‘That’s something,’ Julia said thoughtfully. ‘Suppose we never can meet in the flesh, that the risk of bacteriological contamination is too high. All we’ll ever be able to do is trade information.’
‘That’s one answer for you, then,’ Eleanor said. ‘They aren’t here to trade, they’re listening, tapping our datanets and taking the information. The cosmic equivalent of data pirates.’
And who better to help them than Royan, Julia thought. ‘Yeah, could be. Let’s hope it is something that simple.’
The marquee was full of parents and pupils, standing with drinks in their hands, talking with animated voices. The sixth formers who were leaving were busy swapping addresses, promising faithfully to stay in touch. They had that slightly apprehensive air about them. Julia could remember the feeling herself: the day her grandfather had died, his body at least, and she was the sole legal owner of Event Horizon. The future was loaded with promise, but it was still totally uncharted, dark country. Scary at that age.
Eleanor’s crack about contamination kept running through her mind. Surely there must be some risk from unknown germs? Yet Royan had sent her a freshly cut flower. He couldn’t have been worried.
She took a sip of mineral water from her glass, and pretended to study one of the paintings lined up along the back of the marquee, a hummingbird in flight, wings blurred as if in motion. It was part of the school art department’s exhibition of work by the pupils.
Open Channel to SelfCores. What did the genetics lab report say about humans picking up a possible infection from the flower?
Virtually zero, NN core one answered. In fact the problem is reversed. There was no equivalent to our bacteria in the flower. Appendix fifteen suggested that symbiotic bacteria, such as the terrestrial nitrogen-fixing rhizobia, have been incorporated into the parent plant’s genetic code; and the natural resistance to parasites has evolved and strengthened to such a point where the parasites died off.
Wouldn’t the parasites evolve in tandem? she asked.
If they had, then the laboratory should have found some on the flower. There were none, ergo they have died off.
So we are a bacteriological threat to the aliens?
Possibly. There are three options. One, that contact with us would be extremely dangerous for them, that they will have no immunity to our primitive diseases. Two, their immune systems are so advanced that our germs and bacteria will be no threat at all. Three, that our respective biochemistry is so different that there can be no cross-infection. However, given that the flower’s cell composition was so similar to terrestrial cells, for example the inclusion of cellulose and lignin in the cell membrane, the third option is the least likely.
So even if full contact is established, we may not be able to meet?
Insufficient data, you know that, NN core two chided.
Yes. Sorry, I just hate this floundering around in the dark.
We know, remember?
Two of you do, she countered, teasing.
They know, Juliet, but I care.
Thank you, Grandpa.
We have some good news for you, NN core two said.
Please, I could do with some.
Greg has discovered the name of the courier, a Charlotte Diane Fielder. She is one of Dmitri Baronski’s girls.
Baronski? Julia knew the name, his operation, but he was very second-rate. Or rather, he made sure he stayed second-rate. Always targeting the idle rich and society figures. Never doing anything that would bring a kombinate security division down on him. A man who’d found his niche, feeding off parasites. This is slightly out of his league, isn’t it?
Yes, if he is involved. Charlotte Fielder has been lifted from Monaco, and it was a very professional deal. Greg suggested that the same people who took a sample of the flower are now holding Fielder.
Where is he now? she asked.
On his way back to Monaco’s airport. He is going to visit Baronski to see if he knows Fielder’s current whereabouts.
OK, keep monitoring the situation.
‘Marry me,’ an American voice said. ‘Marry me and let me take you away from all this.’
Julia turned from the hummingbird to see Clifford Jepson standing at her side, grinning ingratiatingly. The president of Globecast was in his forties with a round berry-brown face, thick black hair combed back, channel newsman smile. She knew it was all a forgery, cosmetic face and hormone hair.
Like Julia, Clifford Jepson had inherited his position; and Globecast had nearly doubled its share price in the eight years since he’d been its president. He also carried on his father’s underclass arms trading, which was less welcome news. Julia had used him to supply the Trinities. And she’d questioned the wisdom ever since.
She really liked his father, her uncle Horace. But Clifford Jepson seemed to think that it was a friendship which he’d inherited along with Globecast. He hadn’t, but his position made him just equal enough to talk without being stilted.
Julia glanced round, and saw Melanie Jepson talking to the headmaster. She was a beautiful woman, early twenties, blonde hair so fine it was almost white, a spectacular figure.
‘You’ve got it all wrong, Clifford,’ she said drily. ‘Middle-aged businessmen with midlife crises are supposed to leave frumpish old wives for dazzling young actresses, not the other way round.’
‘Nothing frumpish about you, Julia. You know I’ve always held a torch for you.’
‘Spare me, you’ll be calling me a real woman next.’
He looked at the hummingbird painting. ‘Not bad, sharpen up the colours, add some life to the eyes, could be the makings of a decent artist there. Nice to see the old forms being adhered to. Kids these days, all they do is talk to their graphic simulators.’
‘Bloody hell, crook and art critic. Clifford, what are you doing here?’
He waved his glass in the direction of his wife. ‘Getting the kids down for entry. I’m based in Europe more often than not these days. So we thought they could board over here, give them a chance of some permanency in their lives. Trouble is, the entrance list for this place is getting kinda full these days. Can’t think why.’
That was another aspect of life Julia didn’t enjoy. She’d chosen Oakham School because it was good, and near Wilholm, and Greg and Eleanor sent their children to it. Daniella and Matthew wouldn’t be friendless when they arrived, nor would they have to board, a notion she couldn’t bear. The arrangement had been confidential, but within a week of Daniella starting every entry place for the next ten years had been booked solid. Rumour had it that places for Matthew’s year had been traded for over a quarter of a million Eurofrancs.
‘Clifford, Sonnie’s only two,’ she said.
‘Twenty months, and every bit as pretty as her mom.’
‘Oh, well, I wish you luck. It’s a good school, Daniella and Matthew enjoy it here.’ She walked on to the next painting, a rusting petrol-driven car with a Coke bottle growing out of its roof. A couple of parents were engrossed with it. The woman nudged her husband who looked up, and gave a start when he saw Julia. She gave them a flicker of a smile.
‘Julia, I was being serious about us.’
Why couldn’t he take the hint? ‘I’m a mother with two children, remember?’
‘You’re a single parent, who’s been alone for eight months.’ His face was sober.
‘What do you know about it?’
‘That he’s a fool. That he won’t be coming back.’
‘He will.’
‘Face it Julia, eight months.’
‘Eight months or eight years, it makes no difference to me. I’ll wait.’
Clifford Jepson gulped down the remainder of his drink. When she looked closely, she saw he was strangely apprehensive. Almost frightened.
‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
‘Not if you’re going to make any more indecent proposals.’
‘It’s important, Julia.’
The last thing she wanted was to talk shop. Ol
iver, Anita, and Richy had pulled Eleanor away to see the exhibitions various departments were staging, Matthew and his bodyguard had gone with them. Daniella and Christine were part of a big group of girls in a corner of the marquee, Daniella’s bodyguard wearing a tired tolerant expression.
‘Five minutes,’ she said.
The sports field was almost deserted. A group of school maintenance staff had already started to dismantle the stage, ten boys were stacking up the chairs under the supervision of a master. Ahead of her, the first XI’s cricket square was a bright strip of emerald, standing out from the rest of the field’s parched grass. Over to one side the score board was still showing the result of the last match. It was one of the old-fashioned affairs, a small boxy pavilion dating from the last century, with junior boys scurrying about inside changing the numbers round.
Matthew had to explain how it worked the first time she and Royan came to watch a match. She was amazed at the primitiveness of it, the scorer even used a big paper ledger to keep the runs in. Royan, of course, had loved the idea. It’d been a good afternoon, she remembered, after the match they’d taken Matthew, Daniella and some of their friends to have tea at a café in the town. A big noisy party, where the children had all eaten too much cake. None of them cared who she was.
Julia sat on one of the wooden seats dotted around the pitch’s boundary line, tugging the brim of her hat down against the glare. The air was dusty, tickling the back of her throat.
Clifford Jepson sat beside her, grimacing at the stains of ancient bird droppings on the cracked wood. A line of their bodyguards had fanned out behind them to form a phalanx against casual intrusion by any of the other parents.
‘Marriage was only half the proposition,’ he said. ‘It’s a start, an opening to something much bigger, grander.’
‘Merging Event Horizon and Globecast so our children could take over the world. No, thank you, Clifford. You forget I could buy Globecast if I really wanted to.’
His PR smile turned tight. ‘Will you hear me out? I’m not talking about Globecast. Right now, I’m holding something that’s gonna grow and grow. It’s big, Julia, the biggest. I’m offering you a partnership.’
Open Channel to SelfCores. I think you three had better listen to this. ‘A partnership in what?’ she asked.
‘Something new. Something explosive. It’s a whole new industry, Julia. The company that markets it is gonna win big.’
How interesting, NN core one said. Not many days when we get offered two revolutionary partnerships.
You think they’re connected? she asked.
There’s one way to find out, Juliet. Start name dropping, see how our Clifford reacts.
Right. ‘This partnership,’ Julia said laconically. ‘Let me guess: you provide the data constructs of a rudimentary technology, and Event Horizon develops it to a commercially viable level? Is that the way you see it working, Clifford?’
He raised his hands, putting on a rueful grin. ‘God damn, on the ball or what? After all these years, Julia, I’m still not in your class, nobody is. OK, let me lay it straight on the line for you. Event Horizon is one of several possible partners I’m considering. And I’d like it to be you, Julia, I really would. This operation of yours, you leave the kombinates standing. If we can thrash out a deal, make the numbers work, then it’s yours. I’ll be a sleeping partner, maybe a gate to some military contracts, but essentially it’ll be your field.’
‘This sleeping partner arrangement, I hope that’s not intended literally, Clifford.’
‘People like us, Julia, I mean, working close on this deal, spending time together, maybe you’ll see more to me than you do now.’
‘But I still have to put in the best bid if I want this new technology you’re offering?’
‘Yeah, you’ve got some stiff competition lining up for a slice of this pie. I’m not hiding that from you. But I’ll show you what I’m offering on a confidential basis, and you can decide what sort of offer to make. I’m confident you’ll come out tops. You’ll understand what this means, you’ve got the kind of vision the kombinate boards lack. And this needs someone with vision behind it, Julia.’
Dear Lord, he makes you want to vomit, NN core two said. So dreary and predictable.
This all sounds very familiar, Julia said. Do you think Clifford could be the one Mutizen stole the molecular structuring data from?
If they did, then where did he get it from? NN core one asked. Globecast doesn’t employ a single physicist.
Oh yes they bloody well do, my girl, Philip Evans said. I told you there was something wrong about Globecast bidding to acquire the Mou santa labs.
So you did, Grandpa. But they haven’t acquired it yet. Which means Mousanta can’t be the source. Did commercial intelligence come up with anything?
Sod-all! Idle buggers. You hit this Clifford, Juliet, hit him hard. Make him know he’s a cheap nobody.
Behind Clifford Jepson a couple of umpires had walked out on to the cricket square. They began to set up the wickets.
‘What’s the matter, Clifford?’ she asked. ‘Hasn’t Mousanta got the resources to hack the atomic structuring theory? Is that why you’ve come running to me and the kombinates to build the generator for you?’
‘Motherfuck!’ Clifford Jepson gasped.
It was all she could do not to laugh. His fall from oily confidence to bewildered fright was classic comedy. The lack of control surprised her, though, she hadn’t been expecting that, not from a trained executive. Another demonstration that he didn’t really have what it took. She could never understand why he carried on the arms trading. In his father’s day it was different, the post-Warming world was unstable, astutely placed arms shipments could quite often shift the balance of power in small countries. But now life had calmed down again, the only people who wanted arms on the black market were the alienated, increasingly bitter and desperate radical political groups. It made Clifford Jepson little more than an extension of the terrorists he served.
‘How?’ he demanded.
‘One has contacts.’
‘Not for that. Atomic structuring is the biggest ultra-hush there’s ever been.’
‘Not so, apparently.’
Squeeze him, Juliet, go for the slam. You can dictate your own terms now. I never did like the little bugger, not a patch on his father.
‘Do you still want to offer me a partnership?’ she asked.
‘I’ll consider any bid you submit.’
‘Good. Have your office contact Peter Cavendish. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. I’ll be generous, Clifford. The person who delivers the theory for a nuclear force generator to Event Horizon will be a very rich person indeed. I hope it’s you, Clifford, I really do. For old times’ sake.’
My girl, Philip Evans said smugly.
Ask him about the source, NN core two said.
‘Clifford.’ He looked at her, not angry. Wary, though, she thought, a wounded animal, cornered but prepared to fight. ‘If you provide me with your source, where you obtained the data from, I’ll offer you forty-five per cent royalties, and we’ll close the deal this afternoon.’
‘No way, Julia. You want the generator, you deal through me.’
‘As you wish.’ She rose to her feet, brushing down her skirt.
‘Hey, wait.’
‘Call Cavendish, you have the number. I’ll review what the two of you come up with; if I think it’s good enough, I’ll thumbprint on the dotted line. If not, your opposition get their big day.’
‘Who are they? Who else is offering this?’
She gave him a sweet smile. ‘No way, Clifford,’ said with her old Arizona twang. Philip Evans’s gusty laughter echoed through her brain, her cybernetic mind twins projected quiet satisfaction. She left an acutely flummoxed Clifford Jepson on the bench, and headed back to the marquee. Her bodyguards closed in to escort her.
An end-of-term-prankster had fastened a crude bra made out of pillowcases to the top of the flag-po
le above the school’s art and design block. It was flapping slowly in the breeze. The bishop and the governors had been facing it all through the speeches. Julia started to laugh.
12
The interest was trickling back into Greg’s brain, like a hit that charged his neurone cells with a dose of raw energy, leaving the mind clean, thoughts flowing with cold perfection. He hovered on the razor’s edge between satisfaction and dismay. Tracing the girl, and through her Royan, was supposed to be a duty, not one of love’s labours. But it felt good, the way he’d made it all come together in Monaco. Most of what they had learnt was negative information; it was a challenge making sense out of that. Dropped straight into a premier deal after fifteen years out in the cold, and still managed to hit the floor running. Not bad at all.
He knew Eleanor had feared this the most, that he’d enjoy himself, remember the good old days, how it used to be, the excitement and the danger. When they met she’d been more than a little impressed by the romance of being a private detective. Even now, time tended to obscure the years before that, when he was out on Peterborough’s streets; the brain’s natural defence mechanism fading out the pain and anguish associated with the Trinities. But if he really thought about it, those moments were there, hiding in the shadows beyond the firelight.
Eleanor didn’t have anything to worry about, he decided, not really. Chasing after Charlotte Fielder wasn’t about to trigger the male menopause. In any case, there was something slightly unreal about this investigation; carried from location to location in millionaire style, every fact uncovered pounced on by Victor’s division and Julia’s NN cores, producing a flood of profile data. All very swift and painless.
In fact the interest would be purely abstract if it hadn’t been for his eagerness to talk to Baronski, it was almost impatience. The Pegasus had to fly subsonically over land. He resented that, knowing how fast the plane could go.
There was something else fuelling his mood, though, something darker, his intuition imparting a sense of time closing in. He hadn’t confessed that to Suzi yet.