Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

I know you did, Juliet. It must hurt. I’m so sorry.

It doesn’t hurt. I don’t feel anything. I’m not human any more.

Course you are, girl. Don’t talk nonsense. You’re seeing Adrian again this weekend, aren’t you? What you do with him is pretty bloody human. And I approve. He’s a nice boy.

If I’m still around by the weekend.

Hey, that’s no Evans talking. Wilholm is well protected, and I’m hooked into all the security sensors. Ain’t nobody going to sneak up on you, girl.

Suppose it’s one of the staff, Walshaw even?

No, Juliet, not Morgan. He’s been with me for fifteen years, almost since you were born.

Stake your life on it, huh? She let the irony filter back to him.

That’s my girl. Keep shining through. But don’t you worry, I’m even watching Morgan. No strain on my capacity.

Julia found herself looking down at the wood-panelled study, initially confused by the unusual perspective, a fly on the ceiling. Walshaw was sitting at the long table databasing with his customized terminal; the bald patch on his crown was larger than she’d realized before. Then the incoming squirt from Event Horizon’s datanet bloomed in her mind. Walshaw was reviewing the Cray memories as they were being extracted by the security division programming team. All the memories had been run through search and classification programs as they came out, analysed and indexed. He was running through the categories, accessing every mention of Wolf and Event Horizon, double checking.

He’s been doing that for hours, her grandfather said. Hunting down that clue Greg was talking about. Hardly the act of a turncoat, now is it?

I suppose. It would be nice to believe in him at least, Julia thought. But this was her life she was gambling with now. And the list of her mistakes when it came to dealing with people was a long one.

Suddenly she was inundated with a rapid-motion tour of Wilholm through the security sensors, visual, infrared, magnetic, electromagnetic, UV laser-radar. Millisecond slices of security division hardliners patrolling the corridors; sentinels prowling the grounds; Tobias in his stables; owls snapped in mid-flight, wings motionless; fieldmice twitching their tiny damp noses in the night air; deserted tracts of landscape, fields and woodland. A kaleidoscope of bright-hued luminous colours, and conflicting geometries.

See, Juliet? All quiet on the western front.

Her heart began to beat faster. Why is Walshaw bothering with the Crays? We know Kendric has plugged in with the PSP, that the card carriers organized the blitz.

You and I know, yes, Juliet. But I don’t think Morgan has put it together yet.

But it’s obvious! she exclaimed.

To you.

Oh, Grandpa! What if Greg hasn’t worked it out, either? What if I was wrong about him? He was so tired, I mean totally run down. He’s been through hell; and it was Kendric who had him beaten up.

Relax, girl. First thing I thought of.

What then?

If he’s innocent, why are the two of them in Wisbech? And why didn’t Gabriel warn us about him? She’s in it with him.

Oh.

Sorry, Juliet.

The depression enveloped her again, its return total. She could see the world simply now, black and white, no right, no wrong, there was just survival which mattered. Instinctive self-preservation, primaeval, the only complexity lay in method. The acceptance decided her.

When can you hit them? she asked.

Every hundred and eight minutes, starting in seventy-two minutes-mark.

Do it. Her lips synchronized with her thoughts, but no sound emerged.

OK, Juliet. Why don’t you take a break? Katerina isn’t going anywhere.

No, I’ll stay here; It wouldn’t be right leaving her, not now.

I’ll give you a status check nearer the time.

“Love you, Grandee.”

Wipe OtherEyes Limiter#Five. Exit NN Core.

Julia sat down on the barrel-like Copenhagen chair beside the bed, hand automatically sliding down the side of the cushion. Her fingers touched the hard plastic casing, reassuring her. She drew out the weapon. An ash-grey cylinder thirty centimetres long and three wide, a thin grooved handle at one end, It resembled a fat, long-barrelled pistol, weighing about one and a half kilos. The discharge end was solid, with a small circular indentation, gritted with minute carbonized granules. ARMSCOR was printed along the side in black lettering.

She’d stolen it from Greg after he’d brought Kats back to the finance division offices, slipping it off Walshaw’s desk and into her bag as soon as the desolating revelation of his betrayal had sunk in. She’d been horribly afraid of him, what he might do.

When she’d got back to Wilholm she’d accessed the manor library’s memory core, looking up what she’d got. A stunshot, capable of immobilizing an adult at forty-five metres. Four shots would kill.

The power unit was charged to ninety-five per cent capacity, giving her almost two hundred shots. She’d spent the morning familiarizing herself with it-safety catch, grip, aiming. Kept at it until she was satisfied she could do it by touch alone. It tended to wobble unless she used both hands. The library said there was no recoil.

And nobody knew she’d got it, not even Morgan Walshaw. Her last line of defence. Its solidity and weight injecting a primitive kind of confidence into a badly demoralized psyche. She wished it would be Kendric himself who came. There’d be no inhibition holding her back then. Sending all ninety-five per cent into his jerking, burning body.

But it would be some tekmerc hardliner, anonymous, a fast-moving shadow in the dark. Her one advantage was that he’d have to come to her; a slight advantage, but it might make the difference between life and death. The odds were impossible for the nodes to compute, too many variables, thank the Lord. That sort of foreknowledge was something she could do without.

Julia sat back in the Copenhagen chair, putting the Armscor on her lap, resting her chin on her hands. Looking at Kats she realized she’d even been emptied of envy, her friend’s beautiful face meant nothing. In fact when Kats grew older she would’ve lost far more. You can’t lose what you haven’t got.

The water-fruit field stretched on for ever, a perfect example of perspective, parallel rows of creamy-white globes merging at some grey distance. Eleanor felt around underneath the next globe and cut the thick rope root with her knife. Inky sap puffed out, lost in the reservoir’s slow current. She lifted the globe and steered it slowly into the neck of her net bag. There were another twenty water-fruit inside. Almost full. Turning back to the row.

A dolphin snout pushed her hand. The knife missed the root. She looked at her hand, puzzled. Tried again. Two hard bumps on the back of her wrist, almost painful.

Annoyance began to register in her sluggish thoughts. She held up her hand, palm outwards, pushing twice: back off.

It was Rusty. He didn’t budge, guarding the water-fruit. Dark shapes slithered effortlessly through the water behind her, churning up a small cloud of silt. When she turned she saw another pair of dolphins had got hold of the net bag, pulling it away.

Angry now, her steady rhythm had been broken. Hanging a metre off the reservoir bed, motionless, trying to outstare a dolphin. How odd.

Now the monotony of harvesting was broken she began to realize just how tired she was, muscles whispering their protest into her cortex-arms, legs, shoulders, back, all laced with fatigue toxins.

Exactly how long had she been doing this? The soft green light was fading fast overhead, lowering visibility to less than fifty metres. A cold flash of realization pinched her mind. She hadn’t quite fallen into the trap of blue lost, but her soul had migrated, fleeing the memories of guilt and pain. Now they rushed back in to her empty brain, unmitigated.