Mindstar Rising

  Katerina batted drowsy eyelids at the five faces staring down at her. "I'm ready," was all she said.

  Roddy let out a low admiring whistle. "Makes it all kind've worthwhile, doesn't it?"

  Des sniggered.

  "For God's sake find something to wrap her in," Greg said. Annoyed at their abrupt lapse of discipline. Hardly surprised, though. The porno-starlet stage setting sapped any sense of urgency. He let out a hiss of breath, silently cursing Gabriel for not warning him. "Suzi, help me get her up."

  Katerina looked up with innocent bewilderment as they each took an arm and tugged her into a sitting position. "I remember you," she said to Greg. "Will you make it happen, too?"

  "Not tonight."

  "But this is the paradise place. The hurt and the wonder always happens here."

  "Bollocks, what's she on?" asked Suzi.

  "Phyltre. Stuff's blowing her brain apart."

  Katerina turned her head to focus on Suzi. "Can you make it happen?"

  "No way, girl. Come on, let's get you out of here."

  Something in Suzi's inflexible tone must've finally penetrated Katerina's befuddled brain. "I don't want to leave, not here, not the wonder. Not ever."

  Suzi brought up the infuser in a no-nonsense manner.

  Katerina's bare foot lashed out, catching Suzi full in the stomach. She went down with a silent oof, curling around herself and fighting for breath. Greg was suddenly left holding a screaming, scratching, biting, kicking she-demon. Gabriel was right, Katerina was big, and strong, and utterly deranged. Tapering lavender nails slashed at his eyes, a knee thudded into his pelvic bone, a tornado of golden hair filled the air. He felt soft flesh, hard flesh. Hampered by not wanting to hurt her. An inhibition rapidly dissolving.

  Des made a grab for Katerina's shoulders, succeeding only in ripping her mock slave-costume. All three of them tumbled to the floor in a frenziedly bucking heap. Then Lynne waded in, trying to pin Katerina's arms down. Roddy managed to grab hold of one leg. Finally a wheezing Suzi slammed the infuser on Katerina's neck with unnecessary force. For one horrendous moment Greg thought it wasn't going to have any effect, but a look of outright surprise shot across Katerina's enraged face and she subsided into a limp bundle shrouded in wispy scraps of lemon fog.

  "Goddamn . . . ungrateful . . . bitch," Suzi spat between shudders. Her face was chalk-white. Greg thought she was going to kick the unconscious body. Probably wouldn't have stopped her.

  "She doesn't know what she's doing," he offered in apology. "Hey, you all right?"

  Her hands were still clasped tight around her abdomen. "Yeah. Bitch."

  Roddy wrapped a towelling robe around Katerina, and Des carried her out in a fireman's lift.

  Gabriel stood to one side as they filed out of the master bedroom. "Told you so," she said.

  The seven of them rode the dinghy back to Event Horizon's finance division offices, stealing quietly across the Nene's scummy water, making good headway against the outgoing tide. City noises thrummed around them; sirens, horns, the trill of gas-powered traffic, peals of jukebox music from riverside pubs. The sough of the dinghy's electric outboard was lost without trace.

  Des dodged the big freighters anchored in the middle of the river outside the port. They were waiting for the early-morning tide to provide the draught they needed to take them down the channel to the Wash. Rust-streaked metal giants, sprinkled with tiny navigation lights, their bows a check pattern of hoarfrost where their liquefied gas tanks nestled against the hull. Greg could hear a steady plop plop plop as chunks of the mushy rime fell into the water.

  Once the freighters were left behind it was a straight ride up the Nene to the Ferry Meadows estuary. The Trinities loosened up, schoolboys returning from a day outing. Their hive-buzz chatter percolated about the inflatable—Minim crewmen I have zapped.

  Des even had a beacon to aim at. Philip Evans had chosen to celebrate his company's triumphant return to solid land with a thirty-five-metre-high sign perched on top of Event Horizon's finance division offices. Its core was a macramé plait of colourful neon tubes orbited by stylised holographic doodles—expanding geometric graphics, cartoon characters, origami birds, and, at Christmastime, a traditional Santa replete with sledge and reindeer. Monumentally vulgar, but mesmerising at the same time.

  The deep-throated gurgling of the tidal turbines grew steadily louder as they drew near the little quay jutting out from the steep concrete embankment below the ugly cuboid building.

  Victor Tyo was waiting for them, huddled in a parka against the fresh pre-dawn air rising off the estuary. He offered a gentlemanly hand to Gabriel, then grappled a semiconscious Katerina ashore. She groaned as her bare feet touched the cold concrete.

  "Why are her hands tied?" Victor asked reasonably, as Greg stepped ashore and took some of the weight.

  "Coz there wasn't enough rope for her fucking neck," Suzi growled out of the dark.

  Victor peered down at the inflatable dinghy with its oblique cargo of well-armed hardliners and an underage girl in a revealing gold party frock. "Bloody hell."

  Des gunned the throttle and the little craft surged out into the darkness. "See ya, Greg," Suzi called. "And take care of Lady Gee, she's outta this world."

  Walshaw and Julia were waiting in a big corner office on the third floor. Rachel Griffith stood outside. It was a monastically simple room; the walls and ceiling were painted a uniform white, contrasting against the all-black fittings. Greg knew it was Walshaw's office without having to be told. An extension of his personality. Comfortable, efficient, and uncluttered. The furniture was unembellished, two chairs in front of a broad desk, a settee against the wall. Honey-yellow louvre bunds shut out a view of what Greg's sense of direction told him would be the estuary. The air was warm and slightly damp; stale, the way it got after people had been breathing it for several hours.

  Walshaw was sitting behind the desk when they walked in. Greg was surprised to see the surface covered in little balls of scrunched-up paper.

  Julia was rising from the settee, knuckles screwing sleep out of her eyes. She was wearing a V-necked lilac dress with a pleated skin. A tangerine woollen cobweb shawl was drawn around her shoulders.

  She allowed herself a rueful grin. "Midnight, he says. It's gone three."

  Then Victor Tyo and one of his squad members carried Katerina in between them. She'd begun to hum tunelessly.

  Julia stared at her old schoolfriend, humour and toughness leaching from her face. Whatever zombie incarnation she'd been girding herself for, it wasn't a match for the mental-husk reality provided.

  Katerina was lowered on to the settee, utterly uninterested in her environment.

  Julia sent Greg a silent desperate plea that this was some awful nightmare, not real.

  Walshaw frowned disapprovingly at the grubby rope wrapped round Katerina's wrists. Greg pointed to the fresh scratches on his face.

  "See if you can find some padded cuffs," Walshaw told Victor. "And tell Dr. Taylor to stand by. She'll probably need sedating."

  Victor nodded crisply and departed, happy to be out of the office.

  Julia sank down on to the settee, peering timidly at the beautiful empty shell slumped quiescently beside her. "Kats? Kats, it's me, Julia. Julie. Can you hear me, Kats? Please, Kats. Please."

  Katerina's lost eyes swam round. "Julie," she sighed inanely. "Julie. Never thought it would be you. They bring so many others for me, but never you. It's late, isn't it? I can feel it. It's always late when they come for me. We'll be good, won't we, Julie? You and I, when he watches? If we're good then I can go to him afterwards."

  "Yah," Julia stammered. Her eyes had begun to brim with tears. "Yah, Kats, we'll be good. The best. Promise." She pulled her shawl off and tucked it clumsily around her friend's trembling shoulders. "I'd like you to leave us alone now," she said without looking round.

  Greg had known some officers who could speak like that. Commanding instant obedience. Rank had nothing to do with it
, their voice plugged directly into the nervous system.

  As he left the office he saw Julia tenderly smoothing back Katerina's dishevelled tresses.

  The corridor was narrow with a high ceiling, built from composite panels which cut up the original open-plan floor into a compartmented maze. A pink-tinged biolum strip ran overhead, its unremitting luminescence showing up the threadbare rut running down the centre of the chestnut carpet squares.

  Walshaw closed the door behind him. Rachel moved down towards the lift, giving them a degree of privacy.

  "I've been doing some checking this afternoon," Walshaw said. "There's a clinic on Granada which claims it can cure phyltre addiction."

  "Successfully?" Greg asked.

  "Forty per cent of the patients recover. I was wondering. Miss Thompson, isn't it?"

  Gabriel was resting with her back flat on the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Greg recognised the state, he'd seen it in the mirror often enough. That relentless enervation which siphoned the vitality out of every cell.

  "Morgan, to someone of your age and ex-rank I'm Gabriel, OK? But no, I can't tell if it works with Katerina. That's too far into the future."

  "I don't think Julia will give up," Greg said. "Not now."

  "No, I don't suppose she will," Walshaw agreed.

  "You know Kendric di Girolamo is going to have to be eliminated, don't you?" Greg said.

  Walshaw reached up languidly and began massaging his neck. "Eventually, yes."

  "No. Not eventually. You've seen what he's done to that girl; and that was just for fun. The guy's an absolute loon. Tell you, I've seen inside his mind. Homicidal psychopath isn't the half of it. Julia needs head of state level protection while he's on the loose, no messing."

  "Julia has been badgering me to do the same thing. She is even more intent than you, if anything."

  "Hardly surprising, after what she went through with Kendric. Paedophile shit."

  Walshaw turned his head very slowly until he was staring directly at Greg. "What?"

  "Kendric and Julia; he seduced her. You didn't know?"

  "She hates Kendric."

  "Not always," Greg said. He couldn't ever remember seeing Walshaw so thrown before, not even the blitz and the possibility of a leak in the giga-conductor project had upset him this much. Another of Julia's secret admirers.

  "So that's what is behind this sudden urge for blood," Walshaw said tightly.

  "It's not just a wronged girl's lex talionis. Kendric is dangerous, believe me."

  "I do." For a second the security chief looked heartbroken. Greg was suddenly glad he didn't have the use of his gland at that moment, there were some secrets people were entitled to keep. He guessed Julia had become a surrogate daughter to Walshaw over the years. That strange character flaw of his, the need to have someone to provide him with a purpose in life.

  "Kendric can't be eliminated right now, dangerous though he undoubtedly is," Walshaw said. "Your episode with Charles Ellis at the Castlewood condominium confirms there is someone else involved, the organiser of the blitz. Kendric couldn't have arranged for the sniper at Ellis's penthouse, because he didn't know Wolf. Which makes Kendric our last link with the organiser. And we have to find out who that is."

  "But Wolf knew Kendric," Greg said. "Weird."

  "Not really," said Gabriel. "The organiser is their link, a one-way databus who passes on all Kendric's intelligence to Wolf. But there's no return flow, Wolf has nothing Kendric needs to know. And Kendric would've told the organiser that you'd confronted him, that you knew about Wolf. So the organiser fixed for the sniper. Morgan here is right, Greg. We can't get rid of Kendric, he's your only hard lead left. In fact he ought to watch out, the organiser must realise that, too."

  "Shit," Greg muttered in frustration. "Kendric won't take us to the organiser, not now. He's too smart. They'll never contact each other again."

  Gabriel opened her eyes. "Snatch him," she said flatly. "That's your only option. Snatch Kendric. Interrogate him. Snuff him."

  "Risky," said Walshaw. "A quick clean kill is one thing, snatches have a tendency to get messy no matter how good the hardliners you use. Lots of questions asked."

  "My precognition would make sure there's no mess."

  "I'll authorise it," Julia said firmly.

  Greg hadn't seen her emerge from Walshaw's office. But now she stood in the corridor, head held high, in complete control of herself, as if the bomb-blast of Katerina had never happened. No longer the ivory-tower habitué, but very much the Princess Regent. Some small part of him mourned the passing of the timid, sweet girl he'd first met on a sunny March day. Innocence was the most appealing of human traits.

  Morgan Walshaw shifted uneasily as Julia's chillingly bright gaze turned on him, demanding. "If that's what it takes to sort this out, then that's what'll happen," she said. "It's bad enough having Kendric coming at me like this, but unknown enemies as well, that's totally out. I'm not having it. And the snatch is the way to unmask them. That bastard Kendric has been banking that we won't fight him on his own level. Well, his credit has just run out."

  "Julia—" Walshaw said.

  "No arguments, just do it!"

  Greg could see how much effort it took Walshaw to retain control, no espersense needed for that.

  "It isn't up to me, Miss Evans."

  Julia realised she might've overstepped the limit. "I'm sorry, Morgan. It's Kats, you see, she keeps asking for him. Doesn't say anything else. Bastard. I think she'll have to be sedated."

  "OK." He raised a cybofax and muttered into it. "Doctor's on her way."

  "Who then?" Julia asked. "Who is it up to?"

  Walshaw looked at Greg. "That's you, Greg. If it's to be done, it's to be done properly. Would you interrogate him?"

  Greg had seen it coming, ever since Gabriel blurted the idea of a snatch. It'd given him a few seconds to chew the proposition. He spread his palms wide. "Preparations wouldn't hurt. Mind you, I'd be physically incapable of interrogating anyone for a couple of days anyway. That might give us enough time to analyse the Crays' data. See if we can't find some leads in them. Ellis should've left one."

  He noticed Julia's face had gone blank, focusing inwards. Must be using her nodes, running their arguments through analysis, battling the pros and cons against each other, trying to reach the conclusions ahead of them. In a way it was a power similar to Gabriel's.

  "We're going through the Crays now," said Walshaw. "Although I don't know what the hell you did to one of them, it crashed one of our lightware crunchers when we plugged it in, bloody thing is so much rubbish now. The other two Crays are clean, although it'll take time to make sure there aren't any concealed wipe instructions buried in them."

  "What have you got so far?" Greg asked.

  "Ellis had quite an extraordinary accumulation of data, everything from minutely detailed personal dossiers through to industrial templates. Trivia and ultra-hush all jumbled together. It's going to take some sifting, even with the lightware crunchers hooked in."

  "What did you mean, Ellis should've left a lead?" Julia asked.

  "Standard practice," Greg explained. "If you're plugging into those kind of deals you cover your back. Benign blackmail, to make sure your partners don't get any funny ideas afterwards. There'll be a record of all the burns he arranged as Wolf; money, clients, the names of his hotrod team; data he bought and sold as Medeor, names, companies. Every damning byte. And it'll be somewhere where it can be found after he's dead. In the Crays, the Hitachi terminal's memory core, his cybofax, public data core on a time delay, hell, even an envelope left with a lawyer."

  "Nothing else?" Julia asked.

  "Pardon?"

  "You don't think there's anything else important in the Crays?"

  For some reason her slightly querulous attitude made him aware of how immensely tired he was. He was travelling on buzz energy, had been for hours, and it was running out fast now they'd got Katerina back.

&n
bsp; "I wouldn't know. I expect they're a goldmine of illegal circuit activity."

  "That's all?" Julia was leaning forward, studying his face intently. He had the uncomfortable impression he was being judged. Crime unknown. And, frankly, he didn't give a shit.

  "All I can think of, yeah."

  Dr. Taylor stepped out of the lift, accompanied by Victor who was carrying her case. She was a young woman wearing a plain cerise trouser suit, her dark hair French-pleated. She had a quick word with Morgan Walshaw and went into his office. Julia started to follow, but the security chief laid a light restraining hand on her arm. For a moment she looked like she'd rebel, then nodded meekly. Victor closed the door softly after he'd gone through.

  "Thank you for bringing Kats back to me, Greg," Julia said, abruptly all humble contrition.

  Greg gave up trying to find motives for her oscillating moods. She was on an emotional rollercoaster; depressed by Katerina, frightened by Kendric, trusting in him, Gabriel, and Walshaw to deliver her from evil. Poor kid.

  "It hurts so much just seeing her," Julia said. "Serves me right, I suppose." She reached round her neck with both hands and unhooked a slim gold chain. "For you. From me. And you don't even have to give me a kiss for it." She favoured him with a sly weary smile.

  It was a St. Christopher pendant, solid gold.

  "Well, put it on then," Julia said.

  He mimicked a grin, feeling itchy under Gabriel's heartily bemused eye, and fastened it round his own neck. The little disk was warm on his skin as it slithered down beneath the open neck of his crisp dress shirt.

  "To keep the demons at bay," Julia said. "Even though you're not a believer."

  Greg pulled out of the finance division's nearly deserted car park, turning the Duo west on to the artificial lava surface of the A47. There was a single car in front of them. It wasn't quite dawn. The gross Event Horizon sign splashed the surrounding land with a guttering medley of coloured light.