Peter Hamilton - The Nano Flower

Royan's torso was corpulent, dressed in a food-stained T-Shirt; his arms ended below the elbows; both legs were short stumps. Plastic cups were fitted over the end of each amputated limb, ganglioti splices, from which bundles of fibre optic cables were attached, plugging him into the room's 'ware stacks.

The bank of screens began to flicker with a laborious determination. The lime-green words that eventually materialized were a metre high, bisected by the rims of individual screens as they flowed from right to left.

JULIA. NOT YOU. NOT YOU HERE.

"'Fraid so," she said lightly.

NEVER WANTED YOU TO COME. NOT TO SEE ME. SHAME SHAME SHAME. Royan's torso began to judder as he rocked his shoulders, mouth parting to show blackened buck teeth.

Julia wished to God she could interface her nodes direct with his 'ware stacks here, they normally communicated direct through Event Horizon's datanet. Speedy, uninhibited chatter on any subject they wanted, arguing, laughing, and never lying; it was almost telepathy. But this was painfully slow, and so horribly public. "The body is only a shell," Julia said. "I know what's inside, remember?"

OH SHIT A RIGHT SMART-ARSE.

"Behave yourself," Greg said smartly.

HELLO, GREG. I KNEW YOU WOULD COME. GOING TO HAUL ME OUT OF THE FLAMES AGAIN?

"Yeah."

HIDE ME UNTIL THE ARMY HAS GONE

"No," Julia said. "It's over, Royan."

NEVER. THERE ARE STILL THOUSANDS OF PSP OUT THERE. I'LL FIND THEM, I'LL TRACK THEM DOWN. NO ONE ESCAPES FROM ME.

"Enough!" she stamped her foot. Tears suddenly blurred her vision. "It's horrible outside. You Trinities and Blackshirts, all lying dead. They're our age, Royan. They could have had real lives, gone to school, had children."

STOP IT

"I won't have it in my city any more. Do you hear? It stops. Today. Now. With you. You're the last of the Trinities. I'm not having you start it up again."

I CAN'T HAVE A LIFE. I'M NOT HUMAN. BEAST BEAST BEAST

Julia's resolution turned to steel. "And the first thing you can do is stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself," she said coldly.

SORRY. YOU THINK THIS IS SORRY? BITCH BITCH BITCH. WHAT DO YOU KNOW? COSSETED PAMPERED BILLIONAIRESS BITCH. HATE YOU. VILE.

"You're coming to the Event Horizon clinic," she said. "They'll sort you out."

Royan began to twist frantically in his dentist's seat. NO. NOT THAT. NOT HOSPITAL AGAIN.

"They won't hurt you. Not my doctors."

WON'T WON'T WON'T GO. NO!

"You can't stay here." Julia was aware of how unusually quiet Morgan Walshaw was, the other hardliners, too. But they didn't understand, deep down Royan wanted to be normal again, she'd seen his soul, its flaws, weeping quietly to itself. The fear barrier stopped him, the time he'd spent in the city hospital after the riot had been a living medieval hell, blind, voiceless, immobile. It had taken a long time for the health service to release funds for his ganglion splices and optical modems.

STOP HER, GREG. YOU'RE MY FRIEND. DON'T LET HER UNPLUG ME.

"Julia's right," Greg said sadly. "Today was the end of the past. There's no more anti-PSP war to be fought." He took an infuser out of his pocket.

NO NO NO. PLEASE GREG. NO. I'LL BE NOTHING WITHOUT MY 'WARE. NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. BEG YOU. BEG.

Morgan Walshaw moved to stand in front of the camera on the tripod. Royan was shaking his head wildly. Julia pressed her hand across her mouth, exchanging an agonized glance with Greg. He discharged the infuser into Royan's neck.

The letters on the screens dissolved into bizarre shimmers of static. Royan worked his mouth, wheezing harshly. "Please, Julia," he rasped. "Please no." Then the infusion took hold, and his head dropped forwards.

Julia found herself crying softly as Rachel Griffith hugged her. Greg and Morgan Walshaw hurriedly unplugged Royan's optical fibres from the 'ware stacks.

They trooped up the service stairs to the roof, Greg and Martyn Oakly carrying Royan on an improvised stretcher. Julia held his camera, careful not to get the cables caught on anything.

One of Event Horizon's tilt-fans, painted company colours, picked them up. It rose quickly into the overhanging veil of filthy smoke, away from curious squaddies, and the prying camera lenses of channel newscast crews. Julia looked down through a port at the broken landscape below, emotionally numb. The damage was dreadful, Mucklands Wood's desolated towers, Walton's smashed houses. So many bystanders made homeless, she thought; and this was the poorest section of the Peterborough, they didn't have much clout in the council chamber. She was going to have to do something about that, not just rebuilding homes, but bring hope back to the area as well. That was the only real barricade against the return of the miasmal gangs.

Now, fifteen years later, she could allow herself some degree of comfort with the result. From her office she could just make out the heavily wooded park and prim white houses, there were schools and light manual industries, an open-air sports amphitheatre, a technical college, the artists' colony. The residents of Mucklands and Walton could believe in their future again.

We can't find any reference to the flower, NN core one told her.

She focused slowly on the presentation box in her hands, her mind still lingering on the showy array of blooms in Royan's room. He told her later he grew them for their scent; smell was one of the few natural senses he had left. He put a lot of weight on flowers.

Are you sure? she asked.

Absolutely, it's not in Kew Gardens' public reference memory cores. They are the most comprehensive in the world.

Access all the botanical institutes you can. It has to be listed somewhere.

She frowned at the delicate enigmatic mauve trumpet. Why, after eight months without a word, would he send an unidentifiable flower?

For ten months of the year Hambleton village slumbered tranquilly under the scorching English sun, the rural idyll of a nineteenth century that existed only in wishful daydreams and apocryphal historical dramas. It was nestled at the western end of a long whale-back peninsula which jutted out into the vast Rutland Water reservoir, surrounded by a quilt of lush citrus groves which had sprung up in the aftermath of the Warming. Through those quiet ten months the groves were maintained by a handful of labourers who lived locally. But twice a year the trees fruited, and the peninsula played host to an invasion of travellers which quadrupled the population overnight. Such an influx could never be anything other than a rumbustious fiesta, awaited with a mixture of trepidation and delight by the residents.

This July the convoy of travellers hunting work at the groves stretched the entire length of the road which ran along the peninsula spine. There were genuine horse-drawn gypsy caravans, brightly painted in primary colours with elaborate trim; twentieth-century vans with long strips of bright chrome, bulky custom-built trailers towed by four-wheel-drive Rangers, converted buses, and sleek ultra-modern land cruisers. Kids screamed and ran among the stationary vehicles, playing their incomprehensible games. Dogs barked excitedly and tripped the children. Goats and donkeys added their querulous cries to the hullabaloo. Adults stood in groups round the cabs talking in quiet murmurs. Smells of cooking drifted through the stifling air.

From where Greg Mandel stood at the gate of the camp field it looked like a real carnival. He always enjoyed the first two weeks of July, blistering heat, fruit hanging ripe in the groves, the campfire meals, music and dancing under the stars. There were even the odd days when they got some picking done.

"Roll it through," he yelled up at the driver in the trailer cab. The vehicle had been converted from a redundant Army AT Hauler chassis, eight metres long, with six wheel sets. It rumbled into the field, leaving deep ruts in the mud.