‘Yes. Theoretically, all you need is a single cell. A stamen is more than sufficient.’
Greg rubbed a hand across his temple. ‘I doubt it would be the girl who took the sample.’
‘Why not?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Purely because she is just the courier, especially if Rachel is right about her being a whore.’
‘Courtesan,’ Julia corrected. ‘Don’t fall into the mistake of thinking she’s a dumb go-between. Believe you me, at that level there’s a difference. She’ll be smart, well educated, and knowledgeable.’
‘OK,’ said Victor. ‘But smart or not, courtesans don’t own genetic labs.’
‘I agree,’ said Greg. ‘Somebody else apart from us knows about the alien. But until we know more about the girl, I couldn’t even begin to guess who.’
‘Exactly,’ said Julia. ‘So will you take some extra hardliners?’
‘Maybe a couple. But they stay in the background.’
‘I’ll brief them myself,’ said Victor.
Eleanor rested her head well back on top of the settee’s cushioning, eyes slitted as she stared at the ceiling. ‘What did the government say about the alien?’ she asked.
Greg watched Julia flinch at the question. He’d never seen her do that before, not in seventeen years.
‘They don’t know yet,’ Julia mumbled reluctantly.
‘When were you planning on telling them?’
‘As soon as the situation requires it.’
‘You don’t think it does yet?’ Eleanor asked.
‘All we have is supposition, so far.’
‘And the genes. They convinced you.’
‘The point is, what could the government do that I can’t? Order a strategic defence network alert? I really don’t think neutral particle beam weapons and pulsed X-ray lasers are going to be an awful lot of use against the kind of technology which moved a ship between stars, and did so undetected. Besides, think of the panic.’
‘All right,’ Eleanor said uncertainly. ‘But we have to make some preparations.’
‘Event Horizon is preparing,’ said Victor. ‘We’re assembling a number of dark specialist teams, spreading them through our facilities, kitting them out with top-line equipment.’
‘What use is that?’ Eleanor demanded indignantly.
‘Listen, I can’t believe we’re facing some kind of military action,’ Julia said. ‘But so far these aliens have been acting in a very clandestine fashion. If push comes to shove, then Earth is going to lose. No question about it. So we roll with the punch; if we can’t fight interstellar technology, we acquire it for ourselves, and fire it right back at them.’
Greg turned to watch the sailors on the reservoir. There was something cheerfully reassuring about the brightly coloured triangles of cloth slicing across the water. A nice homely counterbalance to this vein of raw insanity which had erupted into his life.
He didn’t like the connotations interstellar technology was sparking off in his intuition. Though he had to admit Julia had the right idea. If they couldn’t be beaten with hardware, use innate human treachery against them.
And what does that say about us as a species?
5
Jason Whitehurst was right, she should have paid more attention to his data profile. He did have a yacht, of sorts, the Colonel Maitland; it was an old passenger airship he had bought and converted into an airborne gin palace.
After the Newfields ball, Whitehurst’s limousine had driven the three of them halfway around the Monaco dome’s perimeter road before turning off. A covered bridge linked the dome to the city-state’s airport, a circular concrete island fifteen hundred metres east of the Prince Albert marina. They’d driven past the terminal building and across the apron to a Gulfstream-XX executive hypersonic. The plane was a small white arrowhead shape, with a central bulge running its whole length, twin fins at the back. With its streamline profile, embodying power and speed, it would have been easy to believe it was some kind of organic construct.
Charlotte ducked under the wing’s sharp leading edge and climbed the aluminium stairs through the belly hatch. The cabin was windowless, a door leading forwards into the cockpit, another at the aft bulkhead for the toilet, there were ten seats. A smiling steward in a dark purple blazer showed her how to fasten the belt. Jason sat at the front; and Fabian sat opposite her, his greedy smile blinking on and off.
And that was it. There was no passport and immigration control, no customs, no security search. Jason Whitehurst’s money simply overrode the mundane protocols of everyday existence, an intangible bow wave force clearing all before his path. Even so, she thought there should’ve been some kind of formality. But at least she didn’t see the creep with the cool eyes this time.
Charlotte had actually dozed on the short flight. She woke as the steward touched her shoulder. The back of Fabian’s head was descending through the hatch.
She glanced about in confusion as she came down the hypersonic plane’s stairs. The Gulfstream had landed on a circular VTOL pad. A stiff chilly breeze plucked at her gown. They were definitely out at sea, she could taste the freshness of the air. But all she could see past the lights ringing the pad was a band of night sky, stars twinkling with unusual clarity, there was no sign of the sea, no sound of water. A bright orange strobe light was flashing two hundred metres ahead of the Gulfstream’s nose, seemingly suspended in space. That was when she started to realize where they were.
‘Welcome to my yacht, my dear,’ Jason Whitehurst said with a touch of irony.
Charlotte lifted her mouth in a smile. ‘Thank you, sir.’
He wagged a finger.
‘Jason,’ she corrected.
‘Good girl.’
We must be right on top of the airship, she thought. But it’s so stable, even in the breeze, it must be massive.
Fabian had disappeared through a door at the rear of the pad. Jason guided her courteously towards it.
Charlotte yawned widely, covering her mouth quickly. ‘Excuse me,’ she apologized.
‘Tired, my dear? You were out like a light on the plane.’
‘I’m sorry, you must think me dreadfully rude. I’ve been on my feet for thirty-six hours. I’ve only just returned from my holiday. It’s been planes and airport lounges all day, I’m afraid.’
They went through the door into a well-lit corridor. Fabian was waiting by a lift.
‘That sounds most interesting,’ Jason Whitehurst said. ‘I shall enjoy hearing all about your travels tomorrow over lunch.’
Charlotte’s heart sank.
The lift door hummed open. Everything was made out of composite, she noted – walls, floor, ceiling.
‘Fabian, I think you had better see your lady guest to one of the spare cabins for tonight,’ Jason Whitehurst said. ‘Dear Charlotte is terribly tired. I think she needs a night’s rest. She can move into your room tomorrow.’
And that cleared up any possible ambiguities about the situation, Charlotte thought. Clever of him, reassuring his son in front of her.
Fabian’s face fell. ‘Yes, Father.’
She shared the lift with Fabian. He kept giving her fast glances, suddenly nervous again. She thought she’d succeeded in putting him at ease while they were dancing. ‘How old are you?’ he asked quickly. ‘I mean … you don’t have to say. Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I’m twenty-one, Fabian.’
‘Oh.’ He stared at the stainless-steel control panel beside the door. ‘I was fifteen a few months back, actually. Well more like nine months, really.’
According to the data profile Baronski had squirted over to her, Fabian had celebrated his fifteenth birthday barely a fortnight ago. ‘That’s nice.’
Fabian blushed. ‘Why?’
‘Because people will still treat you like a kid. But you’re not. It means you can get away with murder.’
His jaw worked silently for a moment. ‘Ah, yes, right.’
The lift doors opened on the gondola?
??s upper deck. He showed her down a long corridor to her cabin. She began to wonder again about the size of the Colonel Maitland.
‘Thank you, Fabian,’ she said when the cabin door slid open.
‘Sleep as long as you want. There’s nothing rigid about meals on board. The cooks will always get you something to eat whenever you ask them. That’s what they’re here for.’ He flipped the hair from his eyes. ‘Would you like to come swimming with me tomorrow?’
‘Swimming? In an airship? What do you do, jump into the sea?’
Just for a moment a genuine fifteen-year-old’s grin flashed over his face. ‘No, nothing like that. I’ll show you.’
‘Sounds fun. That’s a date, then.’
She woke to the faintest of buzzing sounds, having to concentrate hard to be certain she wasn’t imagining it. It seemed to rise and fall in some strange cycle of its own. There was no accompanying vibration. She thought it might be the propellers.
Her cabin was stylish and luxuriant, vaguely reminiscent of a nineteenth-century steamship. Wooden dresser and chests, mossy sapphire carpet, biolum globes like giant opals, pictures of pre-Warming landscapes on the walls. Three sets of mulberry curtains along one wall emitted a dull glow. A remote unit was sitting on the bedside cabinet.
She found the button for the curtains, and rolled off the bed as they drew apart, revealing long rectangular windows with brass frames.
Colonel Maitland was cruising three or four kilometres above the Mediterranean. The water below shone with a rich clear blue hue, while wave-tops shimmered brightly creating a silver glare. She had never flown over the Mediterranean like this before. Hypersonics flew so high and fast that details blurred to non-existence, seas were reduced to a formless blue plane. But this view was hypnotic. She could see ships down there, trailing long V-shaped wakes; bulk cargo carriers, rusty splinters no bigger than her thumb nail.
There was a light tapping on the door. Charlotte looked round the cabin, and saw a towelling robe on the foot of the bed. She slipped into it.
‘Come in.’
It was a maid, a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a plain black knee-length tunic, her mouse-brown hair wound into a neat bun. She curtsied. And she got it right, too, Charlotte noticed.
‘Did madam have a pleasant rest?’ The maid’s English was slightly accented. Slavonic?
‘There’s no need for that nonsense in private,’ Charlotte said.
‘Madam?’
That hurt. Formality was the way a patron’s household staff told her they thought she was on a social stratum way below them, about equal to the family pets. Dumb, pampered, and good at tricks. ‘I had a very pleasant rest. Is the rest of the ship up and about?’
‘It is nearly eleven o’clock, madam.’
Charlotte blinked in surprise. When she looked out of the windows again she saw the sun was well up in the sky.
She cocked her head at it, finding something vaguely disconcerting about its appearance. Whatever the anomaly was, she couldn’t quantify it.
‘Mr Whitehurst is expecting me for lunch,’ Charlotte said. ‘What time is that?’
‘Twelve fifty, madam.’
Charlotte ran her hands through her hair. ‘I’ll take a shower first. Where are my clothes?’ The gown she’d worn to the Newfields ball was draped over a chair. She’d been so tired last night she couldn’t be bothered even to find a hanger for it. Now the material was probably creased beyond rescue.
The maid opened a drawer. Charlotte recognized some of her clothes folded neatly. When had that been done?
‘Would madam like me to assist in the bathroom? I am a trained manicurist.’
‘You know how to do hair as well?’
A slight bow.
‘Good, in that case you can give me a hand.’ And get that nice clean tunic all wet and soapy as well.
The maid slid open a varnished pine door to reveal a bathroom. It was all marbled surfaces and extravagant potted ferns.
The marble must be fake, Charlotte decided. They couldn’t possibly afford the weight, not even in this airship. Jason Whitehurst giving his guests fake marble. She grinned.
‘Mr Jason said to be sure your choice of day attire was a suitable one for a companion of Master Fabian’s,’ the maid said. Her face was beautifully composed. ‘I took the liberty of laying out one or two of the briefer items from madam’s wardrobe. I hope they meet with your approval, there were so many to select from.’
‘Why, thank you, I’m sure your knowledge in that area is unmatched.’ Charlotte swept regally into the bathroom. One all. But it was shaping up like a long dirty war.
Lunch was difficult. They ate in the aft dining-room on the gondola’s upper deck; looking out at the stern of the airship. Charlotte discovered she had been quite right about the Colonel Maitland, it was vast; seven hundred metres long, a hundred and twenty in diameter. Its fuselage was made up from sheets of solar cells, a glossy black envelope reflecting narrow ripples of sunlight in mimicry of the sea below.
Jason Whitehurst sat at the head of the table, with his back to the curving band of windows. Charlotte and Fabian sat on either side of him, facing each other. Fabian was doing his best not to stare. But once or twice she thought she caught that glint of anticipation on his face again.
As she worked her spoon into the avocado starter Charlotte watched the translucent blur of the contra-rotating fans at the stern. The Colonel Maitland was making a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. She hadn’t known airships could travel so fast, her mind classing them as lumbering dinosaurs.
‘Oh no, not at all,’ Jason Whitehurst said when she mentioned it. ‘Even the previous generation of rigid airships in the nineteen-thirties were reaching speeds around a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. Flat out, the Colonel Maitland can make a hundred and eighty. It used to cruise at about a hundred and fifty when it was on the trans-Pacific passenger run.’
‘This was a passenger ship?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Airships came into their own after the Warming and the Energy Crunch. Damnable era, that one, the whole world went positively insane for over a decade. Still, I expect that was before your time, my dear. And very fortunate you were too, missing it. But after the jet fleets were grounded by impossibly expensive fuel, beauties like the old Colonel were all we had until Event Horizon cracked the giga-conductor’s molecular structure. After that, of course, everybody went bloody speed mad. Hypersonics, spaceplanes; nothing but rush and bustle. One shouldn’t complain, one supposes; the world is a better place now, so everyone says. But airships have such class. That’s why I couldn’t resist buying this old chap when it came on the market.’
Charlotte took a sip of her white wine. This assignment was turning into a complete waste of time. Jason Whitehurst spent most of his time on board the Colonel Maitland, so he said, only touching the ground for parties like the Newfields ball and other social events, the occasional business meeting. His trading empire was mostly handled by his cargo agents, and ninety per cent of his financial business conducted via private satellite relays. That didn’t bode well at all. A large part of her arrangement with Baronski was listening to table talk. It was amazing what premier-grade kombinate executives and company chairmen would say when they were relaxed in a convivial atmosphere, safe amongst their own. Of course, they didn’t expect her to follow a word of what they were saying. Youth, a pretty face, and a perfect figure equals no brain at all. So the next day she would call up Baronski, and he played the bytes of insider knowledge on the stock markets. Charlotte only got two per cent on that deal, but it would often come to more than the price her patron’s gifts brought in.
Except now there were no guests on board, nor any prospect of them before they reached Odessa. And Fabian was supposed to be her patron; the only gifts she was likely to get from him would be rock concert tickets and a Playboy channel subscription.
One of the waiters brought her a chicken salad. Charlotte waited until Jason Whitehurst started
eating, then tucked in. Her usual patrons, with their overhanging bellies and multiplying chins, tended to become irritable when they saw her nibbling at her food while they chomped their way through five-course meals, it showed them up. So she had had her digestive enzymes alerted with biochemicals to reduce her digestion rate; now it didn’t matter how much she ate, she didn’t put on weight. With slenderness guaranteed, a simple regimen of light exercise was all she needed to keep her ballerina muscle tone.
‘So where did you take this holiday of yours?’ Jason Whitehurst asked.
‘New London.’
‘No, really?’ Fabian stopped eating, his fork halfway to his mouth. ‘You mean the asteroid?’
‘Yes.’
The boy’s eyes shone. ‘What’s it like?’
Charlotte moistened her lips with the wine again. ‘Formidable. The flight out leaves you with a most peculiar impression; it’s both big and small at the same time. On the approach you see this huge mountain of rock adrift in space halfway out to the moon. Then, inside, it’s a tiny little worldlet, the centre hollowed out and planted with trees and grass and crops. Yet even that is big, because you can see it all, and know how small you are by comparison.’
‘Crikey. I’d like to get up there myself sometime.’
‘When you’re older,’ Jason Whitehurst said.
‘Yes, Father.’
Jason Whitehurst reached over, and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Ah, impatience of youth. Just wait a few more years, Fabian, you can do what you like after that. Tell your poor old father to get stuffed then.’
Fabian did a half-squirm below his father’s hand, glancing anxiously at Charlotte, so obviously fearful of how she would interpret the gesture. Daddy’s little boy.
‘I imagine there can’t be very much to do up there,’ Jason Whitehurst said.
‘Oh no, there’s much more to it than the microgee industries and Event Horizon’s mineral mining operation,’ Charlotte said. ‘They’re trying to develop it as a finance and tourist centre.’