews our options should be clear enough to start making some headway."

  She couldn't draw as much comfort from his words as she would've liked. The promises were too vague. But at least he was trying to help her, some part of him cared.

  The two of them departed, leaving her alone in the study with the feverishly active memories of a dead man, and the hot rain swatting the window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Half-past two in the morning found Greg lying on his back, hands behind his head, staring up at the blackness which hid the bedroom ceiling. He could hear the reservoir's wavelets swishing on the shore outside.

  The deer had come to drink under cover of the night, venturing out of the new persimmon plantation at the back of Berrybut spinney. His fading espersense perceived their minds as small cool globes of violet light, timid and alert. Eleanor had been entranced with them for the first couple of weeks after she'd moved in, waiting up each night to see them slip furtively out of the trees.

  The afternoon rain had lowered the temperature appreciably, but sleep was impossible. Intuition was running riot inside his cranium, even though he'd ended the gland's secretions. Swirling random thoughts clumped together, producing an image. It didn't matter how many times he told himself to forget it, the image just kept reforming. The same one, over and over.

  Eleanor let out a soft hum, and wriggled slightly. He hoped he featured in that dream.

  No good. He wasn't going to sleep.

  Greg went through the usual mincing motions as he slid gingerly out of bed, making far more noise than if he'd just done it properly. Eleanor sighed again. He pulled the duvet up round her bare shoulders, then put on his towelling robe and went into the lounge.

  Through the chalet's front windows he could see the moonlight painting the checkerboard pattern of Hambleton peninsula's meadows and orange groves in mezzotint contrasts. Silent and serene. Strange how remote it seemed from the kind of global-class corporate battles fought only a few kilometres away in Peterborough. He sometimes wondered if a day would come when he wouldn't be able to leave, giving up on the external world and all its conflicts. And who would really be hurt if he did let go? Certainly not Eleanor.

  Greg closed his eyes, but instead of Rutland Water's landscape there was only the taunting image.

  Not this time, then.

  He disconnected the Event Horizon terminal's voice input, opting for the silence of the touchpad keyboard so Eleanor wouldn't be woken. That done, he began to set up a link to Gracious Services.

  Even Royan wasn't clear on where the circuit's name originated, but under its auspices England's hackers would pull data from any 'ware memory core on the planet—for a price.

  Greg logged into Leicester University's mainframe and entered a cut-off program that'd disengage the instant anyone tried to backtrack his call. Royan had written it for him years ago. He couldn't afford to be anything but ultra-circumspect dealing with Gracious Services. He didn't want any of its members uncovering his own identity and selling the information in turn—the ultimate irony. The average hacker had a moral code which made an alley tomcat a paragon of virtue by comparison. After confirming the cut-off's validity he routed the link through another cut-off in the Ministry of Agriculture on to the Dessotbank in Switzerland, crediting it with a straight ten thousand pounds New Sterling direct from Event Horizon's central account.

  After that it was just a question of establishing two more cut-offs, one in Bristol city council's finance mainframe, then on through the CAA flight control in Farnborough, and dialling the magic number.

  Gracious Services had a nonsense number, there was no phone on the end of it. But every English Telecom exchange computer in the country had been infiltrated with a catchment program that would slot the caller directly into the circuit.

  Never, not once, in all the years they were in power, did the PSP manage to tap the Gracious Services circuit, nor expunge the catchment program from Telecom's exchange computers. They tapped individual phones, and caught people using Gracious Services that way, but that was all. Rumour had it the card carriers used the circuit themselves on occasion.

  The terminal's flatscreen snowstormed for a second then printed:

  WELCOME TO GRACIOUS SERVICES.

  WE AIM TO PLEASE.

  DATA FOUND, OR MONEY RETURNED. NO ACCESS TOO BIG OR TOO SMALL.

  JUST REMEMBER OUR CARDINAL RULE: DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT!!!

  PLEASE ENTER YOUR HANDLE.

  Greg typed THUNDERCHILD, his old Army call-sign.

  GOOD MORNING THUNDERCHILD. YOUR UMPIRE IS WILDACE. WHAT SERVICE DO YOU REQUIRE?

  PHYSICAL LOCATION OF INDIVIDUAL.

  OK THUNDERCHILD, I'VE GOT SEVEN HOTRODS RARING TO BURN FOR YOU. IS THIS GOING TO BE A GLOBAL SEARCH?

  I BELIEVE THE INDIVIDUAL TO BE IN EUROPE, QUITE POSSIBLY IN ENGLAND.

  THIS IS THE WAY IT IS, THUNDERCHILD. A EUROPE-WIDE SEARCH WILL COST YOU FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NEW STERLING. IF WE GET A NEGATIVE RESULT, THAT MEANS YOUR TARGET ISN'T IN EUROPE, IT'LL ONLY COST YOU TWO THOUSAND. IF YOU WANT US TO RUN A GLOBAL SEARCH IT WILL COST YOU SEVEN THOUSAND, OK?

  RUN A EUROPEAN SEARCH FOR ME, WILDACE.

  YOU GOT IT. I HOLD THE MONEY. I DECIDE HOW IT'S SPLIT.

  SOUNDS GOOD.

  DEPOSIT FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS NEW STERLING INTO TIZZAMUND BANK ZURICH, ACCOUNT NUMBER WRU2384ASE.

  Greg entered Wildace's number, authorising the transfer from his Dessotbank account.

  OK THUNDERCHILD, YOUR CREDIT IS GOLDEN. WHO IS THE TARGET?

  The image coalesced in his brain, rock-solid, grinning arrogantly; and he typed: KENDRIC DI GIROLAMO.

  Greg's imagination painted the picture for him; seven people scattered across England, dark anonymous figures hunched over their customised terminals, mumbling into throat mikes, touchtyping, watching data flash through cubes. It was a race, the first one who satisfied Wildace they had the correct answer would get the money, less Wildace's commission. Reputations were made on the circuit. It took twenty or thirty runs, successful runs, before anyone could even think about going solo.

  Royan had trained himself on the Gracious Services circuit. He could've gone solo, running data snatches against kombinates for the tekmercs. But, of course, he had a different set of priorities.

  Greg sat back, wondering if he had time for a drink. He didn't have a clue how long the run was going to take. He didn't use the circuit often; the last time had been almost a year previously, tracing a money sink set up by Simon White's accountant.

  Whatever he asked for, Gracious Services invariably produced an answer. Their only failure to date had been confirming whether or not Leopold Armstrong had died the day the PSP was overthrown. They weren't alone. New Conservative inquisitors had drawn a blank. Even the combined ranks of the Mindstar Brigade vets had been stumped. Most people thought he was dead, including the surviving top-rank apparatchiks. Possibly trying to create a martyr, Greg thought, two years was an impossibly long time to remain hidden if he was alive.

  There had been very little of Downing Street left after the electron-compression warhead had detonated. The explosion created a deep glass-walled crater one hundred metres across, flattening every building for five hundred metres beyond its rim. Hundreds of silver rivulets scarred its slopes, molten metal which had solidified as it trickled downwards. The only human remnants were individual carbon molecules, mingling with the oily black pall clotting the air overhead.

  Some said the warhead was American, others Chinese. Both had denied involvement. But it had to be one of the two superpowers, they were th
e only nations who had mastered the technology.

  Neither had seemed a likely candidate to Greg. There had been talk in Turkey of the Northern European Alliance buying some electron-compression warheads from the Americans. The weapon that would turn the tide, was the squaddies' camp rumour. It could've been deployed to take out entire airfields or tank battalions, megatonnage blasts without the radiation and fallout of fission weapons. Rich man's nuke.

  Nothing had ever come of it. So Greg reckoned that if the Americans wouldn't hand them over to the Alliance, they were even more unlikely to give one to the urban predator gang which claimed to have smuggled it into Downing Street. Certainly the New Conservative inquisitors never bothered to find out.

  Greg had made his small contribution to the search for Armstrong, but for once not even his intuition could say whether the President had survived, he had no belief one way or the other. He just wished Armstrong dead dead dead; burning in Dante's hell for ever more.

  He gazed out of the chalet lounge's window while the unbidden reflections drifted past, bringing the associated emotions back with them, the elation and the suffering. Flames and laughter.

  Seventeen minutes after Gracious Services began the search, his terminal's flatscreen came alive again.

  GOT HIM FOR YOU, THUNDERCHILD. KENDRIC DI GIROLAMO CURRENTLY ON BOARD HIS YACHT MIRRIAM, DOCKED AT PETERBOROUGH'S NEW EASTFIELD MARINA, BERTH TWENTY-SEVEN.

  THANK YOU, WILDACE, Greg typed.

  NO PROBLEM. HOTROD HANDLED BLUEPRINCE BURNED HIM FOR YOU. SAYS IF YOU WANT ANOTHER RUN HE'LL BE HAPPY TO OBLIGE, FEE NEGOTIABLE.

  I'LL REMEMBER.

  PLEASURE TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU, THUNDERCHILD. WILDACE SIGNING OFF.

  So Kendric was in Peterborough, was he? Close to the action. How convenient.

  Greg made one final call, then headed back to the bedroom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The sheer number of Event Horizon facilities springing up in Peterborough after the Second Restoration, coupled with Wilholm's proximity, meant that the company had to establish a large finance division in the city. Julia used it as her de facto head office, so it was only natural that Morgan Walshaw should use it for his security division's command centre as well. It was a temporary arrangement while both divisions waited for the respective custom-built headquarters to be completed. The building they had moved into for the interregnum was the old Thomas Cook office block, situated at the top of a small bluff overlooking the Ferry Meadows estuary, on the western side of the town. In doing so they'd ousted the PSP Minorities Enhancement Council staff who had occupied it ever since currency restrictions put an end to the glories of package holidays.

  After Event Horizon had taken over, the company engineers immediately set about building a concrete embankment along the bluff to halt the erosion which was eating towards the foundations. At the base of it they planted three small lagoons of gene-tailored coral to house a set of tidal turbines which powered the finance division's gear. Seeing a building which wasn't plastered with the glossy black squares of solar-cells came as something of a novelty.

  The security office inside, which Greg and Gabriel had been loaned for interviewing the NN core team, was a cramped cell of a room with a metal table and three plastic chairs. It looked out towards Longthorpe, where gulls strutted about on the partially exposed mudflats.

  Emily Chapman left the office without looking round, her rigid back conveying stark disapproval. She had every right to be upset, Greg acknowledged. He was actually doing the interviews with the NN core team. He'd thought it politic; Gabriel had dropped into one of her best prickly sulks at having to examine his possible interviews with over two hundred and fifty of the security staff in the building, and told him to take a share of the load himself for a change. But she could've timed it better, though.

  The trouble was, Philip Evans had been right; the NN core team were all grade-A people—keen, loyal, honest, hardworking, churned out by Event Horizon's blandification programme. They hadn't taken kindly to his accusations.

  "Shit creek, and no messing." He could feel a neurohormone headache coming on. Thank God there had only been nine of them to question.

  "Don't swear," Gabriel snapped primly.

  "I've got a right. None of them leaked the information about the NN core. How are you doing with the security personnel?"

  "You wouldn't find anything."

  "What? None of them have any shameful secrets?"

  "They might well have, but if so they can certainly hide it from you."

  His unwinding espersense caught her gelid mind tone. Eggshell-walking time. "Bugger, you know what that means."

  "Dillan Evans."

  "Yeah, unless we can produce this mole pronto. And I'm now having serious doubts he ever existed. Christ, how am I going to tell Philip? Maybe I'll tell Julia first, she's pretty protective when it comes to her father. Can't say I blame Dillan, though, the man is totally fucked. Not rational."

  "Saved by the bell."

  "What?" His cybofax bleeped. "Oh."

  The call was a data squirt, a scramble code he knew by heart. Royan. His spirits lifted as the decrypted message rolled down the cybofax's little screen. Royan had found one of the hotrods involved in the blitz: Ade O'Donal, operating from Leicester under the handle Tentimes. Greg snapped the cybofax shut with a flourish; at last he could take some positive action, get out of dead company architecture and pull in hard information. When he glanced up Gabriel was already standing by the door, expectant. "Coming?" she asked.

  Greg drove past the ranks of company buses in the car park and out on to the A47.

  Getting under way didn't noticeably alter Gabriel's disposition. "Fascinating," she said. "The lovely Eleanor, a fully-fledged Trinity urban predator. The mind boggles."

  "I wish you'd make an effort. That girl's never said a single bad word about you. And God knows she's entitled."

  "Greg, you can't just abandon all your old mates in her favour, however besotted you are with her gymnast legs and top-heavy chest."

  He pulled his anger down to a tight incendiary ball. Anger never did any good, not against Gabriel. But it was fucking tempting to let fly once in a while. Not this time, though. He needed her. And she knew it. "Eleanor gets on perfectly well with the marine-adepts, and Royan has taken a shine to her."

  "That was the first time you'd been to see Royan for two months. You know how much that boy worships you."

  Fell into that one, he told himself. Just as she'd intended, guiding his conversation down the Tau line she'd selected.

  Greg gunned the Duo along the A47 above the flooded remains of Ailsworth. Her words had kindled not so much guilt as a sense of melancholy.

  Arguing with her when she was being this waspish was impossible. Whatever he said in his defence she'd have a parry honed and ready, the best of all possible answers. Besides, truthfully, he had neglected Royan. Eleanor made it easy to forget. Life and the future, rather than Royan, a shackle to an emetic past. He just wished Gabriel didn't use a sledgehammer to ram home the point.

  He was aware of her studying his face intently. She gave a tart nod and leant back into the seat cushioning.

  The last section of road leading into Leicester cut through a banana plantation. Methane-fuelled tractors chugged between the rows of big glossy-leafed plants, hauling vast quantities of still-green fruit in their cage trailers. Cutter teams moved ahead of the tractors, machetes flashing in the sun.

  Incorporated in the city boundary sign was the prominent declaration: PSP Free Zone.

  "Oh yeah?" said Gabriel.

  Greg let the snipe ride, though he conceded she had a point. Leicester council had earned a reputation for sycophancy during Armstrong's presidency; it was one of the last to acknowledge the Party's perdition.

  That obedience was the root of its downfall; a numbing historical repetition, those showing the most loyalty receiving the least. With such devotion assured, the PSP had no need to pump in bribe money. Leicest
er had declined as Peterborough had risen. Now the city's New Conservative-dominated council was striving hard to obliterate the image of the past in an attempt to attract hard-industry investment.

  "Give them a chance," Greg said. "It's only been two years."

  "Once a Trot, always a Trot."

  "Exactly where would you be happy living?" he asked in exasperation.

  "Mars, I expect. Turn left here."

  "I know."

  He turned off the Uppingham Road and nudged into the near-solid file of bicycle traffic along Spencefield Lane. The big old trees whose branches had once turned the road into a leafy tunnel were long dead. New sequoias had been planted to replace them. They were grand trees, but Greg couldn't help wondering whether they were a wise choice if the residents were aiming for permanency; give them a couple of centuries and the sequoias would be skyscraper-high.

  The original trees had been trimmed into near-identical pillars six metres high, supporting giant cross-beams over the road. Each arch was swathed in a different-coloured climbing rose. The sun shone through the petals, creating a blazing sequence of coronal crescents. It was like driving under a solid rainbow.

  Greg slowed the Duo to a walking pace as they passed the entrance to an old school. Cars were clustered along the verge ahead, sporty Renaults, several Mercs, one old Toyota GX4. Image cars.

  "Shouldn't there be sailboards strapped on top of them?" Gabriel said under her breath.

  Greg concentrated on house numbers, praying she'd snap out of it before long. Of course, he could always ask her when her mood was due to end. He clamped down on a grin. "That's the address."

  The house was hidden behind a head-high brick wall that had a hurricane fence on top, a thick row of evergreen firs hid most of the building from the road. The gate was a sturdy metal-reinforced chainlink, painted white. Cameras were perched on each side, their casings weather-dulled.

  "He's having a party," Gabriel said, with facetious humour disguising the tingle of nerves Greg knew would be there.