Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Greg saw the gland, glistening ebony, pumping. Physically, it was a horrendously complex patchwork of neurosecretory cells; the original matrix had taken the American DARPA office over a decade to develop. An endocrine node implanted in the cortex, raiding the bloodstream for chemicals and disgorging a witches’ brew of neurohormones in return.

The answer was intuitive: “You didn’t have orange for breakfast.”

Morgan Walshaw blinked, interest awakened.

Evans grunted gruff approval. “The last quarter profits from my orbital memox-crystal furnaces have been bad. True or false?”

“They’ve been awful.”

“You ain’t bloody kidding, boy.” The chair backed out from the table, and trundled over to a window. Gazing mournfully across the splendid lawns, the billionaire said, “This job isn’t for my benefit. I suppose you know I’m dying?”

“I guessed it was pretty serious.”

“Lymph disorder, boy, aggravated by using the old devil deal hormone to keep my skin thick and my hair growing. So much for vanity, serves me right. This thing I’ve got, very rare, so they tell me. After all, it would never do for me to die of something common.” He snorted contemptuously at his own bitterness. “Everything will go to my granddaughter, Julia. She’s the one out there in the pool; the brunette. The lovely one.”

“What about her parents? Don’t they stand to inherit?”

“Ha! Call ‘em parents? Because like buggery I do. If I hadn’t paid off her mother she’d still be in that Midwest cult commune, smoking pot and screwing its leaders for Jesus. And that son of mine is incapable of taking on Event Horizon. Couldn’t anyway, even if he wanted. Legally incompetent.

“Best detox clinics in the world have tried to straighten his kinks. Too late. He’s been on syntho so long-and I’m talking decades-the dependence is unbreakable. You cold-turkey his body and the lights go out. They shoved him through the whole routine-counselling, group analysis, deprivation motivation, work therapy-it amounted to one great big zero. The only time he even knows there’s an outside world is when he’s tripping.” The anger rose again. “It’s fucking humiliating. I was prepared for some rebellion, a bit of antagonism between us. That’s the way it always is between father and son. But him! We had nothing, no love, not even hate. It was like everything I was achieving didn’t even register with him. He walked out the door on his twentieth birthday, and that was it, not another word for twenty-five years. The only reason I found out I had a granddaughter was because that freako cult he wound up with tried to leach me for donations.

“That’s why I’ve got to safeguard the company. For her. I’m not going to last for much longer, and she doesn’t have the experience to take it on right away.”

“But surely you’ll be leaving Event Horizon in the hands of trustees?” Greg asked. “People you know can manage it properly.”

“Damn right.” There was a fierce spark of elation in Philip Evans’s mind. “Event Horizon has the potential to become a global leader in gear manufacture. While other, landbound, English companies rotted under the PSP’s intervention I brought in new cyber-production equipment for my factory ships, kept my overseas research people well funded. Now I’m moving it all back home, consolidating. The company’s growth potential is phenomenal; it’ll create jobs, foreign exchange, build and sustain a national supply industry, stop the sink back into an agrarian economy. We can match those bloody German kombinates, and the best the Pacific Rim Market can offer-new economic superpower, my arse. I’ll show ‘em England isn’t dead yet.”

“Sounds good. So why do you need me?”

Evans scowled. “Sorry, I run on. Old man’s disease. By the time you accumulate the resources to accomplish something worthwhile, time’s up.

“The problem, boy, is my orbital operation up at Zanthus. Someone is running a spoiler against the company. They’ve turned the operators of my microgee furnaces up at Zanthus, thirty-seven per cent of my memox crystals are being deliberately ruined. That adds up to seven million Eurofrancs a month.”

Greg let out an involuntary whistle. He hadn’t known Event Horizon was that big.

“Yeah, right,” Philip Evans said. “I can’t sustain that kind of loss for much longer. Lucky I caught it when I did-” and there was a hint of pride at the accomplishment. Still on the ball, still the man. “The organizer circumvented some pretty elaborate security safeguards too. Means whoever they are they’re smart and organized.”

“They’re clever all right,” Walshaw conceded. He pulled out a black wood chair opposite Greg and sat down.

“And even the security division is under suspicion,” Evans said. “Including Morgan here, which is why he’s so pissed off with me.”

Greg sneaked a glance at Walshaw, meeting impenetrable urbanity. The man had not-nor ever would-sell out. Greg knew him, the type, his motivation; he’d no grand visions of his own, the perfect lieutenant. And in Event Horizon and Philip Evans he’d found an ideal liege. The old billionaire must’ve understood that too.

Walshaw nodded an extremely reluctant acknowledgement. “The nature of the circumvention does imply a degree of internal complicity, certainly knowledge of the security monitor procedures was compromised.”

“He means the buggers are on the take, that’s what,” Evans grumbled. “And I want you to root ‘em out for me, boy. You’re about the nearest thing to independent in this brain-wrecked world. Trustworthy, as far as we can satisfy ourselves. So then: four hundred New Sterling a day, and all the expenses you can spend. How does that sound?”

“Do I have to sign the contract in blood?”

“Just don’t screw me about, boy. I’ve spent close on twenty years fighting that shit President Armstrong and his leftie stormtroops, now he’s gone I’m not going to lose by default. Event Horizon is going to be my memorial. The trailblazer of England’s industrial Renaissance.”

Greg felt a twinge of admiration for the old man, he was dying yet he was still making plans, dreaming. Not many could do that. “Where do you want me to start?” he asked.

“You and I will go down to Stanstead,” Morgan Walshaw said. “Assuming I’m trustworthy.”

“Don’t be so bloody sarcastic,” Evans barked.

“Stanstead is Event Horizon’s main air-freight terminal in England,” Walshaw explained, quietly amused. “All our flights out to Listoel originate there.”

“Listoel?” Greg asked.

“That’s the anchorage for my cyber-factory ships out in the Atlantic,” Philip Evans said. “A lot of Event Horizon’s domestic gear is still built out there, and it’s where my spaceline, Dragonflight, is based. Anyone going up to Zanthus starts at Listoel.”

“Calling in the management personnel and memox-furnace operators who are currently on leave won’t be regarded as particularly unusual,” Walshaw said. “Once they arrive, you can use your gland ability to determine which of them have been turned. After that, you and a small security team will go up to Zanthus and pull whoever circumvented the security monitors, along with the guilty furnace operators working up there. We’ll fly up replacements from the batch you’ve vetted.”

“You want me to go up to Zanthus?” Greg asked. There was a sensation in his gut, as if he’d just knocked back a few brandies in rapid-fire succession.

“That’s right, boy. Why, that a problem?”

“No.” Greg grinned. “No problem at all.”

“It’s not a bloody holiday,” Evans snapped. “You get your arse up there, and you stop them, Greg. Hard and fast. I’ve got to have something concrete to show my backing consortium. They’re due for the figures in another six weeks. I’ve got to have something positive for them, they’ll understand a spoiler, God knows enough of the kombinates are trying to throttle each other rather than do an honest day’s work. What they won’t stand for is me dallying about whining instead of stomping on it.” Philip Evans subsided, resting on the powerchair’s tall back. “That just leaves this evening.”