The Mandel Files, Volume 1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  They waited in the hall at the foot of the stairs. Five of them, a tight arrowhead, with Ronnie Kay at the front. Two shotguns followed him with mechanical precision. Their mouths were curved up in the same slight, vapid smile.

  His espersense flowed round them, along the hall, through the empty rooms. They were the only ones inside. Right at the back of his head was the faint thrumming of pressure, the neurohormones stressing his synapses to their limit.

  He held the rifle casually at his hip as he descended.

  ‘Take the ones with the shotguns first,’ he whispered.

  RIGHT.

  The grid appeared again, peeling into five segments like cybernetic butterfly wings. Closing fluidly around their ignorant prey.

  Ronnie Kay blinked, glancing distrustfully at the rifle. ‘Put it down, Mandel.’

  READY.

  ‘Now.’

  The laser lashed out, spiking each of them in turn. Elapsed time seven-tenths of a second.

  They wilted in unison, filling the air with a grotesque catlike puling. Arms and legs were infected with a life of their own, waving and flexing at random.

  ‘Shitfire,’ Greg murmured.

  DID WE GET THEM?

  ‘Oh yeah. We got ’em.’

  Eleanor was running along the landing, stunshot held ready, looking as if she was about to start a war.

  ‘The crash team will be there in five minutes,’ Philip said.

  Eleanor barged into his side, hugging him tightly. She let out a gulping sob. ‘I’m sorry.’ She wiped her eyes.

  His arm went round her, holding her roughly. He kissed the top of her forehead, damp hair rasping across his lips.

  They went down the last few stairs, slowly, every step a great effort.

  The front door had been forced open, the lock jemmied off. A draught of clammy air swirled in.

  Greg used the rifle barrel to push the lounge door open. Shards of glass were heaped on the floor below the broken window. The curtains flapped feebly.

  ‘It’s clear,’ Greg said. ‘I’ll go out here, through the window. MacLennan can see the front door.’ Eleanor’s fingers clutched at him through the combat leathers. ‘I’ve got to finish this.’ And this time there would be no hesitation, no reluctance. MacLennan had come hunting him, broaching the sanctity of his own home. Well, now it would be settled on those terms. One on one, zero rules.

  ‘I know,’ Eleanor said.

  He crouched down, and scuttled over to the window. ‘Royan, kill the imager’s camera feed. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that paradigm—’ He stopped, intuition acting like a dose of wine, stealing warmly into his brain.

  The gloomy image faded out, leaving him alone with the time display and guido co-ordinates. He shoved the rifle through the shattered window.

  ‘Give me the laser return.’

  The picture which built up was similar to the virtual simulation he had used to fly into Walton, photonic topology, except it was all red. The rickety fence was ten metres in front of him, saplings standing in long rows behind it, grass resolved as a fuzzy gauze mat.

  ‘OK, Royan, there’s one last piece of reprogramming I need.’

  He poked the rifle round the corner of the house. The laser painted in the EMC Ranger, the barn, and the wall around the farmyard. Mark Sutton was lying where he’d fallen. Frankie Owen was crawling towards the driveway. It was like watching a time-lapse puppet in motion, the picture refreshing itself every second as the laser swept back and forth.

  A grid tailored itself into a perfect fit around Frankie Owen.

  ‘I’m here,’ Greg called out clearly.

  Frankie twisted round. When he was looking straight at Greg, the laser fired the magic photon’s activation code at him. There was a muffled gurgling, then he lay still. Greg sensed Bursken’s thoughts routed by Frankie’s usual dull anger and general life-resentment just before consciousness dwindled.

  Not much of an improvement, really.

  He pointed the rifle at the tangerine grove, where he thought MacLennan had fired the paradigm laser from.

  ‘Focus shift, one hundred and fifty metres.’

  The grove filled his vision field. It lacked the sharp-edged clarity of anything close by, degraded by rain, almost like static interference. These saplings had been planted over a year ago, two and a half metres high, starting to spread out at the top. They were covered with leaves and blossom, which showed up like a layer of coarse ice crystals around the core of twigs and branches.

  There was a vehicle parked in the middle of the grove, almost hidden by the saplings. A jeep of some kind.

  Perfect for the terrain in the Chater valley, he thought.

  LASER ACQUISITION, the photon amp display printed.

  ‘Royan?’

  THAT’S YOUR ECM DETECTOR WARNING. MACLENNAN IS FIRING THE PARADIGM IMPRINTER AT YOU. ONE MOMENT.

  The image fluttered then reappeared. A bright red dot was flashing ten metres to the left of the jeep.

  THAT’S THE EMISSION POINT.

  ‘Right. Give me targeting mode.’

  The blue circles sprang up. Greg shifted the rifle until they were centred on the jeep. He pulled the trigger. Five shots into the bonnet, three into the front tyre, another five into the bodywork.

  MacLennan stopped firing the paradigm laser.

  Greg pumped another ten shots into the rear of the jeep. He heard the unmistakable dull thud of an explosion. The back of the jeep rippled, opening up like a flower, jagged metal petals lunging jerkily for the blank sky.

  ‘Cancel targeting mode.’ He started to jog towards the jeep. No way could he run: as it was, he had to try and remember what was immediately ahead at each footfall. The wall between him and the grove seemed to lurch towards him in two-metre increments.

  A nimbus had engulfed the jeep, altering in size each time the picture updated, never the same shape twice. Flames, he guessed.

  He reached the wall and clambered over, moss squelching below his gloves, ignoring the erratic images as the rifle shifted about, working by touch.

  LASER ACQUISITION.

  He landed on the spongy grass in the grove, and automatically rolled to one side. Paratroop training. Furious flames from the jeep were making a loud crackling.

  ‘MacLennan?’ he bellowed. ‘It doesn’t work on me, you shit!’ He stood up, pointing the rifle ahead.

  LASER ACQUISITION.

  The red dot was flashing from behind some saplings away to his left, dancing about like a firefly caught in a hurricane. MacLennan was moving away from the jeep. Greg started to jog towards the dot, ducking under the low branches, swerving round the trunks.

  ‘Greg?’ It was Philip. ‘The crash team will be with you in two minutes.’

  ‘Keep them in the air until I give the all clear.’

  ‘All right, boy, it’s your show.’

  The laser picked out MacLennan running down a row of saplings, about eighty metres ahead. A clockwork humanoid, legs and arms pumping in a fractured rhythm. Slender grid lines chased after him coiling round his limbs and torso.

  DO YOU WANT TARGET MODE???

  ‘Not yet. I have to be sure.’

  SURE SURE SURE? WHAT KIND OF BLOODY SURE? HE TRIED TO KILL YOU.

  Greg ran out into a tractor lane, four metres wide, the branches arching overhead, not quite meeting. It made the going a lot easier; he risked increasing his pace. ‘Sure about Clarissa Wynne.’

  MacLennan vaulted over the fence at the bottom of the grove, and sprinted over the field towards Hambleton Wood.

  Gotcha, Greg thought. He arrived at the fence, scaling it quickly.

  MacLennan reached the boundary of the wood, and charged through the waist-high fringe of undergrowth. He suddenly fell forwards, disappearing from sight below the nettles. Greg heard a distant curse.

  The grass underfoot was awkward, tufty and slippery with rain. He had to slow down again, especially as he was cutting down the slope. There was that distinctive sound of
brittle wood snapping up ahead as MacLennan thrashed about in the dead hawthorn bushes.

  Christ, I hope it is MacLennan after all this! But his intuition was giving him a powerful high, as if he was just going through the motions. The outcome was already decided.

  MacLennan’s upper torso reappeared amid the bushes. He was flinging himself desperately at the knotted tangle of vines strung between the old trees. It wouldn’t do him any good, you needed either a tank or a bulldozer to break into the wood. He jerked round, right arm coming up. Red dot.

  LASER ACQUISITION.

  Greg slowed to a halt thirty metres from the wood, raising the rifle to his shoulder. ‘Give me targeting mode, and expand the magnification.’ He ordered his cortical node to increase the neurohormone secretion level.

  ABOUT BLOODY TIME.

  Blue circles clicked into place. The targeting laser sweep contracted around MacLennan. It was as though he was standing two metres in front of Greg, the warped network of red lines bright enough to give off a faint coronal hue. An oversized pistol was gripped in his right hand, nozzle blazing.

  His espersense encountered the mind inside the reticulated head. It was MacLennan.

  Greg aimed at the pistol and fired.

  MacLennan howled, convulsing, right arm hugged to his chest. His pistol tumbling away. A hot throb of pain lanced into Greg’s mind. Behind it came the raw malevolence, the near-frenzied fear, and the abhorrence.

  ‘Hold it,’ Greg commanded as MacLennan began to look around his feet for the imprinter, the tendrils of desperation uncoiling in his gibbering mind. He walked forward until he came to the edge of the nettles. ‘Why did you come here, MacLennan? Why did you set them on me?’

  ‘Because it was you!’ MacLennan bawled. ‘You! Mindstar freak. You found the paradigm.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You were from the Home Office, you burnt into the memory core. You! It was you. Freak fucker.’

  ‘Oh shit.’ The rush of energy which had carried him out of the house and across the grove suddenly bled away. There was no determination left in him. No pride at completing the case, only weariness. He just wanted this over. Finished.

  MacLennan started sobbing.

  ‘Shut up!’ Greg yelled.

  ‘It hurts me! It hurts. You’ve burnt my hand in half, you bastard. Get me to a hospital, for Christ’s sake.’

  Every emotion reached rock bottom. Greg felt dangerously calm. ‘It hurts, does it, MacLennan? How did Clarissa Wynne feel do you think? When you pushed her head under the lake. Did she hurt, MacLennan?’

  ‘Clarissa?’ It came out like a whinny.

  ‘You killed her. Didn’t you? Eleven years ago, you shot her full of syntho and killed her.’

  ‘She was going to claim all the credit!’

  ‘Even now you’re lying! It was her work.’

  ‘Wasn’t!’

  Guilt corrupted every thought in MacLennan’s head. And there was nothing left to say.

  Greg took a laboured breath. ‘Royan, shoot it over.’

  The grid snapped off for an instant as the targeting laser stabbed at MacLennan’s eyes.

  He heard the paradigm as it came surging through the communication link, a near-ultrasonic wheee in his earpiece, a blast of photons encapsulating the essence of Liam Bursken, accompanied by a monomaniac hatred for one man.

  Poetic justice, or intuitive inspiration; Greg didn’t know which, only that it was right. It fitted.

  He pulled the photon amp strip from his face, twin circles of skin around his eyesockets pinching as it came free. The real world rushed back in on him, dark and dank, awash with human failings. The clean simplicity of the laser return virtual graphics was almost preferable. Somewhere behind him flames were soaring up into the night from the wreck of the jeep. Rain pattered down, beating the dusky vegetation towards the muddy ground.

  MacLennan’s prim face was contorted with pain, hair plastered down into a straggly cap. His jaw was working silently, as though he was choking.

  ‘Do you know who you hate, Liam?’ Greg asked quietly. ‘Do you?’

  MacLennan stared back at him with insane eyes, mouth screwing into a joyous smile. ‘Yes. Me. It’s me. Me!’

  ‘That’s right.’ He took the vibration knife from his belt, switched it on, and dropped it at MacLennan’s feet.

  MacLennan snatched it up with his good hand. ‘Redemption. He has granted me redemption.’ He laughed rhapsodically as he shoved the blade into his stomach. Blood foamed out. He sank to his knees, teeth clenched with effort, cheeks bulging, and pulled the blade up towards his sternum. ‘Yes. Oh, yes. My Lord.’

  Greg turned and walked away. Back to the farmhouse and Eleanor, where he belonged.

  High above the reservoir, the security team’s tilt-fan dived out of the clouds, turbines shrieking with urgency.

  25

  Julia found her hand straying towards Robin’s hair. He was sleeping sprawled out on his belly in the middle of the bed, head fallen between two big fluffy pillows, mouth slightly agape. She stroked his hair softly, smoothing down the ruffled tufts. Seen in the lush morning light which was prising its way round the edges of the curtains he was even more handsome than the first time she had caught sight of him at the pool. And he was so terribly sweet. Tender, anxious, and eager all at once – excellent body too. He lacked Patrick’s ruthless dynamism, which had made their sex far more sensual. She still wasn’t quite sure if she was his first. But she was certainly near the front of the queue. A thought to treasure.

  He stirred below her hand, and she held her breath. She didn’t want to wake him up just yet. The poor dear must be tired after last night.

  She would have a cup of tea, skim through the breakfast ’casts, nip into the toilet, then it would be time for him to perform again.

  NN Core Access Request.

  No peace for the wicked. And last night she had been gloriously wicked.

  Open Channel To NN Core.

  Morning, Juliet.

  Morning, Grandpa. We can’t be having a crisis this early.

  Not a crisis, no.

  Thank heavens for that. What then?

  I’m curious about something you did yesterday.

  Spying on me again?

  No. I was just reviewing some of your data traffic. Double checking. That’s what I’m here for, your safety net.

  Yah, go on. She had a pretty good idea where this was leading.

  You accessed one of our biochemical research labs yesterday. Using your executive code, no less. Mind telling me what for, girl?

  No, I don’t mind. She leaned over to the bedside cabinet and poured her tea from the silver service.

  Juliet!

  Oh, you wanted to know right now?

  If I still had a body, I’d put you over my bloody knee, m’girl.

  Grandpa, behave. Besides, I’m too big and too strong these days. And I don’t fight fair, either.

  You learnt that from me, Juliet. Now are you going to tell me?

  She picked up her cup and saucer, and settled back into the pillows. Yah, all right I wiped every record of the retrospective neurohormone from our memory cores, the analysis report, molecular structure, conclusions, everything. Then I sent Rachel over there, and she tipped all the remaining ampoules into the toxic waste disposal furnace. Happy now?

  Bloody hell, girl. Why?

  The tea was too hot to drink. She blew across the top of her cup as she marshalled her thoughts. Because I don’t want something like that let loose in the world, Grandpa. It’s bad enough having people like Gabriel being able to see what I might do in the future, or Greg knowing how badly I’ve been misbehaving just by looking at me. I don’t want someone standing in this room ten years from now taking a simple infusion and being able to see what I did last night.

  Hardly a simple infusion, girl.

  Exactly. The Home Office have slapped a restriction order on what really happened at Greg’s farm and Launde Abbey. Admitted
ly their main concern is the way MacLennan abused his paradigm project; if word got out that the New Conservatives had been allowing a company to research what amounts to a mind-control system there would be hell to pay. Certainly it would cost them the next election. Marchant didn’t need much prodding to include the neurohormone. And there are now only fifteen people in the world who know a retrospection neurohormone is even possible. With those numbers we might just be able to keep it that way. Even if the news does eventually leak out, it would take an immense research effort to produce it again, if we ever could. Kitchener was a very clever man, not to mention idiosyncratic.

  You can’t fight progress, Juliet.

  A retrospective neurohormone isn’t progress, Grandpa. Quite the opposite. And there is already more than enough freely available technology in this world capable of being misapplied by tekmercs and others. Corporations and kombinates are going to have to start becoming responsible again. After all, we do fund ninety per cent of all the significant scientific research these days.

  Lord preserve us, a global citizen with a conscience.

  Somebody has to be, Grandpa. There is more to Event Horizon than making nifty household ’ware gadgets. Do you really want me to use all that influence for the bad?

  Juliet, you are beautiful. I’m so proud of you.

  She knew her cheeks would be reddening. Didn’t care. Not this morning. Thank you, Grandpa. I am what I am because I have the best teacher in the world.

  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Seductress!

  Yah. And proud of it.

  Eat your breakfast in peace, Juliet, I’ve got plenty of data-work piled up for you later.

  Exit NN Core.

  She took a sip of tea and fired the remote at the wall-mounted flatscreen, keeping the volume low. It was the East England channel, and she was on again. Yesterday’s gala reopening of the Stock Exchange. Another invitation impossible to refuse, half the companies listed were heavily dependent on Event Horizon contracts. The exchange had been operating out of temporary quarters at Canary Wharf ever since the PSP had fallen and trading became legal again. Party activists had razed the old exchange a couple of months after President Armstrong came to power. So a new purpose-built building had risen up out of the old site, one with plenty of spare data processing and communications capacity, ready for the challenge of regeneration.