Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

The door to Wilholm’s study was solid teak, with a simple polished brass handle. Victor turned it and pushed. “Lion’s den,” he said with a grin.

Rick gave him a thanks-for-nothing glance, and walked in still adjusting his tie.

The room was oak panelled, its lead-glazed windows looking out over the Manor’s rear lawns. There was a long oak table down the centre, with ten black wooden chairs along each side. Julia sat at the head, studying the data displayed in the cubes of an elaborate terminal in front of her.

Rick’s greeting died unspoken. Victor was expecting it, a reaction he had seen a thousand times before. Julia in the flesh did that to people. She belonged on channel newscasts, in gossipcasts, there was even a university which included her management of Event Horizon as part of its business finance course. She wasn’t real.

“Dr Rick Parnell,” Victor said innocently. “Your SETI director.”

Julia offered her hand. “Do sit down, though I have to say I don’t quite understand why Victor brought you.”

Victor pulled out a chair for himself, and sat on one side of Julia. “I brought him because Royan’s been playing silly buggers with our memory cores. Tell her about the microbes, Rick.”

Rick settled in the chair on the other side of Julia, his bulk filling it dangerously. Victor listened to him launch into an explanation of the Matoyaii probe, its unsubstantiated discovery in Jupiter’s rings. Rick’s usual bluster had vanished, replaced by a boyish eagerness.

Julia leaned back in her chair after he finished. “Now you’ve jogged my memory, I do remember hearing about the flu theory,” she said slowly. “Years ago, probably when I was back at school. But why do you assume these microbes come from the stars? I would have thought Jupiter itself is a more obvious choice. The chemistry and the energy exists to support microbic life forms in its atmosphere, surely some spoors could have leaked out to the rings, maybe even riding up the Io flux-tube.”

Victor watched the last of Rick’s assurance crumple. Of course, an interstellar origin was so much easier for him to believe in, more important, more dramatic. It gave the whole SETI discipline that edge of certainty, respectability. The same reason people wanted to believe in flying saucers rather than swamp gas.

“The origin is irrelevant to our present situation,” Victor said. “The point is, when he heard the microbes existed, or might exist, Royan had a probe built to investigate them.”

Julia looked at him blankly, as if the words he’d spoken had come out wrong. “When?”

“He approached me about sixteen months ago,” Rick said. “I expect that was because I suggested a probe to verify Matoyaii’s findings as soon as you appointed me. It was turned down.”

Julia’s expression became cool, she didn’t say anything. Rick swallowed and went on, “After Royan came to us, my office advised the design team on the kind of sensors required to locate the microbes.”

“There’s no record of this,” Julia said. Her eyes were closed. Victor knew she was using her nodes, probably talking to her NN cores, running tracers through Event Horizon’s memory cores. He had done it himself on the flight back from the Astronautics Institute, and drawn a complete blank. But if there were any bytes on the probe hidden in the company’s memory cores, Julia would find them. He always thought it a considerable irony that the boss of Event Horizon was one of the greatest hotrods on the planet.

“I watched it being built,” Rick said, a shade defensively. “It was assembled in Building One, you could actually see it from my office window.”

“A Jupiter probe?” Julia asked. “Built in full view, and nobody said anything?”

“Best place to hide something,” Victor said. “One more space project in an Institute that boots five thousand tonnes of hardware into orbit every week. Who’d notice, who’d even care?”

“Mr Tyo is quite right,” Rick said. “Unmanned planetary exploration isn’t of much interest to Institute personnel. Not since the Mars and Mercury landings. There was nothing special about Kiley, the components were all standard apart from the microbe detection sensors and sampling waldos.”

“Kiley?” Julia asked.

“Yes. Royan chose the name. It’s a kind of boomerang,” Rick explained.

“A boomerang? You mean Kiley was a sample-return mission?”

“Yes.”

“Has it returned?” she demanded.

“I couldn’t tell you. That would depend on how long it stayed in orbit around Jupiter. But I will tell you this, it was built for speed. The probe itself only massed about two tonnes, the propulsion section came in at over forty tonnes. It filled a Clarke-class spaceplane payload bay. There were five stages, throwaway reaction-mass tanks and gigaconductor cells. That raised a few eyebrows at the Institute. Whoever heard of throwing away giga-conductor cells? Royan was certainly in a hurry for it to get on Jupiter.”

The corner of Julia’s mouth turned down. “Nothing new in that, he was always in a hurry. So how long would it take to get there?”

“Launched at an optimal conjunction, ten weeks,” Rick said.

“And presumably the same time to return?”

“Yes, possibly a week or so less. The Sun’s gravity field would accelerate it, you see.”

“Do you know when it was launched?”

“Not to the day, no. But Kiley was rolled out of Building One eight months ago, last November.”

Julia gave him a long hard look, holding her body immobile.

Victor knew her mood well enough, contemplative, but Rick was visibly wilting under such a direct contact.

“Did he ever say why he was so keen to examine these microbes?” Victor asked. “What was so important about them?”

“No,” Rick said. “He never confided in me. Sorry.”

Victor glanced enquiringly at Julia.

“Fraid not,” she shook her head fractionally.

“Care to guess?”

“I don’t think I could. I’m beginning to realize how little of him I ever did know.”

Rick cleared his throat cautiously. “Er, are we, the Institute, that is, in trouble for assembling the probe? Royan did have all the funding clearance, and we knew he’s your husband-” He broke off miserably.

Julia favoured him with a thin grin. “Oh, yes, he’s mine all right. And no, I don’t hold the Institute to blame. Royan has the authority to use whatever Event Horizon facility he wishes to.”

“Even if he can’t be bothered to tell us,” Victor said. It came out with more feeling than he intended, and Julia registered a flicker of pain. Julia’s choice had always baffled him, although he and Royan had always been careful never to show any animosity towards each other. If anything, they’d always been scrupulously polite, to the point of excess, it became a ritual. Perhaps the mistrust he felt was just a security man’s instinct. But he always considered Royan a flaw in Julia’s otherwise meticulous life; it was always her devotion, her money. All Royan had brought with him were his hotrod programs. Love was never reasonable.

“Something I’d like to ask,” Victor said, evading Julia’s critical eye. “Seeing as how I don’t believe in coincidence: Royan builds a Jupiter probe to investigate alien life, then he turns up warning us about alien life. Would it make sense for our aliens to use Jupiter as a base?”

“You mean, could their ship be in orbit around Jupiter?” Julia asked.

“Just an idea,” Victor said. It was one he’d had on the flight back to Wilholm. He had wanted to pursue it with Rick, but then Greg had called and he wound up getting sidetracked with safeguarding Andria Landon.

“A good one,” said Rick. “However advanced their technology, a starflight would deplete on-board resources, certainly on a slower-than-light ship. Jupiter would be an excellent resupply point. Minerals and metal in its ring, ice on Europa, He3 in its atmosphere.”