Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“She has pervaded the correct tau co-ordinates,” Nicholas said. “I saw her. Dressed exactly as she is now.”

Amanda’s eyebrows shot up.

Probably never heard him speak unless he’s been spoken to before, Greg thought.

“So what would happen if Eleanor doesn’t take the neurohormone?” Gabriel asked. Her whole attitude was pure wickedness. “We know it works, so why don’t we give it to someone else? Vernon here, he’s a likely lad, and it is his investigation.”

“Behave,” Greg said. The others wouldn’t be able to tell how serious she was. Gabriel took some getting used to. He’d known her for close on sixteen years, through the good times and the bad, and he wasn’t sure he really understood her. Made for interesting company, though.

“Perfectly legitimate question.” She affected injured innocence. “Nicholas says he saw her, so what would happen if she doesn’t go?”

“You and your paradoxes,” Eleanor muttered.

“Nothing would happen,” Ranasfari said. “As I explained yesterday, quantum mechanics eradicates any inconsistency. The ghost which Nicholas witnessed originates from a universe in which Eleanor will infuse the neurohormone. There are others in which she does not.”

“Another me,” Eleanor said wonderingly.

“This version does me fine,” Greg said. But there was an image in his mind he couldn’t shake free; a million Eleanors saying yes and infusing the neurohormone, another million pandering to Gabriel’s whim, and refusing. Universes torn asunder. And never the twain shall meet.

Eleanor smiled at him, hand gripping tighter.

“Well what’s it going to be, then?” he asked.

“Oh, I’ll infuse it, of course.” She looked at Nicholas, her smile turning impish. “I’m sorry I’m going to startle you last Thursday night.”

“That’s all right.” His eyes shone adoringly.

Greg had the uncomfortable thought that Eleanor and Nicholas were actually both the same age. Only chronologically though, an evil voice said inside his mind.

Eleanor lay down on the bed and let Denzil fit the somnolence induction loop round her head. A pearl-white tiara with a coil of cable connecting it to a slim oblong box of blue plastic. It reminded Greg of the neural-jammer collars at Stocken. The technology was the same.

“You should be able to reach down the landing into Kitchener’s bedroom without any trouble,” Gabriel said. “I could tell what was going to happen to a general area about a kilometre across. Or if I fixated on a person, I could track him three or four days into the future even if he went to Australia.”

“She used to fixate on a lot of men,” Greg told the room at large. Nicholas started to giggle.

“Bugger you, Mandel.”

“I’ll be happy if I can just manage to find the Abbey last Thursday,” Eleanor said.

“You did,” Nicholas said. “Or you do, I don’t know which.”

“Shall we just get on with it,” Eleanor said.

Greg could feel the nerves building in her belly. “OK.” He sat beside her, plumping up a pillow, then took her hand. Her grip was strong, in search of reassurance, of a rock of stability.

Denzil handed him the somnolence induction box. There were three buttons and a small liquid-crystal display on the front. A colunm of black numbers changed occasionally below a row of symbols he didn’t recognize.

“I’ve preset it,” Denzil said. “Press this button and she should be under in five seconds.”

“Right.” He rested his forefinger lightly over the button. Hoping to God he wouldn’t have to use it.

Gabriel held up an infuser tube. “You want me to do this?”

“Please,” said Eleanor.

Gabriel bent over her, face sober and professional, and pressed the tube to her neck, just over the carotid.

“Keep your eyes dosed,” Gabriel instructed. “You’ll be seeing enough visions without trying to untangle optical images as well.”

Eleanor’s eyes closed and she clamped her jaw shut, facial muscles hard as stone. Greg ordered a secretion-gland thudding away like a second heartbeat-and joined her in the country of the mind.

Eyes closed, blockading the sleet of photons into the brain’s reception centre, a tide of starless night engulfed him. Eleanor’s mind rose silently into the void, a gas-giant as seen from one of its innermost moons. Vast and heavy. Thought currents swirled, individual strands showing pink, white, and ochre-red, like meandering stormbands, curling round each other to produce complex interlocking vortices. Stains of trepidation bled up out of the deeper psyche, dissolving into the surface thoughts, quickening the rhythm.

Relax, he told her.

The mind’s superficies quaked in surprise, sending out distortion ripples.

Greg?

Yeah. Why, who did you think?

Just remember this is all new to me.

I haven’t experienced this sort of affinity many times, myself.

Oh. Greg? I think I can see the bedroom. My eyes are still shut, aren’t they?

He snatched a fast look. Yeah, they’re shut. He let his own mind relax into passivity, a pure receiver. That eerie phosphorescent cloudscape lost cohesion, filming over with watery streaks of alien colour. When he studied them closer they resolved into walls, furniture, people, himself. He was still sitting on the side of the bed. Gabriel was stuck in a ridiculous posture; mouth open, hands captured in mid-gesture.

You are smiling, Eleanor said.

I’ve just seen me as you see me. It’s interesting.

The room is all still, like a hologram.

Yeah. Now, what I want you to do, very slowly, is hunt round for a watch, and just imagine yourself sliding towards it. Got that?

No problem.

The perception focus shifted, they curved out and upwards, an eagle in flight, heading for Gabriel’s wrist. Her watch was a plain silver band with dry scarlet numbers flush with the surface, as if they were floating on a lake of mercury.

Nine forty-seven, Greg read. About eight minutes ago. OK, now can you see anything around the fringes of the room?

Like what?

A lack of definition, something like the blurred multiple you get right at the edge of a mirror.

No. Nothing like that.

OK Pull back from the room, the opposite of when you zoomed in on the watch.

Ah, yes.

The image flowed, rushing past so fast he thought he could feel the wind of its passage. Yet the walls, the furniture, the fittings, they all stayed in the same place. Darkness fell, siphoning out every shade of colour. In the night sky outside the window, stars traced sparkling arcs across the heavens, flickering in and out of existence as blankets of cloud churned past at supersonic speed.

Very good, he told her drily, but can you stop?

The vertiginous motion slowed. Halted. It was dusk, a paltry smattering of rain leaking from bleak clouds. The room was deserted, its frost of plastic sheets glimmering a dirty indigo.

Up?

Inside, you know?

Stop. Right away.

Bloody hell, said Eleanor. There was a dazed quality to her thoughts, almost like giddiness. I did it, Greg. The past!

Yeah. Yesterday evening, I think. How are you standing?

OK. There’s this feeling of pressure. Like I’m pushing against something.

If it ever gets to be an effort then Eleanor. Don’t try and tough it out.

OK

Any sign of alternatives yet?

God, no, Greg. This is bad enough.

Just asking. Now let’s go back to the night of the murder. One week, Thursday night, midnight, or as close as we can get.

All right.

The room surged around him again.

They stopped a few times, watching Denzil or Nicolette come in and run hand-held sensors over the furniture and carpet. Sometimes they would bag an item up and take it out.