Kiley’s sampling waldo slid out, micromanipulator claws closing around the clump of microbes. It retracted and placed them delicately inside the probe’s collection flask.
Cold gas thrusters fired again, backing Kiley away from the rock. The lightware processors began to check over the propulsion systems.
You did this for me? Julia asked.
I did. Do you see now, Snowy? Do you see the why of it?
Kiley’s chemical thrusters fired for a long time, lifting it out of the ring’s inclination, into free space where the plasma drive could be used. Star trackers locked on to their target constellations, orientating the probe for its flyby manoeuvre burns.
No, she said, inexplicably humbled by the admission. She could sit and think, run a logic matrix, tear the problem apart. Answers never eluded her when she was in that state, a determined computer/human fusion. But somehow just the thought of expending all that effort inhibited her. Perhaps this appalling vastness of the gas giant’s domain had numbed her into dormancy.
Kiley was shedding mass, discarding its primary mission modules, the sampling waldos, precision attitude thrusters, photon-amp booms, laser scanners, all peeling off like mounting scales. She watched them go, oblong boxes and spidery cybernetic arms, adding to the gas giant’s ring. In a few thousand years vacuum ablation would reduce them to tissue flakes, a swarm of slowly dissipating metallic confetti.
The melancholia had really gripped now. The Kiley memory was its own Trojan, draining her.
It’s like this, Snowy: the theorists, Rick Parnell and his merry band, they all say the microbes survived their flight between stars because they are simple primitive organisms.
They’re wrong. I know they’re wrong. How could they be primitive? They are life’s pinnacle, separated from amoebas by billions of years of evolution. These microbes, Snowy, came from a dying world, travelling Christ knows how far to get here-certainly there are no burnt-out stars in our immediate section of the galaxy. Think of it, their planet, its sun growing cold, a freezing atmosphere bleeding off into space, oceans evaporated, mountains fallen. Anything that could adapt to survive such a decaying environment would have to be the toughest, most forbidding, most ruthless form of life imaginable. Then, when whatever it was that eventually triumphed-plant, or algae, or even animal-was all that was left, it made the final jump. It adapted to space. It abandoned its birthworld and achieved species immortality.
That’s what we all strive for, Snowy, deep down. Continuation, the biological imperative. It drives us, preordains our movements from before we are born, it is universal and irrefutable. That, if you like, is our spiritual burden.
I think I see now, she said. The microbes are a stronger form of life than any on Earth, more potent.
And more, he said, eagerness swelling like a wave. They live-thrive-in a vacuum. I want to tame them, Snowy. I want to put them to use, make them work for us. Extraterrestrial bioware, a kind of green space technology, and all at your disposal. My wedding present, at last.
Kiley’s plasma drive came on, a two-minute burn, nudging the probe in towards Jupiter and the flyby. A slingshot manoeuvre that would fling it out of the gas giant’s gravity field and back to Earth.
Is that what you did when the microbes got back? she asked. Manipulate them?
So I believe, that’s certainly what I intended when I left this package for you.
There must be more, then.
Yes. A diary. A daily package, so you could see my progress. And then if anything went wrong, you’d be able to see what I was working on before it happened.
Daily?
Perhaps not. But there will be accounts, lab notes, reviews, explanations, tables of results.
Where, Royan? I need them. Today. Now.
If you’re following me, you’ll find them.
Oh, God, she called out, furious, frightened. What have you done, what are you doing? The chaos you’ve caused.
The smile reappeared. That’s me, Snowy. The king of misrule. You know that’s me. You loved that part of me, it excited you, as your power did to me. Opposites.
God damn you! You’ve no right.
Don’t cry, not for me. I’m not worth it. If I’ve screwed up, you’ll put me back together again. You’re so good at that.
When I find you, I won’t patch you up, I’ll tear you to bloody pieces.
That’s my Snowy. He laughed.
Cancel Integrity Monitored Link to Processor Node One. Squirt Package into NN Core Two.
The study materialized about her again. The light pouring through the windows was oppressively harsh after Jupiter’s gloaming. She blinked rapidly.
What do I want with him? NN core two asked peevishly.
Run a total review of Kiley’s sensor memories.
Oh yes, Io’s volcanos.
That sort of affinity had unnerved her for a week or so after the first NN core had come on line. Now she just took it for granted. The NN core would comb through Kiley’s sensor memories, running comparisons against existing star maps. That was how Io’s volcanos had been discovered, by accident, reviewing old Voyager pictures for a guidance plot.
Maybe, just maybe, Kiley had recorded the starship.
Julia pushed the chair back, and pulled her shoes off. She walked over to the window. Daniella and Matthew were still splashing about in the pool. And they had got that damn dog in with them. The times she’d told them.
She pressed her cheek against the window, watching them. The worry which her entrancement with Jupiter had suppressed was beginning to rise. Microbes and starships. Which was she supposed to be looking for? And Royan, uncertain enough to leave her warnings, perhaps the most chilling aspect of the whole affair. He was always so cocksure.
It wasn’t as if she could offload the burden, confess to someone. “Bugger you, Royan,” she snapped.
The terminal on the desk bleeped for attention. Now what?
She braced herself and turned.
Her personality package had returned from Eienso’s mainframe. Clifford Jepson had paid the money into Leol Reiger’s account.
CHAPTER 17
The Pegasus was spiralling down towards the Colonel Maitland. Greg watched the vast bulk of the airship appear on the bulkhead flatscreen, its contra-rotating fans dawdling in a doldrum calm. Their shallow approach angle showed it as a large black oval above the glistening deep-blue of the ocean. He found it disconcerting, the absorptive black surface, sharp edges, it didn’t seem to belong here at the centre of nature’s passive domain, an intrusive foreigner.
“So why the guilty smile?” Sun asked.
Greg clamped his lips together, he hadn’t realized he was smiling. “Nothing.”
He and Eleanor had taken their honeymoon on one of the Lakehurst-class airships, that was back in the days when all long-distance flights were made by airships. Two weeks spent circling around Greenland and back down Canada’s east coast. A first-class cabin to themselves, day trips to resort centres, the eager buzz of third-class passengers on their way to a new life on homesteads springing up behind the retreating permafrost. The black shape was evocative, tripping his mind’s gates, delicious memories spilling out along his synapses.
Above all was the gentleness, time spent entwined, time spent floating above fresh landscapes, above sunsets and dawns, gourmet meals, idle chatter, laughter. It had been stately.
He rued the day of the airship’s passing, replaced with hypersonic planes powered by Julia’s all-pervasive gigaconductor. The last commercial trans-Atlantic airship flight had rated half a column in The Times one morning; he’d passed the cybofax over the breakfast table to Eleanor who quirked her lips in remorse. They had always said they would repeat the trip, but then there had been the kids, the groves to tend, responsibilities. Now all it ever could be was a sunny memory.
Greg had never really adapted to hypersonics, the second age of air travel; two-and-a-quarter hours to New Zealand from England; Japan a hundred-minute streak over th
e slushy remnants of the North Pole. Where could you escape in a world like that?
Jason Whitehurst had found the answer the hard way. The Pegasus had broken away from the Italian mainland over Genoa, hitting Mach eight above the Ligurian Sea. They were passing over the Straits of Gibraltar fifteen minutes later without slowing down, curving round north-west Africa to line up on the Cape Verde islands. Total elapsed time from Julia sending him the co-ordinates to arrival at the Colonel Maitland was forty-seven minutes.
“We’ve just been given landing clearance by the captain,” Pearse called.
“Fine,” Greg said. “Take her down.” He stood up as Pearse spoke into the handset. Suzi got to her feet beside him. He noticed she used her arms to push herself up out of the deep chair. “You OK?”
She pulled a face. “Sod it, yeah, I’ll do.”
The leg of her shellsuit was torn, stained with a ribbon of blood, blue dermal seal visible through the open fabric. And what would Jason Whitehurst make of that?
Greg’s face still stung, but he’d checked it in the toilet mirror. Appearance-wise it wasn’t too bad. His leather jacket had deflected a lot of the glass splinters. Out of the three of them, he had come off best. Even his neurohormone hangover had run its course.
Two converging lines of bright strobe lights were flashing along the top of the Colonel Maitland, leading them in towards the recessed landing pad. At the front edge of the pad a large blister rose out of the fuselage, which he guessed was a hangar for Jason Whitehurst’s own plane.
Greg walked forward as the Pegasus descended, compensating for the inclined deck. The chair at the front of the cabin had been straightened and tilted horizontal. Malcolm was lying on it; all he had on were jockey shorts, his brown skin mottled with big patches of dermal seal. Diagnostic probes were stuck to his torso and the nape of his neck, the medical unit’s screen showing an écorché representation of his body, large sections coloured amber, two red pinpoints near his spine.
“Is he going to be all right?” Greg asked Rachel.
She looked up from the plasma bladder’s LCD. “Yes. Nothing critical punctured or broken, just blood-loss trauma. But we got the plasma into him in time. He might need some skin replacement for his back, otherwise fine.”
“Thank Christ for that.”
“Never thought I’d be doing this again.”
“Yeah, you and me both,” he said.
The Pegasus touched down with a slight tremor.
Greg shrugged out of his jacket. “Pearse, give me a Tokarev and shoulder holster.”
“Right.” The hardliner went to one of the lockers. “Suzi, do you want a holster for your Browning?”
“Nah, I stowed it.”
Greg glanced at her. The Puma bag had been lost in the Prezda’s well. Her shellsuit wasn’t all that baggy, though. He didn’t ask.
Pearse handed him the holster. “You want me to come with you?”
“No,” Greg said, velcroing the holster’s straps. “The deal is for me and Suzi. We shouldn’t be more than half an hour, forty minutes at the outside. Buy the girl and bring her back. After that we zip Malcolm here straight to a decent medical facility.”
“Buy the girl,” Pearse repeated. “That sounds so… God, I don’t know. Medieval?”
“Something like that.” Greg checked the Tokarev’s charge before slotting it into the holster. “But it’s preferable to the alternative, for her and us.” He pulled his jacket back on, and pressed the belly hatch activation button.
There were two people waiting for them on the pad. Hard-liners, dressed in dark grey trousers and light jade V-neck sweaters, as if they were cabin stewards.
Greg ordered a small neurohormone secretion. The hardliners were cautious, but not hostile.
They took a lift down to the gondola, riding in silence. A long windowless corridor, lit by a bright biolum strip, blank doors in either wall, and nobody else in sight. He thought the hardliners were leading them towards the prow, but it was difficult to be certain. A cleaning drone rolled past them going in the opposite direction.
He sensed the background shimmer of the crew’s minds, a continual whisper of emotions. Reassuring to know the Colonel Maitland wasn’t actually the ghost ship it looked.
The hardliners stopped outside one of the doors near the end of the corridor. It opened into Jason Whitehurst’s clinically plain study. He was sitting behind his glass desk, playing with an old-fashioned gold Parker biro. The hologram display inside the desk top was angled so that it could only be read by him. From where Greg stood inside the door the symbology array was just an Expressionist laser frieze. Pretty, but meaningless.
A grey rectangle on the floor in front of the desk began to bulge up, silently sculpting itself into a settee.
“Please,” Jason Whitehurst opened his hand, gesturing at the newly formed settee.
Greg sat, sensing the two hardliners behind him withdrawing. Suzi plonked herself down beside him, her heels barely reached the floor.
“Do you require medical attention?” Jason Wbitehurst asked Suzi. He was looking at her knee, the torn shellsuit leg. “I have a doctor on board. Someone my age, it is advisable…” He trailed off with a dismissive wave.
“I’ve already had it patched, thanks,” Suzi said.
“Of course.”
“A hazard on our way here,” Greg said. He studied the mind before him. Jason Whitehurst put on a good front. Behind the bemused tolerance expression he was hiding a mix of fretfulness and expectancy. Greg recognized the mind set. Jason Whitehurst was a masterclass gambler, it was his out, his bang. He didn’t merely play the game, he was part of the game.
“You see, we’re not the only people looking for you,” Greg said. He wanted a reaction, see how Jason Whitehurst bore up under some pressure.
“I am aware of this,” Jason Whitehurst said. “After all, the delectable Charlotte is in some demand, a valuable commodity. I simply did what I always do in such a case, and trade on it.”
“A pity you didn’t think to warn Baronski.”
“Is he in some sort of trouble?”
“You judge. Suzi and I managed to escape the tekmerc team that was going to interrogate him about Fielder’s location. That’s where we picked up our little scratches.”
Jason Whitehurst pulled on his beard. Greg sensed the first traces of alarm rising into his mind, thought currents brightening.
“Baronski knew the risks,” Jason Wbitehurst said bluntly.
“Baronski was a cautious man. He didn’t know what Fielder has got herself involved in; if he had, he would have stopped her.”
“You have come all this way, by dint of considerable effort on the part of your employer, simply to remonstrate with me, Mr Mandel?”
“No. All I came for was Fielder. Just telling you this deal isn’t all cosy advantage trading, that’s all. Maybe you don’t know how valuable this Fielder girl is.”
“I believe I have a fair idea of her financial status, or more precisely, the price of the information stored in that pretty little head of hers. Dear Charlotte is unique. And like all monopolies, she does not come cheap.”
“How much?”
“One hundred million Eurofrancs.”
“Bollocks,” Suzi snorted.
Greg had seen it coming, watching Jason Whitehurst nerve himself up. There was determination, but he was also testing, interested to see how important Fielder really was. It fitted Greg’s initial impression. Jason Whitehurst knew he had something, he just wasn’t sure exactly what.
Greg increased his neurohormone secretion. “Did you know first contact has been made?” he asked.
Shadows of doubt flittered across Jason Whitehurst’s mind. “Whatever are you talking about, Mr Mandel?”
“First contact, with aliens.”
Jason Whitehurst’s face registered impatience. Suspicion rose, his thought currents racing, then a slow dawn of comprehension which brought cold fright. “That is the source of atomic structuring
technology? Aliens?”
“Yeah,” said Greg.
“My God, of course, her holiday.” Jason did his best to recover his composure, physically he managed it, mentally his mind surged with phobic dread. “Is Julia Evans really sure she knows what she is doing dabbling in this affair?”
“She’s sure.”
“Very well. Then as I said before, if you are unwilling to pay the reserve price, dear Charlotte will be placed on the open market, available to the highest bidder.”
“Wrong,” said Greg. “We will pay you sixty-five million for her.”
“Greg!” Suzi protested.
“Julia has been most foolish sending you,” Jason Whitehurst said. “All you have done is simply confirmed dear Charlotte’s worth to me. The reserve price stands. I must say, it’s most unlike Julia to make this sort of mistake.”
“I told you about the aliens as a favour,” Greg said. “That’s the second one today. I’m trying to make you realize that you’re in way over your head. This whole deal frightens me very badly, and I’m ex-Mindstar. Charlotte Fielder will be removed from the Colonel Maitland today; either by us paying for her, or by one of the tekmerc squads the kombinates have employed to hunt her down. And they’re not far behind us, a few hours at most. if she comes with us, you will receive your sixty-five million. Wait until they arrive, and you can kiss goodbye to a lot more than money. That’s the bottom line, Whitehurst. No third favour.”
Sparkling blue eyes fixed on Greg. “The Mindstar Brigade?” Jason Whitehurst said it with reluctant admiration.
“Yeah. You want my advice, then leg it out of here as soon as we take Fielder. Head back to Monaco, where it’s safe, and where you’re visible, in a crowd. Tell the other bidders that Fielder’s gone. Best I can offer.”
“I was in the King’s Own Hussars, myself.”
“I know, I’ve read your profile. Good troops, the King’s Own; they were in Turkey.”
“After my day. Mexico was my last campaign.” Jason Whitehurst sighed, dropping the Parker on the desk. “Didn’t know you were a brother officer. Sorry if I sounded off.”
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