The Mandel Files (24 page)

“Too soon to say. They’re still running the fault analysis.” Sean Francis’s mind betrayed a lot of apprehension. Greg wrote it off as the pressure. Failure this soon after his promotion would send him tumbling right back down to the obscurity he’d clawed his way up from.

“Why do you need giga-conductor power cells on a nuclear-powered spaceprobe?” Greg asked.

“The isotopes only power the thrusters during the flight phase, lifting the Merlin out of Earth orbit and boosting it along its interception trajectory. Once it’s matched velocities with its target asteroid they’re jettisoned along with the shielding, which reduces the total mass to just over a tonne. Manoeuvring becomes a lot simpler and faster without all that surplus mass to shift around. The giga-conductor cells charge off the solar panels and provide power to the thrusters for the final approach phase, as well as moving the Merlin around the surface after rendezvous. Some of these Apollo Amor rocks are quite large, we need forty or fifty sample points to build up an accurate picture of the ore composition.”

Greg could see the little group of flight controllers round the chief’s desk craning their necks in his direction, impatience registering in their surface thoughts.

“You’d better be getting back,” he told Sean Francis. “Glad to see you’re getting ahead. One last thing: did you know Philip Evans is still alive?”

From an academic viewpoint Francis’s reaction was a fascinating emotional evolution. His initial stare was pure disgust; from there Greg’s espersense read him progressing through disbelief and into contempt, then back into worry, and finishing up plain confused.

“I saw the body,” he said eventually.

“Right, well, thanks for your time.”

“I hope you’re not going to be so tasteless with Miss Evans. She was very close to her grandfather.”

“Of course not. I’ll tell you why I had to ask you that, one day,” he said, projecting as much bonhomie as he could muster, which simply served to deepen Francis’s confusion.

He flicked an uncertain glance at Gabriel, and departed, a much puzzled man.

“Congratulations,” Gabriel said archly. “You’ve just ruined his entire day. He can’t concentrate on anything, he’s so mixed up by that last crack of yours.”

“Tough. Life at the top isn’t all roses. The sooner he learns, the better off he’ll be.”

“Do you have to be so bloody rude to everyone?”

“We don’t have the time to piss about. Whether that arriviste likes me or not isn’t something I’ll lose any sleep over. I’m doing my job the only way I know how.” He caught the antagonism rising in her. “Besides,” he said resignedly, “it’s Philip Evans who’s tweaked me.”

“Philip Evans?”

“Yeah. That NN core of his is fucking weird, unsettling. For a start I can’t stop wondering if I’d translocate my thoughts if I was given the opportunity; I mean, it’s a sort of immortality, isn’t it?”

“And suppose some smart hacker breaks in, every dark secret you ever had will be wide open to them. Blockbuster stuff, if they publish it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Forget it. What did you see in Mr Dynamism Francis’s future?”

“Nothing much, a lot of frenetic activity here for the next few days, several consultations with young Julia Evans about the Merlin. In fact he seems to have taken rather a shine to our Miss Evans.”

“Sean Francis?” Greg couldn’t keep the reproach from showing in his voice. Cursed himself silently. “But he’s years older than her.”

Gabriel’s grin was wicked. “He’s three years younger than you. And she doesn’t regard you as out of reach, now does she?”

Years of experience prevented him from showing the slightest ire. “The girl’s got a silly crush, that’s all. I can handle that. But Sean Francis, marrying the boss’s granddaughter, well, that’s...”

“Shocking? But Julia isn’t the heir any more, she is the boss now.” Gabriel put her hand over her heart, sighing fulsomely. “I think its romantic, myself.”

“Does he? No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”

“Julia’s really got you in a tizz, hasn’t she?”

“Can we get back to the case, please?”

She chuckled. “Certainly, Gregory. You can forget about Sean Francis, he really is a clean-cut square, his only failing is his ambition. He looks at every problem to see how he can benefit from it.”

“That’s no crime.”

There was a knock on the door, Martin Wallace poked his head round. “Dr Ranasfari’s here.”

“Show him in,” Greg said, and mouthed Kid gloves to Gabriel, suddenly wishing he’d thought to warn her in advance.

Dr Ranasfari was in a foul mood. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair was hanging limply, small flakes of dandruff dusted his collar. Creases crisscrossed his white shirt. There was no tie. Even the Institute’s regulation security tag was missing.

His mind reflected his physical appearance; dull, shot through with frissons of agitation. The prospect that his creation had failed, coupled with the blitz against his patron, had come as a severe shock, Greg guessed. Jolting the secure academic world through which he moved. And now he had to answer impertinent questions. He wore hostility like a hedgehog coat.

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Greg said. “I’m sure you have to get back to the Merlin.”

No response.

“Have you ever told anyone about Philip Evans’s NN core?”

“Certainly not.”

“What about the giga-conductor?”

“No.” Ranasfari sounded uninterested.

“Unintentionally perhaps, a slip of the tongue? One mistake would be all it’d take. People place a lot of weight on your words.”

“Please, Mr Mandel. Ask your questions, reassure yourself. But don’t attempt to ingratiate yourself. I fully appreciate the emphasis Philip Evans places on your investigation, I have already discussed it with him. That is why I agreed to see you. Your conclusions from a minimum data source during your earlier instance of employment indicate your professional competence. Although, I personally suspect a degree of intuition was involved on your part.”

“It was.”

“Interesting. Is that part of your psi-enhancement?”

“It seems to be, although it’s very much a secondary facet. Now, a loose word?”

“No. I don’t make that sort of mistake.”

“You of all people must appreciate the logic that there has been a serious leak within Event Horizon. Knowing about both the giga-conductor and the core logically makes you a suspect. However, now I’m satisfied you are not the origin of any leak”—Ranasfari smiled thinly—”that leaves the team which grew the core, and your own giga-conductor researchers.”

The physicist’s thin lips compressed dolefully. “I realize this. It...is difficult to accept that one of my people is responsible. I hope you are not asking me to point an accusatory finger?”

“No. But I’d appreciate any other leads from your department. For instance, the lightware cruncher you used to design the original cryogenic giga-conductor with, could that have been hacked?”

“No, it is isolated from the Event Horizon datanet.”

Greg paused for a moment, waiting for any ideas to surface from his subconscious. He was aware of a background ache behind his temple. Options were converging at an alarming rate, he had a growing sense of conviction that the assistants weren’t going to be the leak origin. Perhaps he’d picked the assumption off Gabriel. She was sitting on the bottom tier of seats, eyes closed, lost among the Tau multiplicities.

“Exactly how serious is this Merlin failure?” Greg asked, intuition prompting.

“Unless the cause can be determined precisely then it will be a major set-back to both programmes,” Ranasfari answered.

“Both?”

“Yes, the Merlin prospecting missions, and the commercial production of the giga-conductor.”

“When did the Merlin actually fail?”

Ranasfari picked up on the flash of excitement in his voice. “I think I see what you are driving at. Yes. The Merlin failed yesterday morning, eight twenty-four, to be precise.”

“After the blitz.”

“Correct; approximately ten hours. Do you believe the two events are connected?”

Greg was certain of the connection. But there was a fragment of bedlam jarring what would otherwise have been an immaculate fusion of disjointed thoughts. The implication that it wasn’t an obvious union. Yet it seemed straightforward. He almost let out a groan; this was as bad as the memox spoiler.

“The attack against Philip Evans could’ve been a blind,” Greg ventured. “Remember the blitz was perpetrated against the whole Event Horizon network; one of the hackers could easily have tampered with the Merlin control programs while it was going on.”

“But why the delay?”

“An attempt at disassociating the events? No, wait a minute, how much altitude could the Merlin add in ten hours? Would it make recovery more difficult?”

“Altitude increase over ten hours would be approximately one thousand five hundred kilometres; you have to remember that at the start of the flight the Merlin masses four times as much as it will when it rendezvouses with its target asteroid. That means a low initial acceleration. But certainly that additional fifteen hundred kilometres would add considerably to the cost of recovery. Its current three-and-a-half-thousand-kilometre orbit is way above the Sanger ceiling. An inter-orbit tug would have to be chartered specially, which is a totally uneconomic prospect. Physical recovery was well down our option list. In fact, given normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be considered unless a second Merlin suffered a similar failure. There are a great many conceivable reasons for the shut down; the giga-conductor cell is not the only new component in series-four models. Few components are common to every Merlin, its development is a continual process of evolution. And, of course, the giga-conductor cells performed perfectly in the space environment simulation tests, they were most extensive.”

“But in the mean time a question mark hangs over introducing the giga-conductor cell.”

“Yes, unfortunately. A Ministry of Defence team from Boscombe Down has already arrived to review our fault-analysis data.”

“What has happened to the Merlin? Is it a total breakdown?” Greg asked.

“It looks like it. The propulsion system has shut down, and the communication link has been severed. It won’t even respond to signals directed at its omni-directional antenna.”

“Could its state have occurred by transmitting a rogue set of instructions, ordering it to shut down?”

“Indeed,” Ranasfari agreed. “Providing you had the correct codes.”

Which, presumably, are stored here in the Institute’s memory cores.”

“Yes.”

“And are they isolated from the Event Horizon datanet?”

“No.”

“So the attack could be an attempt to discredit Event Horizon’s giga-conductor, which at the very least would delay military funding of your production lines, giving your rivals an opportunity to make up lost ground.”

“That is certainly a theoretical possibility.” The shadowy overtones of worry were lifting from Dr Ranasfari’s mind. “I congratulate you, Mr Mandel.”

Greg felt a weight of relief lifting. “I’d like to be kept informed of your progress on analysing the Merlin failure.”

“Certainly.”

“And if you can’t find anything concrete may I suggest chartering an inter-orbit tug to recover it.”

“I doubt the expense would be authorized.”

“Mission planning will cost nothing. And if I don’t come up with any positive leads I’ll press Philip Evans to cough up the money.”

“I’m sure someone as persuasive as yourself will have no trouble. Good day, Mr Mandel.” Dr Ranasfari exited with what might have been the ghost of a smile on his mouth.

Gabriel gave him a slow laconic clap, the sound echoing hollowly in the empty gallery, Her eyes were still closed. “I am impressed. That was one of the slickest pieces of seduction I’ve seen for many a year. Poor Eleanor couldn’t have stood a chance.”

Greg ignored the crack. “Simple logic. You want wholehearted co-operation, get them on your side. And empathy does have its uses. Like charm, some of us have it.”

He slouched on the journalist’s seats next to her, letting the foam below the black imitation leather mould itself to his buttocks, and stretched his legs out. Beyond the glass, dismay seemed to be tightening its grip.

“How goes it with Ranasfari’s team?”

“Total washout.” Her eyes fluttered open. “If you interviewed every one of them all you’d find is a couple who’ve got a nice racket flogging off Event Horizon equipment and five synthoheads. You were right, Morgan Walshaw knows how to handle security.”

“Has to be either the Ministry of Defence, or a mole, then.”

“Shaping up that way,” she agreed. “So what now?”

“Elimination. My intuition says the Merlin failure and the blitz are related in some way. At the moment the only way I can reconcile the two is if the attack on Philip Evans was intended to divert his attention while the Merlin was hashed up to discredit the giga-conductor.”

“That’s pretty tenuous, Greg. A few giga-conductor cells which may or may not have failed aren’t going to bring the whole enterprise to a grinding halt. The breakdown could’ve been some kind of freak overspill from the attack on the NN core, That would be a connection of sorts.”

“No, the Merlin breakdown wasn’t an accident.”

Gabriel didn’t respond. At least she never questioned his intuition.

“Can you see the result of the failure analysis?” he asked.

“Sorry. Too far in the future from where we are.”

“Well, not to worry, we’ll find out in due course. It might all turn out to be empty hypothesis, Lord knows psi intuition isn’t stone-scripted. But I’d put a great deal of money on that connection. I’ll decide for sure after we’ve interviewed the NN core team. Walshaw should have reeled them in by the day after tomorrow. By the way, what can you see of Ranasfari?”

“Oh, God.” She let out a long contemptuous breath. “Definitely a contender for the world’s most boring human being. He just doesn’t have any interests outside his professional work, I’m sure it can’t be healthy.”

“Leaves him open to blackmail?”

“I shouldn’t think so. What could you possibly corrupt him with? In any case, he doesn’t do anything remotely incriminating for the next few days, make that a week. And you’ve already cleared him.”