Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Fabian picked up the rhythm, strumming along in some private paradise. They cranked the deck up, and started jamming some Beatles and Stones, more Bil Yi, the two of them shouting the lyrics at each other over riffs that shook the den’s heavy thermal insulation panels and rattled her gullet.

The fish were going berserk in their tanks. She hadn’t let her hair down like this for an age.

They were thrashing the hell out of ‘Bloody Honey’ when Charlotte heard the bang, thinking they’d blown a speaker. It took Fabian a minute to realize she’d stopped playing.

“What?” he asked. His face was flushed and sweaty. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him smiling so brightly before, a natural high. It was nice to see.

“We’ve bust a speaker,” she told him, laughing. Her cotton top was damp and hot, contracting about her. There wasn’t much air conditioning in the den. Somehow she didn’t care.

“Aww.” Fabian pulled a face. He bounced over to the music deck, the guitar hanging round him. LEDs winked green and orange as he flicked switches. “No, we haven’t.”

“I heard something go pop.”

“Not us, not guilty,” Fabian’s voice had a ragged euphoric edge.

“Oh well, I needed the rest.”

“Crikey, you were fantastic, Charlotte!” His eyes shone.

“I’ve never played with anyone before, only the deck.”

The breath was coming out of her in short puffs. “Never?”

“No.”

“Pretty damn good, you were.”

“Really? Honest to God?”

“Yep. You’ve got a definite talent there, Fabian.”

His expression went all distant. “Know what I dream? That I get a slot on MTV’s garage access ‘cast.”

Charlotte grinned. She’d seen that herself sometimes.

Thrice a week MTV turned over about ninety minutes of the death hours between two and four in the morning to unsigned bands. Any bunch of kids with an amp stack and a camera could plug into the channel. Wishful rumour said music biz suits sat glued to it, searching for new talent. Charlotte thought that was a load of crap.

Suddenly she had a vision of Baronski watching her and Fabian decimating ‘Your Coolin’ Heart.” She started giggling as Baronski’s jaw dropped in stupefaction, every one of his precious sensibilities overloaded and fused.

“What?” Fabian asked.

She waved her hands helplessly. “One of my friends seeing me on that ‘cast.”

Fabian’s nose twitched. “Father seeing us on that!”

Charlotte whooped ecstatically, banging out a nonsense blast on the keyboard, aware of Fabian hooting wildly.

The door opened. Charlotte saw the maid framed in the gloomy light of the fuselage biolums.

“What do you want?” Fabian asked between gulps. “Unless you’ve come to audition for drums?”

Charlotte laughed delightedly at seeing the sulky cow so thrown by the scene, which set Fabin off again. Although there was something peculiar about the maid’s face, squinting as though she was drunk. Charlotte had seen that expression before somewhere. Couldn’t quite place the memory.

The maid took two steps into the room. Fast steps.

“Hey-” Fabian began.

The maid hit him. It was a backhanded blow, she barely aimed it. Her hand caught him on the side of his face, lifting him off the floor. There was a moment of dead silence as he fell back on to the pile of cushions. Then the guitar made a clattering noise as it caught on the deck, and Fabian let out a dull grunt.

Charlotte yelled, “Fabian!” and rushed over to him.

There was blood trickling out of his mouth, the side of his face where the maid had struck was bright red. He was blinking in numb confusion, his arms struggling limply. One eye was already swelling, the smooth skin discolouring. She went down on the cushions, scattering some, and gripped his wrist. Her other hand went on his forehead. “Don’t move,” she whispered. The guitar neck pressed awkwardly into her belly.

“I-” he coughed. More blood sprayed out between his lips.

Charlotte sucked in a breath at the sight. Utile specks of blood were staining her white cotton top. She stroked the side of his head anxiously, eyes watering. “Don’t…”

Fabian caught sight of the maid behind her. His face twisted into rage, and he surged up.

“No!” Charlotte flung herself on him, pinning him down on the cushions. “No, Fabian. She’s cleardusted.” That was the memory, the squint, the dazed crazed look. She’d seen some of her patrons’ hardline bodyguards take the stuff. Cleardust was a synthesized derivative of the old angel dust, giving the manic strength and immunity to pain without the hallucinogenic effect.

“Very good,” said the maid. “You’re bright for a whore.”

Charlotte was centimetres from Fabian’s face. Seeing pain and reflections of pain in his eyes.

A hand that must have been made of metal closed around her upper arm, and she was yanked up, squealing at the sudden pain. She stumbled for her footing. “Please, Fabian, please stay down. Please.” It was all she could think of. He wouldn’t understand. The maid would kill him.

He glared upwards, bloody lips parted.

“Please, for me,” she pleaded.

“Right,” his voice was distorted, as if he was chewing on something.

The pressure on Charlotte’s arm increased, making her mouth part with the pain. She was turned to face the maid. The glazed eyes made her shiver inside. They didn’t see anything in this universe.

“I will ask you some questions,” the maid said. “You will answer them for me, or I will start to snap all that expensive bonework of yours. Understand, whore?”

“Let him go. I’ll tell you anything you want. But don’t hurt him.”

Charlotte heard a muffled high-pitched crack from somewhere outside the den. She thought it sounded like some kind of weapon.

The maid gave a cyborg smile. “You’re a very popular girl all of a sudden. Lots of people want to talk to you. But I’m first. And last.”

The crack came again, then again.

“Who gave you the flower?” the maid asked.

It took Charlotte’s wild thoughts a moment to work out what flower she was talking about. “Let Fabian go.”

“The flower?”

“I don’t know who he was, not his actual name. Please.”

“Liar.”

Charlotte’s hand was grabbed. She screamed as two fingers were bent back. There was a pistol-shot snap.

Strangely enough, there wasn’t any pain, not at first. She couldn’t feel anything below her wrist, then a red-hot ache spread up her fingers, biting hard into her knuckles. There was bile rising in her throat. Her head began to spin alarmingly; for a moment she thought she was going to faint.

In horror she saw Fabian on his feet, lurching towards her and the maid. She lashed out with her free arm, knocking him back. His face was a mask of desperation and agony.

“Oh God no,” she wailed, tears swelling up. He was regaining his balance, going to try again.

“ENOUGH OF THIS. FABIAN, STAY WHERE YOU ARE.” The voice was an inhuman roar, loud enough to be painful. It was coming out of the music deck speakers, she realized.

Fabian ducked his head down in reflex, hands halfway to his ears. Even the maid was frozen.

The flatscreens came on, each one showing the same picture of a woman’s face. Charlotte let out a choked cry as she recognized her. “Julia Evans,” she gasped. It was her. Really her. Just like at the Newfields ball. That same compelling oval face.

Julian Evans smiled thinly. “Hello, Charlotte. I think it’s about time you and I had a talk.”

“Not a chance,” said the maid.

Julia’s personality package was coded as a commercial intelligence summary, so the Colonel Maitland’s ‘ware network-management program automatically assigned it storage space in the lightware cruncher Jason Whitehurst was using to analyse kombinate finances. Once it was loaded, the personality package immediately reformatted the command routines of the processing structure it was running in, isolating itself from the lightware’s operating program and antiviral guardians. After it had confirmed its autonomy it sent out a series of instructions to the internal databuses, arrogating their handling procedures, shutting down the data flow.