Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Yeah. Do you know what he called himself, Royan? A prince consort. Says a lot about how much consideration I gave him.”

“Oh, come on, Julia, the whole world lives in your shadow. He knew that right from the start, the failure isn’t all down to you.”

She drank some of the wine, it was nice, dry and smooth. Eleanor understood, thank God; she was one of the few people Julia could really let her hair down with. They’d known each other long enough now; Julia had been the chief bridesmaid when she married Greg. “He wanted to be my equal, that’s what he said.”

Eleanor sniffed her wine and took a sip. “And what if he fails? Had he thought of that? What was he going to do then? Find a different alien?”

“Lord knows. He’s causing enough trouble with this one. Like a child really, he never learned to accept failure. Week-long setbacks are as close as he’s ever come. Everything is solvable in the end.”

“Oh dear.”

“Yes.”

They smiled, and drank some more wine.

The waves were moving in irregular patterns across the North Sea, small, high white horses clashing in fast flicks, whipped up by submerged obstacles. The North Sea Farm Company wasn’t as big as Listoel, there were only a hundred developed fields so far, but the water fruit it harvested raised a much higher price than krill. And tasted one hell of a lot better, Victor reckoned, but then what didn’t?

Water fruit globes resembled pumpkins, a thick wrinkled yellow-brown rind enclosing an almost apple-like flesh. Victor always thought of them as tasting like salty melons. But they were protein rich, and popular throughout Europe.

New varieties were introduced each year as the geneticists them.

They had developed into quite an important industry. Most countries had plantations dotted around their coasts. And the shallower southern half of the North Sea, with it’s warmth and low salinity, provided excellent conditions.

Julia had started the North Sea Farm Company three years earlier, assisted by a large Ministry of Fisheries grant. The division wasn’t as large as some of the food comt farms which had sprung up in the North Sea, but it was turning in a reasonable profit now.

When the nodes squirted a profile of the Farm into his mind, he’d seen the organization was top-heavy with research personnel, and a lot of the fields were experimenting with new techniques. Julia covering her options again, he suspected.

It would have been precisely those research facilities that attracted Royan. The station’s genetics laboratories were equipped to handle very sophisticated gene-tailoring operations.

Victor could make out the fields below the surface as Pegasus began its approach run. Kilometre-long walls of brick-red gene-tailored coral formed a broad chessboard of squares. New walls were growing out from the edges, a tracery of spindly lines probing the stark sand. The colours of the water fruit crops planted inside the walls ran through every shade of brown.

There were various towers and platforms protruding from the water at regular intervals. Some he recognized as twentieth-century oil platforms. Waste not, want not. But the majority of structures were built up from the same concrete sections as the thermal-generator platforms at Listoel, mass-produced by Event Horizon’s yards on the Nene. Cargo ships were docked with the platforms, loading up. Squat, heavily laden barges crisscrossed the fields, small bright yellow submarines were visible underwater.

The Pegasus landed on one of the concrete platforms, and Victor trotted down the belly hatch stairs. Eliot Haydon, the Farm’s director, was waiting for him, dressed in navy-blue shorts and a baseball cap with the Event Horizon triangle and flying-V logo on the peak.

Victor accessed his personnel profile: forty-seven years old, graduated from Norwich University with a marine biology degree, been with the company nineteen years, appointed as a divisional director five years ago, largely credited with making the Farm a profitable concern. Another of those smoothly professional Event Horizon premier-grade executives. He wondered if Julia classed him in the same category. Probably.

Eliot Haydon shook Victor’s hand in a warm dry grip. “Mr Tyo, not often we get a visit from your office.”

“Judy Tobandi is a good officer,” he said. “The Farm’s never been a problem from a security point of view. If people have their finger on the pulse, don’t interfere, I say.”

Eliot Haydon smiled, showing four solid gold teeth. “Well now, how about that? Enlightened administration, and at the highest level, too. You must have slipped through the personnel catchment net. What can I do for you?”

“I’m chasing after Royan. Do you know him?”

“Yes, of course. But I’m afraid you’re too late if you want to talk to him, he left us three weeks ago. Didn’t you check with our management cores?”

“That’s part of my problem. We did check. There’s no record of him at all.”

“What?”

“It’s rather complicated, but he’s covering his tracks very thoroughly. Can you tell me what he was doing here?”

“Yes, he was researching coral genetics, trying to improve mineral absorption rates.” A flicker of unease darkened Eliot Haydon’s broad sunny face. “Well, that’s what he said. It was a temporary posting, of course. We get quite a few scientists visiting from other Farms and national marine institutes. Now the first rush of competition is easing off, we all find co-operation helpful.”

“Did you assign Royan a genetics laboratory?”

“Yes. He wanted one for himself. It’s a bit unusual, but his authority rating entitled him. There were a few complaints when we reshuffled.”

“What happened afterwards?”

“After what?”

“After he left. Was there any equipment he left behind? Who moved into the laboratory? What happened to his research subjects?”

Eliot Haydon pulled his cybofax out of his shorts pocket and asked it a couple of questions. He consulted the screen, then gave Victor a thoughtful look. “According to our records, his lab is still unoccupied. That isn’t right at all, lab space is at a premium in the station. The management cores are programmed to reassign it as soon as it became available again.”

Victor had been expecting something like it, resentful of the way he was being led about like a cyborg. “I’d like to see it, please.”

The little cylindrical submarine had a transparent hemispherical nose. Victor sat beside Eliot Haydon in the front as the farm director piloted them away from the platform, using a steering-wheel which could have come from a car. It was designed to ferry twenty people down to the Farm’s main underwater station, but there was only him and his bodyguard on board.

The water was surprisingly clean. Eliot Haydon explained that the water fruit itself was responsible, its matted root system holding down the sand. A variety Event Horizon’s geneticists had developed.

Ripe globes of fruit hung a metre above the sea bed, suspended on a twisted ropy chord, like a squadron of tethered balloons. They were swinging rhythmically in the slow pulse of currents. Thirty Frankenstein dolphins, with long dextrous flippers, swam among the rows. He watched one wriggle underneath a water fruit, its powerful snout cutting clean through the cord. It gripped the globe with its flippers, and carried it to a big net bag at the end of the field, dropping it through the open neck with the accuracy and panache of a basketball player.

The main station loomed beyond the fields, a fat yellow-painted saucer sixty metres in diameter, with portholes round the rim. It stood fifteen metres off the sea bed on three sturdy cylindrical legs. Eliot Haydon steered the sub underneath it, manoeuvring up to an airlock set in the keel. They docked with a loud clunk. Pumps started to whirr.