Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Give you a tip, never oversell.”

His head came up, lips pressed together defiantly. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No, Fabian. I’m not laughing at you. Life is cruel enough without people deliberately adding to it.”

“Oh. You’re nothing like… I don’t mind what you do, you know.”

“What do I do?”

Fabian blushed, the invisible wires tugged his shoulders into a lopsided shrug. “You know. The others, before me. Hiring yourself out.”

“Cars and flats are hired out, Fabian. They’re objects.”

“You mean you want to?”

“I mean there are limits. I have a choice.”

His youthful uncertainty had returned. He looked almost fragile, she thought.

“So you only came on board the Colonel because you wanted to?” he asked.

“More or less, yes.”

“With me?” his voice was disbelieving.

Charlotte was strongly tempted. Revenge for all the shit she’d been made to eat over the years. She could hit him now, beat him with words, sarcasm and derision, cripple him up inside. He was one of them, the indifferent rich, floating effortlessly through life. Never caring, that was their real crime.

His face hovered halfway between pride and trepidation. The kind of innocence she’d never had.

She couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t often like this. She was supposed to be a passing fancy, an interesting diversion. Not someone who could leave a lasting impression. But with Fabian, she knew she’d be a wonderful memory for the rest of his life. The greatest present a fifteen-year-old could ever be given-judged from a fifteen-year-old’s viewpoint. And who knows, I might even alter his perspective on life.

Charlotte twitched her lips sensually. “You won’t like this.”

“What?”

“When I saw you back at the Newfields ball. I thought you were kind of cute.”

“Cute?” he blurted in dismay.

“Told you.”

“Oh.” Fabian dropped the rifle back on the junk pile and scratched his neck. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“So you must like me a bit.”

“I suppose so.”

He seemed to inflate with purpose. “All right! Can we go swimming now?”

There really was a swimming-pool on board. A surprisingly large one, fifteen metres long, six wide. The room had a small bar at one end, and solaris spots shining out of a hologram sky. Sun loungers were set out along one side of the pool, the other side was flush with the wall, the windows ten centimetres above the water.

Charlotte tested the water with one foot, then shrugged out of her towelling robe. She was wearing a bright scarlet crossover-back swimsuit underneath. Fabian watched her with a bold face and timid eyes as she dived cleanly into the pool.

She swam over to the windows, and looked out at the Mediterranean below. Floating in water that was floating through air. How strange. And there was that feeling of something being out of kilter again. It was mid-afternoon, with the sun sinking towards the horizon ahead of the Colonel Maitland. She decided that when she got to Odessa she’d call Baronski and tell him to find her another patron. Fabian could nearly be classified as sweet, he was certainly gullible, and easily controlled. But there was no way she was going to spend the next month cooped up in an airship with no one else to talk to.

“Do you want the wave generator on?” he asked.

“Maybe later. I’m still getting used to the idea of a pool in the air. Waves would be pushing it.”

He turned onto his back, and drifted away. “The pool makes a lot of sense, you know. It weighs less than the hydrogen the ship used to store; and water is the best kind of ballast, quick to dump.”

“Are you telling me that if there’s an emergency we’re going to go down the plug hole?”

Fabian laughed. “No, course not, stupid. There’s a grille over the drain.”

Charlotte pushed off from the windows. “Fabian, where do you go to school?”

“Here, I use flexible rate learning programs on my terminal. But I’m going away to university. Father said I am. Cambridge, I hope. That’s where he went. I want to do economics so I can take over the trading company from him.”

“So when do you get out?”

“Out?”

“Of the Colonel Maitland.”

“Oh, when we reach a port where Father has some business. Or if we go to a party.”

“So how do you make friends?”

Fabian’s good humour faded. He stood up in the middle of the pool. “There are the other kids on the party circuit. And I talk to people on the phone chatlink.”

She swam over to him, and stood up, the water coming up to her elbows. His head tilted up to look at her.

“That’s nice,” she said. “You must meet a lot of varied people.”

Fabian nodded. His gaze dropped to the scoop of her swimsuit and stayed there. She eased her chest forward a fraction. Regretting it almost immediately as Fabian became very still; teasing him was such a delicate business. He was on the verge of panic.

“Yes?” she said gently.

“Charlotte…” He visibly gathered courage. “Charlotte, can I kiss you now? You don’t have to say yes.”

She took a slow step forwards, amused by his suddenly startled expression. Her hands held his shoulders, and she gave him a long kiss, finishing by sucking his lower lip as they parted.

If anything Fabian looked even more confused and lost than usual.

“Didn’t you like that?” she asked.

“Crikey, yes! It’s just-”

She gave him a fast impersonal kiss on the tip of his nose. “Don’t feel guilty, Fabian. Never that. I’m here for you.”

“I didn’t ask for you to be brought on board,” he said defensively.

“I know. So, friends?”

“Yes.” He gave an anxious nod, then experimented with a grin.

“Good.”

“Why did you want to know about my friends?” he asked.

“Just curious.”

“Where do you live?”

“I have a flat in the Prezda, that’s an Austrian arcology.”

“But you can’t live there much.”

“No. I don’t suppose I do. But it’s nice to have somewhere to call home. Somewhere you can always return to and shut the door on the rest of the world. Everybody needs that.”

“If you don’t live there much, then you can’t have many real friends either. Not steady ones.”

Charlotte couldn’t manage to summon up her usual smile. “Fabian, have you got a bioware processor implant?”

His satisfied expression dissolved into perplexity. “No. Of course not. Why?”

“Because you’re a very bright boy, that’s why.”

His grin reappeared. “Really? You really think so?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t want to be rude,” he said contritely. “I thought-”

“Go on, I don’t bite.”

“Well, I thought that might be why you decided to come with me, because we were both the same. Neither of us has anybody really close.”

She let the water flow back over her, twisting idly.

“Could be.”

Charlotte waited for an hour after dinner before she tapped on Fabian’s door. The meal had been another exercise in high discomfort; the three of them sitting in the aft dining-room as the twilight faded into night. Jason Whitehurst had asked about New London again. Where she stayed, who she’d met, actually wanting to know which flights she’d used, for Heaven’s sake. Even Fabian had begun to shift uncomfortably in his seat.

“Busy?” Charlotte asked.

Fabian shook his head, and backed away from the door. The flatscreen on the wall was showing a Western. His cabin’s layout was similar to hers, but pesonalized, with clothes scattered about, real books piled on the dresser, shoes underfoot. Biolum panels glowed dully, reddish pink embers.