Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“I’m sorry, you must think me dreadfully rude. I’ve been on my feet for thirty-six hours. I’ve only just returned from my holiday. It’s been planes and airport lounges all day, I’m afraid.”

They went through the door into a well-lit corridor. Fabian was waiting by a lift.

“That sounds most interesting,” Jason Whitehurst said. “I shall enjoy hearing all about your travels tomorrow over lunch.”

Charlotte’s heart sank.

The lift door hummed open. Everything was made out of composite, she noted-walls, floor, ceiling.

“Fabian, I think you had better see your lady guest to one of the spare cabins for tonight,” Jason Whitehurst said. “Dear Charlotte is terribly tired. I think she needs a night’s rest. She can move into your room tomorrow.”

And that cleared up any possible ambiguities about the situation, Charlotte thought. Clever of him, reassuring his son in front of her.

Fabian’s face fell. “Yes, Father.”

She shared the lift with Fabian. He kept giving her fast glances, suddenly nervous again. She thought she’d succeeded in putting him at ease while they were dancing. “How old are you?” he asked quickly. “I mean… you don’t have to say. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I’m twenty-one, Fabian.”

“Oh.” He stared at the stainless-steel control panel beside the door. “I was fifteen a few months back, actually. Well more like nine months, really.”

According to the data profile Baronski had squirted over to her, Fabian had celebrated his fifteenth birthday barely a fortnight ago. “That’s nice.”

Fabian blushed. “Why?”

“Because people will still treat you like a kid. But you’re not. It means you can get away with murder.”

His jaw worked silently for a moment. “Ah, yes, right.”

The lift doors opened on the gondola’s upper deck. He showed her down a long corridor to her cabin. She began to wonder again about the size of the Colonel Maitland.

“Thank you, Fabian,” she said when the cabin door slid open.

“Sleep as long as you want. There’s nothing rigid about meals on board. The cooks will always get you something to eat whenever you ask them. That’s what they’re here for.” He flipped the hair from his eyes. “Would you like to come swimming with me tomorrow?”

“Swimming? In an airship? What do you do, jump into the sea?”

Just for a moment a genuine fifteen-year-old’s grin flashed over his face. “No, nothing like that. I’ll show you.”

“Sounds fun. That’s a date, then.”

She woke to the faintest of buzzing sounds, having to concentrate hard to be certain she wasn’t imagining it. It seemed to rise and fall in some strange cycle of its own. There was no accompanying vibration. She thought it might be the propellers.

Her cabin was stylish and luxuriant, vaguely reminiscent of a nineteenth-century steamship. Wooden dresser and chests, mossy sapphire carpet, biolum globes like giant opals, pictures of pre-Warming landscapes on the walls. Three sets of mulberry curtains along one wall emitted a dull glow. A remote unit was sitting on the bedside cabinet.

She found the button for the curtains, and rolled off the bed as they drew apart, revealing long rectangular windows with brass frames.

Colonel Maitland was cruising three or four kilometres above the Mediterranean. The water below shone with a rich clear blue hue, while wave-tops shimmered brightly creating a silver glare. She had never flown over the Mediterranean like this before. Hypersonics flew so high and fast that details blurred to non-existence, seas were reduced to a formless blue plane. But this view was hypnotic. She could see ships down there, trailing long V-shaped wakes; bulk cargo carriers, rusty splinters no bigger than her thumb nail.

There was a light tapping on the door. Charlotte looked round the cabin, and saw a towelling robe on the foot of the bed. She slipped into it.

“Come in.”

It was a maid, a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a plain black knee-length tunic, her mouse-brown hair wound into a neat bun. She curtsied. And she got it right, too, Charlotte noticed.

“Did madam have a pleasant rest?” The maid’s English was slightly accented. Slavonic?

“There’s no need for that nonsense in private,” Charlotte said.

“Madam?”

That hurt. Formality was the way a patron’s household staff told her they thought she was on a social stratum way below them, about equal to the family pets. Dumb, pampered, and good at tricks. “I had a very pleasant rest. Is the rest of the ship up and about?”

“It is nearly eleven o’clock, madam.”

Charlotte blinked in surprise. When she looked out of the windows again she saw the sun was well up in the sky.

She cocked her head at it, finding something vaguely disconcerting about its appearance. Whatever the anomaly was, she couldn’t quantify it.

“Mr Whitehurst is expecting me for lunch,” Charlotte said. “What time is that?”

“Twelve fifty, madam.”

Charlotte ran her hands through her hair. “I’ll take a shower first. Where are my clothes?” The gown she’d worn to the Newfields ball was draped over a chair. She’d been so tired last night she couldn’t be bothered even to find a hanger for it. Now the material was probably creased beyond rescue.

The maid opened a drawer. Charlotte recognized some of her clothes folded neatly. When had that been done?

“Would madam like me to assist in the bathroom? I am a trained manicurist.”

“You know how to do hair as well?”

A slight bow.

“Good, in that case you can give me a hand.” And get that nice clean tunic all wet and soapy as well.

The maid slid open a varnished pine door to reveal a bathroom. It was all marbled surfaces and extravagant potted ferns.

The marble must be fake, Charlotte decided. They couldn’t possibly afford the weight, not even in this airship. Jason Whitehurst giving his guests fake marble. She grinned.

“Mr Jason said to be sure your choice of day attire was a suitable one for a companion of Master Fabian’s,” the maid said. Her face was beautifully composed. “I took the liberty of laying out one or two of the briefer items from madam’s wardrobe. I hope they meet with your approval, there were so many to select from.”

“Why, thank you, I’m sure your knowledge in that area is unmatched.” Charlotte swept regally into the bathroom. One all. But it was shaping up like a long dirty war.

Lunch was difficult. They ate in the aft dining-room on the gondola’s upper deck; looking out at the stern of the airship. Charlotte discovered she had been quite right about the Colonel Maitland, it was vast; seven hundred metres long, a hundred and twenty in diameter. Its fuselage was made up from sheets of solar cells, a glossy black envelope reflecting narrow ripples of sunlight in mimicry of the sea below.

Jason Whitehurst sat at the head of the table, with his back to the curving band of windows. Charlotte and Fabian sat on either side of him, facing each other. Fabian was doing his best not to stare. But once or twice she thought she caught that glint of anticipation on his face again.

As she worked her spoon into the avocado starter Charlotte watched the translucent blur of the contra-rotating fans at the stern. The Colonel Maitland was making a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. She hadn’t known airships could travel so fast, her mind classing them as lumbering dinosaurs.

“Oh no, not at all,” Jason Whitehurst said when she mentioned it. “Even the previous generation of rigid airships in the nineteen-thirties were reaching speeds around a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. Flat out, the Colonel Maitland can make a hundred and eighty. It used to cruise at about a hundred and fifty when it was on the trans-Pacific passenger run.”