Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

She sat with her back to the smooth bole of one of the living trees. The temperature had dropped appreciably in the orange-hued shade. She fanned her face with the boater and pulled out her cybofax.

When Greg’s face formed on the little screen it didn’t match her memory of him. Free fall had swollen his cheeks, his eyes seemed enlarged, but even through the slightly distorted features he looked dispirited. Something she would never have imagined. She’d been a little bit afraid of him the other night. Physically he wasn’t exceptionally big, the same height as Adrian, but there’d been an impression of strength; the way he moved, clean and unhurried, knowing nothing would be in his way. And he’d never smiled, not meaning it anyway. Like he was only play-acting civilized. He’d seemed a very cold fish, hard. Which, on reflection, was an interesting kind of challenge. What would make him take notice of someone, respond with kindness? And if he did, how safe that person would feel with such a guardian angel.

“Miss Evans,” he said, expectant.

Julia wedged the cybofax into a fork on the gnarled branch in front of her, and put her boater back on. “Julia, please.”

“Julia. What can I do for you?”

“I called about the spoiler operation.”

“You can tell your grandfather I’ve got all the guilty furnace operators under custody, and the person who destreamed the microgee module squirts.”

Tell Grandpa, indeed. Like she was some sort of second-rate office messenger. “Oh, yah. Is Norman Knowles under sedation yet? Mr Tyo’s report said he put up quite a struggle.”

“How the bloody hell did you know that?”

“My executive code gives me access to all the security division communications.” She regretted saying it instantly, flinching inwardly at how pompous she must’ve sounded.

“Oh. Well anyway, Knowles isn’t going to be any more trouble. It’s finished now, we’re due down in another six hours.”

“It isn’t finished, Greg.”

He frowned, inviting explanation.

She began to reel off her research findings, praying he wouldn’t think she was talking down to him. The girls at school always said she talked as though she was delivering a lecture. But he listened intently, not interrupting like most people.

“You discovered this yourself?” he asked when she’d finished, and there was definitely a tone of respect in his voice.

“Yah. The data was all there, it’s just a question of running the right search program.” Julia knew her cheeks would be red, but didn’t care.

“How much is the monolattice filament worth?” he asked.

“That’s what doesn’t make sense,” she admitted. “The total loss is only nine hundred thousand Eurofrancs.”

“And that bothers you?”

“Yah! It’s ridiculous. Why go to all that trouble? The memox spoiler works perfectly, there’s no need to add the monolattice filament to it.”

Greg didn’t exactly smile, but she could sense his tension easing. “Tell you,” he said, “I knew something about this spoiler operation was funny. You believe in intuition?” The question was sharp, as though the answer really mattered to him.

Julia forgot the tea plantation, the bark pressing into her back, muggy air. She felt real good talking to him like this, treated as an equal, not the patronized boss’s granddaughter, not a scatty teenage rich girl. Right now she was a real person, for the first time in a long time. Maybe the moment would stretch and stretch.

Commit GregTime. To sip and savour whenever she felt down.

“I had to keep working on the Zanthus data,” she said carefully. “Like it wouldn’t let me go.”

He nodded, satisfied with her response. “It’s up here. I can feel it, no messing.”

Which sounded pretty strange. Was that what he’d meant by intuition? “What’s up there?”

“The twist. We’re overlooking something, Julia.” He paused, eyes closed, an impression of effort. “What was the monolattice filament intended for, anything important? Are you going to get clobbered with penalty clauses for non-delivery?”

Julia used the nodes to plug into the company datanet, remonstrating with herself, it was an obvious question. She traced the monolattice-filament contracts, running a quick analysis. “Not that I can find,” she said. “But I’ll have the lawyer’s office double check to be on the safe side,”

“Right. In the mean time, I’ll start interviewing the monolattice-filament module people.” He let out a long breath, rubbing his nose. “Lord, how many of them are there?”

“Seven. We don’t make much monolattice filament.”

“That’s something. You’d better call Morgan Walshaw; bring him up to date, and have him round up those on their furlough. I’ll have to vet them once I get down.”

“Right.”

“That was a terrific piece of work, Julia. Exactly the sort of proof I needed.”

Julia watched his image intently. His camouflage of emotional detachment had slipped fractionally, he was keen now, animated. He looked much nicer this way, she decided. “What proof?”

“That the spoiler doesn’t conform.”

“But how does knowing it’s odd help? That just makes it more confusing to me.”

He winked. “Have faith. Now I know, I’ll keep looking. And I can look in the weirdest places.”

“Where?” she demanded eagerly.

“Right in my own heart. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got to get Victor Tyo organized.”

“Right, sure.” Granting him a favour.

End GregTime.

His image winked out, what might have been a smile tantalizing her. She reached out and plucked the cybofax from the tree. Grinning stupidly, feeling wonderful.

One of Wilholm’s sentinel panthers was looking at her five metres away, violet saucer eyes unblinking. She clicked her fingers and it padded over. Warm damp breath fell on her cheek.

“Good girl.” She stroked it behind pointed flattened ears. It yawned lazily at the affection, pink tongue licking its double row of shark-heritage teeth. Tobias snorted disapproval, shaking his thick neck, then went back to foraging the grass.

Right in his own heart?

Alexius McNamara dropped through the sick bay’s hatch, dressed in the sky-blue flightsuit which all the microgee module workers wore. His jowls overflowed his helmet strap, fingers resembled sausages. It was the last week of his shift.

“Grab him,” Greg said simply. He’d soon learnt to speak in a half shout, sound didn’t carry far in free fall.

Victor Tyo and Isabel Curtis were already anchored to the chamber’s walls on either side of the hatch. They clamped him between them with the efficiency of a tag-wrestling team, his legs and arms immobilized. Don Howarth jabbed a shockrod into his neck.

Greg had recognized the mental genotype as soon as he appeared: fissures of lassitude, leprous self-loathing. One of the kamikazes. He wasn’t taking chances with them any more. His interview with Norman Knowles, one of the five managers, had finished badly. Greg had sensed Knowles was the one who’d circumvented the security monitors at the same time as Knowles worked out he had a gland. Unfortunately, Greg hadn’t sensed Knowles was one of the kamikazes in time. Jerry Masefield had taken the brunt of the attack before he had been subdued. There was something uniquely disquieting about small globules of blood spraying about in free fall.

“Fuck you!” McNamara shouted.

The shockrod dug deeper. Don Howarth was a man worried for his position and pension. McNamara snarled.

Greg pushed off the wall, and stopped himself ten centimetres from him. They were inverted, and Greg sensed how that irritated the man. The Zanthus crew put a lot of stock in orientating themselves to a universal visual horizon.