Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Is this plane fitted with an ECM system?” she asked.

Rachel looked up from the handset. “Yes.”

“Tell the pilot to use it, and fly an evasion pattern through the mountains. We might be followed.”

“Right.”

“Suzi!” Greg called. “Take over from me, will you?”

She rose from the chair, the pain in her knee more acute. Malcolm was unconscious; Pearse had got his jacket and shirt off, and was spraying the wounds with antiseptic. The clear oily liquid mixed with blood, forming runnels across Malcolm’s ribs, splashing on the chair fabric.

Suzi checked the data the diagnostic was displaying on its screen. Her guess about the blood had been right, he was losing too much. She found a plasma bladder, and pulled out its bioware leech patch. The patch resembled a flattened snail, a hard carapace with a soft spongy underside, connected to the plasma bladder with a plastic tube. She held Malcolm’s forearm and pressed the leech pad against his skin. There was a soft sucking sound as it adhered. The pattern of yellow and green LED on the bladder’s pump changed as the leech patch inserted its needle probes into his blood vessels, then it began feeding plasma into him.

Greg sat down gingerly in one of the chairs, and gave Victor Tyo’s number to his cybofax.

Suzi heard the security chief say, “Bloody hell, what happened to you?”

“Tell you, we’re not the only people looking for Charlotte Fielder.” He started to fill Victor in on the events in the Prezda.

Suzi began spraying dermal seal on Malcolm’s lacerations; the foam sizzled as it touched the skin, rapidly solidifying into a pale blue membrane. She was continually bracing herself as the plane banked and rose. Malcolm’s back had been badly slashed by the flying glass. She had to use flesh tape on the wider cuts. Pearse was working on his legs, using a small sensor pad to find any buried glass fragments.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “He did all right, your mate. Stopped those tekmercs dead.”

“Reason he was chosen,” Pearse grunted.

“Yeah, right.” Suzi heard Greg rounding up, and asked Rachel to finish for her. She limped back to where Greg was sitting. A glance at the bulkhead flatscreen showed a continual blur of rock.

“You too?” Victor asked when Greg handed her the cybofax.

Suzi sat heavily in one of the chairs, grimacing. The hand she was holding the cybofax with was filmed in dried blood, and not all of it was Malcolm’s. “Yeah. But you should see the opposition.”

“I know, Greg told me.”

“Listen, Leol Reiger, I know him. He’s a prize turd, but the bastard’s good.”

“I’m reviewing his profile now, Suzi. But I was aware of the name. Have you got any idea who employed him, any rumours?”

“Nope, sorry. Gave me a fuck of a shock seeing him there.” She stared at Victor’s concerned young-seeming face, her instincts rebelling against confiding in him. Security man. But she had hardlined with him once, seventeen years ago, some weird case Greg was working on for Julia. It was just she hated opening herself to anyone. “Victor, there’s this girl. Name’s Andria Landon. She’s in my apartment at the Soreyheath condominium; not a hardliner, not even tekmerc. Means she can’t look out for herself. So if Leol Reiger wants to hit me, she’s the obvious choice. You got a safehouse she can stay at till I get back?”

“No problem, I’m dispatching a couple of my people, they’ll have her out of there in twenty minutes.” He said it all crisp and efficient, which she figured was his way of not showing surprise.

“They’ve got to be good, Victor.”

He was looking at something off-screen, typing. “They will be. Call her now and tell her they’re coming: Howard Lovell, and Katie Sansom. Got the names?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Victor.”

Victor came down out of the Pegasus on to Wilholm Manor’s lawn. He was greeted by a rich scent of honeysuckle in the moist air. The sprinklers had been on, drenching the lawns, keeping the grass lush and green. His shoes were swiftly coated in the artificial dew.

The Manor in front of him was a long classical grey-stone building, three stories high. It dated back to the eighteenth century, although it had undergone considerable modernization and refurbishment over the years. The last major overhaul had come when Julia and Philip Evans bought it, right after PSP fell, ousting the communal farmers and virtually gutting the interior before returning it to an opulence of a bygone age.

Wilholm estate was a rare enclave of gracious living, Victor always thought, out of sync with the present and all its digital bustle. A true English country house, basking in an eternal Indian summer. Birds always singing, flowers always in bloom. Time slowed down here.

Rick Parnell trotted down the stairs out of the executive hypersonic’s belly hatch, carrying his suit jacket over his shoulder. When he was clear of the plane he turned a full circle, gawping at the grounds like an overawed tourist. “Bloody hell, you mean somebody actually lives here? It looks like a theme park.”

“It’s your boss who lives here, just remember,” Victor said.

Rick Parnell was staring at the trout lake at the bottom of the gardens; now the hypersonic’s compressors had wound down the noise of the waterfall on the far side was clearly audible. Beyond the dark water was a dense stretch of woodland. The Chinese yew and virginciana trees were draped in a lacework of dark green ivy and clematis vines, clusters of plate-sized red and lilac flowers dangling. They had survived the spring hurricanes again, the few trunks that had keeled over adding to the rustic authenticity of the spinney. It was hard to believe that the grounds were only eighteen years old.

Paths crisscrossed the lawn, fenced by topiary drimys and japonicas, elaborate cockerels, dogs, bears, concentric spheres, and one giant pair of shears. A wide lily pond had a statue of Venus in the centre, shooting a fountain five metres into the air. Boxy orange drones crawled along the flower borders, digesting faded roses and forking out weeds.

Victor started off towards the manor, Rick Parnell following reluctantly. Daniella and Matthew were playing in the big outdoor pool. They’d got Brutus, their sheepdog, in with them. Victor watched Matthew slide down the water chute along one side, nearly landing on top of the excited animal. Qoi, their nanny, was sitting at a table on the patio behind the pool, reading her cybofax, and occasionally glancing up to check on her wayward charges.

Victor liked the children; Julia had brought them up well, deliberately ensuring they didn’t have the hauteur of their contemporaries. She had almost gone too far in Matthew’s case, the boy could be a bit of a pain at times. Though what he probably needed was a father. Daniella was growing up along similar lines to her mother, tall and slim, through her hair was darker, and not worn as long. Nice kid, occasionally very serious, as if she was suffering bouts of premature adulthood. She waved, smiling, and shouted something at him. He guessed it was an invitation to join them, but the barking dog made it hard to tell. He gave her an exaggerated shrug and walked into the drawing room through open French doors.

“Open house here, isn’t it?” Rick said.

“Oh no, nothing like. If you weren’t with me you wouldn’t have made it off the bottom step of the Pegasus. Julia just doesn’t like the security hardware to spoil the look of the place.”

“I can believe that. What this place must have cost to build.”

Victor opened the door. “She’s entitled.”

They came out into a big hall hung with oil paintings. Victor led the way up a broad curving stairway and on to the landing. Rick struggled into his jacket on the way up.