Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“This was a passenger ship?” she asked.

“Yes. Airships came into their own after the Warming and the Energy Crunch. Damnable era, that one, the whole world went positively insane for over a decade. Still, I expect that was before your time, my dear. And very fortunate you were too, missing it. But after the jet fleets were grounded by impossibly expensive fuel, beauties like the old Colonel were all we had until Event Horizon cracked the giga-conductor’s molecular structure. After that, of course, everybody went bloody speed mad. Hypersonics, spaceplanes; nothing but rush and bustle. One shouldn’t complain, one supposes; the world is a better place now, so everyone says. But airships have such class. That’s why I couldn’t resist buying this old chap when it came on the market.”

Charlotte took a sip of her white wine. This assignment was turning into a complete waste of time. Jason Whitehurst spent most of his time on board the Colond Maitland, so he said, only touching the ground for parties like the Newfields ball and other social events, the occasional business meeting. His trading empire was mostly handled by his cargo agents, and ninety per cent of his financial business conducted via private satellite relays. That didn’t bode well at all. A large part of her arrangement with Baronski was listening to table talk. It was amazing what premier-grade kombinate executives and company chairmen would say when they were relaxed in a convivial atmosphere, safe amongst their own. Of course, they didn’t expect her to follow a word of what they were saying. Youth, a pretty face, and a perfect figure equals no brain at all. So the next day she would call up Baronski, and he played the bytes of insider knowledge on the stock markets. Charlotte only got two per cent on that deal, but it would often come to more than the price her patron’s gifts brought in.

Except now there were no guests on board, nor any prospect of them before they reached Odessa. And Fabian was supposed to be her patron; the only gifts she was likely to get from him would be rock concert tickets and a Playboy channel subscription.

One of the waiters brought her a chicken salad. Charlotte waited until Jason Whitehurst started eating, then tucked in. Her usual patrons, with their overhanging bellies and multiplying chins, tended to become irritable when they saw her nibbling at her food while they chomped their way through five-course meals, it showed them up. So she had had her digestive enzymes alerted with biochemicals to reduce her digestion rate; now it didn’t matter how much she ate, she didn’t put on weight. With slenderness guaranteed, a simple regimen of light exercise was all she needed to keep her ballerina muscle tone.

“So where did you take this holiday of yours?” Jason Whitehurst asked.

“New London.”

“No, really?” Fabian stopped eating, his fork halfway to his mouth. “You mean the asteroid?”

“Yes.”

The boy’s eyes shone. “What’s it like?”

Charlotte moistened her lips with the wine again. “Formidable. The flight out leaves you with a most peculiar impression; it’s both big and small at the same time. On the approach you see this huge mountain of rock adrift in space halfway out to the moon. Then, inside, it’s a tiny little world-let, the centre hollowed out and planted with trees and grass and crops. Yet even that is big, because you can see it all, and know how small you are by comparison.”

“Crikey. I’d like to get up there myself sometime.”

“When you’re older,” Jason Whitehurst said.

“Yes, Father.”

Jason Whitehurst reached over, and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Ah, impatience of youth. Just wait a few more years, Fabian, you can do what you like after that. Tell your poor old father to get stuffed then.”

Fabian did a half-squirm below his father’s hand, glancing anxiously at Charlotte, so obviously fearful of how she would interpret the gesture. Daddy’s little boy.

“I imagine there can’t be very much to do up there,” Jason Whitehurst said.

“Oh no, there’s much more to it than the microgee industries and Event Horizon’s mineral mining operation,” Charlotte said. “They’re trying to develop it as a finance and tourist centre.”

“Good heavens, a sort of Disneyland in orbit, that kind of thing?”

“Not quite, it’s rather more exclusive than that. They have casinos, nightclubs, if anything it’s rather like a giant cabana club.”

“Sounds ghastly,” Jason Whitehurst muttered.

“And there’s zero gee, as well,” Charlotte said.

“From what I’ve been given to understand, it makes people sick.”

“Not much nowadays, the medical people have got the anti-nausea drugs worked out fairly well. They had to. Sports form a big part of the attraction. There are a lot of games that you can play in the various low gee terraces. Tennis, badminton, squash, handball; they’re all a lot of fun up there. The ball travels completely differently, you have to develop a whole new set of reflexes to cope. And then there’s the fall surfing, that’s worth the price of the ticket alone. You must have seen it on the channels.”

Jason Whitehurst dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin. “Yes. Well that settles it, I certainly won’t be going. I’m far too old to learn anything new.”

“Oh, come on, Father. It sounds terrific.”

“Maybe for your sixteenth birthday.”

“Great!”

“I said maybe.” Jason sat back as the waiter removed his plate. “You obviously enjoyed yourself up there, my dear?”

“Yes. I’d like to go back.”

Jason Whitehurst pulled thoughtfully at his beard as he looked at her. “How long were you up there for?”

“Ten days.”

“I see. And then straight from the spaceport to the Newfields ball. You were in a bit of a rush, weren’t you?”

Charlotte didn’t like the way he was asking her questions, it wasn’t polite conversation-making any more. “I support the Newfields charity, it means a lot to me.”

“Dead boring, though,” Fabian said. “Except when we were dancing,” he added hurriedly.

“Thank you,” Charlotte smiled at him.

“Do you still want to come swimming?”

It was the third time he’d asked. Charlotte had finally twigged why he was so persistent: swimming meant bikinis. Devious old Fabian. “I certainly do, yes.”

“Not until you’ve digested your lunch,” Jason Whitehurst said. “Why don’t you show Charlotte round the old Colonel first.”

The gondola was a hundred metres long, thirty wide, with two decks containing all the cabins, lounges, and staff quarters. Fabian led her down the central corridors, opening various doors. The flight centre was at the front of the lower deck, a big room with panoramic windows; three bored officers monitored the airship’s systems on five horseshoe-consoles. Fabian introduced her to them, then they went up into the main hull.

“This is where it gets interesting,” Fabian said as they climbed a short flight of stairs at the rear of the gondola, right above the dining-room they’d had lunch in.

The stairs came out on to a narrow composite walkway with a rail at waist height, illuminated by a row of biolum strips. Charlotte was standing in a three-metre gap between a spherical helium balloon and the solar cell envelope. Long girders made from improbably thin monolattice carbon struts curved away on both sides, disappearing into darkness. The walkway was a narrow thread of light which stretched out into infinity fore and aft.

She shivered from the cool air. The gap seemed to suck sound away.

Fabian started walking towards the stern. “There are nine of these big spherical gasbags,” he said, pointing up, “and two smaller ones in the conical sections at both ends.”