Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Greg shook Victor’s hand warmly. “Where are Julia’s bodyguards? You’re far too old for hardlining now.”

“Hey,” Victor Tyo spread his arms. “You speak for yourself.” He gestured with one band. A nineteen-fifties Rolls Royce Silver Shadow was parked on the drive just above the farmyard, two sober-faced hardliners in ash-grey suits standing beside it.

Greg rolled his eyes. “My God, it’s the camouflage detachment.” On the road at the top of the drive a flock of children was forming, plotting dark misdeeds.

A horse-drawn caravan had pulled up in front of the gate, painted bright scarlet with yellow and blue trim. Greg recognized Mel Gainlee holding the reins, a spry pensioner who’d been coming to Hambleton for almost as long as Derek. He waved hopefully to Greg.

“Christine.”

She was staring across the field to where the ambulance was parking.

“What?” she asked guiltily.

Greg handed her his cybofax wafer, glancing at the logo on the bottom right corner. Thankfully it was Event Horizon’s triangle and flying-V. That could have been embarrassing. “You and Derek sort the rest of the teams out for me, OK?” His intuition had been sending out subtle warnings since he saw Victor Tyo had accompanied Julia. Victor was a good friend, but he didn’t make social calls in the middle of the working week. Neither did Julia, come to that.

Christine’s face coloured slightly. “Sure, Dad,” she agreed seriously.

Greg felt a burst of pride. She really was growing up.

“She’s quite something,” Julia said as she and Victor Tyo walked with Greg down the rough track back to the farmhouse. Her bodyguards had fallen in a regulation ten paces behind. The kids on the road were letting off wolf-whistles.

“Yeah.” Greg couldn’t stop smiling.

“Sorry if we interrupted. I’d forgotten what a pandemonium Hambleton is at picking time.”

“No problem. Derek knows who to let through. I only put in an appearance for form’s sake.”

“Where do they all come from?” She gazed back towards the heat-soaked convoy.

“From all over, of course.”

The E-shaped farmhouse had been added to and extended over the years, bricks and stone and composite sheeting were all in there somewhere, hidden under a shaggy coat of reddish-green ivy. The steeply angled roof was made entirely from polished black solar panels. A couple of satellite dishes were mounted on the western gable end, pointing into the southern sky. The larger of the two was faded and scratched, obviously second hand, with a complicated-looking aluminium receiver at the focus.

A gaggle of geese scattered, honking loudly as the five of them walked into the farmyard.

“That’s new,” said Julia, pointing at the satellite dishes.

“Oliver put it up,” Greg explained. “The boy’s gone astronautics crazy. He picks up all sorts of spacecraft communication traffic on it. Wants to go and live in New London. So Anita’s decided she’s going to live in a Greenland commune.”

Oliver and Anita were eleven-year-old twins, and took a savage joy in trying to be total opposites.

Greg had planted evergreen magnolias around two sides of the farmyard, the third side was defined by a long wooden barn. The planks for which had come from the dead deciduous trees in Hambleton Wood. It was full with white kelp-board boxes ready for the picking, the stacks reaching up to the roof. Three tractors were drawn up outside, their wheels thick with mud.

Julia looked at them pensively. “I really ought to have remembered this was the main fruit season.”

“No reason why you should. Fruit picking isn’t something Event Horizon has cybernated.”

“Oh, you!” She poked him in mock exasperation as Victor Tyo laughed.

It was cooler inside the house, conditioners filling the air with a slightly clammy refrigerated chill. Greg led Julia and Victor Tyo into the sun lounge, checking quickly to see if any of the children’s toys were lying about underfoot. The room had a white-tile floor, furnished with a pair of twisted-cane frame chairs and a three-seater settee. Benji, the family parrot, was climbing delicately over the outside of his cage.

A broad bay window looked out over the huge southern prong of Rutland Water. White wooden hireboats from the fishing lodge at Normanton bobbed about on the blue water, windsurfers and sailing yachts zipped round them. Red-faced cyclists pedalled along a narrow track just above the far shoreline, sweltering in the tropical heat of the English summer.

Greg relished the view, he had grown up in the small arabic county, lived on the shore of the reservoir for over twenty-five years. The Berrybut time-share estate was almost directly opposite the farm; in the evening he and Eleanor would watch the nightly bonfire blaze in the centre of the horseshoe of chalets, remembering earlier, simpler times.

Eleanor came into the sun lounge, walking carefully, stiffbacked from her seven-month pregnancy.

Greg caught Victor Tyo throwing him a startled glance as Eleanor and Julia embraced. It added to his growing sense of unease.

“Victor.” Eleanor was smiling as she kissed the security chief. “Never see enough of you. Found a girl you can settle down with yet?”

“Eleanor,” Greg protested.

“There is someone,” Victor agreed defensively.

“Good, you can bring her round to dinner. We’d love to meet her.”

“You never mentioned her to me,” Julia said.

Victor Tyo sent a silent dismayed appeal to Greg.

“Sit down,” Greg said. “And you two, behave; stop trying to embarrass Victor.” He snagged Eleanor round her waist and urged her over to the settee.

“Oliver, Anita and Richy are out in the stables,” Eleanor said. “I sent Matthew and Daniella out to find them. One of the mares has just foaled.”

Julia groaned. “They’ll only want to bring it back to Wilholm with them.”

Greg put his arm around Eleanor, enjoying the feel of her as she leant in against him. “So what did you come for?” he asked.

Julia had the grace to look mildly guilty. “Royan.”

“You’ve heard from him?” Eleanor asked.

“Sort of.”

She handed Greg a slim white box, explaining about the unknown girl at the Newfields ball.

The trumpet flower inside was drooping, its light fuzz of hairs curling up. Greg’s intuition strummed a quiet string of warning. Something about the flower was desperately wrong. He couldn’t begin to guess what.

“And there was just the one card with it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He gave the box to Eleanor.

“I don’t recognize it,” Eleanor said. “What sort is it?”

Julia shot Victor Tyo a nervous questioning glance. The security chief shrugged.

“That’s where the real problem begins,” Julia said. “My NN cores ran a search through every botanical memory core they could access. Nothing. They drew a complete blank. No big deal about that, there are a lot of new gene-tailored varieties on the market; can’t keep track of everything. Still, I sent it down to the lab for genetic sampling, see if we could find what it was derived from, the parent species.” She drew a breath, pressing her palms together. “It’s extraterrestrial.”

“Alien?” Greg felt a fast twist of cold fear. Gone. With his sensitivity, no wonder the flower had triggered a mild wave of xenophobia. He stared at the flower; intuition shouting loud and clear what Julia was going to ask him to do next.

Eleanor’s weight pressed against him, she was giving Julia a doleful accusing look.

“It can’t be,” Eleanor said. “It’s no different to any other flower.”

Greg could sense a stiff form of revulsion growing in her mind; she wanted to reject the whole notion.