Their eyes met. It seemed as though time was stretching out. Then Rachel gave a little sigh of relief. ‘It’s all over now.’
After that, events became kind of remote, out of focus. All the biolums were activated as the bedroom filled with people. Excited babbling shouts echoed around her. Someone used a fire extinguisher on the burning wall, filling the air with chemicals and soot. Three people held on to poor old Kats, who was having blue-fit hysterics. Morgan Walshaw arrived at a dead run, face ashen.
Julia put out her arms to the security chief, as she used to do for her mother years past remembering; too weak to rise from the bed. He sat beside her as Dr Taylor discharged an infuser tube into Kats’ neck, his own arms going round her, squeezing tight, rocking her gently. Cheeks pressed together, his stubble. He held her for a long time, until everything in her mind quietened down, and the world didn’t hurt any more.
Trust. And it worked, for the very first time.
The shower was revitalizing, washing away the smell of sweat and fear. Julia felt herself come alive again under the sharp spray, hot lime-soaped water thrumming against her shoulders and back. It was a physical punctuation mark, she decided, separating out the past and future. She turned off the soap and let the suddenly icy water rinse her down.
The two would be different, she thought determinedly, as she stepped out on to the bathroom’s rich shag carpet.
Rachel was standing right outside the shower cubicle, still holding her Uzi, jaw set. She hadn’t been more than two metres away from Julia since she killed Steven.
A real live avenging angel.
After Julia towelled herself down, she chose a plain black cotton vest dress from her wardrobe; it seemed apt somehow, right for a born-again human, one with faith in herself, her pure self, unaugmented.
A big man called Ben was waiting for her in the bedroom when she came out of the bathroom, ruthlessly combing knots from her still-damp hair. She gave him a tight smile and he responded with a brief nod. Polite and respectful, perfect for a personal bodyguard. But then with Morgan choosing them, they all were.
‘How are you feeling?’ Rachel asked.
‘Still a bit dazed. It’s fading though. Remembering things isn’t so difficult now.’ Julia slipped a couple of big butterfly clips into her hair. ‘Let’s go.’
Her bedroom door was splintered around the lock. All Wilholm’s locks had been glitched by the virus. She nearly got the shakes again when she thought about that. If they hadn’t been glitched, Steven would have just walked straight in. Luck, or chance. Fate.
Rachel walked beside her, Ben taking up position a couple of paces behind. At least she didn’t have to be shown the way to the study, that was too ingrained. But she simply couldn’t match a name to the face of one of the manor’s anxious-looking domestic staff as they walked past. It was definitely a member of staff, though. That was something.
‘Thank you, Rachel,’ she said, suddenly shy.
‘What for? You did all the work. Even after all you’d been through you held it together just perfect. Most of us would’ve gone completely to pieces. By rights you ought to sack the lot of us. Some bodyguard I turned out to be.’
‘No. Steven wasn’t your fault. How could we have known?’
‘It’s my job to be suspicious. All that sudden calling in sick every time your psychic friend Mandel turned up. I should have known.’
Julia frowned. That couldn’t be right. Greg and Steven were both working for Kendric. Weren’t they? She requested a logic matrix. ‘Oh,’ she sighed in disappointment. The loss of the nodes was going to take some getting used to.
‘I don’t want you to worry any more,’ Rachel said. ‘No greasy little hardline tekmerc is going to get near you. Not with us here.’
Julia could see Rachel was bottling up a core of hearty excitement, almost as if she relished the prospect of a tekmerc attack. It sent little roots of doubt into Julia’s mood, because it made her seem like nothing more than an excuse for the two sides to let fly at one another, they enjoyed it.
‘Isn’t that right, Ben?’ Rachel called over her shoulder.
‘God’s honest truth, Miss Evans.’
Julia turned at the unexpectedly mellow voice, giving an embarrassed little grin. ‘That’s just Julia, please.’
He nodded warmly.
Rachel tipped her a wink as she pushed the study door open. The lock had disappeared, leaving a rough semicircle of charred wood. Morgan had been in a hurry.
She walked in feeling better than she had any right to. Rachel had never spoken to her like that before. Friendly. Who’d have thought it?
There were about ten people in the study, four of them sitting at the paper-littered table. She could name seven, five in security, two manor staff. The buzz of conversation faded out, all heads turning to look at her. She saw concern and relief register in their faces. They cared about her.
Morgan rose from his seat and she went to his side.
‘OK now?’ he asked tenderly.
‘Yah. Thank you.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’d like to thank all of you, actually. I’m really very grateful for your support.’ She sat quickly, not meeting eyes. The chair was the one next to Morgan’s, she’d always sat at the head of the table before, or opposite him. No more. She sensed Rachel take up position behind her. ‘What happened?’
‘Ha, you tell me,’ Morgan said.
‘Grandpa said someone had managed to squirt a Trojan into him.’ Julia glanced up at the rustle of sounds, smiling faintly at the curious glances thrown at her. Her finger lined up on the NN core, ultra-hush belonged in the past too. These were her people, they had a right to know. ‘His memories are in there, translocated before he died. Still are from what I can gather. He shut himself down to stop the virus spreading. Once we write an antithesis program we can unlock him.’ She stopped, pleased with herself, gear terminology had all been node-referenced.
‘The NN core’s still drawing power,’ Morgan said. ‘Small but constant.’
‘Great. What do we do in the mean time?’
‘Stay put, I’m afraid. We don’t have a lot of choice.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Piers will tell you.’
Julia knew that name. Piers Ryder, one of the security division staff, technical.
He was sitting on the other side of the table from her, none too happy at being the centre of attention, reflected in a slightly strained voice. ‘One of the assault methods we anticipated was an attempt to knock out the defence gear around the manor with a virus program as a prelude to hardliner physical penetration. Consequently, the gear is all designed to revert to a fully autonomous mode if such a virus is detected in the security datanet. And that’s exactly what has happened. For all its power this virus is easily detectable, in fact you can’t fail to notice it. From what I’ve managed to ascertain it only attacks databus management programs, the ’ware processors themselves are left unscathed. Basically it’s a spoiler virus, it can’t do any actual damage.’
‘Really?’
Piers Ryder shifted at the irony in her drawl, dislodging some of the sheets of hard copy he’d covered in thin wavery handwriting. ‘I mean, not long-term damage.’
‘So it was aimed at the security gear rather than Grandpa’s NN core?’ Julia asked.
‘That’s what I think. There would be no point in directing it at a bioware core; as you’ve seen, the programs stored inside won’t actually suffer any damage. The hotrod who squirted it in must have known that.’
‘Which implies that we’re going to have visitors sometime soon,’ Morgan Walshaw said.
‘Then why are we still here?’ she asked. ‘The finance division offices are just as secure. And they won’t know I’m there if we move fast.’
Ryder took an awkward breath. ‘Miss Evans, Wilholm’s defences will shoot anything larger than a rabbit which moves inside the grounds, apart from the sentinels.’
‘Including us?’ Julia asked incred
ulously.
‘If anyone were to step outside, then yes.’
‘We’re perfectly safe,’ Morgan Walshaw said. ‘Just can’t get out, that’s all.’
‘All!’
‘And no one can get in. The attack has failed, Julia.’
‘You hope.’
‘We’re patrolling the manor on the inside. I’ve got lookouts with photon amps scanning the gardens. If anyone does get past the sentinels and the defence gear they’ll be sitting ducks for our hand-lasers.’
‘Oh.’ Julia tried to spot a flaw in his reasoning, and couldn’t, to her immense relief. ‘Guess we’re going to be all right, then.’
‘Good girl. We’ll just sit it out in here for the rest of the night.’
Julia realized that there was something Ryder hadn’t said. ‘How long before your team finishes the antithesis program?’ she asked him.
‘There’s only me here,’ Piers Ryder replied. ‘I can’t do anything by myself, you need a lightware cruncher to write an antithesis.’
‘Haven’t they even given you an estimate?’
‘We can’t talk to anyone outside, Julia,’ Morgan said.
‘Why not?’
‘The virus has contaminated all the communications consoles. Your grandfather’s NN core was plugged into every landline, ours and English Telecom’s.’
‘Well, what about the satellite uplinks?’
‘Same problem,’ said Piers Ryder. ‘Even the dish servos are glitched.’
‘So use a cybofax.’
Piers Ryder looked crestfallen, he glanced at Morgan Walshaw for support. The security chief responded with an empty wave.
‘One of the security systems protecting the manor is an all-spectrum electromagnetic jammer,’ said Piers Ryder. ‘We thought a tekmerc penetration squad would have to be equipped with some kind of military-grade communication gear to co-ordinate their assault. A commercial cybofax couldn’t possibly break through the jamming blanket. I’m sorry.’
Julia felt a pang of sympathy for Ryder. ‘Don’t apologize, I had no idea I was so well protected.’
‘The security office in Peterborough will know exactly what’s happened,’ Morgan said smoothly. ‘They’ll be working on it now.’
‘All they need is the antithesis,’ Ryder said earnestly. ‘Once they’ve cracked it, they’ll load it into the company datanet and send it into our communications consoles through the optical cables, it’ll flush the virus in seconds.’
‘Right then.’ Julia gave them all a bright smile.
Morgan sensed her agitation had ebbed, and relaxed into his chair. He’d already drawn up schedules for the patrols on the back of hard-copy sheets. Even his terminal’s dot-matrix printer was glitched.
The security people began marshalling Wilholm’s domestic staff into a bedroom near the study. Morgan said he didn’t want anyone but the patrols moving through the manor. Julia stayed in the study, where there would always be at least four security hardliners in the room with her.
Tea arrived in an ornate silver pot and she went round silently, pouring for everyone. Morgan smiled fondly as she offered him the biscuits. Ginger nuts, his favourite. Now, she remembered that. Funny what had stuck.
38
The marine-adepts’ Bedford van stank of stale water-fruit and pigshit; its thirty-year-old combustion engine wheezed asthmatically from the methane it was burning, a fuel it’d never been designed to run on. Eleanor neither noticed nor cared about its failings, the van moved, and that was all that mattered right now.
Nicole drove, hunched forward over the steering-wheel, staring myopically down the weak beams its headlights threw along the narrow uneven road. There weren’t any doors; wind whipped through the cab, frosting Eleanor’s legs.
‘Should be along here somewhere,’ the marine-adept woman said.
‘Greg said it looks just like a farm road.’
‘Right.’ Nicole leaned even further forwards, nose almost touching the cracked windscreen. ‘What the hell’s this?’
As they turned a corner Eleanor saw about fifteen cars and four methane-fuelled Transit vans parked along both sides of the road, all of them had flashing lights on top, blue and orange in equal numbers. ‘Police?’ The ever-present fear increased its hold.
‘Some of them.’
Nicole slowed. A uniformed bobby was standing in the middle of the road, flagging them down. The headlights of the parked vehicles had been left on, casting pale beams of light along the tall hedgerows, turning the leaves grey. There were a lot of people milling about on the road, less than half were wearing police uniforms, the rest had green nylon windcheater jackets with Event Horizon’s logo across the back.
The bobby looked into the cab and smiled. ‘Evening ladies, won’t keep you a moment. There’s a C9 division van backing off the road up ahead.’
‘I have to get to Wilholm manor,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Julia Evans.’
The bobby looked her slowly up and down. Eleanor had thrown a thick lumberjack shirt over her swimsuit, and there were some borrowed trainers on her feet. His eyes tracked her long bare legs. ‘Oh yes, ma’am?’
Nicole didn’t turn her head, gripping the wheel tighter.
‘Please, I really do.’
‘Name?’
‘Eleanor Broady.’
The bobby pulled out a slim cybofax and typed quickly. Eleanor’s heart sank.
‘I don’t think you do, Miss Broady,’ he said.
‘Well, it’s really Morgan Walshaw I’m booked to see.’
He began to walk away. ‘Drive straight through when the road’s clear.’
‘Arsehole,’ Nicole muttered.
‘What is going on here?’ Eleanor could see the big van ahead, creeping into a gap between two powerful Vauxhall ground-cruisers with the Event Horizon logo on their sides, there were armed men inside.
‘Lotta heavy shit going down.’
They both jumped at the voice. There was a young man standing on the running board next to Nicole, dressed in a black jumpsuit with a rubbery collar which came up to his chin.
Familiar face, unpleasant memory. ‘Des, isn’t it?’ Eleanor asked.
Des grinned wolfishly. ‘Kinda memorable, right? Listen, Father’s hung out a hundred metres past the last of the pigs. See ya there.’ He jumped off.
Nicole grunted and shoved the Bedford into gear and they growled slowly between the lines of stationary vehicles. Eleanor saw what must’ve been Wilholm’s entrance, a cattle grid which opened into the fields of sugar cane. It was illuminated from below by a harsh orange light, as though something was burning beneath it. Several people were standing watching it, none venturing particularly close.
It was Suzi they saw first, standing in the middle of the road, hands planted firmly on her hips. She was wearing the same kind of jumpsuit as Des, a photon amp across her eyes, and a maroon beret on her head. She waved them on to the grass verge.
Nicole pulled over and switched off the engine and lights. Eleanor looked round to see Suzi marching determinedly down the road towards the ant’s nest commotion outside the manor’s entrance.
Teddy swarmed into the cab, sitting beside Eleanor. ‘ ’Lo there, Nicole, thanks for bringing her.’
‘No problem. Good seeing you again Ted.’
Eleanor hadn’t known they knew each other. The military mates thing again.
‘OK, we’ve got problems,’ Teddy said. ‘Royan can’t access Wilholm to see what the hell’s going down; the manor’s ’ware has been burned by a virus. Event Horizon and English Telecom have both physically unplugged it from their networks, it was doing too much damage hooked in. Half of Peterborough’s telephones have already been glitched by the fallout.’ His thumb jerked back towards the entrance. ‘That’s why the cavalry’s here.’
‘Someone’s attacked the manor’s ’ware again?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Yeah, third time. Persistent buggers.’
‘Why are the police waiting out
here?’ she asked. ‘Why haven’t they gone in?’
‘Can’t,’ said Teddy. ‘All the manor’s defence gear is running loose. They’ve got to deactivate it first, which ain’t gonna happen before morning, some of that stuff is seriously hazardous. And when they do get in the likes of you and I aren’t gonna be first on the guest list.’
‘But we’ve got to find out about Greg, it’s been hours!’ Eleanor felt Nicole’s restraining hand on her shoulder, sympathetic, alleviating some of the anguish.
‘I know, gal. Looks like we’re gonna have to go in ourselves if we want some answers.’
‘Hey, Father.’ Suzi calling with soft urgency.
Teddy and Eleanor climbed out of the cab.
Suzi had a man in tow, oriental looking with a young face, wearing one of the Event Horizon jackets. ‘Man here is Victor Tyo,’ Suzi said. ‘Met him last night, one of Julia’s security people. Captain no less.’
‘I know you,’ Eleanor said quickly. ‘You went up to Zanthus with Greg.’
Victor Tyo seemed puzzled. ‘That’s right, although can’t say I remember you. I’m sure I would do.’
‘Greg’s my man,’ she said simply.
‘And we’d like to know what’s happened to him,’ Suzi said.
‘Happened?’
‘Yeah,’ said Teddy. ‘He never got back home after snatching that phyltre junkie from the di Girolamo yacht. Eleanor here is loaded up with grief about that. You know anything about it?’
Victor glanced round at the circle of faces. ‘I don’t understand. Greg left the finance division offices right ahead of Miss Evans’s convoy.’
‘When?’
‘About half-past four this morning.’
‘You saw him leave?’
‘Yes, he had Miss Thompson with him in the Duo. He said he’d be back later to help analyse some holomemories we’d acquired.’
‘The Crays from Ellis?’ Teddy asked.
‘How did you know?’
‘Always cover yourself, Victor. Someone you trust. And don’t sweat yourself, man, I ain’t interested in no corporate politics. So Greg never showed today at all, right?’