The Mandel Files (157 page)

The circular airlock opened with a hissing sound. A small shower of water sprinkled down on Eliot Haydon’s head. He started to climb up the metal ladder.

The laboratory was GD7, a rectangular chamber on the edge of the station. Three portholes looked out over the fields and reefs, some chemical aspect of the thick material turning them a deep blue-green. Fans of jade light poured in, dancing across the white-topped benches which ran along the wall.

GD7 appeared to be a standard set up. The benches were crowded with specialist terminals and composite equipment modules, long crystalline glassware arrays and culture vats. A rack of empty aquariums stood along the back wall. There was a section given over to an electron microscope. All of it was clean, unused, switched off. Waiting, Victor thought.

Kiley was resting on a pedestal in the centre. An octagonal framework two metres in diameter, half a metre high, its side panels covered in crumbling, grey thermal/particle protection foam. Thimble-sized cold gas thruster nozzles poked out above the foam, along with three sets of star-tracker sensors, a couple of slim conical omnidirectional antennas, tarnished-silver electrical umbilical sockets, and an interface key. Seven corners sprouted a square dull-copper thermal radiator fin. The eighth had a long grapple pin for the remote manipulator arm on Newton’s Apple to grab during retrieval.

A metre-high truss structure on top had held the probe’s collection flask. It was empty now, mounting points trailing a spaghetti tangle of severed power lines and fibre optic cable. Above that was the communication dish, a gossamer-thin umbrella of silver foil, badly crumpled and torn.

Victor looked round, and saw the collection flask on one of the benches, a titanium rugby ball, split into two halves. Empty. There was a plain white card resting against it. He picked it up.

I’ll bet it’s you, Victor—

The handwriting was Royan’s. He crumpled it into a tight ball. It was a superbly equipped lab. What had Royan done here?

“What is this thing?” Eliot Haydon asked, he was walking cautiously round Kiley, staring. “A space probe?”

“Yes. A Jupiter sample return.”

“Gods, what’s it doing here?”

“That’s a bloody good question.”

Open Channel to Julia Evans NN Core. I’ve found Kiley, or at least what’s left of it.

Great. Where?

It’s in the Farm’s main underwater station, laboratory GD7. That’s a genetics lab. But there’s nothing else left, he’s cleaned it out.

Hang on, I’ll access that lab’s memory cores again. They’ve already been reviewed once.

Victor thought he detected a hint of resentment in the soundless voice. “When Royan left, what did he take with him, can you remember?” he asked.

Eliot Haydon was still looking at Kiley, left hand stroking one of the thermal radiator panels. “Just a standard air cargo pod.” He brought his hand away, rubbing his fingers together. “Oh, and a plant. Funny looking thing, like a cross between a cacti and a palm. He was carrying it when he got on the plane, that’s why I remember.”

Victor felt a tingle of alarm. “Was it flowering?”

“Was it...” Eliot Haydon trailed off into uncertain bemusement.

“Flowering? Did it have any flowers?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

I still can’t locate anything, Victor, NN core one said.

He turned a full circle. The personality package had to be here. Royan would expect him to work it out, to come in and see the obvious.

Start with the basics, he told himself. A data construct has to be stored in ‘ware. And it has to be obvious. Royan wasn’t hiding anything, they were supposed to be warnings. A location proof against accidental discovery, but not obscure.

He wanted Greg and his intuition here in the lab. Greg would have seen it straight off.

Victor turned slowly and looked at Kiley. The tiny glass eye of the interface key stared back at him. He pulled his cybofax out of his inside jacket pocket and held it up.

CHAPTER 29

The armoury was a long windowless concrete room, metal lockers along one wall and weapons racks along the other. There were ten tables running down the middle, fitted with test rigs and the various cybernetic tools the armourers used. The sight and warm oil smell of the place took Greg right back to his squaddie days. Even the pre-mission chatter of the security crash team was the same, brash with that unique brand of strained humour.

He was sitting on a bench watching Suzi being kitted out by Alex Lahey, one of the armourers. He had found a muscle armour suit small enough for her, and now he was programming it to accept motor neurone impulses from her implant. A thick bundle of fibre-optic cables ran from the ‘ware interface socket on the suit’s chest to the terminal he was operating on the table. Only the helmet had been left off, leaving Suzi’s head sticking out of the black barrel-like torso.

“First there’s healthy paranoia,” Greg said. “And then there’s obsessive psychosis. The dividing line is pretty thin.”

“Bollocks. Leol got out of that hospital in Nigeria. You think he’s going to give up on Charlotte now?”

“No. But how’s he going to find her?”

Suzi gave a disparaging grunt. “The bastard’s good, Greg. Give him that. And he’s got Clifford Jepson’s money behind him.”

“Victor’s better. And we’ve got Julia’s money.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Alex Lahey looked up from the terminal he had plugged into Suzi’s armour suit. “Could you raise your left arm, please.”

She moved it up slowly until it was level with her shoulder, then it suddenly shot up to point at the ceiling. “Fuck’s sake!”

“Sorry,” Alex Lahey said. He studied the terminal cube, muttering to himself.

“Hey, can I lower it, or what?”

Alex Lahey didn’t look up. “Yes, yes.”

“This personalized tank, bit over the top, isn’t it?”

Suzi’s gauntleted left hand slapped her torso, producing a hollow thud. “I can face him now, Greg. No more running, no more evasion and decoy. Christ, that was fucking humiliating. You should try a suit out, gives your confidence an orgasm.”

“No thanks, muscle armour was after my time. I’ll stick to what I’ve got. Good old mystic intuition. It’s kept me alive this long.”

“Yeah? So what does it say about Royan?” Suzi asked.

“Tell you, he’s up there.” He surprised himself. The words had come out without any conscious thought, he hadn’t ordered a gland secretion, either.

“Huh,” Suzi grunted.

“Would you touch your toes, please,” Alex Lahey said.

Greg kept his amusement in check at the slightly ridiculous sight of a muscle armour suit doing callisthenics as Suzi tested each limb’s articulation. The rest of the crash team started to check out their weapons from the rack.

Suzi’s armour suit split open down the side of the torso, and she began to wriggle her legs out. Her tracksuit fabric was heavily creased where the suit’s spongy internal lining had contracted about her.

Alex Lahey began to unplug the fibre-optic cables. “Your knee shouldn’t be a problem,” he said as Suzi emerged. “The suit will support it.”

“Great.” She dropped lightly on to the floor, and promptly flexed her leg, rubbing at the bioware sheath.

“Could you thumbprint this, please?” He proffered a cybofax. “It’s the release authorization for the suit.”

Greg looked at the bare concrete of the ceiling, offering up a small prayer.

“You betcha.”

Suzi was smiling acid sweet as she pressed her thumb against the cybofax’s sensitive pad. She eyed the weapons rack. “I’d like one of those Honeywell pulsed plasma carbines; a Konica rip gun, plus eight power magazine cells; five Loral fifteen-centimetre pattern-homing missiles, programmable from my implant; and ten directed lance charges with timed and remote detonators. And have you recharged my Browning?”

Alex Lahey sagged in place, his watery eyes giving Suzi a disbelieving stare.

“What’s up? Do you need another thumbprint?”

“Whatever the lady wants, Alex,” Melvyn Ambler said in a pained tone. “Put it all in with the rest of our gear.”

“You’re a gent,” Suzi grinned.

Greg turned round to see the crash team captain standing behind him.

“The spaceplane will be here in five minutes,” Melvyn said. “We’ll load our gear and launch straight away.” He held up two maroon flight bags. “I’ve got your shipsuits. Put your clothes in the bag, you can wear them again in New London. Do either of you need an anti-nausea infusion for the flight?”

“Not me,” Greg said. “I’ve been in freefall before. Didn’t suffer then.”

“I’ll take one,” Suzi said brightly.

“Right.” Melvyn Ambler hesitated. “Are we likely to meet a hazard up there?”

“I’ll give you a full briefing on the spaceplane,” Greg said. But you’re along mainly for your deterrence value.”

“Thank you. Mr Tyo said you are in complete control of the operation.”

“He’s got to be flicking kidding,” Suzi muttered.

Spaceplane shipsuits seemed to have improved. The last time Greg had gone into orbit the rubber garment they gave him looked like it was sprayed on. You needed to be a mesormorph to wear one with any dignity. This time Melvyn had provided him with a comfortable, fairly loose, ginger-coloured onepiece with elasticated wrist and ankle bands; the wide pinnedback lapels taken straight off the kind of jacket a nineteenthirties flying ace would’ve worn. A multifunction ‘ware wafer was clipped into its pocket on his upper right arm, monitoring his physiologicaI functions, along with the atmospheric pressure, temperature, gas composition, and radiation levels.

He carried his maroon flight bag out to Anastasia, the Orion-class spaceplane that had landed in the centre of the generator platform. The twenty-strong crash team were trooping into the airlock in front of him, all of them in the same ginger one-piece, a cyborg army. Charlotte and Fabian walked behind, talking in low tones.

Anastasia was a simple delta shape, twenty-six metres long, built around a pair of induction rams; convergent tubes which compressed incoming air, heated it with a battery of radio-frequency induction coils, and blasted it out through expansion nozzles. A simple, clean propulsion system which took over from the fans at Mach seven and boosted the spaceplane up to orbital velocity. There was also an auxiliary reaction drive fitted which made her capable of lifting twenty-five tonnes of payload direct to New London. Her pearly lofriction fuselage glinted bright and cool under the mid-morning sun. Big scarlet dragon escutcheons were painted on the fin.

A convoy of five small drone lorries had drawn up underneath, and the crash team’s armourers were loading pods of equipment into the rear cargo bay through hatches in the tail cone.

Greg ordered a small neurohormone secretion as he waited at the foot of the airstair. His intuition didn’t say much about anything, a grudging sense of inevitability was the best it could manage. He always thought of the ability as being slightly timeloose, a weak form of precognition. That ought to mean death should ring out loud and clear.

“Anything?” Suzi asked. She knew how he relied on it.

“No. Not a thing.” He turned to Charlotte and Fabian. The ginger shipsuit looked stunning on the girl. “Time to go,” he told her.

She bent down and gave Fabian a long, lingering kiss.

Greg shifted uncomfortably; Suzi chortled and started up the airstairs, swinging her flight bag jauntily.

Charlotte eventually broke off the embrace. “This won’t take long,” she murmured in a voice so quiet Greg could barely make out the words. She and Fabian looked as if they were being parted for eternity. Fabian flipped some hair out of his eyes. “Come back to me,” he pleaded mournfully.

“You know I will.” Charlotte planted a final kiss on his brow, and went up the stairs in a hurry. Greg tugged his cap on, a close-fitting padded dome that came down over his ears, protection against hard corners when he was in freefall. He followed Charlotte up the stairs; when he looked back Fabian was sprinting for the crew quarters, a hardline bodyguard in pursuit.

Anastasia seated forty passengers in her cabin. It was compact, but not cramped. The walls were covered in a quilt of grey padding, even the deck was slightly springy as Greg walked down the aisle. A biolum strip ran along the centre of the ceiling, fabric hoops banging on either side, reminding him of the handholds for standing passengers on a bus. At the rear of the cabin was a galley and a couple of toilet cubicles. He eyed them warily, a series of unwelcome memories surfacing, painfully tight tubes and suction holes that pinched. Best to wait until New London.

There was no separate cockpit. The pilot sat behind the narrow curving windscreen, dressed in the same kind of ship-suit as Greg, except his was silvery grey. He didn’t even have a flight console, no controls of any kind. Sitting with arms neatly folded across his lap, eyes half-closed in some zen-like contemplation. Multicoloured geometric spiderwebs rolled across the windscreen itself. Greg guessed the pilot must use a processor node to interface with the spaceplane’s flight ‘ware.

He didn’t enjoy the idea. When he was in the army he used to fly parafoils and microlites; direct physical control, you shifted your weight and the wing banked in response. It was something you could feel, solid and dependable. Real flying.

Surely the spaceplane must have some kind of manual fallback? The pilot would probably laugh if he asked. He looked young, mid-twenties; a generation that wasn’t so much ‘ware literate as ‘ware addicted.

The crash team were choosing their seats noisily, like a small-town rugby club on their way to a match, all jokes and laughs. Two stewards helped to stow their flight bags in the lockers under the seats.

Suzi was sitting in one of the seats behind the pilot. Greg claimed the one next to her, where he could see out of the graphic-etched windscreen. He touched the activation stud on his armrest, and the seat cushioning slid round his legs, gripping gently.

Charlotte and Melvyn Ambler were sitting across the aisle from them, Rick in the row behind. The security captain leaned forward. “That’s everyone,” he told the pilot.

“OK. Flight time will be about three and a half hours, we should rendezvous with New London somewhere over South America.” The airlock hatch closed, cutting off the thrum of the platform’s thermal generators.