Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Greg concentrated on his hands, still clenching the wheel, white-knuckled. They wouldn’t let go.

What appeared to be a eucalyptus branch was lying across the windscreen. Its purple and grey leaves shone dully in the waning rouge emissions from the office block’s sign.

Looking out of his side window he could see the bridge nearly directly overhead. They’d only just missed crashing into the concrete support wall.

“Greg-” Gabriel said in a low frightened moan.

Upright shapes were moving purposefully through the dusky shadows outside the sharp cone of light thrown by the Duo’s one remaining headlight.

Greg stared disbelievingly at them for one terrible drawn-out second. “Out!” he shouted, His door opened easily enough and he was diving out, racing for the back of the Duo. A mini-avalanche of loose earth and gravel had digested the rear of the car. His hands flapped across his dinner jacket, hitting every pocket. Panicking. Trying to remember where the fuck he’d left the Armscor stunshot.

There were three of them approaching; two men, one woman. Walking down the middle of the road with a glacial panache, cool and unhurried. A confidence that’d tilted over into sublime arrogance.

The Armscor had gone, swept away by the tide of pitiful sloppiness he was screwing his life with. Given it to Victor? Suzi? Left it in Walshaw’s office?

He stuck his head above the Duo’s roof, ducking down quickly. The ambush team was closing in remorselessly, empty silhouettes against that idiotic phallic sign and its happy floating Disney projections. They were still carefully avoiding the headlight beam.

Gabriel’s door was jammed up against the earth of the cutting; her frantic shoving couldn’t budge it more than halfway open. The gap wasn’t nearly large enough for her bulk.

One of the men levelled a slender long-barrelled rifle at her. Greg squirrelled away his profile: leather trousers tucked into calf-high lace-up boots, last-century camouflage jacket, blind plastic band of a photon amp clinging to his face, designer stubble, small pony tail.

“Mine,” the man said.

A narrow streak of liquid green flame spewing from the end of the rifle, and Gabriel was jerking about epileptically.

Greg turned and ran for the slope of crumbling earth, clawing at the dense treacherous scrub lassoing his legs, keeping low. The eucalyptus saplings were neatly pruned, a bulbous flare of foliage on top and bare slim boles, providing a meagre cover. He grabbed hold of them in a steady swinging rhythm, hauling himself upwards, feet scrabbling for purchase. The embankment seemed to stretch out for ever. It was an animal flight. Blind instinct, equating the sliproad at the top of the embankment with the grail of sanctuary. Pathetic, some minute core of sanity mocked.

“There,” came the triumphant shout from below.

The shot caught him three metres short of the summit, where the saplings and scrub had given way to a bald mat of grass which bordered the sliproad. The pain seared down his nerves like a lava flow. He saw his arms windmilling insanely, fingers extended like albino starfish.

As he fell there was just one question looping through his brain. Why hadn’t Gabriel known?

Greg woke to find he couldn’t move. His toes and fingers were tingling, not so much pins and needles as pokers and knives; the aftermath of a stunshot charge. Arms and legs ached dully. Guts knotted tight, rumbling ominously. A livid collection of aggravated bruises and scrapes.

His cortical node prevented the worst peaks of neural fire from stabbing into his brain, but the cumulative effect was atrocious.

He opened his eyes, seeing greyness distorted by octagonal splash patterns. His whole body was quivering now, drumming against whatever hard surface he was lying on. The tingling bloomed into a sandpaper rasp which the cortical node hurriedly muted.

Consciousness seemed like nothing but constant suffering. He instructed the node to disengage his nerves altogether. Sensation fell away, leaving him alone in grey nothingness. He closed his eyes and slept.

At the second awakening his thoughts were clearer. He’d stopped bucking, still on his back and unable to move. Genuine tactile sensation had replaced the tingling. The surface he was lying on was vibrating faintly. Heavy machinery, somewhere not too far away. A stifled monotonous hum backed the supposition.

He opened his eyes again, focusing slowly.

Gabriel was lying beside him, shuddering, in the throes of stunshot backlash. Her mouth gaped, drooling beads of saliva.

Greg tried to reach out to her, found his hands were immobilized under his back. There was a rigid bracelet about each wrist, bolted to the floor; it was the same for his ankles.

Bloody uncomfortable.

They were in a small empty compartment, metal walls, metal floor, metal ceiling. Painted grey. The only light was coming through a grille in the door.

Greg blinked at that door, haunted by its familiarity. It was rectangular with curved corners, fastened by bulky latches. The last time he’d seen that particular arrangement was on board the Mirriam. “Oh, shit.” And under way too, by the sound of it.

Thinking logically, they’d have to be heading down the Nene. Or up? No, the river wasn’t deep enough to take the Mirriam west of Peterborough. The Wash and the open sea, then.

Next question: Why?

Not just to dump them overboard. There were far simpler ways to dispose of bodies. Besides Kendric had gone to a great deal of trouble snatching them alive.

Nothing pleasant, hundred per cent cert.

“Greg?” Gabriel’s voice was tiny, fearful. “Greg, it’s gone.”

“What has?” His own voice wasn’t much better. “No, wait, think before you speak. Remember they’ll probably be listening.”

“Bugger that. My precognition won’t work. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

“You really gave your gland a workout snatching Katerina, remember? We all have to throttle back occasionally, nature never intended our brains to take the psi strain.”

“Shut up and listen, arsehole. There is absolutely nothing. I can’t see a second into the future. I don’t even know what you’re going to say!” He could hear the fright bubbling through her voice. She was holding back a long, terrified scream.

Hear it, but not sense it.

The corrosive throb of overdriven synapses had faded, he must’ve been out for several hours. He’d recuperated enough to use the gland again. It began to discharge a murky cloud of neurohormones, But that secret gate into the psi universe remained firmly shut. He couldn’t even perceive the glow of Gabriel’s mind, not fifty centimetres from his own. Impossible. His skin crawled, goose bumps rising at the black sense of deprivation. Mortal again. After fifteen years it was hard.

“Me too,” Greg said. “Not a peep.”

The breath came out of her in a woosh. She let her head rest on the decking, staring into a private purgatory. “What have they done to us, Greg?”

“They haven’t done anything to us. You were using precognition right up until the Duo crashed. We didn’t eat anything dodgy we certainly weren’t infused with anything.”

“What then?”

“Must be something which affects psi directly.”

“What?” she shouted.

“I don’t fucking know. Ask Kendric, he’s the one into pilfering new discoveries before they even make it out of the laboratory.”

Gabriel closed rheumy eyes in anguish. “Funny, I always thought I didn’t want to see the end coming. Now I’m sure it is coming I’d like to see it. Not knowing is too much like cold turkey.”

“Silly girl. You just want to see which of our escape plans works the best.”