The Mandel Files, Volume 1: Mindstar Rising & a Quantum Murder

  He was shown through the double doors into the hall by an old man in a butler’s tailcoat. The interior was as immaculate as he’d expected. Large dark oil landscapes hung on the walls; the antique furniture was delicate to the point of effete, chandeliers like miniature galaxies illuminated a vaulting ceiling: a décor which blended perfectly with the building. But it was all new, superimposed on the ancient shell by a stage dresser with an unlimited budget. The paint was glossy bright, the green and gold wallpaper fresh, the carpets unworn.

  Greg hadn’t known this kind of opulence existed in England any more. Yes, his usual clients were well off. But at most that meant a detached house with maybe three or four bedrooms; or some overseas-financed condominium apartment loaded with pieces of family heritage saved from the magpie acquisition fever of tax-office apparatchiks.

  Given normal circumstances the local PSP committee would’ve turned the manor into accommodation modules for about forty families who’d then work the surrounding land in some sort of communal farm arrangement, either a co-op or a fully fledged kibbutz. Wilholm’s renovation was recent, post-Second Restoration.

  The butler led Greg up a broad, curving stair to the landing, and he caught a glimpse of the formal gardens at the back. Bushes clipped into animal shapes sentried wide paths. A statue of Venus in the middle of the lily pond sent a white plume of water shooting high into the air. Spherical rainbows shimmered inside the cloud of descending spray.

  The inevitable swimming pool was a large oval affair, a good twenty metres long. A tall tower of diving boards stood guard over the deep end, and there was a convoluted slide zigzagging along one side. A couple of big inflatable balls were floating on the surface. Three teenagers cavorted about in the clear water; two girls, one boy.

  They seemed out of place, interlopers, their lively shrieks and splashes discordant with the funereal solemnity that hung through the rest of the manor.

  He was shown into Wilholm’s oak-panelled study; and the day finally began to pull together into some sort of sense. Philip Evans was waiting for him.

  There had been this girl, Greg couldn’t remember her name now, but the two of them had got rapturously drunk watching the coronation together. The triumph of the Second Restoration remained for ever buried in that alcoholic netherland, but he distinctly remembered Philip Evans sitting in the abbey’s congregation. The cameras couldn’t keep off him. A small man in his mid-seventies, stiff-backed, using a stick to assist his slow walk, but managing to smile brightly none the less.

  Philip Evans was the PSP’s bête noire; their Whitehall media department set him up as a hate figure, a campaign of vilification which left Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein standing. It’d backfired on them badly. Evans became a romantic pirate to the rest of the country. A living legend.

  Event Horizon’s cybernetic factories floated with blissful impunity in international waters, churning out millions of counterfeit gear systems each year. Molecular-perfect Korean flatscreens, French memox-crystal players, Brazilian cybo-faxes, a long, long list of the consumer goodies which R&D-starved State factories couldn’t match, and PSP economic policy prohibited importing.

  His fleet of Stealth transports made nightly flights over England, distributing their wares to a country-wide network of spivs like demonic Santas. They proved unstoppable. One of the PSP’s first acts on reaching office had been to disband most of the RAF.

  The black-market gear hurt the economy badly, undermining indigenous industries, turning more people to the spivs. A nasty downward spiral, picking up speed.

  Evans had changed for the worse in the intervening two years since the coronation. The flesh sagged on his face, becoming pasty-white, highlighting dark panda circles around his eyes. His hair had nearly gone; the few wisps remaining were a pale silver. And not even the baggy sleeves of his silk dressing-gown could disguise how disturbingly thin his arms were.

  He was sitting at the head of a long oak table. Two holo cubes flanked him, multi-coloured reflections from their swirling graphics rippling like S-bend rainbows off the highly polished wood.

  Greg sniffed the cool dry air; there was a tart smell in the study, peppery. Philip Evans was badly ill.

  The ageing billionaire dismissed his butler with an impatient flick of his hand. ‘Come in, Mandel. Can’t see you properly from here, boy, my bastard eyes are going along with the rest of me.’

  There was another man in the study, standing staring out of the window, hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t look round.

  Walking down the length of the table Greg saw that Evans was only whole above the waist. His legs and hips had been swallowed by the seamless cylindrical base of a pearl-white powerchair, torso fusing into an elastic chrome collar. It was a mobile life-support unit, analogue bioware organs sustaining the faltering body. But the mind was still fully active, burning hot and bright.

  Greg shook his hand. It was like holding a glove filled with hot water.

  ‘What do they call you, boy? Greg, isn’t it?’ The accent was pure Lincolnshire, blunt, as much an attitude as a speech pattern.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, I’m Philip, Greg. Now sit down, it ricks my neck craning up at you.’

  Greg sat, one chair down from Evans.

  ‘This is my security chief, Morgan Walshaw.’

  The man turned, looking at Greg. He was in his late fifties, with close-cropped grey hair; wearing a blue office suit, plain fuchsia tie. Shoulders squared. Definitely ex-military. The recognition was instantaneous. A mirror.

  Eyeing each other up like prize fighters, Greg thought. Stupid.

  ‘Mr Walshaw doesn’t approve of my asking you here,’ Evans explained.

  ‘I don’t disapprove,’ Walshaw said quickly. ‘I just consider this an internal affair; sorry, nothing personal.’

  Greg looked to Evans, politeness software loaded and running. Showing respect. ‘May I ask why you chose me in particular for a job? Random selection is, frankly, unbelievable.’

  ‘Haven’t decided whether you are going to do a job for me, yet, boy. You’ll have to prove you’re what I’m looking for first. I believe you cleared up a problem for Simon White last year? Delicate, a real ball-crusher. That right?’

  ‘I know Mr White, yes.’

  ‘All right, don’t go all starchy on me. I do business with Simon, he recommended you. Said you only work for the top man, keep your mouth shut afterwards. Right?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Greg said. ‘Naturally I offer confidentiality. But in taking on corporate cases I do so only for the board or chairman. Office politics are a complication I can do without.’

  ‘You mean I couldn’t hire you?’ Walshaw asked.

  ‘Only if the chairman approved.’

  ‘You’re ex-Army?’ the security chief persisted. ‘Mindstar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it was the Army which gave you your gland,’ Evans said. ‘How come you didn’t sign on with a kombinate security division after you were demobbed, or even turn tekmerc?’

  ‘I had other things to do, sir.’

  ‘You could’ve earned a fortune.’

  ‘Not really,’ Greg said. ‘The idea that gland psychics are some kind of superbreed is pure tabloid. If you want someone who can see through brick walls then I’m not your man. Glands are not an exact science. I tested out psi-positive with top marks on esp, so the Army volunteered me for an implant thinking I would develop a sixth sense that could pinpoint enemy locations, index their weapons and ammunition stocks. But the workings of the mind don’t follow a straight logical course. I was one of the disappointments, along with several hundred others. People like me were one of the major factors in the decision to abandon the Mindstar programme, and that was long before the PSP obliterated the defence budget.’

  ‘So what can you do?’ Evans asked.

  ‘Basically, I can tell if you’re lying. It’s a kind of super empathy, or intuition, a little mix of the two. Not much call for that on
the battlefield. Bullets rarely lie.’

  ‘Don’t run yourself down, boy. Sounds like you’ve got the kind of thing I’m looking for. So tell me, did I enjoy my breakfast orange?’

  Greg saw the gland, glistening ebony, pumping. Physically, it was a horrendously complex patchwork of neurosecretory cells; the original matrix had taken the American DARPA office over a decade to develop. An endocrine node implanted in the cortex, raiding the bloodstream for chemicals and disgorging a witches’ brew of neurohormones in return.

  The answer was intuitive: ‘You didn’t have orange for breakfast.’

  Morgan Walshaw blinked, interest awakened.

  Evans grunted gruff approval. ‘The last quarter profits from my orbital memox-crystal furnaces have been bad. True or false?’

  ‘They’ve been awful.’

  ‘You ain’t bloody kidding, boy.’ The chair backed out from the table, and trundled over to a window. Gazing mournfully across the splendid lawns, the billionaire said, ‘This job isn’t for my benefit. I suppose you know I’m dying?’

  ‘I guessed it was pretty serious.’

  ‘Lymph disorder, boy, aggravated by using the old devil deal hormone to keep my skin thick and my hair growing. So much for vanity, serves me right. This thing I’ve got, very rare, so they tell me. After all, it would never do for me to die of something common.’ He snorted contemptuously at his own bitterness. ‘Everything will go to my granddaughter, Julia. She’s the one out there in the pool; the brunette. The lovely one.’

  ‘What about her parents? Don’t they stand to inherit?’

  ‘Ha! Call ’em parents? Because like buggery I do. If I hadn’t paid off her mother she’d still be in that Midwest cult commune, smoking pot and screwing its leaders for Jesus. And that son of mine is incapable of taking on Event Horizon. Couldn’t anyway, even if he wanted. Legally incompetent.

  ‘Best detox clinics in the world have tried to straighten his kinks. Too late. He’s been on syntho so long – and I’m talking decades – the dependence is unbreakable. You cold-turkey his body and the lights go out. They shoved him through the whole routine – counselling, group analysis, deprivation motivation, work therapy – it amounted to one great big zero. The only time he even knows there’s an outside world is when he’s tripping.’ The anger rose again. ‘It’s fucking humiliating. I was prepared for some rebellion, a bit of antagonism between us. That’s the way it always is between father and son. But him! We had nothing, no love, not even hate. It was like everything I was achieving didn’t even register with him. He walked out the door on his twentieth birthday, and that was it, not another word for twenty-five years. The only reason I found out I had a granddaughter was because that freako cult he wound up with tried to leach me for donations.

  ‘That’s why I’ve got to safeguard the company. For her. I’m not going to last for much longer, and she doesn’t have the experience to take it on right away.’

  ‘But surely you’ll be leaving Event Horizon in the hands of trustees?’ Greg asked. ‘People you know can manage it properly.’

  ‘Damn right.’ There was a fierce spark of elation in Philip Evans’s mind. ‘Event Horizon has the potential to become a global leader in gear manufacture. While other, landbound, English companies rotted under the PSP’s intervention I bought in new cyber-production equipment for my factory ships, kept my overseas research people well funded. Now I’m moving it all back home, consolidating. The company’s growth potential is phenomenal; it’ll create jobs, foreign exchange, build and sustain a national supply industry, stop the sink back into an agrarian economy. We can match those bloody German kombinates, and the best the Pacific Rim Market can offer – new economic superpower, my arse. I’ll show ’em England isn’t dead yet.’

  ‘Sounds good. So why do you need me?’

  Evans scowled. ‘Sorry, I run on. Old man’s disease. By the time you accumulate the resources to accomplish something worthwhile, time’s up.

  ‘The problem, boy, is my orbital operation up at Zanthus. Someone is running a spoiler against the company. They’ve turned the operators of my microgee furnaces up at Zanthus, thirty-seven per cent of my memox crystals are being deliberately ruined. That adds up to seven million Eurofrancs a month.’

  Greg let out an involuntary whistle. He hadn’t known Event Horizon was that big.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Philip Evans said. ‘I can’t sustain that kind of loss for much longer. Lucky I caught it when I did—’ and there was a hint of pride at the accomplishment. Still on the ball, still the man. ‘The organizer circumvented some pretty elaborate security safeguards too. Means whoever they are they’re smart and organized.’

  ‘They’re clever all right,’ Walshaw conceded. He pulled out a black wood chair opposite Greg and sat down.

  ‘And even the security division is under suspicion,’ Evans said. ‘Including Morgan here, which is why he’s so pissed off with me.’

  Greg sneaked a glance at Walshaw, meeting impenetrable urbanity. The man had not – nor ever would – sell out. Greg knew him, the type, his motivation; he’d no grand visions of his own, the perfect lieutenant. And in Event Horizon and Philip Evans he’d found an ideal liege. The old billionaire must’ve understood that too.

  Walshaw nodded an extremely reluctant acknowledgement. ‘The nature of the circumvention does imply a degree of internal complicity, certainly knowledge of the security monitor procedures was compromised.’

  ‘He means the buggers are on the take, that’s what,’ Evans grumbled. ‘And I want you to root ’em out for me, boy. You’re about the nearest thing to independent in this brain-wrecked world. Trustworthy, as far as we can satisfy ourselves. So then: four hundred New Sterling a day, and all the expenses you can spend. How does that sound?’

  ‘Do I have to sign the contract in blood?’

  ‘Just don’t screw me about, boy. I’ve spent close on twenty years fighting that shit President Armstrong and his leftie stormtroops, now he’s gone I’m not going to lose by default. Event Horizon is going to be my memorial. The trailblazer of England’s industrial Renaissance.’

  Greg felt a twinge of admiration for the old man, he was dying yet he was still making plans, dreaming. Not many could do that. ‘Where do you want me to start?’ he asked.

  ‘You and I will go down to Stanstead,’ Morgan Walshaw said. ‘Assuming I’m trustworthy.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody sarcastic,’ Evans barked.

  ‘Stanstead is Event Horizon’s main air-freight terminal in England,’ Walshaw explained, quietly amused. ‘All our flights out to Listoel originate there.’

  ‘Listoel?’ Greg asked.

  ‘That’s the anchorage for my cyber-factory ships out in the Atlantic,’ Philip Evans said. ‘A lot of Event Horizon’s domestic gear is still built out there, and it’s where my spaceline, Dragonflight, is based. Anyone going up to Zanthus starts at Listoel.’

  ‘Calling in the management personnel and memox-furnace operators who are currently on leave won’t be regarded as particularly unusual,’ Walshaw said. ‘Once they arrive, you can use your gland ability to determine which of them have been turned. After that, you and a small security team will go up to Zanthus and pull whoever circumvented the security monitors, along with the guilty furnace operators working up there. We’ll fly up replacements from the batch you’ve vetted.’

  ‘You want me to go up to Zanthus?’ Greg asked. There was a sensation in his gut, as if he’d just knocked back a few brandies in rapid-fire succession.

  ‘That’s right, boy. Why, that a problem?’

  ‘No.’ Greg grinned. ‘No problem at all.’

  ‘It’s not a bloody holiday,’ Evans snapped. ‘You get your arse up there, and you stop them, Greg. Hard and fast. I’ve got to have something concrete to show my backing consortium. They’re due for the figures in another six weeks. I’ve got to have something positive for them, they’ll understand a spoiler, God knows enough of the kombinates are trying to throttle each o
ther rather than do an honest day’s work. What they won’t stand for is me dallying about whingeing instead of stomping on it.’ Philip Evans subsided, resting on the powerchair’s tall back. ‘That just leaves this evening.’

  ‘What’s happening this evening?’ Greg asked.

  ‘I’m throwing a small dinner party – some close friends and associates, one or two glams, plus Julia’s house guests. There’s a couple of people I want you to screen for me. I’ve invited Dr Ranasfari. He’s leading one of Event Horizon’s research teams, a genuine genius. I’ve got him working on a project I consider absolutely crucial to my plans for the company’s future. So you handle with care.’ Evans stopped, looking as uncomfortable as Greg had yet seen him. For a moment he thought it was the illness. But the old man’s mind was flush with an emotion verging on guilt. Walshaw had turned away, uninterested. Diplomatic.

  ‘The second …’ Philip Evans nodded vaguely at the window. ‘That lad out there … Adrian, I think his name is. Julia seems quite taken with him. Leastways, she doesn’t talk of hardly anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to him, not if he makes her happy. Nothing I want more than to see her smiling, she’s my world. It’s just that I don’t want her hurt. Now, I know you can’t expect eternal commitment, not at that age, and he seems pleasant enough. But make sure she’s not just another tick in his stud diary. Life’s going to be tough enough for her, being my heir, she surely doesn’t deserve bad-news boyfriends as well.’

  4

  There was a dinner jacket waiting for Greg in the guest suite after he’d finished bathing. It fitted perfectly. He put it on, feeling foolish, then went out to find his host. At least he had remembered how to do up his bow tie.

  The lights throughout the majority of Wilholm’s rooms were old-fashioned electric bulbs, drawing their power from solar panels clipped over the splendid Collyweston slates. He had to admit that biolums’ pink-white glow wouldn’t have done the classical décor justice. Evans had obviously gone to a lot of trouble recreating the old building’s original glory.