Mindstar Rising

  "Do you know what these are?" Greg asked Victor casually. He rested a hand on one of the three grey football-sized globes that were sitting on a leather-topped Edwardian writing desk. A Hitachi terminal was plugged into each of them with flat rainbow ribbons of optical cable. "They're Cray hologram memories. You can store half of the British library in one of these."

  Greg tapped the Hitachi's power stud. LCDs flipped to black across its pale-brown surface, forming a standard alphanumeric keyboard. The cube lit with the Crays' data storage management menu. "You'll note that they're kept in isolation, not plugged into the English Telecom grid. So nobody can hack in. After all, bytes are money, especially when you know how to market them as well as Medeor here."

  "What are you going to do?" Ellis's voice was a grizzled rasp coming from the back of his throat.

  "Whatever I have to." Greg read the menu codes and accessed the first Cray. "Sixty-two per cent capacity used up," he observed. "That's one fuck of a lot of data. Now I could go through a whole list of names I'm interested in and see which your mind flinches at, but that would be very time-consuming. So I'm just going to ask you to tell me instead. Who paid you to organise the blitz on the Event Horizon datanet?"

  Ellis shook his skeletal head, jaw clenched shut. "No."

  Greg showed his card to the Hitachi's photon key, using his little finger to activate it. The percentage figure began to unwind at an impressive speed as Royan's data-crash cancer exploded inside the Cray. He hadn't been totally sure it would work on lightware. Admitting now he should've had more faith. The percentage numerals vanished from the cube, sucked away down some electronic black hole. The cube placidly reverted to showing the menu.

  "No!" Ellis howled, an unpleasant high-pitched wheezing sound. He ignored Victor's unwavering Lucas pistol to stumble frantically across the lounge to the antique writing desk, looking down in consternation at the cube display. "Oh my God! Do you know what you have done?" His hands came up to claw at Greg, stopping impotently in midair. His face was contorted with fury. "There were seven million personnel files in there, everybody of the remotest interest in the country. Seven million of them! Irreplaceable. God curse you, gland freak."

  "Kendric di Girolamo," Greg said calmly.

  Stark horror leapt into his mind at the name.

  It was very strange; a circle of bright orange flame suddenly burst from Ellis's head to crown him with a blazing halo. For one fleeting moment his mind inveighed utter incomprehension, wild eyes beseeching Greg for an answer. Then the flickering mind was gone, extinguished in an overwhelming gale of pain. The corpse was frozen upright, steaming blood spewing fitfully out of its nose and ears. Its corona evaporated, there was no more hair to burn; the skull blackened, crisping. He heard the iron snap of bone cracking open from thermal stress.

  Realisation penetrated Greg's numbed thoughts as the reedy legs began to buckle, pitching the body towards him.

  "Down!" he screamed. And he was dancing with the corpse, slewing its momentum to keep it between himself and the silvered balcony door as he flung himself on to the fringed Wilton rug. They crashed on to the worn navy-blue weave together. There was a drawn-out sound of glass smashing as Victor tumbled to the floor behind him.

  Greg was flat on his back, the throat-grating stench of singed hair and charred flesh filling his nostrils. A wiry hand twitched on his thigh, not his. Ellis's dense curved weight pressed into his abdomen.

  "Jesus," Victor bawled. "Jesus, Jesus."

  "Shut up. Keep still."

  The air heaved, alive with raucous energy; creaking and groaning as it battled to stabilise itself. A pile of paper forms took flight from the Edwardian desk, rustling eerily as they fluttered about the invisible streamers of boiling ions. The end of the discharge came with an audible crack which jumped the carpet fibres to rigid attention, dousing them in a phosphorescent wash of St. Elmo's fire.

  Greg sent his espersense whirling, perceiving the star sparks of minds swilling through the concrete beehive maze of the Castlewood. Seeing the galvanised ember of victory fleeing.

  "OK, they've gone," he croaked through the backlash of neurohormone pain. Even that sliver of sound seemed distant.

  Victor was kneeling beside him, a rictus grimace on his face, rolling Ellis's body off. The back of the skull had cleaved open, a fried jelly offal spilling out.

  Victor wrenched aside and vomited; coughing, dry retching, and sobbing for an age. When his convulsions finished he was on all fours, his hair hanging in tassels down his forehead, skin sallow and filmed with cold sweat. "Jesus, what did that to him?"

  Greg looked at the wall opposite the balcony door; it was criss-crossed by narrow black scorch marks. Glass fragments from the cabinets were heaped on the carpet, figurines glowed a faint cherry pink on smouldering shelves. "Maser," he said. "Probably a Raytheon or a Minolta, something packing enough power to penetrate the silvering on the glass."

  "Bloody hell. What now?"

  Greg wriggled his legs from under the small of Ellis's back, and propped himself up on his elbows, gulping down air. Looking anywhere but at the ruined flesh at his feet. The world was a mirage, wavering nauseously. "Cover up. Call your squad, this apartment has got to be scrubbed clean, there must be nothing left to prove we ever visited. You'll have to take the body out tonight—cleaning truck, something like that. And get these Crays to Walshaw. Lord knows how long it'll take to go through their contents, though."

  "No police?"

  "No police. We need the Crays' data. Besides, I'd hate to try and explain what we were doing here. Let Ellis become another unperson, nobody's going to ask questions."

  "Oh. Yes." Victor was dazed, moving and thinking with a Saturday night drunk's shell-shocked apathy.

  "Call your squad now."

  "Right." He tugged his cybofax out of an inner pocket. "Your nose is bleeding."

  Greg dabbed at the flow with some of Ellis's tissues while Victor yammered out increasingly urgent instructions. Flies were beginning to feed on the open skull. Greg pulled a white lace tablecloth over Ellis, and collapsed into one of the low chairs, exhausted.

  "On their way," said Victor. "You want to flit, find a doctor or something?"

  "No. I think I'll just sit here for a minute. Oh, and be sure to have this place swept for bugs." His nose had stopped bleeding.

  Victor hovered anxiously, head swivelling round the apartment, missing the body each time. "Bloody hell, what a cock-up."

  "Not your fault. But it proves one thing."

  "What's that?"

  Greg gave him a battle-weary smile. "I'm close."

  "Yeah, but Greg . . . What have you got left now?"

  "A name. Confirmation."

  "That di Girolamo character you mentioned?"

  "Yep. It was beautiful the way Ellis's mind funked out. You should've seen it."

  "If you say so. This is all way above my head. Surveillance and backup, Walshaw says. You sit there and take it easy for a while. I'll see to the clean-up."

  "Sure." Greg drew his cybofax out of his leather jacket's inside pocket, taking care not to make any sudden motions. His brain sloshed from ear to ear each time his head moved.

  He flipped the cybofax open, and keyed the phone function with difficulty. His fingers were stiff, devoid of feeling.

  The cybofax bleeped for an incoming call. Unsurprised, he let it through. Knowing.

  Gabriel's face appeared on the little screen. "No," she said, with ominous resolution.

  "I'm sorry, but you have to. There's no one else."

  "No, Gregory."

  "Look at me, a proper look. Right now I couldn't even sense a tiger's brain if it was biting me."

  "Tell you, I've got to have psi coverage to get that girl out. You'll be saving lives, Gabriel. The Trinities will bloodbath the Miriam without perfect intelligence information—where Katerina is, where the crew are, and what they're tooled up with."

  "You're a bastard, Mandel."

  "No messing. See
you at the briefing."

  After that, it was the difficult call. Eleanor.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  True to prediction, one of the yachts docked at the same quay as the Mirriam was hosting a party. A brassy, high-wattage rave; hysterical guests spilling out on to the quay itself, dancing, drawing syntho, swilling down champagne. Perfect cover. By two o'clock in the morning it still hadn't peaked.

  At five minutes past two Greg walked down the quay with Suzi, the pair of them holding hands and laughing without a care in the world. He wore a dinner jacket that felt as though it was made of canvas, and reeked of starch. Suzi had slipped into a 1920s gold lamé dress, low-cut with near-invisible straps, a blonde bob wig covering her gelled-down spikes. With her size and figure she looked impossibly young—fourteen, fifteen, something like that. He reckoned that as a couple they fitted the scene perfectly. Anyone would think it was fathers and daughters night. Thank heavens for café society, immutable in a fluid world.

  They infiltrated the party fringes, anthropoid chameleons.

  Big Amstrad projectors were mounted on the yacht, firing holographic fireworks into the night. Upturned faces were painted in spicy shades of scarlet and green by carnation bursts of ephemeral meteorites.

  Suzi lingered to watch a girl dressed in a sequin bikini and dyed ostrich feathers limbo her way under a boathook held by two semi-paralytic Hoorays.

  Greg checked his watch and tugged Suzi's arm with gentle insistence, steering her into the wrap of darkness at the end of the quay. Three minutes before they had to be in position. The snatch had to be performed with exact timing; one mistake, one delay, a hesitation, and they'd be heading down the wrong Tau line and all Gabriel's planning would come to naught. He'd tried to emphasise that to the Trinities, drilling it in.

  The limbo girl failed to make it, overbalancing and winding up flat on her back. The flesh of her overripe body quivered with helpless laughter. One of the Hoorays poured champagne into her mouth straight from the magnum. She lapped at the foamy spray spilling down her cheeks, her mind light-years away.

  Greg and Suzi tottered away from the revellers. Nobody was paying them a second glance.

  "Lady Gee was right," Suzi said from the corner of her mouth. He could sense how tight her small body was wired, rigid with restless tension.

  The Trinities had been, to say the least, sceptical when Gabriel began outlining the evening's events. Their agnosticism had been whipped in staggered increments as the prophecies unfurled with uncanny precision—the party, which crewmen would leave the Mirriam for the evening, the exact time Kendric and Hermione left for the Blue Ball, the fact that Katerina had been left behind.

  Other couples had drifted into the seclusion of the quay beyond the party, exploiting the penumbra of privacy provided by covered gangplanks. Greg kept his eyes firmly on the Mirriam ahead; Suzi peeped unashamedly, chortling occasionally.

  Mirriam looked deserted, lit only by the intermittent spectral backwash from the Amstrads. Yet Gabriel had said there were seven people on board, two of Kendric's bodyguards, four sailors, and Katerina. She'd even reeled off their locations.

  Greg wished he could use his espersense to confirm, but that was a definite no-no. The anaemia which the neurohormones had inflicted on the rest of his body had lifted during the afternoon and physically he was shaping up, but another secretion would cripple his brain.

  They reached the Mirriam's gangplank and folded into the midnight shadows it exuded. He checked his watch again.

  "How about we go for total realism?" Suzi whispered with a giggle in her voice as she twined her hands round his neck.

  "Twelve seconds," he answered. The gangplank was one long pressure pad according to Gabriel.

  "Oh, Daddy, give it to me good," she yodelled.

  He could feel her shaking with laughter and a crazy burn of exhilaration.

  Right on time a voice said, "Hey, sorry folks, but you're gonna have to move along."

  Greg was facing the quay so he couldn't see the speaker, but he recognised Toby's baritone rumble. Besides, Gabriel said it would be him. He carried on smooching with Suzi.

  There was a faint vibration as Toby walked down the gangplank.

  "I said—"

  Suzi's Armscor stunshot spat a dart of electric-blue flame. Greg heard a startled grunt and turned just in time to catch Toby before he hit the gangplank. Asking himself why the hell he bothered.

  Suzi was racing up the gangplank. Greg followed dragging Toby. The bodyguard's breathing was ragged, slitted whites of his eyes showing in the fallout from the silent twinkling light-storm overhead.

  As always Greg experienced the conviction of operating under divine protection. With Gabriel's guidance he'd become omnipotent.

  Suzi ducked into the darker oval of an open hatch, fumbling her photon amp into place as she went.

  Greg pulled his own photon amp out of the dinner jacket's pocket. That reassuringly familiar pinching as the band annealed to his skin. Mirriam resolved into cold hard reality around him, nebulous leaden shadows stabilising into sharply defined blue and grey outlines.

  02:12:29, flashed the yellow digits.

  "At two hours, twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds GMT the crewman will exit the cabin-lounge door on to the afterdeck," Gabriel had said, her voice raised above the Trinities' scoffing.

  Greg dumped Toby on the glossy polished decking and ran for the afterdeck, black leather shoes squeaking.

  02:12:35.

  "At twelve minutes and forty-one seconds GMT he'll move into your line of sight."

  02:12:38.

  Greg stopped and assumed a marksman stance with his Armscor. Lining it up one metre wide of the corner of the superstructure.

  02:12:41.

  The crewman obviously knew something was amiss; he came round the corner of the superstructure fast, crouched low.

  The photon amp showed a monster crab scuttling right at him, metre length of pipe instead of claw. He fired.

  "The crewman's name is Nicky."

  Metallic clangour as the crab's erratic momentum skated him into the railing, pipe skittering away anarchically. "Bye, Nicky," Greg whispered.

  "Radar cancelled," Suzi's voice squawked in his earpiece. "God, this place is exactly like Lady Gee described it. Wild!"

  Greg finished up at the stern, scanning the glum water of the marina and its flotsam carpet of decaying seaweed. Oily ripples slapped lazily at Mirriam's hull.

  "On the taffrail you'll find a control box with six weather-proofed buttons. Press the second from the left."

  The box was there. Rigid forefinger pressing. A stifled drone of a motor lowering the diving platform ladder.

  The inflatable dinghy surged out of the gloaming, four figures hunched down, muffled engine cutting a hazy wake through the seaweed. It turned a finely judged arc and rode its bow wave to a halt at the foot of the ladder. The first three figures swarmed up the ladder, dressed in combat leathers and helmets. Des and two of his troop, Lynne and Roddy.

  They ignored Greg and crossed the deck to the half-open cabin-lounge door. Des slid it right back and the three of them rushed in.

  Greg leant over the taffrail to see Gabriel puffing her way up the ladder. She was wearing a balaclava and a heavy night-camouflage flak jacket, restricting her movements; it was the largest the Trinities had in stock. He put his hand down and diplomatically helped her over the railing.

  She tugged the balaclava off, wiping the back of her hand across her perspiring forehead. "We're too old for this Greg, you and I, believe me. If you weren't such a bloody ignorant stubborn bugger." A resigned smile lifted her lips. Shaking her head. "Crazy."

  Greg smiled fondly. "Tell you, I have a horrible feeling you may be right."

  "That's my boy." A sudden frown wrinkled her plump features. "Damn." She thumbed the comm set in her breast pocket. "Lynne, it's not that hatch, go to the next one, that's right. The crewman is standing behind the cowling."

  "Come on
," Greg said. "Time for you and I to rescue the damsel."

  "You know, Teddy's done a good job with those kids," Gabriel admitted grudgingly as they moved into the lounge. Greg negotiated the unfamiliar obstacles and found the central companionway. A tube of impenetrably black air, which even the photon amp had difficulty discerning.

  "Are we all right for some light?" he asked.

  "Yes. One moment."

  Greg heard her shut the lounge door, then the biolum strip came on. He peeled the photon amp off. Suzi slithered down a narrow set of stairs from the bridge.

  "Mega," she breathed, pulling off her wig and ruffing up her mauve spikes. "You got it spot on, Lady Gee. All of it. Where you said, when you said. It's fucking incredible."

  "Thank you, my dear."

  The three of them headed for the lower deck. Thick vermilion carpet absorbed their footfalls down the stairs. One of the crewmen was lying on the bottom step, his limbs shivering spastically from the stunshot charge. Des was waiting for them outside the master bedroom's door, helmet off, grinning broadly, his hair a dark sweaty mat.

  "All right!" he whooped blithely. "We breezed it, no problem. You ever need a job, Gran, you come'n see me, OK?"

  "You're too kind," Gabriel said.

  Des missed the mounting testiness, but Suzi winked at Greg, rolling her eyes for his denseness. Lynne and Roddy clattered up the stairs from the crew quarters below.

  "Shall we get on with it?" Gabriel said, hurriedly forestalling the compliment Lynne had opened her mouth to begin. She took an infuser tube out of her flak jacket and handed it to Suzi. "You'll need this."

  Suzi turned it over, mildly curious. "What for?"

  "She's a big girl."

  Des and Roddy exchanged a glance.

  "Is she armed?" Lynne enquired.

  "No."

  Greg knew that mood well enough, Gabriel at her most obdurate. There'd be no budging her now.

  He opened the bedroom door. There was a subdued pink light inside.

  "Hoo boy." Suzi groaned in pawky dismay. Des and Roddy piled in behind her for a look.

  Katerina was sprawled across a huge circular water-bed, wearing an Arabian harem slave costume; strips of diaphanous lemon chiffon held together with thin gold chains. It was a size too small, strained by the curves of her breasts and hips. The chiffon was so flimsy they could see her large areolas through it, dark purple-brown circles with aroused nipples.