Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

That was another aspect of life Julia didn’t enjoy. She’d chosen Oakham School because it was good, and near Wilholm, and Greg and Eleanor sent their children to it. Daniella and Matthew wouldn’t be friendless when they arrived, nor would they have to board, a notion she couldn’t bear. The arrangement had been confidential, but within a week of Daniella starting every entry place for the next ten years had been booked solid. Rumour had it that places for Matthew’s year had been traded for over a quarter of a million Eurofrancs.

“Clifford, Bonnie’s only two,” she said.

“Thirty months, and every bit as pretty as her mom.”

“Oh, well, I wish you luck. It’s a good school, Daniella and Matthew enjoy it here.” She walked on to the next painting, a rusting petrol-driven car with a Coke bottle growing out of its roof. A couple of parents were engrossed with it. The woman nudged her husband who looked up, and gave a start when he saw Julia. She gave them a flicker of a smile.

“Julia, I was being serious about us.”

Why couldn’t he take the hint? “I’m a mother with two children, remember?”

“You’re a single parent, who’s been alone for eight months.” His face was sober.

“What do you know about it?”

“That he’s a fool. That he won’t be coming back.”

“He will.”

“Face it Julia, eight months.”

“Eight months or eight years, it makes no difference to me. I’ll wait.”

Clifford Jepson gulped down the remainder of his drink. When she looked closely, she saw he was strangely apprehensive. Almost frightened.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“Not if you’re going to make any more indecent proposals.”

“It’s important, Julia.”

The last thing she wanted was to talk shop. Oliver, Anita, and Richy had pulled Eleanor away to see the exhibitions various departments were staging, Matthew and his bodyguard had gone with them. Daniella and Christine were part of a big group of girls in a corner of the marquee, Daniella’s bodyguard wearing a tired tolerant expression.

“Five minutes,” she said.

The sports field was almost deserted. A group of school maintenance staff had already started to dismantle the stage, ten boys were stacking up the chairs under the supervision of a master. Ahead of her, the first Xl’s cricket square was a bright strip of emerald, standing out from the rest of the field’s parched grass. Over to one side the score board was still showing the result of the last match. It was one of the old-fashioned affairs, a small boxy pavilion dating from the last century, with junior boys scurrying about inside changing the numbers round.

Matthew had to explain how it worked the first time she and Royan came to watch a match. She was amazed at the primitiveness of it, the scorer even used a big paper ledger to keep the runs in. Royan, of course, had loved the idea. It’d been a good afternoon, she remembered, after the match they’d taken Matthew, Daniella and some of their friends to have tea at a café in the town. A big noisy party, where the children had all eaten too much cake. None of them cared who she was.

Julia sat on one of the wooden seats dotted around the pitch’s boundary line, tugging the brim of her hat down against the glare. The air was dusty, tickling the back of her throat.

Clifford Jepson sat beside her, grimacing at the stains of ancient bird droppings on the cracked wood. A line of their bodyguards had fanned out behind them to form a phalanx against casual intrusion by any of the other parents.

“Marriage was only half the proposition,” he said. “It’s a start, an opening to something much bigger, grander.”

“Merging Event Horizon and Globecast so our children could take over the world. No, thank you, Clifford. You forget I could buy Globecast if I really wanted to.”

His PR smile turned tight. “Will you hear me out? I’m not talking about Globecast. Right now, I’m holding something that’s gonna grow and grow. It’s big, Julia, the biggest. I’m offering you a partnership.”

Open Channel to SelfCores. I think you three had better listen to this. “A partnership in what?” she asked.

“Something new. Something explosive. It’s a whole new industry, Julia. The company that markets it is gonna win big.”

How interesting, NN core one said. Not many days when we get offered two revolutionary partnerships.

You think they’re connected? she asked.

There’s one way to find out, Juliet. Start name dropping, see how our Clifford reacts.

Right. “This partnership,” Julia said laconically. “Let me guess: you provide the data constructs of a rudimentary technology, and Event Horizon develops it to a commercially viable level? Is that the way you see it working, Clifford?”

He raised his hands, putting on a rueful grin. “God damn, on the ball or what? After all these years, Julia, I’m still not in your class, nobody is. OK, let me lay it straight on the line for you. Event Horizon is one of several possible partners I’m considering. And I’d like it to be you, Julia, I reaily would. This operation of yours, you leave the kombinates standing. If we can thrash out a deal, make the numbers work, then it’s yours. I’ll be a sleeping partner, maybe a gate to some military contracts, but essentially it’ll be your field.”

“This sleeping partner arrangement, I hope that’s not intended literally, Clifford.”

“People like us, Julia, I mean, working close on this deal, spending time together, maybe you’ll see more to me than you do now.”

“But I still have to put in the best bid if I want this new technology you’re offering?”

“Yeah, you’ve got some stiff competition lining up for a slice of this pie. I’m not hiding that from you. But I’ll show you what I’m offering on a confidential basis, and you can decide what sort of offer to make. I’m confident you’ll come out tops. You’ll understand what this means, you’ve got the kind of vision the kombinate boards lack. And this needs someone with vision behind it, Julia.”

Dear Lord, he makes you want to vomit, NN core two said. So dreary and predictable.

This all sounds very familiar, Julia said. Do you think Clifford could be the one Mutizen stole the molecular structuring data from?

If they did, then where did he get it from? NN core one asked. Globecast doesn’t employ a single physicist.

Oh yes they bloody well do, my girl, Philip Evans said. I told you there was something wrong about Globecast bidding to acquire the Mousanta labs.

So you did, Grandpa. But they haven’t acquired it yet. Which means Mousanta can’t be the source. Did commercial intelligence come up with anything?

Sod-all! Idle buggers. You hit this Clifford, Juliet, hit him hard. Make him know he’s a cheap nobody.

Behind Clifford Jepson a couple of umpires had walked out on to the cricket square. They began to set up the wickets.

“What’s the matter, Clifford?” she asked. “Hasn’t Mousanta got the resources to hack the atomic structuring theory? Is that why you’ve come running to me and the kombinates to build the generator for you?”

“Motherfuck!” Clifford Jepson gasped.

It was all she could do not to laugh. His fall from oily confidence to bewildered fright was classic comedy. The lack of control surprised her, though, she hadn’t been expecting that, not from a trained executive. Another demonstration that he didn’t really have what it took. She could never understand why he carried on the arms trading. In his father’s day it was different, the post-Warming world was unstable, astutely placed arms shipments could quite often shift the balance of power in small countries. But now life had calmed down again, the only people who wanted arms on the black market were the alienated, increasingly bitter and desperate radical political groups. It made Clifford Jepson little more than an extension of the terrorists he served.