The Mandel Files, Volume 2: The Nano Flower

‘Well, I thought that might be why you decided to come with me, because we were both the same. Neither of us has anybody really close.’

  She let the water flow back over her, twisting idly. ‘Could be.’

  Charlotte waited for an hour after dinner before she tapped on Fabian’s door. The meal had been another exercise in high discomfort; the three of them sitting in the aft dining-room as the twilight faded into night. Jason Whitehurst had asked about New London again. Where she stayed, who she’d met, actually wanting to know which flights she’d used, for Heaven’s sake. Even Fabian had begun to shift uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘Busy?’ Charlotte asked.

  Fabian shook his head, and backed away from the door. The flatscreen on the wall was showing a Western. His cabin’s layout was similar to hers, but pesonalized, with clothes scattered about, real books piled on the dresser, shoes underfoot. Biolum panels glowed dully, reddish pink embers.

  Charlotte closed the door. Fabian gave the impression of wanting to jump on her, and flee at the same time. He stared miserably at his bare feet.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d really turn up,’ he said in a thick voice. ‘I still think you might be a dream.’

  Charlotte turned the flatscreen off, deepening the shadows. ‘Fabian?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Am I really so hard to look at?’

  When he lifted his head she gently pushed the lock of hair from his forehead, then put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. His skin was singularly smooth under her fingers.

  She let go, slightly disturbed by the amount of adoration in his gaze. ‘Before we go any further, I just wanted to thank you.’

  ‘Me? What for?’

  ‘For not trying to order me about.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that. Honestly.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’ Charlotte showed him a slow enticing smile. ‘And now you don’t have to.’ She slipped the straps off her shoulders in an easy motion and let the gown slide to the carpet with a silky rustle. Her self-control nearly cracked at the sight of the outright astonishment on his face as he stared at her breasts. Baronski had said they were big enough not to need enlarging, but she’d taken a hormone course to strengthen the Cooper’s ligaments which supported the ductal lobes, keeping them high and firm.

  Fabian flipped his hair aside, and scrambled for his shirt buttons, his eyes never leaving her.

  ‘No,’ she said, and the huskiness of her tone surprised even her. ‘I’ll do that.’

  She started at his collar, kissing his skin as it was exposed, moving down his chest on to his belly. There were no blemishes, nor spots, it was baby-flesh. She reached his shorts, and pulled them down along with his pants.

  Fabian was biting his lower lip, drawing breath in judders when she rose to stand in front of him. She slithered quickly out of her panties.

  ‘Bed,’ she said, and took him by the hand.

  He lay down on the rumpled sheets, an almost fearful expression on his face. Charlotte sat across his hips, her gaze holding his eyes for a long moment, then slowly leant forwards.

  It was a strange sensation, to be in bed with someone so inexperienced, having to guide and whisper encouragement. But she discovered a secret miscreant pleasure in being dominant for once, bigger and stronger. It was exciting listening to him whimper as her fingers dug into his hard buttocks, tongue making love to his erection. She let him play with her breasts for a long time.

  Then finally he was up between her legs, pumping wildly. It was over quickly, Fabian crying out as he fell on top of her.

  She held him until his shaking passed. Kissing his brow as she gently stroked his spine.

  ‘I got it all wrong, didn’t I?’ he said wretchedly.

  ‘No, not at all. I’ve known of some people who get so wound up the first time that they just freeze. That hardly happened to you, now did it? You’ll learn how to make it good for both of us.’

  ‘So it wasn’t good for you, then?’

  She sighed. Even now his mind functioned like a ’ware chip. ‘This was your night, Fabian.’

  ‘But you let me do anything I wanted to you. Anything. You never stopped me.’

  ‘Was that so terrible? Didn’t you like it?’

  ‘God yes, you’re so beautiful. It’s brilliant enough just being able to look at you and touch you, but sex with you is like going to heaven.’

  She had to strain hard not to laugh. He really was cute. ‘Sex is whatever you enjoy, providing it doesn’t hurt your partner.’

  He raised himself on his elbows, looking down on her body with a sheepish awe. ‘Please, Charlotte, show me how to make you enjoy it. I want to thrill you, I want to make you as excited as I am, I want to be the greatest lover you’ve ever had. Please. Just show me how. Please, Charlotte.’

  Now how long had it been since she’d had a request like that? If ever. She grinned lazily, and stretched her arms above her head, arching her back. ‘Do you know what an erogenous zone is?’

  ‘Course I know!’

  She giggled. ‘Ah, but where are they?’

  His indignation faltered.

  Charlotte caught one of his hands; she gently kissed the tip of each finger, licking with feline provocation, then guided him across her abdomen.

  6

  Suzi was sunbathing on the balcony when she heard the piccolo hiss of the executive hypersonic’s compressor fans. Darkness swept over her, accompanied by a wave of half-imaginary cold as the boiling afternoon sun was eclipsed by the little arrowhead plane.

  Suzi opened her eyes and squinted up, but there was too much glare to make out the fuselage insignia. Andria sat up beside her, long hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she watched the hypersonic settle on the condominium’s roof pad two storeys above them.

  ‘I don’t recognize it,’ the girl said.

  Suzi turned on to her back, shuffling her shoulders until the lounger’s cushioning was comfortable. ‘It’s an Event Horizon Pegasus CV-188D,’ she mumbled with her eyes closed again. ‘Their latest marque.’

  Andria laughed. ‘No, Suse, I meant, I don’t know who it belongs to. I don’t think it belongs to any of the residents.’

  That laugh did things to Suzi’s brain that could normally only be achieved by a hefty infusion of proscribed substances, it was carefree and warm, amazingly sultry. She lifted her head to look at the naked girl on the lounger beside her.

  Andria was nineteen, her body lean and long limbed, dark wavy hair falling below her shoulders. She had a heart-shaped face with a flat nose, and wide ever-curious eyes that never seemed to stay focused on anything for more than a few seconds. The whole world was a constant delight to Andria, she had to try and see all of it at once. Then there was her shyness, which was a provocative aphrodisiac.

  Her pregnancy didn’t show yet. Six weeks after the private London clinic specializing in parthenogenetic reproduction had fertilized Suzi’s ovum and planted it securely inside Andria, the girl’s coffee-coloured belly was still flat and firm.

  They had met in a New Eastfield nightclub last October, Suzi celebrating a finance sink deal with some of her team, Andria on a night out with her boyfriend.

  It took Suzi three weeks to lure Andria into bed, shamelessly exploiting the girl’s sunny, trusting nature. She hadn’t pursued anyone with such determination since her Trinities days; it was like being drunk on raw lust. Their first night together was worth every agonizing second of the wait. She used Andria’s body to work off fantasy after fantasy, only to find it just left her wanting more. It meant that for the first time in a long while Suzi had been forced to tell someone how much she felt about them.

  Andria had moved in permanently at the start of December, though she insisted on keeping her datashuffling job in the office of a local shipping agent. It was that kind of quiet pride which was such a puzzle and fascination to Suzi. A girl who would surrender every inhibition to her at night, yet still refused to become a dependant. Andria was more than erotic satisfaction,
she filled the soul’s longing.

  So in January, just before she started working on the Johal HF deal, Suzi screwed up her courage, and asked Andria to consider having her child.

  ‘But why?’ Andria had asked as Suzi lay on top of her.

  The air-conditioned darkness of the penthouse’s bedroom revealed only the faintest of silhouettes, but Suzi knew the girl had a frown on her face. ‘Because it’s a way out for me,’ she answered, shrinking inside for showing her vulnerability. ‘This shit I’m in, I know it’s bad, but it’s addictive. It gives me a high. I can’t get out. There’s nothing outside tekmerc territory that can give me the same buzz. I’ve seen ’em all, dopey bastards who say they’ll quit when they’ve made their wad. Never do; they live wild for a few months, even a couple of years, then they come crawling back, and when they do their edge is all screwed up.’

  She felt Andria’s fingers running lightly round her chin. ‘You could always set up as a corporate security consultant, your experience must count for—’ the girl began.

  ‘Bollocks. Kombinate security wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole. Besides, I want right out, the whole way. Got the money, too.’

  ‘But what would you do?’

  ‘Get conventional. Shit, I know it sounds fucking stupid. Right? But I’d like to give convention a go. I thought a pub or a hotel, maybe a club.’

  ‘If a consultancy wouldn’t give you the excitement, then I don’t think a pub would be what you need.’

  ‘I know someone,’ Suzi whispered. ‘Someone who used to do this kind of crap, a real hardliner. He got out, clean and sweet. Jesus wept, one person. One out of all the thousands.’

  Andria kissed her throat lightly, trying to give comfort through intimacy. ‘And he did it through being conventional?’

  ‘Yeah.’ That image came back to spook her again. Greg and Eleanor walking down the aisle of Hambleton’s dinky little church, both of them smiling radiantly at each other, not seeing anyone else. Suzi hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t known what to wear, hadn’t known what present to get. Like a fucking savage figuring out a cybofax. It had come as a harsh shock, finding out just how far she’d regressed from society. ‘He’s got a wife, kids, farm, the whole fucking works. And he never came back.’

  ‘Was he your lover?’

  ‘No. Yes. Not really. Good mates, that’s all.’

  ‘And you think you can follow him?’

  Suzi stroked the damp strands of hair from Andria’s forehead. She always wanted to be tender afterwards, make up for her earlier fierceness, show the girl she really cared. She knew sex was another of her failings, needing to be on top when it was boys, making the girls submit. She wanted to stop, to be normal. Didn’t know how; couldn’t figure how the other ways could possibly work like everyone said, all that giving and sharing bollocks. Sex was power.

  ‘Fuck-all chance of doing anything else,’ Suzi said. ‘I mean, tekmercs, we screw convention, deliberately. That’s what we are. But this jobs and family bullshit, it works, for billions of people, it sodding works. If I just had something that I could commit myself to, something I could feel a bit of pride in.’ Her voice had risen without her realizing. ‘Shit, maybe Leol Reiger was right about me when he said I haven’t got what it takes. Sometimes I hope he is. But I need something to anchor me to that kind of world. Kid would do that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Andria said simply.

  ‘You’ll do it?’

  ‘Of course I will. I love you, Suse.’

  Andria was still watching the hypersonic above them. The balconies on the eastern end of the Soreyheath condominium looked out over New Eastfield’s marina and the gleaming structures of Prior’s Fen Atoll away in the lazy distance beyond. They were arranged in tiers, which meant Suzi could see any of the balconies below her, but not the two above. A concrete-enforced statement about social position, she always thought.

  The tip of the hypersonic’s nose was sticking over the end of the roof, like a bird of prey crouched ready to pounce on the supine bodies laid out invitingly below it.

  Access Concierge. Identify Incoming Plane Ownership. Suzi took a drink of orange from her glass. She was skipping alcohol right now, it wasn’t fair on Andria.

  Pegasus G-ALPH Registered with Event Horizon Corporation. Suzi glanced thoughtfully at the white nose cone.

  The phone shrilled.

  Andria pressed the sound-only button. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Guests for you, Miss Landon,’ the concierge ’ware’s construct voice said. ‘Julia Evans and Greg Mandel.’

  Suzi heard Andria’s indrawn breath at the mention of Julia, she smiled at the girl’s innocent enquiring gaze, and began hunting round for her robe. ‘Well, send ’em in, then.’

  Suzi hadn’t seen Greg for over six months, though she did make an effort to stay in touch. Sort of. Julia she hadn’t talked to for nearly three years. The multibillionairess was only a couple of years older than Suzi. When she came through the front door, Suzi couldn’t find any appreciable signs of ageing. Julia still looked like a young twenty-five-year-old. And she didn’t possess the kind of conceit which would send her scurrying to the surgeons. Rich and youthful; there just wasn’t any justice.

  Greg gave her a quick hug and a kiss. Julia seemed at a loss what to do, kiss, shake hands, wave …

  ‘I thought you aristo types always knew what to do in every social situation,’ Suzi scoffed. ‘Inbred etiquette along with all the other déviances.’

  Julia screwed up her face and stuck her tongue out.

  Suzi turned the white presentation box over in her hands. Flowers weren’t her thing, though she had to admit it was a bid odd. But— ‘Extraterrestrial?’

  ‘Yes.’ Julia was sitting on one of the lounge’s white-leather pillow chairs. A real close look showed she had stress lines around her eyes and mouth.

  Suzi shot Greg a look. ‘And what do you make of it?’ She’d always been awed, and not a little envious of his intuition. If she had anything like it, no way would Leol Reiger ever have taken her so easily. What Greg said about the flower she’d be happy to go along with.

  Aliens were something so far outside her norm she hadn’t got a clue how to react at all – except maybe scream and run. But if Julia was right about them arriving in the solar system, they were behaving fucking odd. And what did they look like? More important, what did they want? Why all this secrecy?

  Just thinking about it made her ache inside.

  ‘The flower is real enough,’ Greg said. ‘But as to what the aliens are like, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Shit. You’re a big help.’

  ‘Forget the implications, if it makes you feel any easier,’ Greg said. ‘Concentrate on the immediate. All we’re going to do tomorrow is track down the courier girl, find out where she got the flower from. Julia takes over from there.’ He kept glancing out at the balcony where Andria was lying on the lounger.

  ‘I’ll bet you take over,’ Suzi muttered. ‘Starship technology should bring in a bundle, even by your standards.’

  Julia played nervously with her fingers in her lap. ‘I just want Royan back,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  That name was an omen, all bad. Suzi could feel it shackling her to the past, reeling her in. Greg was the same, she figured, all edgy underneath. He really wasn’t up to any of this any more, not at his age, he’d been out of it for too long, things had changed. Respect was gone, violence was on the up. Trouble was, they all owed Royan in a big way. Without him, his hotrod expertise, the Trinities would have been wiped off the map.

  ‘You really going looking for the little pillock?’ she asked Greg.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks, count me in.’

  7

  On top of everything else, this. Julia came down the hypersonic’s stairs in a foul mood. It was the children’s speech day at school, she never missed that, and wasn’t about to start now.

  The wind on the top of the Event Horizon tower was cool, blowing off the land.
Down below, a thick milky mist covered the quagmire and the deep-water channels, even rising high enough to claim the interlocking metro rail lines. The sun was an anaemic pink nebula hovering somewhere out over the Wash.

  Kirsten McAndrews waited for her at the side of the landing pad. ‘Is Mutizen’s negotiator here yet?’ Julia asked her.

  ‘Yes, he arrived on the metro right after you called to set up the meeting.’ Kirsten cleared her throat delicately. ‘The Welsh delegation are waiting as well.’

  ‘Bloody hell! What do they do, sleep here?’

  Kirsten maintained a diplomatic silence.

  Julia glanced back down at the Prior’s Fen Atoll, where the Mutizen kombinate’s arcology lifted out of the oily mist, up-draughts around its sloping walls stirred slow-moving eddies all around the base.

  Open Channel to SelfCores. You three had better be right about this, she told them crisply.

  We are, NN core one replied levelly. The Cambridge laboratory team has been up all night assessing the data; the concept is radically different from any current technology.

  Julia paused at that. Different, or just more advanced?

  Different, there’s a whole new set of principles involved. Mutizen have come up with a real breakthrough, by the look of things. That’s why we gave Peter Cavendish’s message a priority one grading.

  Right, thanks. She screwed some of the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles. The Fens Basin was so much quieter at this time of day, passive and clean, less fraught. ‘I’d forgotten how refreshing a sea dawn can be,’ she told Kirsten McAndrews as they walked into the lift.

  Royan had loved to sit on the beach and watch the dawn creeping up out of the Atlantic.

  It had taken Event Horizon’s Bristol clinic twenty months to rebuild him. They cloned his muscles, blood vessels, tendons, nerves, skin, and bones, a hundred diverse glands, organs, and cell clusters, then painstakingly stitched the components together into entire limbs. It was a hugely expensive procedure, not that the money meant anything to her. She had to buy the clinic an extra thirty clone vats, draft in a regiment of specialists. Their so-called Frankenstein department was already one of the most advanced in Europe, but they didn’t have anything approaching the necessary capacity. None of the medical team had heard of a case where all four limbs had to be replaced. Normally amputees used kinaware prosthetics, but she wanted him whole again, human. She knew that was the only way he could ever hope to truly banish the past.