Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“This data package I’ve got for Walshaw is very important,” she said. “I don’t suppose you could tell me where he is, I could hand deliver it.”

“Er, sure, no ultra-hush about that. He’s with Miss Evans at her home. But you won’t be able to get in. It’s sealed up tight, something to do with the communication glitch. They don’t tell me anything.”

“Thanks, Bernard.” She broke the connection before he could say anything else.

There was a number for Wilholm in the terminal memory, listed as private.

Should’ve done this to start with, Eleanor thought as the connection was placed. Greg always said go straight to the top for real results.

The terminal’s flatscreen dissolved into a tricolour snowstorm, red, green, and yellow specks skipping about. The speaker hissed with static.

Eleanor stared at it uncomprehendingly, then cleared the order, ready to try again.

ERROR, flashed the flatscreen as she punched up the menu.

An icy dread settled on her skin, like a fast autumn-morning frost. Piercing clean into her heart. This was something to do with Greg, she knew it was. Greg, Event Horizon, Julia, Gabriel, Walshaw, Katerina, all bound together in some devil’s tangle. Thoroughly spooked, she punched up the menu again.

ERROR.

ERROR.

ERROR.

The flatscreen went dead, not even that absurd will-o’-the-wisp nebula.

Eleanor snatched up the Trinities card and ran out into the twilight. “Duncan!” People turned to look at her, pale ovals of surprise and concern. “Duncan!”

He was abruptly standing in front of her, face rapt with a mixture of eagerness and trepidation.

“Your terminal, I have to use your terminal!” she cried.

Duncan seemed startled, her frantic urgency taking a moment to sink in. “Right-oh, sure.”

Eleanor wanted to grab him and shake him as he fidgeted through his cards, eventually finding the right one for his door with a shy apologetic grimace. “Is it Greg? Is he all right?”

“Yes. No. I’m not sure, that’s why I need the terminal.”

The door swung open. “Here we go.” Duncan had an old Emerson terminal, the keyboard worn, some of the touch tabs completely blank. He tapped the power stud.

Eleanor punched out the phone function with a pulse of anarchic energy, then showed her Trinities card to the key. Duncan’s face went white when he saw the bold fist and thorn cross emblem, eyes widening. “I’ll er…be outside.”

Teddy’s face appeared, leaning forwards, squinting. “Hell, what’s happened with you, gal?”

She told him, barely coherent, words falling over each other in her rush to expel them. Made an effort to calm down.

“Not good,” he scowled. “Gabriel never made it home either. We wanna find out where they was headed, we gotta talk to Walshaw or that Julia Evans gal.”

“Can’t. The security man said Wilholm was sealed up, that I wouldn’t be able to get in.”

“And they ain’t taking no calls, neither,” Teddy said. “Hostile to ‘em, even. Strange. Something in there they don’t want no one to see. Ask me and it’s something plugged into whatever the Christ is going down. Gotta be. Lay you down good money on that, gal. You know what?”

“What?”

“Reckon we oughta take a look see.” There was a dense gleam of excitement in his eyes, some of his tension draining away.

“Yes, but-how?”

“Ain’t nowhere God can’t reach, not if he really wants to.

“Can you get to Wilholm tonight?”

“Yes.”

“OK, I’ll round me up a few troops, meet you outside the main entrance in an hour. How’s that grab you?”

“Great.” And she was lumbered with the problem of transport.

“Everything all right?” Duncan called as she ran down the slope to the water.

“Fine.” Lying. Curious eyes tracking her flight.

There were three rowing boats tied up at the Berrybut estate’s little wharf, one of them was Greg’s. She unwound the painter from its hoop and hopped in. The floating village was three kilometres away, an impossible distance. Why oh why didn’t the marine-adepts even have a cybofax between them? Isolation was fine, but not to that extreme.

Eleanor began to row, lifting one of the oars out every ten or so strokes to slap the water three times.

The marine-adepts had a van, an old Bedford pick-up they used to take the water-fruit down to Oakham station. They’d help, and keep silent.

She hadn’t gone a hundred metres when the dolphins surfaced around the boat, three of them; agitated, tuning in on her distress. Just in time. The surge of adrenalin that’d got her this far was fading rapidly, arms already leaden.

Eleanor chucked the blouse and dived right into the chilly black water, shockingly aware she’d never been swimming at night before.

The dolphins clustered round, snouts butting her gently. She brought her hands together, making a triangle then pressing her palms together: home fast, Again.

Loud chittering, then one of the sleek grey bodies rose under her. She hung on grimly and they began to slice through the water, curving round Hambleton peninsula towards the floating village.

Cold turkey was a bitch. It was convulsive shivering, with hot flushes, cold flushes, dryness burning like vitriol in his gullet. Nothing made sense, light and darkness alternating, noise and silence cartwheeling around each other. Nightmares and nirvana trips entwining, indistinguishable.

It was dark when his fever broke. Greg was sitting uncomfortably on a hard floor, propped up against the wrought iron railings of the tower’s stair. His hands had been pushed through the railings, and cuffed on the other side. He could slide them a metre and a half up or down, his entire range of possible movement. His bladder ached, his mouth tasted as if it’d been rinsed in copper soap. Somewhere along the line his shirt had got lost, that scratchy dinner jacket was tickling his skin.

When he glanced round he saw he was in the tower’s first-floor storage room. Biolum light shone up from the basement and down from the lounge. Murmured conversation drifted out of both holes. The smell of cooking was making his stomach growl.

Gabriel was sitting next to him, her arms embracing the railings. She was asleep, her mouth open.

Greg nudged her with his toe. She shook herself awake, blinking at him.

“Christ, Greg. I was worried about you.”

“Yeah, Lord knows what was in that infusion Neville Turner gave me, bloody sight more than a relaxant, though. How come we’re still alive?”

She grimaced and shifted closer. He leant forwards as much as his tethered arms let him. They got their heads within a foot and talked in whispers.

“They’re checking out what you told them,” she said. “From what I can gather, Armstrong has some kind of landline stretching over to Downham Market. He told his apparatchiks to launch another hotrod attack against Philip Evans’s NN core. He reckoned that without me there to warn Evans they’d have a good chance of success this time.”

“Figures. What did I tell them?”

Her lips depressed. “Sorry, Greg. Just about everything. Armstrong was fascinated by how you found Tentimes. Made you give him Royan’s life story. That really shook them, the way the Trinities have been killing off ex-People’s Constables. They thought the Trinities were an ordinary bunch of street punks. Irritants beneath contempt.”

“Shit. That’ll start a bloody war, no messing. The Black-shirts will be screaming for revenge.”

“If Armstrong tells them. He probably doesn’t want to draw public attention to PSP remnants right now. Besides, don’t write Teddy off so quickly. The Blackshirts would take a hell of a pounding if they ever went into Mucklands Wood.”