‘Bloody typical,’ Kitchener groused. ‘How many times do I have to tell you delinquents, the abstract is all very well, but it makes piddle-all difference to the human condition. There’s no bloody point in me teaching you to think properly, if you can’t use those thoughts of yours to some benefit. The way this clapped-out world is limping along, a clean source of fresh energy would be like manna from heaven right now. A wealthier world will be better able to support eggheads chasing metaphantoms. It’s to your own advantage. God, take me, unless I’d come up with those molecular interaction equations—’
‘You could never have bought Launde,’ Uri and Cecil chorused, laughing.
‘Little buggers!’ Kitchener grunted. He glanced down at the plate Isabel put in front of him, and started to poke around distrustfully with a fork. ‘And don’t giggle, lad,’ he said without looking up, ‘only bloody women giggle.’
Nicholas clamped his mouth shut, and concentrated on his plate. From the corner of his eye he could see Isabel laughing silently.
‘I was watching the newscasts this afternoon,’ Kitchener said. ‘It looks like the Scottish PSP is about to fall.’
‘It’s always on the verge of collapse,’ Cecil protested loudly. ‘They said it wouldn’t last six months after our lot got kicked out.’
‘Yes, but Zurich has cut off their credit now.’
‘About time,’ Liz muttered.
Nicholas knew she had lost her mother when the PSP was in power in England. She always blamed the People’s Constables, but thankfully never went into details. His own memories of President Armstrong’s brutish regime were more or less limited to the constant struggle to survive on too little food. The PSP never had much authority in rural areas, they had had enough trouble maintaining control in the urban districts.
‘I hope they don’t want to link up with us again,’ Cecil said.
‘Why ever not?’ Rosette asked. ‘I think it would be nice being the United Kingdom again, although having the Irish back would be pushing the point.’
‘We can’t afford it,’ Cecil said. ‘Christ, we’re only just getting back on our own feet.’
‘A bigger country means greater security in the long run, darling.’
‘You might as well try Eurofederalism again.’
‘We’ll have to help them,’ Isabel said. ‘They’re desperately short of food.’
‘Let them grow their own,’ Cecil said. ‘They’re not short of land, and they’ve got all those fishing rights.’
‘How can you say that? There are children suffering.’
‘I think Isabel’s right,’ Nicholas said boldly. ‘Some sort of aid’s in order, even if we can’t afford a Marshall plan.’
‘Now that will make a nice little complication for the New Conservatives during the election,’ Kitchener said gleefully. ‘Trapped whichever way they turn. Serves ’em right. Always good fun watching politicians squirming.’
Conversation meandered, as it always did, from politics to art, from music to England’s current surge of industrial redevelopment, from channel-star gossip (which Kitchener always pretended not to follow) to the latest crop of scientific papers. Cecil walked round the table, pouring the wine for everyone.
Isabel mentioned the increasing number of people using bioware processor implants, the fact that the New Conservatives had finally legalized them in England, and Kitchener declared: ‘Sheer folly.’
‘I thought you would have approved,’ she said. ‘You’re always on about enhancing cerebral capacity.’
‘Rubbish, girl, having processors in your head doesn’t make you any brighter. Intellect is half instinct. Always has been. I haven’t got one, and I’ve managed pretty well.’
‘But you might have achieved more with one,’ Uri said.
‘That’s the kind of bloody stupid comment I’d expect from you. Totally devoid of logic. Wishful thinking is sloppy thinking.’
Uri gave Kitchener a cool stare. ‘You have few qualms about using other enhancements to get results.’
Nicholas didn’t like the tone, it was far too polite. He shifted about in the chair, bleakly waiting for the explosion. No one was eating, Cecil had stopped filling Rosette’s glass.
But Kitchener’s voice was surprisingly mild when he answered. ‘I’ll use whatever I need to expand my perception, thank you, lad. I’ve been a consenting adult since before you were shitting in your nappies. Being able to discern the whole universe is the key to understanding it. If neurohormones help me in that, then that makes them no different to a particle accelerator, or any other form of research tool, in my book.’
‘Neat answer. Pity you don’t stick to neurohormones, pity you have to expand your consciousness with shit.’
‘Nothing I take affects my intellect. Only a fool would think otherwise. Expanded consciousness is total crap, there’s no such thing, only recreational intoxication, it’s a diversion, stepping outside your problems for a few hours.’
‘Well, it’s certainly helped you overcome a few problems, hasn’t it?’ Uri’s face was blank civility.
‘I always thought bioware nodes would be terrifically useful if you want to access data quickly,’ Rosette said brightly.
Cecil’s hand came down on Uri’s shoulder, squeezing softly. He started pouring some wine into Uri’s glass.
Kitchener turned to Rosette. ‘Use a bloody terminal, girl, don’t be so damn lazy. That’s all implants are, convenience laziness. It’s precisely the kind of attitude which got us into our present state. People never listen to common sense. We shouted about the greenhouse gases till we were blue in the face. Bloody hopeless. They just went on burning petrol and coal.’
‘What kind of car did you use?’ Liz asked slyly.
‘There weren’t any electric cars then. I had to use petrol.’
‘Or a bicycle,’ Rosette said.
‘A horse,’ Nicholas suggested.
‘A rickshaw,’ Isabel giggled.
‘Perhaps you could even have walked,’ Cecil chipped in.
‘Leave off, you little buggers,’ Kitchener grunted. ‘No bloody respect. Cecil, at least fill my glass, lad, it’s wine not perfume, you don’t spray it on.’
Nicholas managed to catch Isabel’s eye, and he smiled. ‘The salad’s lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Rosette held her cut-crystal wineglass up to the light, turning it slowly. Fragments of refracted light drifted across her face, stipples of gold and violet. ‘You never compliment Mrs Mayberry when she cooks supper, why is that, Nicky, darling?’
‘You never complimented Mrs Mayberry or Isabel,’ he answered. ‘I was just being polite, it was considered important where I was brought up.’
Rosette wrinkled her nose up at him, and sipped some wine.
‘Well done, lad,’ Kitchener called out. ‘You stick up for yourself, don’t let the little vixen get on top of you.’
Nicholas and Isabel exchanged a furtive grin. He was elated, actually answering back to Rosette, and having Isabel approve.
Rosette gave Kitchener a roguish glance. ‘You’ve never complained before,’ she murmured in a husky tone.
Kitchener laughed wickedly. ‘What’s for dessert, Isabel?’ he asked.
The storm began to abate after midnight. Nicholas was back in his room watching a vermiform pattern of sparkling blue stars dance through his terminal’s cube like a demented will-o’-the-wisp. The program was trying to detect the distinctive interference pattern caused by large dark-mass concentrations; if there was one directly between the emission point and Earth (a remote chance, but possible), the gamma rays should bend around it. Kitchener was always interested in the kind of localized spatial distortions such objects generated. His program was using up a good third of the Abbey’s lightware cruncher capacity. The kind of interference he was looking for was incredibly hard to identify.
He had thought about making a start on the magnetosphere induction problem, but the dark mass project was much mor
e interesting. It was worth enduring another of Kitchener’s tongue-lashings to be able to see the results as they came in from orbit. Dark-mass detection was well down the priority list of CNES’s in-house astronomers, it was exciting to think he might actually be ahead of them, up there at the cutting edge. Nicholas Beswick, science pioneer.
He had been in Uri’s room for most of the evening after supper, along with Liz and Isabel. It had been a good evening, he reflected; they’d chatted, and the flatscreen had been tuned to Globecast’s twenty-four-hour news channel with the sound muted. And it really did look like the Scottish PSP was going to be overthrown at last. There was rioting in Glasgow and Edinburgh and the assembly building had been firebombed, the flames soaring impressively into the night despite the heavy rain. They had watched the text streamers running along the bottom of the flatscreen and talked, drinking another bottle of Sussex wine. The others never seemed to mind that he didn’t say as much as them, he was under no pressure to venture an opinion on everything.
They had packed up around midnight, or at least, he and Isabel had left Uri and Liz alone.
He shut Uri’s door, thinking that for once he might find the nerve to ask Isabel into his room.
She stood on the gloomy landing glancing at him expectantly.
‘It was a nice evening, thanks,’ he said. Pathetic.
Her lips pressed together. It was her solemn expression, the one that made her look half-tragic.
‘Yes, I enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope there’s a new government in Scotland tomorrow. Liz will be over the moon.’
‘Yes.’ Now, he thought, now say it. ‘Goodnight,’ he said meekly.
‘Goodnight, Nick.’
And she’d walked off to her room.
Surely if a girl liked a boy she was supposed to show it: some small word or deed of encouragement? But she hadn’t actually discouraged him. He clung to that. If it hadn’t been for the fact he could never keep his mouth shut Nicholas might have asked Cecil for advice. Cecil never had any trouble chatting up girls when they visited the Old Plough.
The clouds above the valley were disintegrating, pale beams of moonlight probed down through the tattered gaps. Nicholas looked up from the cube, watching them shiver across the undulating parkland. After the uniform darkness of the storm they seemed preternaturally bright. Trees and bushes imprinted on his retinas, ragged platinum silhouettes which vanished almost as soon as they were revealed.
A face looked back at him through the glass. It was a woman, probably not much older than him; her features were slightly indistinct, misted somehow, but she was certainly attractive, with thick red hair combed back from her forehead.
All he did was gawk for a second, his thoughts shocked into stasis, a gelid fingertip stroking his spine. Then he realized her spectral image must be a reflection. She was standing behind him! He yelped in panic, and jerked round in the chair, a thousand-volt current replacing his normal nervous impulses.
There was nobody there.
He twisted back to stare at the window. There was no face.
Slowly, his shoulders were trembling faintly, he let out a long sigh. Idiot! He must have been dozing, dreaming. The clock on the bedside cabinet read quarter-past one.
Too late, Nicholas, he told himself wanly. Besides, since when did beautiful women ever come stealing into your bedroom in the middle of the night?
He cancelled the gamma ray search program. That was when he heard somebody talking on the landing outside, two people, voices murmuring softly. The chilly breath of static washed down his back again; but he was wide awake now. He frowned, concentrating, filtering out the intermittent patter of residual rain on the window. He knew one of them was Isabel, by now he could have plucked her voice out of hell’s bedlam.
Curiosity warred with dread, he wanted to know what she was doing, he was terrified of making a fool out of himself. But if he didn’t go to the door quickly, the chance to do either would be lost. In the end it was the thought of having to live with not knowing, spending days wondering while his over-active imagination summoned up grotesque scenarios, which propelled him up out of the chair.
He turned the brass door handle, already trying to think of an excuse. I was just going to fetch something from the library, my toilet’s blocked … Feeble.
There was only a single biolum globe illuminating the landing, its weak pink-white lambency disfiguring the familiar corridors and twisting the proportions of the stark wooden chairs outside each door. Long serpentine shadows dappled the walls, veiling the vague figures depicted in the dusty hanging tapestries behind a crepuscular fog.
The two girls had their backs to him, walking with a measured companionable pace towards the stairs. They stopped as soon as the bright fan of light from his room splashed out into the landing, and slowly turned towards him. Rosette was wrapped in a jade-green silk kimono, embellished with fantastical topaz griffins. She was obviously riding some kind of high, he’d seen enough of that at Cambridge to tell; black sun pupils, dawdling movements. Probably Naiad, a sophisticated derivative of street-syntho, guaranteed no bad trips, no cold turkey. The vat in the lab downstairs was elaborate enough to produce it.
Isabel was still in her jeans, held up by a braided leather belt she’d fastened with a big loop tucked back into her waistband. She had taken off her blouse, leaving just a plain black bra to cup her high, exquisitely shaped breasts.
Nicholas stared at her with lightheaded dismay, the kind of sensation he got whenever his father butchered spring lambs. The scene and all it implied was too macabre, too lascivious to take in. In the gloom behind the girls he could see the red-headed woman again, all of her this time. She was tall and broad shouldered, wearing some kind of jacket with a long skirt. He blinked, dizziness forcing him to grip the door to stop himself falling. His skin was ice cold, needled with hot beads of sweat. He thought he was about to be sick. The world buckled alarmingly, sight and sound dissolving under a suffocating wave of heat. He was hallucinating, he was sure of it, the only explanation, trapped in a terrifying loop of nightmare. When his vision shimmered back into focus the phantom woman had gone. But Isabel and Rosette were still solidly, undeniably present.
A corner of Rosette’s mouth lifted in a lazy chaffing smile, as if she was glad he’d interrupted them. ‘Adults only, Nicky, darling,’ she said in a throaty voice. ‘Sorry.’
He looked at Isabel, a long, anguished appeal that this wasn’t happening. All she did was give a minute shrug, a gesture of almost total indifference. It was a blow which hit him harder than the first shock of discovery.
He stared in abject misery as they continued silently down the landing, Rosette’s feet unseen inside the kimono, giving the impression she was gliding above the carpet. Isabel had her shoulders square, lean bands of muscle shifting pliantly below the flawless skin of her tapering back.
They walked all the way past the stairs, along to the north wing, swallowed up in the gloaming. Then orange light shone out of the door Rosette opened. Kitchener’s suite of rooms.
She didn’t even glance back to see if he was watching before she closed the door behind them.
Why? He couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t on drugs. She wasn’t suffering from delusions. She was always so levelheaded. Not like him, having fantasy women and the agony of sexual treachery running loose in his brain, twisting his mind up until he could barely think.
Nicholas clawed at his sheets, petrified the red-headed woman would materialize again, hoping in some perverse way that she would. Nothing made sense any more.
Why? Was it a price the female students had to pay for admission? But he would have heard, the ones that refused would have run screaming to the tabloid channels.
The moon had set now, leaving cold starlight to kiss the valley. He could hear lost gusts of wind swirling round the eaves, gurgles of water from the overflowing lakes.
Why? She didn’t have to do it. Not with Kitchener. Not with Rosette. So she must want to. W
hy? Why? Why?
Nicholas snapped awake, his head rising off the pillow in a reflex jolt. What had woken him? He was still in his T-shirt and jeans, waist button undone. The duvet was a crumpled mess below him.
It was like every nerve fibre was shooting distilled trepidation into his brain. He knew it was going to be bad, very bad.
The scream assaulted his ears. Female. Powerful and utterly wretched. Dragging on and on, enough to leave a throat raw and withered.
He rolled off the bed fast. There was just enough pre-dawn light leaking through the window to see by. The scream stopped as he reached the door, then started up again as he pulled it open.
He looked about wildly. Orange light was shining down at the far end of the north wing. He could see Rosette kneeling brokenly in the doorway to Kitchener’s suite, clinging desperately to the wooden frame.
Getting to her was a confused blur. His feet pounding. The other doors opening. Pale anxious faces. That unending, spine-grating scream.
Tears were streaming down Rosette’s face. She was shaking violently.
He rushed past her and saw the bedroom for the first time. The curtains were still shut and tinted biolum globes shone from the middle of bulbous paper-moon shades that hung from the ceiling. The furniture was supremely tasteful, a dark antique dresser, matching wardrobe, Chinese carpet, full-length mirror, a porcelain-topped table below the window, brass ornaments on the mantelpiece, monk chest. The centrepiece was a large four-poster bed with an amber canopy.
Edward Kitchener was lying on the snow-white silk sheets, at the middle of a deep scarlet bloodstain spreading to the edge of the mattress. He felt the intolerable pressure of his own scream building in his chest.