The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  SHOOT

  “Have you heard about the blitz against the Event Horizon datanet?”

  CHUCKLE CHUCKLE. THE CIRCUIT HAS BEEN BUZZING WITH NOTHING ELSE FOR THE LAST THREE DAYS. BIGGEST DEAL SINCE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC ORDER MAINFRAME WAS CRASHED.

  “Who set it up?”

  NO IDEA. BIG PUZZLE RECRUITING NOT DONE THROUGH THE CIRCUIT. ODD ODD ODD.

  “Could the hotrod pack have been foreigners?”

  NO. CIRCUIT KNEW ABOUT IT TOO SOON. HINTS DROPPED. NO NAMES THOUGH. UNUSUAL. IF I’D TAKEN PART I’D WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW MY HANDLE. THAT KIND OF BURN PUSHES THE GOING RATE UP, MAYBE EVEN DOUBLES IT. SILENCE WOULD HAVE TO BE BOUGHT. LOTS OF MONEY INVOLVED.

  “So how would I go about recruiting without using the circuit?”

  GOOD QUESTION. TEKMERC WHO HAS WORKED WITH SOLO HOTRODS BEFORE. SHRUG. THEYD HAVE TO HAVE GOOD CONTACTS.

  The little robot that’d been watering the troughs ran across the floor to a tap on a wall and eased itself underneath. Water poured into its tank. Greg watched the operation over the rim of his cup. “Tell me about Philip Evans.”

  HE WAS THE OWNER OF EVENT HORIZON. DIED A MONTH BACK. RICH. RICH. RICH.

  “That’s it?”

  NO. THERE’S WHOLE MEMORY CORES LOADED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL DATA. YOU WANT A PRINT OUT?

  “No thanks. What I meant was, is there anything current?”

  OPPOSITION MPS PROTESTED ABOUT COST OF HIS FUNERAL. THAT’S THE LAST ENTRY.

  “OK, I’ve got a big hush for you. Philip Evans’s memories have been stored.”

  AH HA.

  “Tell me how you’d go about doing that.”

  BEST WAY WOULD BE IN A BIOWARE NEURAL NETWORK. FERREDOXIN HAS THE POTENTIAL. YOU’D HAVE TO SPLICE EVANS’S SEQUENCING RNA INTO THE NODES, DUPLICATE HIS BRAIN STRUCTURE, THEN SQUIRT HIS MEMORIES INTO THE CORE WITH A NEUROCOUPLING. THE COST WOULD BE UTTERLY LOONY. BUT I SUPPOSE PHILIP EVANS COULD AFFORD IT AFTER ALL, THAT’S ONE WAY OF TAKING IT WITH YOU. RIGHT?

  “Right.” Greg thought for a moment. “So all you’d have to know to deduce the nature of Evans’s core was that his memories had been translocated, nothing else?”

  YES. IT’S BEEN RAPPED ABOUT FOR YEARS. HAMBURG UNIVERSITY LOADED A TURING PERSONALITY INTO THEIR BIOWARE CRUNCHER A FEW YEARS BACK; ITS RESPONSES REALLY WERE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A HUMAN’S. ALL IT LACKED WERE BACKGROUND MEMORIES. I RAPPED WITH IT ONCE. CREEPY CREEPY CREEPY.

  “If you knew of a bioware core which housed some kind of sophisticated personality responses program, how would you set about disabling it?”

  MACRO DATA SQUIRT FORCE THE PERSONALITY PROGRAM OUT OF THE CORE.

  “Did you think of that yourself, or was it something you picked off the circuit?”

  ALL MINE, CROSS HEART IT’S OBVIOUS SOLUTION.

  “Does that mean it wasn’t a personal attack against Evans?” Eleanor asked. Intense interest had resulted in her coffee going cold. She’d either forgotten, or had accommodated, Royan’s state, acting perfectly naturally. There weren’t many who could do that.

  Royan would’ve noticed, too; he was an acute observer within his small kingdom. For some obscure reason Greg was delighted. He wanted them to be friends, to approve of each other. It meant a lot to him, although he couldn’t say exactly why. The bloody quacks would have lots of psychobabble about resolving the past, no doubt.

  He poured himself another coffee. “It’s a possibility,” he admitted. “Any hacker observing the Event Horizon datanet would know a lot of management decisions were originating from that one core. Whether or not they knew it was Philip Evans himself, I’m not sure.”

  IF IT WASN’T FOR VENGEANCE, THEN IT WAS PROBABLY CONNECTED WITH EVENT HORIZON’S GIGA-CONDUCTOR. AM I RIGHT, OR WHAT?

  “You’re right.” Greg wasn’t surprised; Royan kept himself well plugged in to the circuit, trading data whenever it was to his advantage. “Philip Evans believes the blitz was an attempt at a spoiler; reducing Event Horizon’s ability to market the giga-conductor by removing his managerial experience. So how did you find out about the giga-conductor?”

  EVENT HORIZON HAVE A GIGA-CONDUCTOR DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT WITH THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE.

  “My God,” said Eleanor, “Does everyone know about the country’s military secrets?”

  NOT NECESSARILY. BUT THE GIGA-CONDUCTOR IS SUCH A BIG DEAL IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP IT UNDER WRAPS. WEAPONS APPLICATION PROJECT DETAILS HAVE BEEN LOADED INTO THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE MAINFRAME. THAT MAKES THEM AVAILABLE TO PEOPLE LIKE ME, AND THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE LIKE ME. CHUCKLE CHUCKLE. WELL NOT QUITE

  Greg considered that; Event Horizon’s giga-conductor wasn’t half as secret as Morgan Walshaw had believed, yet the Ministry of Defence had only been brought in after the patent was filed. He still couldn’t believe a kombinate would bother with a spoiler like the blitz, not after the chance of filing their own patent had been lost.

  “When did you find out about the giga-conductor?”

  THIRD WEEK IN DECEMBER. MINISTRY OF DEFENCE BEGAN A NEW ULTRA-SECURE FILE AT THE START OF THE MONTH, I WAS INTERESTED. TOOK A COUPLE OF DAYS TO BURN.

  He used the teaspoon to lift the skin off his coffee, running the dates through his mind. If he assumed another hotrod had burnt open the Ministry file around the same time as Royan, then the blitz could well be a kombinate operation. But how had they discovered the NN core existed? He was back to the question of the mole’s existence again. “Could you pull data from Event Horizon’s security division memory cores without tripping any alarms?”

  IF YOU ASKED ME TO, I MIGHT CHANCE IT BUT I’D HATE TO HAVE TO TRY. WHAT DID YOU WANT PULLED?

  “The Zanthus microgee-furnace production-monitor programs.”

  WOW. WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD. ANY MEMORY CORE CAN BE BURNT OPEN, BUT SOME ARE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS. EVENT HORIZON IS MOST EQUAL OF ALL.

  “Do you know anyone else who could do it?”

  THERE ARE ABOUT FOUR OR FIVE OF US WHO COULD WRITE MELT PROGRAMS GOOD ENOUGH. BUT IF YOU WENT TO THE CIRCUIT WITH THAT REQUEST IT WOULD COST YOU TWENTY THOUSAND NEW STERLING, MINIMUM.

  Greg grunted, the answer was about what he expected. Kendric could afford that, no messing, but would he have bothered to asset-strip Event Horizon if he hadn’t known about the giga-conductor? There were still too many unknowns. “Does anyone on the circuit know how the blitz ties in with the Merlin failure?”

  WHAT MERLIN FAILURE?

  “That answers that,” he muttered in an undertone. He gave Royan a quick outline of the spaceprobe’s breakdown. “Intuition tells me they’re connected. But I can’t see how. I’m just not convinced about the validity of the blitz. What could it hope to achieve?”

  DUNNO. THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT EXPANDED MOUNTING! THE BLITZ IS COMPLETELY OUT OF PROPORTION TO THE DAMAGE IT WOULD CAUSE. EVENT HORIZON LOST A LOT OF DATA IN THE RESULTANT DATANET SHUTDOWN, BUT NOTHING CRITICAL. THAT IMPLIES VENGEANCE.

  The green letters with their subliminal flicker jolted him. He shook his head at his own slowness. The blitz had exactly the kind of protective layers as the memox-crystal spoiler, each one a cover for the one underneath, and progressively more complex, more subtle, Kendric di Girolamo’s method of operation. A bright sensation of satisfaction rose up; identical patterns, and intuition now both focused on Julia’s nemesis. That coincidence was far too much to ignore. Except…Kendric was smart, he wouldn’t use the same pattern twice. Unless that was what he wanted people to think.

  Greg sipped the last of his coffee reflectively; there were limits to paranoia. Go with your intuition, he told himself, at least you know you trust that.

  SO WHAT DO YOU RECKON, HOLMES?

  “Insufficient data. You want to do me a huge favour?”

  FIND OUT WHO WAS IN ON THE BLITZ?

  “Got it in one.”

  GRIN. SILENCE IS GOLDEN AT THE MOMENT, SO IT’LL MEAN HACKING HOTRODS, ACCESSING THEIR MEMORY CORES TO SEE IF THERE’S ANY REFERENCE TO THE BURN. AND IT’LL HAVE TO BE THE SOLO HOTRODS, THAT COTERIE WEREN’T VIRGIN
S. OOPS, PARDON MY FRENCH, ELEANOR.

  She looked straight at the camera, brushing loose strands of titian hair from her face, and gave him a warm smile.

  “If that’s too big a deal for you, I can bring some help in from Event Horizon’s security division,” Greg said solemnly.

  HOW SOON DO YOU WANT THE ANSWER, SMARTARSE?

  Greg saluted the camera with his empty coffee mug. “Soon as possible, if not before.”

  Royan’s mouth parted a slit, revealing bucked teeth yellowed by the pulped vegetable mush Qoi fed him. His version of a smile. THE HUNT IS ON.

  A whole load of apprehension lifted from Greg, Nobody hunted better than Royan, nor had more practice. And he took it seriously, deadly serious. Royan had monitor programs stashed in every major public data core in the country, sleepers watching for key words and names, Out of the four hundred and seventy People’s Constables on duty the night of the riot there were less than two hundred left alive. The boy had been hunting them out ever since he plugged his axon splice into a gear terminal; seeking out their home addresses, tracking them through promotions, transfers, redundancies. Greg and the rest of the Trinities were told where to find them, what they looked like now, at what point in their daily routine they were most vulnerable.

  Greg had personally taken out sixteen for him.

  “Thanks,” Greg said.

  SNEAKY PRESENT FOR YOU, GREG. YOU MIGHT HAVE A USE FOR IT GIVE ME YOUR CARD.

  One of the waldos stretched out across the work top, claw opening, He fumbled in his Levis pocket and fished out the Event Horizon card. The tarnished silver metal closed about it, and the arm retracted, rotating on its vertical axis, then slid out again, pushing the card into a slot on one of the gear consoles banked up behind the flat-top bench.

  HEY, GREG, DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH CREDIT THIS BUGGER CAN TRANSFER, QUESTION MARK, TRIPLE EXCLAMATION MARK.

  “Yeah, so go careful.”

  TRUST TRUST TRUST WHERE’S IT ALL GONE? PUT YOUR RIGHT HAND ON THE BLUE SQUARE.

  He leant across the bench as a square lit up on a gear module, and did as he’d been told, pressing with his fingertips. Nothing visible happened.

  I’VE BEEN WRITING THIS FOR THE TRINITIES. THOUGHT THEY MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE IT TO GAIN UNLAWFUL ENTRY.

  The card popped out of the slot like a slice of toast. Greg snagged it neatly.

  THUMBPRINT WILL ACTIVATE CREDIT AND ID CONFIRMATION AS USUAL, LITTLE-FINGER PRINT WILL ACTIVATE DATA-CRASH CANCER. ITS SQUIRT SHOULD BOLLOCKS UP GEAR LOCKS, AND TAKE OUT ENTIRE MEMORY CORES.

  Greg looked at the card. Out of the two of them it was rapidly becoming the more useful.

  YOU’LL BOTH COME BACK TO VISIT ME, WON’T YOU?

  The screens blanked out, then, PLEASE, appeared in bright scarlet letters, fuzzy round the edges.

  “Yes,” Eleanor said quickly, and looked at Greg for confirmation.

  “Yes,” he echoed.

  I’D LIKE THAT, said the letters, reverting to green.

  One of the waldos slid out in front of Eleanor and opened its claw with the panache of a conjuror producing the coin that’d just been swallowed. There was a Trinities card resting in the mechanical palm. FOR YOU, MY NEW PRETTY LADY FRIEND. THE TROOPS OUTSIDE WON’T GIVE YOU ANY HASSLE IF YOU SHOW THEM THIS. SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT FOR HIM TO BRING YOU.

  “You do know him well, don’t you?” Eleanor said coyly, her eyes danced with amusement.

  The camera whined as the lens twisted round, zooming in for a close up on Eleanor’s face. She held her poise without flinching.

  WE CAN HAVE A GOSSIP. IT’S BEEN YEARS SINCE I HAD A REALLY GOOD GOSSIP ABOUT SOMEONE BEHIND THEIR BACK. IT’LL BE FUN. THE STORIES I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT HIM.

  “You’ve got a date.”

  “Hey,” Greg protested.

  YEAH. SNEER. YOU GOT A COMPLAINT?

  He held his hands up. “I’ll be back, too.”

  GOOD. MISS YOU, GREG. BAD.

  “Promise,” he mouthed to the camera.

  Qoi materialized silently at their side and showed them out.

  CHAPTER 21

  Julia took the broad stairs of Wilholm Manor two at a time, her burst of speed nearly skidding her feet from under her when she reached the hall’s polished tiles. She pushed up the heavy iron latch on the front. Rachel came out of the old butler’s pantry, looking miffed; it should have been Steven on duty, but he’d called in sick. The disapproving expression fell from her face to be replaced by her usual natural diligence.

  Julia enjoyed the momentary lapse. So Rachel was human after all. Wonder who was in there with her?

  She pushed the big oak door open and went outside. It was raining lightly, drops falling vertically from a high almost nebulous cloud sheet. The air seemed solid with humidity. She stood under the portico, heart pumping strongly.

  You in a hurry, girl?

  Julia clamped down on her racing thoughts as the silent voice whispered into her brain, resenting the way her father was interpreting her actions. He’d loaded a personality package, coded OtherEyes, into one of her processor nodes, digesting her body’s senses in real-time, feeding the formatted sensations back to his NN core.

  I’d go crazy otherwise, he’d pleaded. Camera images are no substitute, flat and insipid; I’m human, damn it, I need human touch and smell, heat and cold. Not all the time, just the occasional reminder. Keep in touch with the real world.

  So she’d acquiesced; and still wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea. She’d carefully reviewed the processor node’s basic management program, making sure its neural-interface flow was strictly one way. Acceptance only. None of her thoughts could seep in for him to examine. Not bloody likely. But despite the precautions, it meant having Grandpa chuntering away inside her mind the whole time OtherEyes was loaded.

  There were advantages-his insights could be illuminating-but he did moan so.

  From her position she could see a pair of forlorn-looking wheelbarrows that’d been abandoned down at the far end of the garden, piled high with weeds. She didn’t blame the gardeners for taking a break from the heat and damp. She was already perspiring under her white cotton summer dress. Her skin itched.

  Too bloody hot it is, Juliet.

  Show me your April, she asked, on some fey impulse.

  For an instant the trees lost their leaves, their branches becoming thick black crockery cracks superimposed on a band of sombre grey landscape. There were no flowers in the garden, though the shrubs were covered in a crop of glossy scarlet berries. Steam shifted to clammy mist, cold water droplets clinging to branches and grass. Icy air cut through her thin dress. Small bedraggled birds pecked for worms in the slushy gravel. A remote style of beauty, lonely.

  The strange apparition withered. She was rubbing her bare arms against the lingering impression of chill.

  Now those were the days, her grandfather said happily.

  I suppose.

  But she wouldn’t want it to happen very often, say every five years.

  The Duo rolled out of the warm drizzle, and pulled up close to the portico. There was someone sitting in the passenger seat. Julia smiled a welcome.

  Isn’t he a bit old, Juliet?

  Her smile locked.

  Greg is a nice man, Grandpa. He doesn’t patronize me like everyone else. You’ve no idea what a relief that is.

  She was going to have to go back over the processor node’s inputs; he was learning far too much of her private self, that aspect of personality which should remain secret. Her own body language was playing traitor.

  Greg got out of the Duo, scurrying quickly round the rear the car for the shelter of the portico. He shook out the collar of his leather jacket, nodded at Rachel. He wasn’t bothering with suits any more, Julia noted. Levis and T-shirts were more agreeable on him, anyway; he’d never looked quite right in a suit, caged. It was great to think he felt familiar enough around her to relax, let her see his real self. Most people were so guarded with her.

  “Hel
lo, Greg. Was it something important?” Or did you come just to see me? Unlikely, but…

  Lovesick. Your knees have gone all watery, Juliet. Mental laughter.

  Grandpa, if you don’t stop that right now I’ll cancel the link. First and final warning, OK?

  No bloody sense of humour, that’s your trouble, m’girl.

  Greg was looking at her strangely, head slightly cocked as though he was concentrating on a faint voice. “Could be,” he said pleasantly. “Brought someone to see you and your grandfather.”

  The woman getting out of the Duo’s passenger seat, with some difficulty, was about fifty, Julia thought as she sized her up. Dressed in a pleated maroon skirt and a flower-print blouse under a woollen jacket, a double string of pearls around her neck. Her fading fair hair had been given a light perm. Julia didn’t quite know what to make of her. She certainly couldn’t be Greg’s girlfriend. Surely? Perhaps his aunt.

  Now there’s a candidate for a healthy diet if ever I saw one.

  It took a great deal of willpower not to clench her fists. And what must Greg be seeing in her mind?

  Shut! Up! Julia shouted into the node.

  “This is Gabriel Thompson,” Greg was saying. “My Mindstar colleague.”

  Julia forgot all about the exasperating intrusion in her mind, suddenly excited and fearful in a way she couldn’t explain. She opened her mouth.

  “Yes, I can,” said Gabriel.

  Julia gaped, elated, then suspicious. Recovering her composure. “You must know that is the first thing everyone is going to ask you by now,” she countered.

  “True.” And there was a burst of humour in the woman’s deep-set leathery eyes. Gone almost before it registered.

  She looks so sad, Julia thought. Haunted.

  If her ability is real, then she will be able to see her own death approaching. How would you feel about that, Juliet?

  “There must be an easy way of proving you can see the future,” Julia persisted as the three of them walked up the stairs toward the study. Rachel had gone back to the butler’s pantry, satisfied Greg and Gabriel posed no threat.