After Qoi disappeared into the kitchen Eleanor ducked round a hanging basket of pink begonias, and sat herself in a plain oak admiral’s chair.
COFFEE???
‘Please.’ It was part of the visit ritual.
One of the robots trundled over, a pot of coffee resting on its flat top. She poured herself a cup. It tasted perfect.
YOU LOOK TIRED.
‘I’ve been working.’ More disapproval slipped into her tone than she intended.
ON THE FARM?
‘No. Mandel Investigations got hauled out on a case.’
JULIA JULIA JULIA. HAS TO BE. GREG WOULDN’T DO IT FOR ANYONE ELSE.
‘You’ve been peeping.’
NO. I KNOW YOU ALL TOO WELL. MY FRIENDS. I WATCHED JULIA ON THE CHANNELS THIS MORNING. A BILLIONAIRESS POURING CONCRETE, FUNNY FUNNY FUNNY. I WATCH HER EVERY DAY, YOU KNOW. SHE’S NEVER OFF.
‘I know. She could make another fortune if she charged the newscast programmes an appearance fee.’
SHE’S PRETTY PRETTY PRETTY. JUST LIKE YOU. LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY ME. TWO PRETTIEST GIRLS IN THE COUNTRY ARE MY FRIENDS.
She took another sip, surprised to find herself relaxing. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’ she asked slyly.
I KNOW WHY. HE WANTS SOMETHING, SO HE SENT YOU. HE KNOWS I’M A SUCKER SUCKER SUCKER FOR A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. I AM TOO.
‘We had to split up, actually. There’s a lot of ground to cover today.’
WHAT’S THE CASE?
‘The Kitchener murder.’ She started giving him a review of the data they’d amassed. As far as she could tell he was listening attentively, certainly the vaguely eerie lettering faded from the screens, a sure sign of contemplation. The session wasn’t turning out as emotionally arduous as she had been expecting. The trick was to block out the rest of his life, the daily horror of eating, crapping, peeing, the pain spasms which convulsed him every few hours. Pretend everything stopped when she wasn’t there, that all he did was meet visitors who brought him gossip and problems he could gain a measure of satisfaction from solving. It was weak of her to think like that, craven, but it was the only way she could get through. The suffering he went through was a tragedy on an epic scale.
IF IT WASN’T THE STUDENTS, AND IT WASN’T A TEKMERC SNUFF DEAL, THEN WHO WHO WHO DUNNNNNIT?
‘Good question. I didn’t say a tekmerc definitely wasn’t involved; but they certainly didn’t drive in, and they didn’t fly in either. Of course, we’re not ruling out the possibility that someone yomped in, but Greg says he doesn’t think it’s likely.’
IF HE SAYS IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, IT DIDN’T DIDN’T DIDN’T.
‘He says he’s not sure.’
Royan’s rucked smile appeared again. WHAT DO YOU THINK???
‘I think it would have been absolutely impossible for anyone to walk in and out of the Chater valley that evening. It was bad enough driving our EMC Ranger in yesterday. Launde Abbey is very isolated.’
I BELIEVE YOU. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?
She put down the empty coffee-cup and held up her cybofax. ‘I’ve brought the schematics for the Abbey’s security system. I need to know if it is possible for someone to burn through, enter the Abbey, and then get out again afterwards without raising the alarm. The police forensic team say it was completely undisturbed.’
One of the ’ware modules on the top of the bench let out a small bleep. When she turned, blue and green LEDs were winking on the front of the scuffed grey plastic casing.
SQUIRT THE BYTES OVER. NO NO NO PROBLEM FOR ME.
She pointed the cybofax at the module and keyed a squirt.
GOT IT. I’LL START LOOKING FOR A WAY THROUGH. SHOULD HAVE AN ANSWER BY THIS AFTERNOON.
‘Fine.’ Eleanor slipped the cybofax into her back pocket. ‘Can you also find out if any hotrod was contracted to supply this hypothetical burn virus?’
I’LL ASK. MIGHT NOT GET A HUNDRED %%%%%% ACCURATE ANSWER. IF IT WAS DONE, THE WRITER WON’T BE ADVERTISING.
‘Have you heard of anyone asking for a virus like this?’
NO NO NO. CROSS HEART.
‘OK, final point; Greg thinks it would be useful to know what sort of rumours are floating about. Ask around the circuit, find out what people think Kitchener was working on for Julia, whether they even knew he was working for Julia; and also, did Kitchener owe money to anyone?’
HE WAS A MILLIONAIRE MULTI MULTI MULTI.
‘He was a regular syntho user, and so were some of the students. He had his own vat at Launde, but the basic compounds still cost money. So it probably wouldn’t be banks we’re talking about.’
GOTCHA. KITCHENER USED SYNTHO?
‘Yes.’
MAN LIKE THAT. WOW WOW WOW.
She gave him a sad smile. ‘Yes, a man like that. Funny old world, isn’t it. You wouldn’t think he’d need it, a brain like his.’
MAYBE BECAUSE HE HAD A BRAIN LIKE THAT. NOBODY ON THIS PLANET WAS HIS EQUAL. MAYBE HE WAS LONELY LONELY LONELY.
‘Oh, no, not Kitchener, not lonely. One of the girl students is having his child.’
There was no answer for a moment, the last LONELY remained splashed across the three right-hand screens. Then the word evaporated like morning dew. She heard the lens on the camera whirring softly, zooming in on her face.
HE WAS OLD.
‘Sixty-seven, I think.’
ALL THAT TIME. SO MANY YEARS.
‘He accomplished an awful lot,’ she said, uncertain where Royan was leading. Not true, at the back of her mind she knew exactly. She just didn’t want to acknowledge it.
DO YOU LIKE ME, ELEANOR?
That grin didn’t have to be forced. ‘I keep coming back, don’t I?’
YES YES YES. THANK YOU.
She stood up, straightening the creases out of her sweatshirt. ‘Now don’t spend all your time working on the Abbey’s security system. Teddy says he needs you for Trinities work.’
BUGGER HIM … PARDON MY FRENCH. I DECIDE MY OWN PRIORITIES. ME ME ME.
‘You’ll get me into trouble.’
NEVER. SAY HI TO GREG. TELL HIM HE HAD BETTER SHOW UP HIMSELF NEXT TIME.
‘I will.’
AND YOU. COME BACK. SEE ME.
‘Yes.’ She gave him a last glance, non-human, shamed by the fact that she could never in a million years show so much bravery. There was no point in even asking him to come out to the farm. It could be done, physically, with stretchers and vans and plenty of advanced planning. But his inheritance tied him to Mucklands far tighter than the web of fibre-optic cables ever did. Him and Teddy, neither of them would leave; there was no point, they were Mucklands, it went with them wherever they were.
Qoi popped up out of the kitchen without being summoned, and showed her to the door.
12
‘As always, the sylphlike Julia Evans remains resolutely wedded to her fallal dress sense,’ Jakki Coleman said. She was at her Mediterranean villa, lounging on a sunbed at the side of a kidney-shaped pool. On the far side was a white stone balustrade, guarding the steep drop down to a muzzy blue sea. Tall palm trees were growing out of stone barrels, fronds stirring in a gentle breeze.
‘Considering the perennial obsession which the Gothic cult has for the afterworld, this particular selection of garments worn for the Prior’s Fen footings ceremony is highly appropriate. Because, let’s face it, our poor dear Julia looks as if she’s been exhumed after a few weeks residing in a grave.’
‘BITCH!’ Julia shrieked.
Her tea cup hit the flatscreen in the centre, smashing into crescent fragments; it was the first object her searching hand could find, a big yellow and blue breakfast cup from the bedside tray. Sugary dregs began to trickle down the flat-screen, smearing the dark-haired young man who climbed out of the pool and began towelling himself off.
Patrick raised his head from the mounds of pillows which had accumulated on his side of the bed, blinking sleep from his eyes. ‘What?’ he grunted blearily.
‘Oh go back to sleep.?
?? Julia fired the remote at the flat-screen, imagining it was a laser pistol, beam scorching a hole through Jakki Coleman’s head, her middle-aged head, and the shiny blue swimsuit showed her thighs were getting flabby too. She folded her arms below her breasts and glared at the blank rectangle.
Her bedroom was decorated in a soothing montage of pink and white tones, extremely feminine, with exquisite lacy frills on all the furniture, subdued lighting, a huge four-poster bed with a Romany canopy, ankle-deep pile carpet. It was the third redesign in four years; each time she edged closer to her ideal, the romantic French-château image she secretly treasured.
And what would Jakki Coleman have to say about it? Bitch!
‘You’re upset about something,’ Patrick said.
‘Oh, ten out of ten, give it a banana.’
‘Was it me?’
‘No,’ she said tightly.
‘Ah, right.’ He subsided back into the pillows.
Well that ruined the morning mood, Julia thought, there would be no sex now.
She pointed the remote at the windows. The thick imperial-purple velour curtains swept aside to show her the balcony. Wistaria vines, gene-tailored against the heat of the new seasons, were wrapped round the wrought iron railings, producing a solid wall of delicate mauve flower clusters. Wilholm’s rear lawns formed a splendid backdrop with their English country house formality, she could just see the long trout lake at the bottom, its fairytale waterfall tinged brown from the silt washed down the stream by the heavy rains.
Not even the garden’s naturalistic perfection could break her ire. Bugger Jakki Coleman anyway. Who cared what she said?
Although that wasn’t the half of it. She still felt guilty about asking Greg to look into the Kitchener murder. And the murder itself was a complication she could do without. Right now Morgan’s security division was stretched pretty thinly defending the company from conventional threats – industrial sabotage, industrial espionage, crooked accountants, hotrod hackers infiltrating the datanet. Why would anybody feel strongly about something as weirdly abstract as superphysics wormholes? Surely it couldn’t be an anti-Evans gesture? Not slaughtering a defenceless old man? She couldn’t believe anyone was that sick and warped; besides, there had been no announcement. If any operational PSP remnants had killed Kitchener they would have been crowing about it all across the media by now.
At least there hadn’t been much mention of Greg on the newscasts she had caught before flicking over to the Coleman trollop. Some jerky pictures taken from a shoulder-mounted camera, the operator running after the EMC Ranger as it drove out of the police station, Eleanor’s tight-lipped anger, Greg impassive as always.
Patrick touched her shoulder. ‘You’re very tense.’ His fingers slid down her arm to the elbow, then stroked her breast, circling the nipple.
She tilted her head back and sighed through clenched teeth. ‘No, Patrick.’
His tongue nuzzled her ear, stubble scratching her collar bone. ‘I can massage all that tension away. You know I can.’
It was very very tempting. There wasn’t a chime in her head Patrick couldn’t ring whenever he chose. But for all that ecstasy, he was a mechanical lover. She had begun to suspect a great deal of his excitement came from the way he controlled her body, almost a voyeur of his own performance.
‘No,’ she said abruptly, and shoved her feet out of the bed. ‘Sorry, I’ve got a busy morning.’ She picked up her négligé from the floor where he’d thrown it last night and went into the bathroom.
She sat on the side of the circular marble bath and dropped her head in her hands, staring glumly at the swan mosaic on the wall opposite. There were just so many issues clamouring insistently for her attention right now; the petty, the important, and the personal.
She made an effort to blank them out, as if her whole mind was one giant processor node she could shut down when she wanted. It didn’t work; Patrick was easy to ignore, a feat which raised its own slightly disquieting question, but she found herself returning to yesterday’s strange conversation with Karl Hildebrandt. Greg was always telling her to trust her native instinct; it’s a variant on precognition, he explained, not quite rational, but ninety per cent reliable. And right now her instincts said that conversation was desperately wrong.
The bad PR she had been picking up from leftish organizations and pressure groups had been more or less constant for two years, ever since the giga-conductor was announced to the public. In that context Greg and the Kitchener case was just one more incident. Nothing special. The way she was siting factories in marginal constituencies was far more blatant, provocative.
The PR angle was a blind, then, it had to be. Karl had wanted Greg off the case, plain and simple. From what she had heard about the strange circumstances out at the Abbey, Oakham’s CID would be very unlikely to find the murderer without Greg and Event Horizon’s resources behind them. How would Karl benefit from that?
Wrong tack, she realized; Karl was the bank’s mouthpiece, the perfect corporate cyborg. How would Diessenburg Mercantile benefit from allowing Kitchener’s murderer to go free?
Open Channel To NN Core.
Morning, Juliet.
A wan smile crept on to her face. Good old Grandpa, he was so indefatigable.
Morning, Grandpa. Anything important happen last night?
Someone tried to break in to our Leicester music deck factory warehouse; it was a local gang, they’d even brought a lorry with them to cart away their loot. Security suspects someone on the inside was feeding them information on the shipments. There was an attempt to snatch data out of the genetics research division memory core, we think they were after the land-coral splices. The guardian programs prevented any data loss, and security are working with English Telecom to see if they can backtrack the hackers. Hopeless, of course. The pound closed three cents up on the dollar, and the FTcast index was up eight points. Market confidence is high after the spaceplane roll out. There was a lot of data traffic between our backing consortium partners right into the wee small hours. Got ’em on the run, we have, Juliet.
Did you break any of their squirts?
No, they’re using a high-order encryption code. It could be done, but it would tie up a lot of processing capacity. Not cost-effective. They’ll agree to Prior’s Fen.
Hope so.
Everything all right, Juliet?
Yes. No.
Executive material if ever I saw it. So bloody decisive you are, my girl.
What do you think of Patrick, Grandpa?
Handsome, rich, cultured, quite clever, well mannered. Picked yourself a good one again, Juliet.
There was a shade too much emphasis on again for her mind. She glanced up at the mirror above the basin. And boy oh boy did she look melancholy. Her hair was a complete mess as well. Patrick did so enjoy seeing it tossed about. His husky voice in the dark, encouraging her, whispering how wild she was. It never seemed to matter in bed, excitement overriding everything.
Yah, she replied. So how come they never last?
I said good, I never said flawless.
Do you think he’s going to start asking me for shipping contracts?
No. Even if his family shipping line needed ’em, he wouldn’t ask. And they don’t need ’em, I’ve had our commercial intelligence division keeping an eye open.
My very own guardian angel. You’re wonderful, Grandpa.
You’ll find him one day, Juliet. I’ll be a great-grandfather yet.
Don’t hold your breath, not the way I’m going.
I watched that Coleman woman this morning.
I don’t want to talk about it! She reached for a comb and began to pull it through the knots. The face in the mirror was scowling petulantly.
I don’t like you being ridiculed like that, Juliet. Let me tell you, my girl, it would never have happened in my day. People should have more bloody respect. You ought to blacklist that channel, no adverts, and pass the word round everyone Event Horizon does business with. Th
at frigid Coleman cow would soon get the message.
It was the second time temptation had been put in front of her that morning. She considered it, something like envy colouring every thought. No, Grandpa. If I started using my power like that, where would it end?
Use it or lose it, girl. I’ve told you before.
That is misuse, as you well know. I get into enough trouble using it where it’s beneficial.
Ah, Juliet, a little bit of self-indulgence occasionally never hurt.
Don’t you worry about me, Grandpa. I’ll get that Jakki Coleman, you’ll see.
My girl.
She put the comb down, the worst of the knots out. It would be safe to ask her maid Adelia to wash and set it now. Adelia always got mighty prickly if she was faced with a big untangling job every morning.
I’ve been thinking about Karl Hildebrandt, she said.
Oh, yeah? I don’t think he’d be a suitable replacement for Patrick.
Behave! I meant his wanting me to take Greg off the Kitchener case. There’s something very funny about that.
Well … it was a very high-profile appointment, Juliet. Bloody marvellous it is, girl, the first time in four years the company hasn’t had an ulterior motive in twisting Marchant’s arm, and everyone starts banging on about undue influence. We just can’t win.
Karl is a front for Diessenburg Mercantile, Grandpa, first, last, and always, even in these circumstances. He was too quick off the mark, and too insistent asking to see me just to be offering sociable advice. He was ordered to do it.
Conceded, it is a bit odd. Do you think it’s important?
Yes. Why would Diessenburg Mercantile have any interest in a ghoulish murder in the middle of the English countryside?
Beats me, girl.
Well, find out.
Oh, yes, bloody abracadabra. Here you are.
Don’t get stroppy, Grandpa. It’s simple. Run down a list of Diessenburg Mercantile’s other investments for me, and see if any of them comes into conflict with the work Kitchener was doing.
What, a stardrive!?
She went to the basin, and ran the cold tap, splashing some of the water on her face. It did sound pretty unlikely now she had spelt it out. Yes, I know it sounds totally wonky, Grandpa. But there has to be a reason.