Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

But then Fabian was a boy in lust. He was also a remarkably fast learner. She had spent a strenuous two hours last night coping with his enthusiasms and demands before he finally drifted off into an exhausted sleep, then he’d been ready for more this morning. Which was why they turned up late at the table.

Jason Whitehurst was already sitting at the table waiting for them. He greeted them with an unabashed smile. “Ah, glad to see you young people are getting on so well.”

Fabian blushed hot crimson.

Jason Whitehurst had chosen his cereal, unperturbed, and ordered his cybofax to display the London Times, which he read as he ate.

Charlotte could hear the waiter squeezing fresh orange juice at the side table behind her. She started in on her own cereal bowl. The sun was filling the dining room with a liquid rose-gold light, rising into view directly behind Jason Whitehurst. She stared at it, feeling cold despite the thick Cotton of her summer dress.

Jason Whitehurst looked up from his cybofax. “Something wrong, my dear?”

“West,” she said numbly. “We’re heading west.”

“That’s right.”

“But Odessa is east of Monaco. I thought we were going around Italy, then up into the Black Sea.”

“No.” Jason Whitehurst inspected a slice of toast, then began buttering it. “My agent has taken care of my business in Odessa. There’s no need to go there now. Great relief all round, one expects. I told you what it was like.”

The waiter put a glass of orange down in front of Charlotte. She ignored it. “Where are we going, then?”

“Going?” Jason Whitehurst affected puzzlement. Why, my dear girl, the Colonel Maitland simply drifts. On a whim and a prayer, I always say. I had a notion that South America would be nice. You and Fabian could laze around on the beach, that sort of thing, whatever it is a boy and a girl do together these days. How does that sound, young man?”

“Great, father,” Fabian said cautiously.

“Which country in South America?” Charlotte asked. It was hard to maintain her pose of polite seminal interest.

“Oh, I don’t know. I really hadn’t given it any thought, to be woundingly honest. Why, have you got any preferences?”

For once she was stuck for a reply. There was a small part of her mind thinking that Baronski would be shaking his head in dismay; questioning her patron’s intent, letting her own disapproval show. It simply was not done. But either Jason Whitehurst was the most carefree soul she’d ever met, or he was being deliberately obtuse.

She’d heard of patrons like that, not that there were many, thank heavens. Instead of physical mastery, they went in for nasty psychological games. Mental kinks designed to rip the sense of order from a bewildered girl, reduce her to a disorientated nervous wreck. It gave them a sense of power. A mind set which got its bang from destruction.

Charlotte remembered talking to one of the women tutors that Baronski had sent her round to learn the extras which put her so far above the others of her trade. The woman had told her it was all down to age and bitter jealousy; the patrons wanted to punish the girls for their youth and beauty, something their money could never bring back to them.

Charlotte reckoned that no one with a trading empire as large as Jason Whitehurst could have the kind of slapdash mind he alluded to.

She ran quickly through her options. “French Guiana is supposed to be nice,” she said with cheerful enthusiasm. “It has some wonderful beaches. Then there’s the tropical nature park we could tour; that has some of the oldest original rain forest on the continent. And they’re still discovering new insect species each year.” French Guiana was also one of the closest South American countries to Europe; which meant the voyage would be over as quickly as possible, and she could skip out.

“I can’t somehow imagine Fabian being vastly interested in bugs; is that right, young man?”

Fabian looked at Charlotte, then at his father. Trapped, not wanting to disappoint either. She felt sorry for him.

“Isn’t French Guiana where Devil’s Island is?” Fabian asked.

Jason Whitehurst pulled at his beard. “Yes, do you know, I think you’re right there. The jolly Ile du Diable. I might have guessed a red-blooded lad like you would show an interest in the totally macabre. Still, can’t be helped, all part of growing up. So, French Guiana it is, then.”

Charlotte dived straight into the Colonel Maitland’s pool and started doing lengths, a smooth easy freestyle with a neat flip at each end. It was one of the best ways she knew of working off frustration, losing herself in the mechanical spin of limbs, not having to think. She stopped after thirty lengths; the pool was smaller than she was used to. There wasn’t the distance to work up a decent speed, or maybe she was just spoilt.

“Crikey, is there anything you’re no good at?” Fabian asked. “I thought I was a good swimmer, but you just left me standing.”

“Sorry. I was a bit wound up over Odessa.”

“Oh.” The corner of his mouth depressed. “Father can be a bit, well, casual, at times. I suppose it must be unusual unless you’re used to it.”

She swung her legs up, and floated on her back. Now probably wasn’t a good time to ask what happened to his father’s previous girls, if they left in floods of tears.

“Now I know where we’re heading I’ll be all right.” She began to swish her feet, heading for the window. “You didn’t have to say you wanted to go to French Guiana, you know. I wouldn’t have been offended.”

“No, really, I wanted to go.” He started swimming beside her. “Well, all right, not the trees and caterpillars and things. But I would like to see Devil’s Island. And the beaches, with you.”

Charlotte steadied herself on the side of the pool by the window. She looked down thoughtfully on the water below. “Where are we now, do you think?”

Fabian held on to the side, eyes on her rather than the water. “It’s the Atlantic, we’re west of Africa. I can get you the exact co-ordinates if you want.”

“No, thank you Fabian, that’s all right. It’s just a pity we missed seeing Gibraltar. Have you ever been there before?”

“No.”

“If the Colonel Maitland comes back to the Mediterranean some time, then remember to ask your father to show you. The Straits drop flow is quite something, that tiny little gap is the only place the Mediterranean basin can fill up from. Thermal expansion didn’t raise the Mediterranean’s level as high as the oceans, the water was warmer to start with. So the Atlantic is still a good couple of metres higher, and that’s after nearly twenty-five years. They won’t reach equipoise for a long time yet.”

“Did you ride it?”

“No. I was too scared, the drop flow is over five kilometres long. I watched the macho loonies doing it, through. You sit in one of the overhang cafes on the rock, and your bones shake from the turbulence round the base, the sound is like one continual thunderclap. They reckon the rock itself will be gone in a few more decades. Nothing can resist that sort of pressure.”

She remembered more, the sleek canoe-like capsules that people rode the Straits drop flow in, like phosphene dots zipping across her vision as she watched that incredible surge of white water from the safety of the café. Three of the people in her group had wanted to try it, knowing full well the drop flow claimed a couple of lives a week.

She thought at the time how little regard they had for their own lives. There was a degeneracy building in the world’s rich, becoming more advanced with each generation. There used to be a kind of adventurism in the excitement they sought, the power boat racing, desert car rallies, polar trekking. But now the element of calculation was missing from the risks they took, superseded by recklessness, a return to the live fast die young ideal. She supposed it was an answer to the increasing jadedness of their existence, in this world so much pleasure could be bought on the cheap. Their urge towards self-destruction set them apart from the poor again.