Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

The answer clicked.

Julia raced out of the bathroom just as Adela was about to pick up her cybofax. “I’ll get it,” she called over the shrill bleeping. She tightened the belt on her robe and threw away the big yellow towel she’d been drying her hair with. Adela shrugged, and began to close the curtains. Torrential rain was beating against the thick windows.

Julia dropped on to the bed and picked up the cybofax. Greg’s face appeared on the screen. She flushed scarlet. “Give me a moment, Adela, please.”

Adela picked the towel off the carpet, giving her a meaningful look before closing the bathroom door behind her.

“Are we secure?” Greg asked.

Julia pushed back some of her hair, it was all rat tails. Why did he have to call when she looked like this? ‘Yah.”

“Great. I know what the twist is.”

Julia stared at him numbly. “And you called me first?”

“Yeah. You see, I need it confirmed before I go to Walshaw or your grandfather. So I thought you could do some research for me.”

“Me?”

“You uncovered the monolattice filament discrepancy. It’s as much your discovery as mine. I thought you’d want to see it through.”

“I do,” she said quickly.

Commit Gregtime#Two.

“Right then,” Greg said. “It’s a Luxemburg-registered company that has to be checked out. Can you do that for me?”

“Of course. But, Greg, what’s the twist?”

He smiled, and she noticed how drawn he looked.

“I think the memox crystals are being shipped down to Earth.”

“Oh,” was all she said, because the jolt sent her thoughts racing. “Greg, the Sanger flights are well documented. Their cargo manifests are finalized weeks in advance. It’d be awfully difficult to sneak anything on board, certainly on a regular basis.” She didn’t like puncturing his idea like that, he seemed so keen about it.

But Greg’s smile just broadened. “Forty-eight million Euro-francs, Julia. When I took the case, we thought the crystals were being contaminated, dumped. But they’re not contaminated, are they? They’re perfect. For forty-eight million, it’s worth trying to bring them down, even if you couldn’t get away with it. Tell you, I’d try. If it’s possible, those tekmercs will’ve done it; maybe they’ve found a psychic who can teleport the stuff back to Earth for them.”

“Teleport?” she squawked in alarm.

“Old Mindstar joke, sorry.”

“Ah.” The goosebumps on Julia’s forearms began to settle.

“The thing is, to find the flights the crystals went down on, Event Horizon would have to run a computer search through past spaceplane flights up to Zanthus. Say, over the period of a couple of months.”

“God, Greg, do you know how many spaceplane flights rendezvous with Zanthus in one day, let alone a month?”

“Today there were twenty-three. That’s where my problem lies. I’m convinced it’s happening, but getting Morgan Walshaw to mount an investigation on that scale, with just my intangible hearsay to go on, would be difficult. That’s even if the spacelines would co-operate and open their data cores to you, which is doubtful, and assuming the tekmercs haven’t wiped the records anyway.”

“So what’s this company you want me to check out?”

“The weak link. There’s always one.”

“I know,” she whispered fervently.

“Yes? Well, anyway, memox crystals, good or bad, are taken from the furnace modules to the servicing docks. From there, they’re either loaded into a Dragonflight Sanger, or included in a waste-dump stack, depending on how the batch was coded. Ample scope there for hanky-panky.”

Access HighSteal#Two.

She fired off a tracer program as soon as the simulacrum materialized. “It’s a contractor!’ she shouted excitedly.

“Right. Event Horizon doesn’t own any inter-orbit craft. There are three specialist transport companies based up at Zanthus to serve the manufacturers. You pay High Shunt to move your cargo around, and to perform your waste dumps.”

“It’s got to be them.”

“No messing. Now if you’d just care to prove it for me.” He was grinning at her.

She beamed right back, it was like they had some sort of affinity bond or something. And she’d been the one he’d come straight to. Not Morgan Walshaw, not Grandpa. Her. “Coming up,” she said.

It wasn’t even difficult. Event Horizon’s commercial intelligence division compiled a survey of every company they did business with. Large or small, each of them was scrutinized before the contract was finalized.

Julia’s executive code plugged her right in. High Shunt’s daedal aspects expanded in her mind, a comprehensive listing of its history, management structure, performance, assets, personnel. It was a respectable company, formed eight years ago, good safety record, developing as Zanthus grew.

List Ownership.

A stream of banks, pension schemes, trust funds, and individuals flooded through her, giving percentages and acquisition dates. One of them leaped out at her as if it was haloed in flashing red neon. Thirty-two per cent of High Shunt was owned by the di Girolamo family house.

“Gotcha, Kendric,” she whispered.

Stanstead airport was subtly depressing. New developments were erupting like shiny volcanic cancers in the middle of abandoned jet-age structures, vibrant young challengers. But the chances for inspiration which new materials and energy technologies provided, the opportunities to learn from the past and build a commercial enterprise which complemented the local environment, had all been lost; the steel and composite structures worshipped scale, not Gaia. They had neither grace nor art, simply history repeating itself. Stanstead had originally been built on the promise of the post-war dream, only to find itself betrayed like the rest of the country.

Greg looked down on the architectural shambles from an office on the top floor of Event Horizon’s glass-cube administration block, and wondered how many times that cycle would turn down the centuries. Hopes and aspirations of each new age lost under the weight of human frailties and plain bloody-mindedness.

The airport’s ancient hangars were dilapidated monstrosities, corrugated panels flapping dangerously as they awaited the reclamation crews. Next to them were six modern cargo terminals made from pearl-white composite; a constant flow of Dornier tilt-fans came and went from the pads outside. Black oval airships drifted high overhead.

He could see an old An-225 Mriya at the end of the barely serviceable runway. The Sanger orbiter he’d returned in yesterday had been hoisted on top by a couple of big cranes. The configuration was undergoing a final inspection before flying back to Listoel.

He heard Philip Evans’s querulous voice behind him, and closed the grey-silver louvre blinds which ran along the window wall, shutting out the sight of the tilt-fans hovering outside. The glass was sound-deadened, blocking the incessant high-frequency whine of their turbines.

Only Morgan Walshaw and Victor Tyo were in the office, sitting in hotel lobby silicon-composite chairs at a big oval conference table. There was a large flatscreen on the wall at the head of the table, showing Julia and Philip Evans in the study at Wilholm. Julia’s hair was tied back severely, and she was wearing a double-breasted purple suit-jacket over a cream blouse. Going for an executive image. It didn’t quite come off; her face, despite its current solemnity, was far too young. People would underestimate her because of that, he knew. He had.

But it was Philip who worried him. The old man looked just awful; a heavy woollen shawl wrapped round his thin frail shoulders, eyes that were yellow and glazed. His deterioration even over the five short days since the dinner party was quite obvious. He seemed to be having a great deal of trouble following the proceedings, his attention intermittent.