The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Greg looked at the wall opposite the balcony door; it was criss-crossed by narrow black scorch marks. Glass fragments from the cabinets were heaped on the carpet, figurines glowed a faint cherry pink on smouldering shelves. “Maser,” he said. “Probably a Raytheon or a Minolta, something packing enough power to penetrate the silvering on the glass.”

  “Bloody hell. What now?”

  Greg wriggled his legs from under the small of Ellis’s back, and propped himself up on his elbows, gulping down air. Looking anywhere but at the ruined flesh at his feet. The world was a mirage, wavering nauseously. “Cover up. Call your squad, this apartment has got to be scrubbed clean, there must be nothing left to prove we ever visited. You’ll have to take the body out tonight-cleaning truck, something like that. And get these Crays to Walshaw. Lord knows how long it’ll take to go through their contents, though.”

  “No police?”

  “No police. We need the Crays’ data. Besides, I’d hate to try and explain what we were doing here. Let Ellis become another unperson, nobody’s going to ask questions.”

  “Oh. Yes.” Victor was dazed, moving and thinking with a Saturday night drunk’s shellshocked apathy.

  “Call your squad now.”

  “Right.” He tugged his cybofax out of an inner pocket. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  Greg dabbed at the flow with some of Ellis’s tissues while Victor yammered out increasingly urgent instructions. Flies were beginning to feed on the open skull. Greg pulled a white lace tablecloth over Ellis, and collapsed into one of the low chairs, exhausted.

  “On their way,” said Victor. “You want to flit, find a doctor or something?”

  “No. I think I’ll just sit here for a minute. Oh, and be sure to have this place swept for bugs.” His nose had stopped bleeding.

  Victor hovered anxiously, head swivelling round the apartment, missing the body each time. “Bloody hell, what a cockup.”

  “Not your fault. But it proves one thing.

  “What’s that?”

  Greg gave him a battle-weary smile. “I’m close.”

  “Yeah, but Greg…What have you got left now?”

  “A name. Confirmation.”

  “That di Girolamo character you mentioned?”

  “Yep. It was beautiful the way Ellis’s mind funked out. You should’ve seen it.”

  “If you say so. This is all way above my head. Surveillance and back up, Walshaw says. You sit there and take it easy for a while. I’ll see to the clean up.”

  “Sure.” Greg drew his cybofax out of his leather jacket’s inside pocket, taking care not to make any sudden motions. His brain sloshed from ear to ear each time his head moved.

  He flipped the cybofax open, and keyed the phone function with difficulty. His fingers were stiff, devoid of feeling.

  The cybofax bleeped for an incoming call. Unsurprised, he let it through. Knowing.

  Gabriel’s face appeared on the little screen. “No,” she said, with ominous resolution.

  “I’m sorry, but you have to. There’s no one else.”

  “No, Gregory.”

  “Look at me, a proper look. Right now I couldn’t even sense a tiger’s brain if it was biting me.”

  “Tell you, I’ve got to have psi coverage to get that girl out. You’ll be saving lives, Gabriel. The Trinities will bloodbath the Mirriam without perfect intelligence information-where Katerina is, where the crew are, and what they’re tooled up with.”

  “You’re a bastard, Mandel.”

  “No messing. See you at the briefing.”

  After that, it was the difficult call. Eleanor.

  CHAPTER 31

  True to prediction, one of the yachts docked at the same quay as the Mirriam was hosting a party. A brassy, high-wattage rave; hysterical guests spilling out on to the quay itself, dancing, drawing syntho, swilling down champagne. Perfect cover. By two o’clock in the morning it still hadn’t peaked.

  At five minutes past two Greg walked down the quay with Suzi, the pair of them holding hands and laughing without a care in the world. He wore a dinner jacket that felt as though it was made of canvas, and reeked of starch. Suzi had slipped into a 1920s gold lamé dress, low cut with near invisible straps, a blonde bob wig covering her gelled-down spikes. With her size and figure she looked impossibly young-fourteen, fifteen, something like that. He reckoned that as a couple they fitted the scene perfectly. Anyone would think it was fathers and daughters night. Thank heavens for café society, immutable in a fluid world.

  They infiltrated the party fringes, anthropoid chameleons.

  Big Amstrad projectors were mounted on the yacht, firing holographic fireworks into the night. Upturned faces were painted in spicy shades of scarlet and green by carnation bursts of ephemeral meteorites.

  Suzi lingered to watch a girl dressed in a sequin bikini and dyed ostrich feathers limbo her way under a boat-hook held by two semi-paralytic Hoorays.

  Greg checked his watch and tugged Suzi’s arm with gentle insistence, steering her into the wrap of darkness at the end of the quay. Three minutes before they had to be in position. The snatch had to be performed with exact timing; one mistake, one delay, a hesitation, and they’d be heading down the wrong Tau line and all Gabriel’s planning would come to naught. He’d tried to emphasize that to the Trinities, drilling it in.

  The limbo girl failed to make it, overbalancing and winding up flat on her back. The flesh of her overripe body quivered with helpless laughter. One of the Hoorays poured champagne into her mouth straight from the magnum. She lapped at the foamy spray spilling down her cheeks, her mind light-years away.

  Greg and Suzi tottered away from the revellers. Nobody was paying them a second glance.

  “Lady Gee was right,” Suzi said from the corner of her mouth. He could sense how tight her small body was wired, rigid with restless tension.

  The Trinities had been, to say the least, sceptical when Gabriel began outlining the evening’s events. Their agnosticism had been whipped in staggered increments as the prophecies unfurled with uncanny precision-the party, which crewmen would leave the Mirriam for the evening, the exact time Kendric and Hermione left for the Blue Ball, the fact that Katerina had been left behind.

  Other couples had drifted into the seclusion of the quay beyond the party, exploiting the penumbra of privacy provided by covered gangplanks. Greg kept his eyes firmly on the Mirriam ahead; Suzi peeped unashamedly, chortling occasionally.

  Mirriam looked deserted, lit only by the intermittent spectral backwash from the Amstrads. Yet Gabriel had said there were seven people on board, two of Kendric’s bodyguards, four sailors, and Katerina. She’d even reeled off their locations.

  Greg wished he could use his espersense to confirm, but that was a definite no-no. The anaemia which the neurohormones had inflicted on the rest of his body had lifted during the afternoon and physically he was shaping up, but another secretion would cripple his brain.

  They reached the Miriam’s gangplank and folded into the midnight shadows it exuded. He checked his watch again.

  “How about we go for total realism?” Suzi whispered with a giggle in her voice as she twined her hands round his neck.

  “Twelve seconds,” he answered. The gangplank was one long pressure pad according to Gabriel.

  “Oh, Daddy, give it to me good,” she yodelled.

  He could feel her shaking with laughter and a crazy burn of exhilaration.

  Right on time a voice said, “Hey, sorry folks, but you’re gonna have to move along.”

  Greg was facing the quay so he couldn’t see the speaker, but he recognized Toby’s baritone rumble. Besides, Gabriel said it would be him. He carried on smooching with Suzi.

  There was a faint vibration as Toby walked down the gangplank.

  “I said-”

  Suzi’s Armscor stunshot spat a dart of electric-blue flame. Greg heard a startled grunt and turned just in time to catch Toby before he hit the gangplank. Asking himself why the hell he
bothered.

  Suzi was racing up the gangplank. Greg followed dragging Toby. The bodyguard’s breathing was ragged, slitted whites of his eyes showing in the fallout from the silent twinkling light-storm overhead.

  As always Greg experienced the conviction of operating under divine protection. With Gabriel’s guidance he’d become omnipotent.

  Suzi ducked into the darker oval of an open hatch, fumbling her photon amp into place as she went.

  Greg pulled his own photon amp out of the dinner jacket’s pocket. That reassuringly familiar pinching as the band annealed to his skin. Miriam resolved into cold hard reality around him, nebulous leaden shadows stabilizing into sharply defined blue and grey outlines.

  02:12:29, flashed the yellow digits.

  “At two hours, twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds GMT the crewman will exit the cabin-lounge door on to the afterdeck,” Gabriel had said, her voice raised above the Trinities’ scoffing.

  Greg dumped Toby on the glossy polished decking and ran for the afterdeck, black leather shoes squeaking.

  02:12:35.

  “At twelve minutes and forty-one seconds GMT he’ll move into your line of sight.”

  02:12:38.

  Greg stopped and assumed a marksman stance with his Armscor, Lining it up one metre wide of the corner of the superstructure.

  02:12:41.

  The crewman obviously knew something was amiss; he came round the corner of the superstructure fast, crouched low.

  The photon amp showed a monster crab scuttling right at him, metre length of pipe instead of claw. He fired.

  “The crewman’s name is Nicky.”

  Metallic clangour as the crab’s erratic momentum skated him into the railing, pipe skittering away anarchically. “Bye, Nicky,” Greg whispered.

  “Radar cancelled,” Suzi’s voice squawked in his earpiece. “God, this place is exactly like Lady Gee described it. Wild!”

  Greg finished up at the stern, scanning the glum water of the marina and its flotsam carpet of decaying seaweed. Oily ripples slapped lazily at Mirriam’s hull.

  “On the taffrail you’ll find a control box with six weather-proofed buttons. Press the second from the left.”

  The box was there. Rigid forefinger pressing. A stifled drone of a motor lowering the diving platform ladder.

  The inflatable dinghy surged out of the gloaming, four figures hunched down, muffled engine cutting a hazy wake through the seaweed. It turned a finely judged arc and rode its bow wave to a halt at the foot of the ladder. The first three figures swarmed up the ladder, dressed in combat leathers and helmets. Des and two of his troop, Lynne and Roddy.

  They ignored Greg and crossed the deck to the half-open cabin-lounge door. Des slid it right back and the three of them rushed in.

  Greg leant over the taffrail to see Gabriel puffing her way up the ladder. She was wearing a balaclava and a heavy nightcamouflage flak jacket, restricting her movements; it was the largest the Trinities had in stock. He put his hand down and diplomatically helped her over the railing.

  She tugged the balaclava off, wiping the back of her hand across her perspiring forehead. “We’re too old for this Greg, you and I, believe me. If you weren’t such a bloody ignorant stubborn bugger.” A resigned smile lifted her lips. Shaking her head. “Crazy.”

  Greg smiled fondly. “Tell you, I have a horrible feeling you may be right.”

  “That’s my boy.” A sudden frown wrinkled her plump features. “Damn.” She thumbed the comm set in her breast pocket. “Lynne, it’s not that hatch, go to the next one. that’s right. The crewman is standing behind the cowling.”

  “Come on,” Greg said. “Time for you and I to rescue the damsel.”

  “You know, Teddy’s done a good job with those kids,” Gabriel admitted grudgingly as they moved into the lounge. Greg negotiated the unfamiliar obstacles and found the central companionway. A tube of impenetrably black air, which even the photon amp had difficulty discerning.

  “Are we all right for some light?” he asked.

  “Yes. One moment.”

  Greg heard her shut the lounge door, then the biolum strip came on. He peeled the photon amp off. Suzi slithered down a narrow set of stairs from the bridge.

  “Mega,” she breathed, pulling off her wig and ruffing up her mauve spikes. “You got it spot on, Lady Gee. All of it. Where you said, when you said. It’s fucking incredible.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  The three of them headed for the lower deck. Thick vermilion carpet absorbed their footfalls down the stairs. One of the crewmen was lying on the bottom step, his limbs shivering spastically from the stunshot charge. Des was waiting for them outside the master bedroom’s door, helmet off, grinning broadly, his hair a dark sweaty mat.

  “All right!” he whooped blithely. “We breezed it, no problem. You ever need a job, Gran, you come’n see me, OK?”

  “You’re too kind,” Gabriel said.

  Des missed the mounting testiness, but Suzi winked at Greg, rolling her eyes for his denseness. Lynne and Roddy clattered up the stairs from the crew quarters below.

  “Shall we get on with it?” Gabriel said, hurriedly forestalling the compliment Lynne had opened her mouth to begin. She took an infuser tube out of her flak jacket and handed it to Suzi. “You’ll need this.”

  Suzi turned it over, mildly curious. “What for?”

  “She’s a big girl.”

  Des and Roddy exchanged a glance.

  “Is she armed?” Lynne enquired.

  “No.”

  Greg knew that mood well enough, Gabriel at her most obdurate. There’d be no budging her now.

  He opened the bedroom door. There was a subdued pink light inside.

  “Hoo boy.” Suzi groaned in pawky dismay. Des and Roddy piled in behind her for a look.

  Katerina was sprawled across a huge circular water-bed, wearing an Arabian harem slave costume; strips of diaphanous lemon chiffon held together with thin gold chains. It was a size too small, strained by the curves of her breasts and hips. The chiffon was so flimsy they could see her large areolas through it, dark purple-brown circles with aroused nipples.

  Katerina batted drowsy eyelids at the five faces staring down at her. “I’m ready,” was all she said.

  Roddy let out a low admiring whistle. “Makes it all kind’ve worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

  Des sniggered.

  “For God’s sake find something to wrap her in,” Greg said. Annoyed at their abrupt lapse of discipline. Hardly surprised, though. The porno-starlet stage setting sapped any sense of urgency. He let out a hiss of breath, silently cursing Gabriel for not warning him. “Suzi, help me get her up.”

  Katerina looked up with innocent bewilderment as they each took an arm and tugged her into a sitting position. “I remember you,” she said to Greg. “Will you make it happen, too?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “But this is the paradise place. The hurt and the wonder always happens here.”

  “Bollocks, what’s she on?” asked Suzi.

  “Phyltre. Stuff’s blowing her brain apart.”

  Katerina turned her head to focus on Suzi. “Can you make it happen?”

  “No way, girl. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  Something in Suzi’s inflexible tone must’ve finally penetrated Katerina’s befuddled brain. “I don’t want to leave, not here, not the wonder. Not ever.”

  Suzi brought up the infuser in a no-nonsense manner.

  Katerina’s bare foot lashed out, catching Suzi full in the stomach. She went down with a silent oof, curling around herself and fighting for breath. Greg was suddenly left holding a screaming, scratching, biting, kicking she-demon. Gabriel was right, Katerina was big, and strong, and utterly deranged. Tapering lavender nails slashed at his eyes, a knee thudded into his pelvic bone, a tornado of golden hair filled the air. He felt soft flesh, hard flesh. Hampered by not wanting to hurt her. An inhibition rapidly dissolving.

  D
es made a grab for Katerina’s shoulders, succeeding only in ripping her mock slave-costume. All three of them tumbled to the floor in a frenziedly bucking heap. Then Lynne waded in, trying to pin Katerina’s arms down. Roddy managed to grab hold of one leg. Finally a wheezing Suzi slammed the infuser on Katerina’s neck with unnecessary force. For one horrendous moment Greg thought it wasn’t going to have any effect, but a look of outright surprise shot across Katerina’s enraged face and she subsided into a limp bundle shrouded in wispy scraps of lemon fog.

  “Goddamn…ungrateful…bitch,” Suzi spat between shudders. Her face was chalk-white. Greg thought she was going to kick the unconscious body. Probably wouldn’t have stopped her.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” he offered in apology. “Hey, you all right?”

  Her hands were still clasped tight around her abdomen. “Yeah. Bitch.”

  Roddy wrapped a towelling robe around Katerina, and Des carried her out in a fireman’s lift.

  Gabriel stood to one side as they filed out of the master bedroom. “Told you so,” she said.

  The seven of them rode the dinghy back to Event Horizon’s finance division offices, stealing quietly across the Nene’s scummy water, making good headway against the outgoing tide. City noises thrummed around them; sirens, horns, the trill of gas-powered traffic, peals of jukebox music from riverside pubs. The sough of the dinghy’s electric outboard was lost without trace.

  Des dodged the big freighters anchored in the middle of the river outside the port. They were waiting for the early morning tide to provide the draught they needed to take them down the channel to the Wash. Rust-streaked metal giants, sprinkled with tiny navigation lights, their bows a check pattern of hoarfrost where their liquefied gas tanks nestled against the hull. Greg could hear a steady plop plop plop as chunks of the mushy rime fell into the water.

  Once the freighters were left behind it was a straight ride up the Nene to the Ferry Meadows estuary. The Trinities loosened up, schoolboys returning from a day outing. Their hive-buzz chatter percolated about the inflatable-Minim crewmen I have zapped.