Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Contamination.” Greg mulled the word over. “Yeah. You gave the students a head to toe scan, I take it?”

“As soon as they were back in Oakham station,” Vernon said. “Three of them had touched Kitchener, of course, but only in the presence of the others.”

“Figures,” said Greg. “Which three?”

“Harding-Clarke, Beswick, and Cameron. But it was only a few stains on their fingertips, entirely consistent with brushing against the body and the sheets.”

“OK,” Greg said. “I’d like to see the lightware cruncher that’s been wiped. Is there anything else our murderer tampered with?”

“Yes,” Denzil said. “Some of the laboratory equipment. We found it this morning.”

The computer centre was at the rear of the Abbey, a small windowless room with a bronze-coloured metal door. It slid open as soon as Denzil showed his police identity card to the lock. Biolum rings came on automatically. Walls and ceiling were all white tiles; the floor had a slick cream-coloured plastic matting. A waist-high desk bench ran all the way round the walls, broken only by the door. There were three elaborate Hitachi terminals sitting on top of it, along with racks of large memox datastore crystals and five reader modules.

The Bendix lightware number cruncher was in the centre of the room, a steel-blue globe one metre in diameter, sitting on a pedestal at chest height.

“Completely wiped,” Denzil said. He crossed to one of the terminals and touched the power stud. The flatscreen lit with the words: DATA LOAD ERROR. Above the keyboard, a few weak green sparks wriggled through the cube. “Kitchener used to store everything in here, all his files, the students’ work. He didn’t need to make a copy; the holographic memory is supposed to be failsafe. Even without power, the bytes would remain stable until the actual crystal structure began to break down-five, ten thousand years. Probably longer. Who knows?”

Eleanor looked round the room. There was one conditioning grille set high on a wall; the air was clean but dead. She couldn’t see a blemish anywhere, the tiles and floor were spotless, as were the terminals.

“Could the storm have knocked it out?” she asked.

Denzil gave her a surprised look. “Absolutely not. This room is perfectly insulated; and even if the solar panels were struck by lightning there is a triplicated surge-protection system. Besides, a voltage surge wouldn’t cause this.”

“So what would?” Greg asked.

“There are two things. One, a very sophisticated virus. An internecine, one that wipes itself after it’s erased all the files, because there’s no trace of it now. Second, someone who knew the core management codes could have ordered a wipe.”

“Who knew the codes?”

“I don’t know,” Vernon said apologetically.

“All right, we’ll ask the students when I interview them. What about access to this room, who is allowed in?”

“Kitchener and the students,” said Denzil. “But there are terminals dotted all over the Abbey. You could use any of them to load a virus, or order a wipe.”

“What about someone outside plugging in?”

“You can only plug into the lightware cruncher through one of the terminals in the Abbey,” Denzil said. “But all the terminals are plugged into English Telecom’s datanet. So you have to be inside the Abbey to establish a datalink between the Bendix and an external ‘ware system.”

“And to get inside the Abbey you have to be cleared by the security system,” Greg murmured. “Neat.” He turned to Vernon Langley. “English Telecom should be able to provide you with an itemized log for the datanet. Check through it and see if there were any unexplained datalinks established on Thursday night or Friday morning.”

“If it was a tekmerc operation, it was the best,” Denzil said soberly. “The very best.”

The laboratory was virtually a caricature, Eleanor thought.

Either that, or set designers on channel science fiction shows did more research than she had ever given them credit for. But it was a chemistry lab, not a physics one.

The room was spacious, with a high ceiling, and the usual ornate mullioned windows, which helped to give it the Frankenstein feel. The glass-fronted cabinets were lined up along the walls. Three long wooden benches were spaced down the centre of the room. Each of them had a vast array of glassware on top, immensely complicated crystalline intestines of some adventuresome beast, plastic hardware units clamped around tubes and flasks, a spaghetti tangle of wiring and optical cable winding through it all. Small Ericsson terminals, augmented with customized control modules, were regulating each of the set-ups.

Derizil led them to the middle bench. “Take a look at this.” He was indicating one section of the glassware, spiral tubing and retorts surrounding what reminded Eleanor of an incubator. “We found it yesterday when we started classifying the equipment.” He shot a wily look at Vernon Langley. “Recognize it?”

The detective shook his head.

“It’s a syntho vat. High-quality stuff, too. Well above what you find on the street; this formula is similar to Naiad.”

“Were the students on it?” Greg asked.

“Three of them were using it on Thursday night,” Vernon said. We took blood samples as soon as they came into the station. Harding-Clarke, Spalvas, and Cameron. But the count was low, they’re not addicts.” He sighed. “Students experiencing life, it’s a thrill for them, a little taste of adventure. I imagine bright sparks of that age could get bored very easily with this place.”

Eleanor thought he pronounced students with well-emphasized contempt.

“And the other three?” Greg prompted.

“Clean as newborns,” Jon Nevin said. “Of course, all six of them had been drinking. They had wine at their evening meal, and then some more in their rooms later on.”

“But not enough to unhinge them?”

“No.”

“Kitchener was taking the syntho as well,” Vernon said. “It was in the pathology report. Expanding his mind, no doubt. Some such nonsense. He was always on about that, his New Thought ideology.”

Greg exhaled loudly. “At his age. Christ.”

“And he encouraged the students,” Jon Nevin said disapprovingly.

“Yeah.”

“And this,” Denzil said theatrically. “Is something we found this morning.” He rapped at another chunk of the glassware on the third bench. It had more hardware units than the rest. “You ought to know what this is, Greg, there’s a smaller version in your head.”

“Neurohormone synthesizer.”

Well done. Themed neurohormones, to be precise. Makes your blanket educement look old fashioned.”

“Kitchener was using neurohormones?” Greg asked in surprise. “Psi stimulants?”

“Yes,” said Vernon. “Quite heavily, as far as we can determine. It’s all in the pathology report.”

“What sort of psi themes?” Eleanor asked.

“Ah, can’t be as helpful there as I’d like,” Denzil said. “There is a low-temperature storage vault full of themed ESP-educer ampoules. But those are a standard commercial type from ICI; he was a regular customer, apparently. However, there’s also a small batch of unmarked ampoules which I’ll send off for analysis, although we may have problems with identifying it, especially if it’s something experimental. We don’t have a large database on the stuff. As far as I know this is the first time it’s ever cropped up in a police investigation.”

“We may be able to help you there,” Greg said. “I’ll find out if Event Horizon has any information on neurohormones.”

“Fine.”

“Do you know what he was using the ESP theme neurohormone for?”