The Mandel Files, Volume 1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Bloody right, boy. Something like this would bring the fruitcakes pouring out of the woodwork. Everyone and his grandmother would want to be loaded into an NN core.’

  ‘Somebody outside Event Horizon already knows, though, Grandpa.’

  ‘Don’t remind me, girl. At least they’ve not made it public, for whatever reason. Probably afraid of losing whatever advantage they’ve got over the other kombinates. That’ll be something for you to watch for, Juliet, if they do get me. Whichever bastard is the first to put the pressure on you for a low licensing-fee, they’re the ones.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ she said, quietly insistent. ‘Nobody’s going to get you.’

  ‘Are your security programmers trying to backtrack the hotrods behind the blitz?’ Greg asked Walshaw.

  ‘Yes, although I don’t hold out much hope of success. The hacker community is a hard one to crack, our best chance is if a rumour escapes. Someone bragging, stoned or drunk.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, I have a contact in that area.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Philip.

  ‘Tell you, you pay me for results, and that’s what you’ll get. But your money doesn’t entitle you to know my sources. Without confidentiality I’d never be able to hang on to them.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me.’ Philip shovelled on the sarcasm, thick and dripping.

  ‘Sounds like a reporter,’ Julia muttered tartly.

  ‘I’m reassembling the team which built the NN core for you to interview,’ Walshaw told Greg. ‘We disbanded them after Mr Evans was successfully translocated. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two. They’re all still employed by us.’

  ‘Right then, in the mean time I’ll get started on Ranasfari’s research team,’ Greg said briskly. ‘Oh, by the way, Julia?’

  She looked up, half smiling, expectant.

  ‘Who’ve you told that your Grandpa’s still intact?’

  ‘No one!’ It emerged as an indignant squawk. Her mind flamed like a solar flare from high-energy outrage. No guilt, no subterfuge.

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘Sorry, just checking that …’

  ‘He’s my grandpa!’

  ‘Juliet, shush. Greg’s doing exactly what I asked him here for.’

  She shut up, but spiked Greg with an evil glare.

  He swivelled round to look enquiringly at Walshaw.

  ‘I have never told anybody that Philip Evans’s memories are intact, nor that Event Horizon has perfected a giga-conductor,’ the security chief said formally. True.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me, boy?’

  Julia was suddenly very alert, giving Greg an intent stare, her mind coloured by a strange mix of curiosity and trepidation.

  The hairs along the back of Greg’s neck pricked up. He concentrated. Right at the edge of perception was a faint nebulous glow. Details were non-existent. Half-life? Half-death? Not a mind as he knew minds. And yet, and yet …

  ‘No,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Ah well, worth a try.’ The disembodied voice was utterly devoid of emotional content.

  The study window showed green grass and blue sky. Reality. Greg focused on that. A flock of dark birds flew by. Infinitely reassuring in their normality. ‘We’ve got four lines of investigation,’ he summarized. ‘The hotrod pack which launched the blitz, the team which built the NN core, Ranasfari’s giga-conductor research team, and a possible executive-level mole; that’s a lot of ground for me to cover. I’m going to need money, not to mention help. There’s a colleague I’d like to bring in, spread the load a little.’

  Walshaw produced a card from his pocket, embossed with the company’s triangle and flying V emblem. ‘This will give you unlimited access to any Event Horizon facility, it also provides you a credit line direct to the company’s central account. Please try not to spend more than half a million.’

  The little oblong of active plastic sat in Greg’s palm, innocuous. Half a million. Eurofrancs or New Sterling? He didn’t ask. These people were serious.

  ‘Who’s your colleague?’ Julia asked, her face lifted with interest.

  ‘Another psychic; a Mindstar veteran like myself.’

  ‘What’s his speciality?’

  ‘Her. Her speciality. She can see into the future.’

  She didn’t call him a liar to his face, but his espersense told him it was a close-run thing.

  15

  Julia closed the study door behind her, looking round in sudden desperation. She couldn’t let Greg go without at least trying to explain. Damn Grandpa for blabbing like that. When he was alive in the flesh he would never have said anything to hurt her.

  He was walking down the stairs, head just visible bobbing above the railing.

  ‘Greg! Wait.’

  He turned round, paused. She ran along the landing, ankle-length skirt flapping round her legs.

  Standing in front of him, her resolution wavered. What did he actually think of her? There’d never been any thank-you card for the van of gear she’d sent to his home. But would someone like Greg even think about thank-you cards? Damn that bloody Swiss snob school. It’d distorted her perspective on real life. As if anyone else ever bothered about Debrett’s Etiquette in this day and age, let alone treated it as a bible.

  He was watching her with quizzical respect. But was it bought respect? Oh hell. She searched his face for a hint of sympathy, any sign of that brilliant moment when they seemed to think as one. ‘They didn’t alter me, you know.’ There, she’d gone and said it, betrayed her insecurities. Would he laugh?

  ‘What didn’t?’ Greg asked.

  She blinked, that wasn’t the response she’d been expecting.

  ‘The bioware nodes. People think they turn you into some kind of mental freak. But it’s just like having an encyclopedia on permanent call, that’s all. I’m a total whiz at general-knowledge questions.’ She flashed a bright entreating smile.

  ‘Of all the people in the world, I’m the least likely to be prejudiced against you.’

  ‘Oh … yah,’ she knew her cheeks would be reddening. God, how stupid. She was making a complete fool of herself. Why couldn’t conversation flow from her lips? Kats never had the slightest trouble talking to men, no matter what she said they’d smile and agree. ‘What’s it like? I wanted a gland. But Grandpa said no.’

  ‘I’m glad he did,’ Greg said gently. ‘The price is far too high. Take my case. I have to steel myself against people, build a high wall to shut them out. Every mind is awash with fears and intolerance and fright, all the human failings. We school ourselves to hide them from showing in our voices and expressions, but to me it’s an open book. I’d drown in it if I let my guard down. And there’s the pain, too. Actual physical pain from the neurohormones, it can cripple me if I don’t keep a firm control over the secretion levels.’

  Commit GregTime#Three. Nobody else was ever this honest with her about themselves. It must mean he felt something, even if it was only a variant of parental concern. ‘Why don’t you have it taken out, if it’s that bad?’

  ‘I’m a psi-junkie, Julia. I couldn’t give up the gland any more than you could give up eyes. Once it’s in, you’re hooked. But if I was living my life again I’d run a million miles rather than have a gland.’

  She nodded with earnest sympathy. ‘I didn’t realize. I thought one might help me run Event Horizon, show me who was disloyal. I took the assessment tests and came out esp positive. Grandpa was furious.’

  ‘You’d be spreading yourself too thin. Run with what you’ve got, Julia. Event Horizon is going to demand every scrap of your attention. You can always hire specialists like me to combat specific problems.’

  ‘But how do I know who to trust?’ she whispered insistently.

  His fingers found her chin, tilting her head up. ‘That’s everybody’s problem, Julia, not just yours. It’s an unending question. People change, someone who you could entrust with the crown jewels one day will sell out for a pound the next. You want my ad
vice? Put your faith in Morgan Walshaw. Strange as it may sound, people like that need someone to work for. So long as you don’t evolve into some kind of irresponsible playgirl he’ll remain loyal.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Morgan? God!’

  ‘Just remember, loyalty doesn’t mean slavish obedience. If he disagrees with you on some issue he won’t be doing it simply to spite you. Ask him to explain his reasons, and listen to the answer.’

  ‘You’re worse than Grandpa,’ she moaned.

  ‘Life’s a bitch, then you die. No messing.’ He grinned, and started down the stairs again.

  She walked in silence with him until they reached the hall. The air was cooler in the big vaulting chamber, its black and white marble tiles drawing away April’s dry heat.

  ‘Greg … there’s something else.’

  ‘Hey, what am I, your confessor?’

  ‘No, this is about the blitz.’ She knew he’d changed, hardening somehow. It was like she’d spoken a codeword, switching his mind from levity to total attention.

  She started to tell him about Kendric, the buyout, her threat; speaking rationally, without rancour. And doing it that way made her mortified by how petty she sounded. What was it Kendric had said? Schoolgirl temper-tantrum.

  ‘I couldn’t let him go unpunished,’ she said. ‘He set out to destroy everything Grandpa spent fifty years of his life building, not to mention my future.’

  Greg looked troubled, staring at one of the Turner landscapes without seeing it.

  ‘Do you think I was right?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Yeah, probably. I’d have done the same, I think.’

  ‘So the blitz might have been Kendric’s vendetta against Grandpa and me? Nothing to do with the giga-conductor.’

  ‘Could be. But I think it’s reasonable to assume Kendric is involved up to his neck; he’s certainly my first choice. This possible mole implicates him directly.’

  ‘You keep calling him “possible”.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s almost too easy to write everything off on to one masterspy. But the evidence is pretty strong. Who knows? And now I think about it, this whole giga-conductor thing adds a new dimension to the memox-spoiler operation. Kendric was more than likely after the patent the whole while, that was the asset he really wanted to strip.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But I couldn’t tell you at the time. Sorry.’

  ‘No problem. I didn’t need to know. Tell me, exactly when did Dr Ranasfari crack the giga-conductor?’

  ‘Tenth of November.’ She didn’t have to query the nodes, the date was ingrained. The last time she’d seen Grandpa really happy.

  He sat slowly on an old monk’s bench, thinking hard. She hovered, agitated. Wanting to know what he was mulling over, unwilling to interrupt. The hall’s silence amplified every sound as she fidgeted.

  ‘Half-way through the memox spoiler,’ Greg mused. ‘So it had already been working for a few months. The thing is, if the mole, or whoever, had already breached the security cordon around Ranasfari, then it’s odds on that it was Kendric, or Kendric got word of it. Pirate data traffic is his speciality, after all. Tell me, would he have known in advance that Ranasfari was going to crack the giga-conductor? What I mean is, was the breakthrough sudden?’

  ‘Not really. Ranasfari has been working on the project for a decade, he was confident of a positive result for almost a year beforehand. Then he produced a cryogenic giga-conductor last May. A room-temperature version was only a matter of time after that; a lightware cruncher problem, solving the chemical make-up, rather than any revelation in fundamental physics.’

  ‘Yeah, I figured something along those lines. You see, ten years is a hell of a long time to keep something hushed up. If the mole informed Kendric about the cryogenic prototype, then he would have had time to organize the memox crystal spoiler. The dates certainly fit.’

  ‘But you don’t think so?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If Kendric knew about the giga-conductor, why did he authorize your buyout of the di Girolamo house?’

  ‘I told you, I blackmailed him.’

  ‘A couple of billion Eurofrancs each year, that’s what your grandfather said the giga-conductor royalty licence would bring in, is that right?’

  ‘Yah, in fact it’s a conservative estimate.’

  ‘So answer me this: with an eight per cent stake in Event Horizon, which you could never legally make him give up, why should Kendric worry about his family house being dragged through the mud? In fact, you would’ve looked pretty bloody silly if he hadn’t knuckled under; exposing one of your own financial backers as a shark, then still having to cut them in on a share of your giga-conductor profits.’

  The nodes turned the problem into neat packages of equations for her. Greg and the hall slipped away as she pushed them through a logic matrix. They began to develop a life of their own, the channels unable to confine them, twisting out of alignment. The instability began to absorb more and more of the nodes’ processing power. She scrambled to maintain cohesion, loosening the parameters, adding additional channels. But her mind originated nothing ingenious enough to halt the imminent collapse. She observed helplessly as the channels wound in on themselves, constricting in ever-tighter curves, sealing the data packages in closed loops.

  The bioware-generated edifice crumpled beyond salvation. Her imagination invested the scene with sound. From a vast distance she could hear a cathedral of glass slowly toppling over.

  ‘Kendric couldn’t have known about the giga-conductor,’ she said finally.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Yah. No. Not really. It’s a paradox, you see, he must’ve known, yet he couldn’t have.’

  ‘That’s the way I see it.’ He seemed ridiculously cheerful. ‘Know what we’re going to do about it, Julia?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put Kendric at the top of the suspect list, then forget about him. Concentrate on tracking down the source of the leaks. When I’ve done that I’ll see where they lead. Then we might begin to understand the game he’s playing.’

  She wasn’t certain any more. Problems should be logical, solutions readily available. The pride she’d possessed in her own ability was dented: the nodes had always been a bulwark in her defence against other people, elevating her soul. No matter appearances and social awkwardness, she knew she was superior. Now this. Unable to provide her with an answer for the first time. And it was an answer which was utterly critical.

  But Greg didn’t seem unduly bothered, which gave her a certain degree of confidence. The guilt that this might have been all her fault was dissipating. What more had she been expecting from him?

  He rose from the black-polished bench. ‘Couple of days, week at the most, and it’ll all be over, no messing. You can look back and laugh.’

  ‘Thank you, Greg.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the bill yet. Walk me to the car? I might get lost otherwise; normally when I’m in buildings this size there are hordes of other people queuing to catch their trains.’

  She laughed. A joke. He was joking with her. Then her father came into the hall, and the sudden bud of joy was crushed as though it’d never been.

  Dillan Evans was wearing jeans and a baggy brown sweater which was fraying at the end of the sleeves. He was walking with a drunkard’s hesitancy, taking care that his feet only trod on the black tiles.

  ‘Hello, Daddy,’ Julia said quietly.

  He nodded absently at her, and looked Greg up and down with bleary eyes.

  Julia felt like weeping. It was bad enough witnessing her father’s state in private, having it exposed like this only exacerbated the pain.

  She watched in dismay as he straightened up ponderously. ‘Bit old for her, aren’t you?’ he said to Greg.

  ‘Daddy, don’t, please,’ her voice had become high, strained. She caught Greg’s eye, a tiny motion of her head telling him to say nothing. Please. He inclined his head discreetly, than
k God.

  Dillan grunted roughly. ‘Out of the way, don’t embarrass us, keep out of sight, keep your mouth shut, never know what might come out. Want me to shut up, Julie? Is that it? Want your father to keep his dirty mouth closed. Afraid of what the old fool will say? I’m only looking after your welfare. I’ve got a right to meet my little girl’s men friends.’

  ‘Greg is not a boyfriend, Daddy. He’s someone who works for us.’

  ‘Work, eh?’ A crafty expression twisted his vacant face. ‘Been up to see the old bastard, have you?’

  ‘What?’ Julia blurted, alarmed.

  ‘The old bastard. Up there in the study.’

  ‘Grandpa’s dead, Daddy. You watched the funeral on the channel,’ she enunciated with slow deliberation, as though she was explaining a particularly difficult fact to a small child.

  ‘Oh, Julie, Julie. How you hate me, a disgrace, a failure as a father. Beneath contempt. Written off. Well I’m an Evans, too, don’t forget. A mighty Evans. I see things, I listen to what’s going on. I know.’ He started up the stairs, clinging tightly to the banister rail. His foot slipped, nearly sending him tumbling. He looked round at her mute face staring up at him. ‘I could have done it. If he’d given me the chance, I could’ve run the company. Bastard never gave me the chance. He did this to me, his own son! Not you, though, Julie; everybody loves you. He does, I do. Everybody does.’ The words spluttered into incoherence. He glanced round nervously, suddenly confused as to where he was, what he’d been saying. His hand pulled hard at the banister, starting himself off on the climb again. He began muttering fractured words as he went.

  Julia buried her face in her hands. After a while she felt Greg’s arm round her shoulder. Misery compounded as she found she was quivering silently.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, lowering her hands to wipe at her eyes. Absolutely refusing to cry. Then the implications of what her father had said penetrated. ‘Oh, God, do you think he was the one?’