The Mandel Files, Volume 1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘If MacLennan wanted a copy of Liam Bursken’s memories, the only way he could obtain them would be through a cortical interface,’ Morgan said. ‘That means Bursken would have to undergo surgery.’

  ‘Good point,’ Greg said. ‘It’s something we can look for, some solid physical proof. Although if he underwent the surgery at Stocken you can bet your life there will turn out to be a legitimate reason for it. But there’s no doubt in my mind.’ He turned to Eleanor. ‘Remember what Nicholas did right after he smothered Kitchener?’

  She drew a breath, thinking back. ‘He crossed himself.’

  ‘Right. But Nicholas is virtually an atheist. Bursken, on the other hand, is a religious fruitcake; he believes he kills his victims because God tells him they’re sinners. I’m telling you, it was Bursken’s mentality in Nicholas’s brain. A real live cyborg. I knew Nicholas was innocent.’ He looked pleased. More like relieved, Julia thought, studying him out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘I know he’s innocent, Greg,’ she said, hating herself for being such a pragmatist, for puncturing his mood. ‘We all do. But you have still got the problem of proving it in a court of law.’

  ‘The prosecution still has the knife,’ Gabriel said. ‘Pretty strong evidence, especially when you’ll be dealing with a jury that’s going to be lost after the first ten minutes of specialist technical testimonies.’

  ‘Then we shall have to produce some counter-evidence,’ Eleanor said smartly. ‘Something that Inspector Langley can’t ignore, something that’ll mean Nicholas never gets into court. The paradigm itself.’ She looked at Julia. They both smiled. ‘Royan,’ they chorused.

  Julia followed the burn’s progress through her nodes. The others used the time to relax; Teddy trying to chat up Rachel over by the drinks cabinet; Greg, Eleanor, Morgan, and Gabriel all with their heads together, talking in low tones. Eleanor still hadn’t let go of Greg, her hand gripping his, fingers entwined.

  Royan in hotrod mode was awesome to watch. She had learned a lot about hacking techniques from him; modesty aside, she was good, she knew that. Good enough to crack Jakki Coleman’s bank account – and Lloyds-Tashoko’s guardian programs were the best corporate money could buy. But she watched Royan’s infiltration of Stocken Hall’s ’ware with something approaching envy; the speed of the penetration was incredible, and he didn’t have lightware crunchers to back him up.

  He didn’t even bother trying to crack the authorized user entry codes, he went straight for the management routines. A melt virus got him past the first-level guardian programs, opening up the prison’s datanet. The structure unfolded in her mind, an origami molecule, individual terminals and ’ware cores linked together by a spiderweb of databases. She had access to menus of low-grade security files stored in the terminals, along with the Hall’s day-to-day administration details, and financial datawork. But the cell security and surveillance circuits were blocked, along with a vast series of memories in the cores.

  Royan squirted a more complex virus at the second-level guardian programs, the ones governing access to restricted core memories.

  Let’s see what the medical department has on Bursken, Julia said, studying the menu. At the least his file should tell us whether or not he’s got a cortical interface.

  Nice one, Snowy. It isn’t on the restricted list. Here we go.

  He pulled a Home Office identification code from the administration officer’s terminal, and used it to request a squirt from the records terminal in the medical division.

  ‘This is Bursken’s medical file,’ she said as the datasheets swarmed down the conference room’s flatscreens. ‘Grandpa, review it for implants, please.’

  The datasheets flashed past, too fast to read. ‘Here we go, Juliet.’ The deluge of bytes halted. She was looking at some kind of official Home Office package. ‘Hell, girl, they really were wetting themselves over Bursken. This confinement order gives the director, that is MacLennan, permission to employ any method he sees fit to restrain Liam Bursken, including chemical suppression, or even remedial surgery such as a lobotomy.’

  ‘And who would ever complain?’ Greg mused, not looking up from his flatscreen. ‘Even the human rights lawyers wouldn’t bother arguing in Bursken’s favour. He’s beyond the lowest of the low. You could do anything you wanted to him, and no one would give a shit.’

  ‘I don’t know about anything, boy,’ Philip said. ‘But a month ago he was wheeled into surgery and given a cortical interface.’ A new datasheet slid into place. ‘It was ordered by MacLennan, part of a new mental assessment project. According to this it was supposed to provide data on his psychotic state trigger stimulants. Follow up results are restricted.’

  ‘I knew that …’ Greg looked puzzled for a moment, then clicked his fingers. ‘Of course, it was Stephanie Rowe who filled me in on Bursken, MacLennan just sat there and let her recite facts to me. How stupid of me.’

  ‘You weren’t interrogating them,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Julia’s nodes showed her the second-level guardian programs falling as the virus penetrated. Huge stacks of data materialized into the nodes’ visualization, dense packages of colourless binary digits extending out to her mind’s horizon. A batch of Royan’s tracer programs slithered through them.

  Bursken’s surgical records vanished from the flatscreen in front of her. PROBLEM, it printed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Greg asked.

  I THINK I’VE FOUND THE PARADIGM FILE. IT IS LISTED AS BURSKEN’S CORTICAL INTERFACE FOLLOW-UP RESULTS, AND IT HAS A DIRECTOR-ONLY ACCESS CODE.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  THEY WILL KNOW IF I ACCESS IT. A NOTIFICATION PROCEDURE IS HARDWIRED IN TO THE CORES. ALL SQUIRTS ARE LOGGED AUTOMATICALLY.

  ‘But the cores think we’re the Home Office,’ Julia said. ‘Under that premiss, we’re entitled to access their data. Berkeley operates Stocken under government licence.’

  IF WE ARE THE HOME OFFICE, HOW COME WE CAN ORDER A SQUIRT FOR A DIRECTOR-ONLY FILE??? MACLENNAN WOULD HAVE TO BEAT THE HOME OFFICE TO AUTHORIZE THE SQUIRT.

  ‘OK, let’s look at what we want to achieve,’ Greg said. ‘What we need is for Inspector Langley to go into Stocken first thing tomorrow morning, armed with a data warrant, and find that paradigm. So we have to be sure it’s there before we send him in. Is there any chance this file will crash wipe if you order a squirt?’

  NO.

  ‘Then I’d say do it. Morgan?’

  ‘I can’t see any objection. Even if you were to interrogate MacLennan, a lawyer might conceivably neutralize your testimony; there are still some legal queries over evidence obtained psychically. As Eleanor said, we need tangible proof. The evidence is piling up against MacLennan, to my mind he’s guilty as hell. It has to be the killer paradigm in that file.’

  ‘OK, squirt it over, Royan.’

  It came through the link, a large construct, taking half a second to transfer. In her terminal cube it was nothing, a moiré patchwork of randomized data. In her mind—

  She opened a secure file in one of her memory nodes and let the construct fill it. Analysis programs sifted through the bytes, trying to identify coherent segments. The patterns they formed were like nothing she had ever seen before; there were analogue visual sequences, interlaced with data pulses that defied decryption. She accessed one at random.

  Chiaroscuro images, black and scarlet, bloomed silently around her. She was standing on a rainswept street at night, parallel rows of cheap terrace housing, their walls shimmering as sheets of water sluiced down over the bricks, it was almost as though they were melting. There were no stars above, only empty night. A solitary figure walked down the middle of the road, a man in a sodden greatcoat. Julia felt her heart ignite with exaltation.

  She was stalking through woodland, the smooth boles of dead beech trees sliding past, a deep claret in colour. Ribbons of black ivy were clawing their way up the crumbling bark, crisp dry leaves like heart-shaped flake
s of ash crunched underfoot. She circled a glade, the procession of boles eclipsing the sight of the two young lovers in its centre. All she caught was fleeting glimpses, their bodies moved in a stop-motion sequence. And they were unmarried, profaning the gift of life with their casual coupling. Their skin was salmon pink, their scattered clothes burgundy and ebony. A knife was heavy in her hand, its blade a glowing coral.

  Her mind was alive with whispers, enticing dark promises. God’s voice. His strength flooding through her limbs.

  A face coalesced before her. An old man, with bright smiling eyes, and wispy hair. Mocking eyes. Black eyes, light wells. The man stared into hell and laughed in joy at what he saw.

  The whispers grew bolder, caressing her.

  Exit.

  The nodes shut off with an almost audible snap.

  She took a deep gulp of air, shuddering violently.

  ‘What is it?’ Morgan asked sharply.

  ‘I’m all right.’ She held up her hands, surprised to find them trembling. ‘I was accessing some of the paradigm’s visual routines, that’s all. Greg’s right, it is made up from Bursken’s memories.’ She stopped, remembering the confused montage. A smell of the street’s sweet fresh rain lingered in the executive conference room. And she detested the God-violator Edward Kitchener. Feeling a wild primitive joy that he was dead dead dead. ‘Dear Lord, he’s not human.’ She stared at Greg. ‘And you looked into his mind all the time you interviewed him?’

  ‘Goes with the job.’

  ‘Yech!’

  ‘So that settles it, then,’ Greg said. ‘Royan, do you understand the paradigm?’

  MOST SECTIONS ARE ANALOGUE BUT THERE IS ONE SEQUENCE WHICH IS A DIGITAL COMPOSITION.

  ‘Is it the instruction to kill Kitchener?’

  GREEDY GREEDY GREEDY, IS WHAT YOU ARE! THE DIGITAL SEQUENCE IS STRANGE, I WILL HAVE TO WRITE A DECRYPTION PROGRAM. TELL YOU TOMORROW.

  ‘OK,’ Greg said casually, as though he didn’t care.

  Liar! Julia thought.

  Teddy walked back from the drinks cabinet to stand next to Greg, a dumpy German beer bottle in his hand, condensation mottling its silver and ice-blue label. ‘Hell, man, all this shit about paradigms turning the Beswick kid into a cyborg, it’s kinda screwy, but I’ll buy it. But you still ain’t told us the why of it. How come this MacLennan guy wants to snuff his old teacher? He did all right by Kitchener. Christ, made it to the top in his field. Head of a premier-grade research institution, respected man, big bucks backing him. What’s he wanna go and risk all that for?’

  ‘Wrong question,’ Gabriel said. She was smiling faintly, head tilted right back on her chair, staring at the ceiling. ‘What you ought to ask is why did MacLennan kill Clarissa Wynne? That’s the real question. After he murdered her he had to get rid of Kitchener; it was inevitable. He was covering himself to protect that cushy number he’s wound up with.’

  ‘The neurohormone!’ Julia exclaimed, quietly pleased she could keep up with Gabriel.

  WELL DONE, SNOWY.

  Morgan flicked an ironic glance at the camera.

  Gabriel suddenly leant forward, resting her elbows on the table, fixing Teddy with an intent stare. ‘MacLennan must have been worried that once Kitchener perfected the retrospective neurohormone he would look into the past and see him murdering Clarissa. That’s why poor old Nicholas Beswick was also ordered to destroy the bioware which produced the neurohormone, and wipe the Abbey’s Bendix. To eliminate any possibility of anybody looking back. Lucky he missed those ampoules. I don’t suppose MacLennan could think of every contingency.’

  ‘I couldn’t have seen that far back,’ Eleanor said. ‘A week was a hell of an effort. Eleven years would have been utterly impossible.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gabriel said. ‘I never used to look more than a couple of days into the future when I had my gland. That was partly psychological, admittedly. But … well, with Kitchener working on it, who knows what might have been accomplished in the end.’

  ‘I think I’ve found the reason why she was murdered,’ Philip said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Greg perked up. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Ten years ago there was a paper published on the possibilities of laser paradigms applied to education. The first of its kind. It was co-authored by James MacLennan and Clarissa Wynne.’

  ‘Ten years?’ Morgan asked. ‘We confirmed that World Bank loan was eleven years ago.’

  ‘Published posthumously,’ Greg said. ‘That’s why MacLennan killed her. I’ll give you good odds that Clarissa did the real breakthrough work on paradigms while she was at Launde. And MacLennan was sharp enough to realize the possibilities. He was very keen to stress that when I talked to him. Once they are perfected, paradigms will be worth a fortune. He reckoned the entire penal system would have to be rebuilt from the ground up, and not just in this country. I suppose it would be the same for schools and universities as well, paradigms could replace lessons and lectures. And he’s leading the project. He’ll get all the fame and the glory, not to mention a share of the royalties. And it should have been her in charge of Berkeley’s team.’

  ‘Ah!’ Julia cried. She grinned at the curious faces. ‘Grandpa, that financial profile we assembled on Diessenburg Mercantile should still be in our finance division memory core. Access it, and run a check for me. See how much money Diessenburg Mercantile is loaning the Berkeley company.’

  ‘You all hear that?’ Philip’s voice boomed. ‘Now that is a true Evans. Laser sharp. My granddaughter.’

  There were times – like now – when she wished the NN core was only loaded with a simple Turing management program.

  ‘Got it,’ Philip said. ‘The Berkeley company has borrowed eight hundred million Eurofrancs from Diessenburg Mercantile. There are extension options covering another two and a half billion, but they’re all subject to some kind of clause. Dunno what, it’s classified, board members only.’

  ‘MacLennan succeeding with the laser paradigms?’ Morgan suggested.

  ‘Very probable,’ Philip agreed.

  ‘Two and a half billion,’ Julia said, ruminating out loud. ‘That’s more than Diessenburg loaned us before Prior’s Fen.’

  ‘How much would it cost to build and operate an entire continent’s educational and penal services?’ Greg asked.

  ‘A lot,’ she said. ‘And Karl Hildebrandt is on holiday. Unavailable for two months. I asked his office yesterday after you said you wanted to meet him.’

  ‘We can’t really blame them,’ Morgan said. ‘They were just protecting their investment. Natural corporate reflex.’

  Julia didn’t approve of that attitude at all. ‘That doesn’t take away the fact that MacLennan is a double murderer, nor that an innocent man is in jail because of him.’

  ‘You’ll have a terrible job trying to establish degrees of complicity,’ Morgan said. ‘I doubt Karl will ever reappear anywhere under English jurisdiction. The Diessenburg Mercantile directors will disclaim any knowledge of the affair. And if the bank does allow any of them to come into our courts to testify, you can be sure they will be genuinely ignorant so that Greg here won’t be able to implicate them.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Greg said. ‘But at least we’ve got MacLennan nailed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Morgan said. ‘I’ll get on to the Home Office, they’ll have MacLennan arrested first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’d like the Oakham police to handle the actual arrest,’ Greg said. ‘They need the credit. I’ll rap with Langley, explain what actually happened. And we’d better have a premier-grade programmer on hand to serve the data warrant. I’d hate anything to happen to that paradigm now.’

  ‘Right.’ Morgan loaded a note into his cybofax.

  Greg climbed to his feet, stretching laboriously.

  Julia stood and tugged her windcheater jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Thanks again for helping, Teddy.’

  He took a last swig from his beer bottle, and gave her a shrewd look. ‘No problem, gal, does me good to get out an
d about, keep my hand in. But you leave off Greg once this case is over, hear me? He’s a fucking orange farmer now. Nothing else.’

  ‘I hear you, Teddy.’ She blew him a kiss.

  24

  It was midnight when Greg and Eleanor reached the farm. Fog had given way to a steady rain, the darkness was total. Greg could hear the wind rustling the tops of the new saplings on either side of the driveway. The EMC Ranger’s tyres splashed through long trickles of water as Eleanor let it roll slowly down the slope.

  He ran a hand through his greasy hair. What he wanted was a shower, a drink, and bed. Worst of all, he wanted to go to bed to sleep. Arms and belly muscles were stiff and sore from hanging under the Westland ghost wing.

  Surprisingly, given all the aches, plus a persistent post-mission edginess, he still felt easier than he had for a week. He grinned at his weak reflection in the side window. I knew Nicholas didn’t do it.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘Nothing. Tell you, I’m just glad it’s over.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks for understanding.’

  ‘Make the most of it. Next time, I’ll stomp my foot and say no.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, with feeling. ‘You’d better go and see Mrs Beswick tomorrow, give her the good news. I expect I’ll be having quite a busy day. Christ, and Vernon was upset about the murder being complicated before.’

  ‘He’ll survive. Like you said, they’ll get a lot of credit for wrapping this up.’

  ‘Yeah.’ There’s justice. But at least it will make life in Oakham more tolerable for everybody.

  Beyond the window’s reflection, Maurice Knebel’s mirage rippled unsteadily on the edge of reality. Greg knew his last memory of the ex-detective would take a long time to dissipate. Knebel had closed his eyes tightly, teeth clamping down on his lower lip, whimpering softly as Greg aimed the stunshot at him. In the background Teddy had muttered snidely about using the Uzi instead.

  Then there was the trip back to the warehouse. Walton’s minacious streets crowding in on him, plaguing him with the prospect of running into some kind of hazard now the mission was over – the oldest squaddie fear in the book.