Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“All right!” he whooped blithely. “We breezed it, no problem. You ever need a job, Gran, you come’n see me, OK?”

“You’re too kind,” Gabriel said.

Des missed the mounting testiness, but Suzi winked at Greg, rolling her eyes for his denseness. Lynne and Roddy clattered up the stairs from the crew quarters below.

“Shall we get on with it?” Gabriel said, hurriedly forestalling the compliment Lynne had opened her mouth to begin. She took an infuser tube out of her flak jacket and handed it to Suzi. “You’ll need this.”

Suzi turned it over, mildly curious. “What for?”

“She’s a big girl.”

Des and Roddy exchanged a glance.

“Is she armed?” Lynne enquired.

“No.”

Greg knew that mood well enough, Gabriel at her most obdurate. There’d be no budging her now.

He opened the bedroom door. There was a subdued pink light inside.

“Hoo boy.” Suzi groaned in pawky dismay. Des and Roddy piled in behind her for a look.

Katerina was sprawled across a huge circular water-bed, wearing an Arabian harem slave costume; strips of diaphanous lemon chiffon held together with thin gold chains. It was a size too small, strained by the curves of her breasts and hips. The chiffon was so flimsy they could see her large areolas through it, dark purple-brown circles with aroused nipples.

Katerina batted drowsy eyelids at the five faces staring down at her. “I’m ready,” was all she said.

Roddy let out a low admiring whistle. “Makes it all kind’ve worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

Des sniggered.

“For God’s sake find something to wrap her in,” Greg said. Annoyed at their abrupt lapse of discipline. Hardly surprised, though. The porno-starlet stage setting sapped any sense of urgency. He let out a hiss of breath, silently cursing Gabriel for not warning him. “Suzi, help me get her up.”

Katerina looked up with innocent bewilderment as they each took an arm and tugged her into a sitting position. “I remember you,” she said to Greg. “Will you make it happen, too?”

“Not tonight.”

“But this is the paradise place. The hurt and the wonder always happens here.”

“Bollocks, what’s she on?” asked Suzi.

“Phyltre. Stuff’s blowing her brain apart.”

Katerina turned her head to focus on Suzi. “Can you make it happen?”

“No way, girl. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

Something in Suzi’s inflexible tone must’ve finally penetrated Katerina’s befuddled brain. “I don’t want to leave, not here, not the wonder. Not ever.”

Suzi brought up the infuser in a no-nonsense manner.

Katerina’s bare foot lashed out, catching Suzi full in the stomach. She went down with a silent oof, curling around herself and fighting for breath. Greg was suddenly left holding a screaming, scratching, biting, kicking she-demon. Gabriel was right, Katerina was big, and strong, and utterly deranged. Tapering lavender nails slashed at his eyes, a knee thudded into his pelvic bone, a tornado of golden hair filled the air. He felt soft flesh, hard flesh. Hampered by not wanting to hurt her. An inhibition rapidly dissolving.

Des made a grab for Katerina’s shoulders, succeeding only in ripping her mock slave-costume. All three of them tumbled to the floor in a frenziedly bucking heap. Then Lynne waded in, trying to pin Katerina’s arms down. Roddy managed to grab hold of one leg. Finally a wheezing Suzi slammed the infuser on Katerina’s neck with unnecessary force. For one horrendous moment Greg thought it wasn’t going to have any effect, but a look of outright surprise shot across Katerina’s enraged face and she subsided into a limp bundle shrouded in wispy scraps of lemon fog.

“Goddamn…ungrateful…bitch,” Suzi spat between shudders. Her face was chalk-white. Greg thought she was going to kick the unconscious body. Probably wouldn’t have stopped her.

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” he offered in apology. “Hey, you all right?”

Her hands were still clasped tight around her abdomen. “Yeah. Bitch.”

Roddy wrapped a towelling robe around Katerina, and Des carried her out in a fireman’s lift.

Gabriel stood to one side as they filed out of the master bedroom. “Told you so,” she said.

The seven of them rode the dinghy back to Event Horizon’s finance division offices, stealing quietly across the Nene’s scummy water, making good headway against the outgoing tide. City noises thrummed around them; sirens, horns, the trill of gas-powered traffic, peals of jukebox music from riverside pubs. The sough of the dinghy’s electric outboard was lost without trace.

Des dodged the big freighters anchored in the middle of the river outside the port. They were waiting for the early morning tide to provide the draught they needed to take them down the channel to the Wash. Rust-streaked metal giants, sprinkled with tiny navigation lights, their bows a check pattern of hoarfrost where their liquefied gas tanks nestled against the hull. Greg could hear a steady plop plop plop as chunks of the mushy rime fell into the water.

Once the freighters were left behind it was a straight ride up the Nene to the Ferry Meadows estuary. The Trinities loosened up, schoolboys returning from a day outing. Their hive-buzz chatter percolated about the inflatable-Minim crewmen I have zapped.

Des even had a beacon to aim at. Philip Evans had chosen to celebrate his company’s triumphant return to solid land with a thirty-five-metre-high sign perched on top of Event Horizon’s finance division offices. Its core was a macramé plait of colourful neon tubes orbited by stylized holographic doodles-expanding geometric graphics, cartoon characters, origami birds, and, at Christmas time, a traditional Santa replete with sledge and reindeer. Monumentally vulgar, but mesmerizing at the same time.

The deep-throated gurgling of the tidal turbines grew steadily louder as they drew near the little quay jutting out from the steep concrete embankment below the ugly cuboid building.

Victor Tyo was waiting for them, huddled in a parka against the fresh pre-dawn air rising off the estuary. He offered a gentlemanly hand to Gabriel, then grappled a semiconscious Katerina ashore. She groaned as her bare feet touched the cold concrete.

“Why are her hands tied?” Victor asked reasonably, as Greg stepped ashore and took some of the weight.

“Coz there wasn’t enough rope for her fucking neck,” Suzi growled out of the dark.

Victor peered down at the inflatable dinghy with its oblique cargo of well-armed hardliners and an underage girl in a revealing gold party frock. “Bloody hell.”

Des gunned the throttle and the little craft surged out into the darkness. “See ya, Greg,” Suzi called. “And take care of Lady Gee, she’s outta this world.”

Walshaw and Julia were waiting in a big corner office on the third floor. Rachel Griffith stood outside. It was a monastically simple room; the walls and ceiling were painted a uniform white, contrasting against the all-black fittings. Greg knew it was Walshaw’s office without having to be told. An extension of his personality. Comfortable, efficient, and uncluttered. The furniture was unembellished, two chairs in front of a broad desk, a settee against the wall. Honey-yellow louvre bunds shut out a view of what Greg’s sense of direction told him would be the estuary. The air was warm and slightly damp; stale, the way it got after people had been breathing it for several hours.

Walshaw was sitting behind the desk when they walked in. Greg was surprised to see the surface covered in little balls of scrunched-up paper.

Julia was rising from the settee, knuckles screwing sleep out of her eyes. She was wearing a V-necked lilac dress with a pleated skin. A tangerine woolen cobweb shawl was drawn around her shoulders.