Mindstar Rising

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LESS CHOICE LESS PRICE

The crude placards lined the M11 for kilometres either side of Cambridge. Large kelpboard squares, sprayed with fluoro-pink lettering that dribbled like a window’s condensation. They flapped beneath sturdy sun-blistered road signs, themselves so old the few legible names had distances in miles.

CAKE AND EAT IT NOW!

"What's the matter with them?" Gabriel exclaimed irritably as the Duo passed Little Shelford. "Do they want those bloody card carriers back in power?"

KRILL DON'T HAVE BOLLOCKS

THEY JUST TASTE LIKE THEM

"You are deep into student country," Greg told her, amused by her reaction. "What did you expect? They just don't like governments, full stop. Any sort of government. Never have, never will. They think demonstrating political awareness is exciting. You should encourage questing young minds."

DIGNITY NOT ECONOMIC THEORY

The Duo's cooler was going full blast, grinding uncomfortable gusts of frigid air. Gabriel's grunt was lost in the noise of the fans.

"They can't have it both ways," she said. "Two years there wasn't any food at all. Inflation is the price you pay a free-market economy. Wages rise to cope, it's cyclic."

"But do student grants rise as well?"

"Christ, whose side are you on? If they're so bloody aware they should know freedom isn't perfect. If they'd tried protesting when Armstrong was running the country they would've become non-people before you could say community responsibility."

"So put up your own banners, tell them, not me."

The motorway was in surprisingly good condition. Dead sycamores with peeling bark and bleached wood rose out of the scrub tangle at the edge of the hard shoulder. Greg toed the brake as they approached a large densely packed patch of scarlet flowers shining with livid intensity under the Sahara-bright sun. He thought they were poppies at first, except they were too big. A single palm-sized petal, waxy; thousands of them waving in the breeze.

"Someone agrees with you," he said drily, inclining his head. Two young men in sombreros and dirty jeans were ripping down one of the kelpboard placards. Their bicycles lay on the fringe of the flamingo flower carpet. He spotted badges with the deep-blue crown of the New Conservative party emblem pinned on their T-shirts.

Gabriel nodded with tight approval at this vandalism of graffiti. Greg returned to the tarmac ahead. Crazy world.

He turned off the nearly deserted road at junction ten, on to the A505. There was a new brightly painted green-and-gold sign at the side of the sliproad.

DUXFORD

Event Horizon Astronautics Institute

Freshly torn scraps of kelpboard littered the grass below it, flapping like broken butterflies in the hot dry breeze.

The Astronautics Institute was an all-new construction that'd sprung up out of the ruins of the Imperial War Museum. Armstrong's extremist followers had gleefully set about eradicating the museum's exhibitions and aircraft collection after they’d come to power, calling it a war pornography monument. The cabinet declared that Duxford was to become the National Resource Reclamation Centre, intended as the prestigious mainstay of the PSP's self-sufficiency policy. They said it would dismantle the war machines scrapped under their demilitarisation programme and turn them into useful raw material for industry.

Greg remembered the hundreds of APVs and Challenger IV tanks parked in the Chunnel marshalling yards after he got back from Turkey. All earmarked for Duxford and ignominy.

But all Duxford had ever achieved was to smash up the beautifully restored aircraft displays, and the first few trainloads of redundant Army vehicles. The promised smelters had never materialised, and the dole-labour conscripts had rioted. For eight years the abandoned hammer-mangled wrecks on the runway had snowed rust flakes on to the concrete, oil and hydraulic fluid seeping through the cracks, poisoning the soil. Then after the PSP fell, Philip Evans chose the site to be the foundation of his dream.

The Astronautics Institute had been visible as a gleaming blister on the horizon ever since the Duo passed junction eleven outside Cambridge. After that Greg found himself constantly readjusting his perspective to accommodate the size of the thing. It was huge.

He'd spent a few minutes the previous evening reviewing the data which he'd been given at Wilholm. But it'd completely failed to prepare him for what he was seeing now.

The main building was a five-storey ring of offices, research labs, and engineering shops, eight hundred metres in diameter, presenting a blank wall of green-silvered glass to the outside world. The area it enclosed had been capped by a solar-collector roof, giving the staff a voluminous hangar-like assembly hall for space hardware.

Construction crews were still finishing it off; two motionless cranes stood on opposite sides, piles of scaffolding littered the raw packed limestone surround, ranks of silent contractor vehicles were drawn up across the parking yards. Standard transit containers full of Event Horizon's own cybernetics were stacked outside the assembly hall's sliding doors, waiting to be installed. A saucer-shaped McDonnell Douglas helistat hovered overhead, its five rotors generating an aggressive down-draught as it struggled to maintain its position against the light north-easterly wind. A container was being winched down out of its belly hold, swaying like a pendulum in the gusts. Two more helistats waited high overhead.

Greg could see machinery and gear being moved from their temporary accommodation in patched-up Museum buildings into the Institute. With the bulk of the structure complete, Event Horizon's research, design, and management teams were starting to take up permanent residence.

A ragtag army of scrap merchants had been let loose on the old airport, piling vans and horse-drawn carts high with the twisted shards of metal which were still strewn across the runway and taxi lanes. One of the merchants had modified an old street-cleaning lorry to sweep up the thick stratum of rust, and a dense cloud of orange dust foamed up from its bald tyres as it thundered up and down the concrete strip.

Philip Evans had built his mindchild with an eye to the future. Its proximity to the University colleges had proved subversively addictive, offering finance and top-range research facilities to budget-starved faculties. A move which put the cream of the country's intellect at his disposal.

Physically, the Institute was a totally self-contained complex, taking the concept of centralisation right to its extreme. It could design and fabricate mission hardware ranging from torque-neutralising screwdrivers for orbital riggers right up to the refineries which would latch on to asteroids and leach out the ores, minerals, and metals. Independent and efficient. And with the money the giga-conductor royalties would bring in, Greg realised, quite capable of achieving the space-activist dream: exploiting the solar system's wealth.

It also housed the team which had cracked the giga-conductor. Philip Evans had brought Dr. Ranasfari back to England after the Second Restoration, wanting to keep a tight rein on his Company's resident genius. Setting him up at the Astronautics Institute had been Morgan Walshaw's idea.

With so many recently assembled research and design groups scattered throughout the old museum buildings while they waited for their new facilities to be completed, the place was in a constant state of flux. Ranasfari's team could establish themselves in an office and laboratory unit at the centre and remain unnoticed amongst the flustered crowd. The lost in plain view concept had worked for two years.

"No wonder Evans was so upset when the memox began to affect Event Horizon's profit margin," Greg said as they drew close to the Institute's gates. "How much did this lunatic conceit cost him, for Christ's sake?" The data squirted from Philip Evans's NN core into his cybofax concerning the Institute had only given him generalities, PR gloss. No hard financial facts.

Gabriel answered with a shrug. He sensed a cold trickle of intimidation damping her thought currents.

The Institute was circled by a mushroom ring of ten geodesic spheres housing the satellite uplinks. On the eastern side was a peculiar horn-shaped antenna, unprotected from the elements. It had a temporary look to it. People were walking among the dove-grey Portacabins at its base, ant-size. The damn thing must've been thirty metres high. Scale here something else again.

Greg had a shrewd idea that that was the source of Gabriel's dismay. She'd grasped the Institute at once. With him, the ego-ablating effect was taking time, a slow dawning of his own utter insignificance.

A four-metre chain fence topped by razor-wire marked out the perimeter. There was a smaller fence inside, fine granite chippings between the two. A guard-dog run, or at least some form of hunt animal.

The entrance road was split into five channels, each with a pole barrier. Greg chose number one. The Duo had to pass over ratchet spikes before they got to the red-and-white-striped barrier.

"What does he keep in here?" Gabriel muttered. "Crown jewels?"

"Oh no, something far more valuable than that. Knowledge."

A company bus drew up in lane two, full of sanitised young technical types, all of them wearing pale shirts and neat ties. Greg showed his new Card to the white watchman pillar, and the barrier raised itself obediently.

"But can we get out so easily?" Gabriel asked.

"Your department."

There were three parking yards. He found a space in the first, in the shadow of a big JCB. Gabriel climbed out, twisting her pearls self-consciously. The air was stifling, so Greg slung his leather jacket over his shoulder.

"We don't belong here," Gabriel declared. She'd turned a complete circle, taking in the strange conflation of creaky old buildings, chaotically jumbled wreckage, and new mega-structure with a childlike expression of awe. "You and I. It's not our world." Her mind state verged on depression.

"Don't be such a Luddite," he said.

She gave him a soft, pitying smile. "You don't understand. This place, it has destiny. I can feel it, portent after portent, the weight of them pressing down, suffocating. Future history, eager to be enacted, glories waiting to be born."

Her words triggered his own instinct, a feedback reinforcing misgivings. Another reason Gabriel lived alone, even he had to take her in small doses. What she saw, rambled about, there was no escape from knowing it was all true. Suppose she was to hint the approach of his own death?

There was a work crew laying the last stretch of paving slabs between the yard and the main building. A clump of bedraggled and confused daffodils were sprouting in one of the concrete troughs beside the entrance.

"Ready?" he asked just before they went in. "Shouldn't take long."

"You're telling me this?"

He grinned at the old reliably cranky Gabriel and waved the magic card at the door pillar.

Ten minutes later Greg was standing beside the front rank of seats in a deserted ten-tier press gallery, looking out into the institute's Merlin mission control. It was the final humbling, he was a small bewildered child permitted a privileged glimpse of adults playing some marvellously intricate game, understanding nothing.

On the other side of the tinted glass, concentric semicircles of consoles faced big wall-mounted flatscreens showing pictures of alien worlds. Young shirtsleeved controllers sat behind them, studying cubes full of undulating graphics, muttering instructions into throat mikes. The central display was a map of the inner solar system, a snarl of coloured vector lines showing the disposition of the Merlin fleet.

The scene should've been generating a flood of urgency and excitement. Greg hadn't forgotten the emotion of the Sanger crew out at Listoel. Instead he received an impression of tension, his espersense confirming the mass anxiety.

Nervous knots of the controllers were forming at random amid the gear consoles, talking in low, concerned tones, breaking up to reform with different members, human Brownian motion.

"Bit of a flap on at the moment, I'm afraid," said Martin Wallace. He was an Institute security officer who'd been summoned in a hurry by the authority vested in Greg's card. A stocky Afro-Caribbean in his late thirties, uncomfortable with Greg and Gabriel's appearance and what it implied. "Trouble in orbit. One of the Merlins has packed up for no apparent reason. The flight management teams are shitting bricks," he stopped and flinched. "Sorry, ma'am."

Gabriel bit back a smile.

Greg peered through the glass, recognising one of the figures in conference around the flight chief's desk. "How long before we can see Dr. Ranasfari?" he asked as he rapped his knuckles on the thick glass.

"Shouldn't be long." Wallace stood at attention, upset by Greg's breach of etiquette.

Greg rapped again, harder.

Irked faces turned to look. Greg beckoned to Sean Francis. The young executive started, then nodded and headed for the door to the press gallery, brushing off protests from the cluster of senior controllers he was in deep conversation with.

"This is as good a place as any," Greg said. "We'll do our interviews here. You see that we're not disturbed."

"Right," Wallace backed out, not exactly bowing, but coming close.

"Macho," Gabriel drawled. "Any orders for me, Captain?"

"Yeah, now you mention it, Major, start skipping through the giga-conductor team. All the possible interviews I could have with them, see which of them, if any, leaked the information."

Her good humour darkened. "Don't want much, do you?"

"I'm not asking you to stretch. Just find what you can. I'll be satisfied with anything, even a string of negatives."

"All right."

Sean Francis bustled in. Completely unchanged, still pleasant, firm, capable, eager. Annoying.

"What brings you here?" he asked after Greg introduced him to Gabriel.

"I'm investigating the hackers' assault on Event Horizon's data network."

"Really? You believe someone here is involved, yes?"

"Could be. What are you doing here? I thought you were bound for greater things. Julia told me you'd made the management board."

Greg's first-name terms with his boss didn't escape Sean Francis's notice; a sharp spike of interest rose in his mind at the mention of her name. Outwardly, his positive cheeriness expanded. "Ah, but this is greater things. Miss Evans appointed me as an independent management examiner after Oscot anchored in the Wash for decommissioning. I travel round company installations and report back directly to the trustees. This way I build up a working knowledge of Event Horizon second to none. Means I'm going to be on line for a top-rank management position in a couple of years, yes? Opportunities like that only happen once in a lifetime. I grasped it. And, well, here I am."

"Doing?"

"Troubleshooting. Miss Evans has given the Merlin project a high priority rating. I'm here to hustle them along."

"So what's the problem?" Greg asked. His gland began the neurohormone infusion. Sean's mind swam into a sharper focus.

"Merlin malfunction. Number eighteen, it's the first series-four model. Lot of high hopes riding on it. But the bitch is stalled in Earth orbit, three and a half thousand kilometres up. Absolutely dead in the water. Disaster time. We're talking reputations on the line here."

"Ranasfari's?" Gabriel asked sharply.

Francis cocked his head to one side to look at her. "Why do you ask?"

"Humour us, Sean," Greg said, and showed him his new Event Horizon card.

The sight didn't flummox him quite like it had Wallace, but his mind tightened appreciatively. "So? I'm impressed. This attack on the datanet is being taken seriously, yes?"

"The Trustees attach a certain importance to it," Greg said. "Now, what about Ranasfari?"

"Do you know what he's been working on?" Sean Francis asked cautiously.

"Room-temperature giga-conductor."

"Fine, OK, had to be sure. You understand? Can't just shout my mouth off, yes?"

"We understand," said Gabriel.

Francis caught the undertone of irony. "The series-four Merlin is fitted with giga-conductor power cells. Thing is, Event Horizon has put in a bid to fit the RAF's Matador AGM-404 exospheric interceptors with the same marque of cells. If it is the giga-conductor which has screwed up then we're really up the old creek, yes?"

"And is it?" Greg asked.

"Too soon to say. They're still running the fault analysis." Sean Francis's mind betrayed a lot of apprehension. Greg wrote it off as the pressure. Failure this soon after his promotion would send him tumbling right back down to the obscurity he'd clawed his way up from.

"Why do you need giga-conductor power cells on a nuclear-powered spaceprobe?" Greg asked.

"The isotopes only power the thrusters during the flight phase, lifting the Merlin out of Earth orbit and boosting it along its interception trajectory. Once it's matched velocities with its target asteroid they're jettisoned along with the shielding, which reduces the total mass to just over a tonne. Manoeuvring becomes a lot simpler and faster without all that surplus mass to shift around. The giga-conductor cells charge off the solar panels and provide power to the thrusters for the final approach phase, as well as moving the Merlin around the surface after rendezvous. Some of these Apollo Amor rocks are quite large, we need forty or fifty sample points to build up an accurate picture of the ore composition."

Greg could see the little group of flight controllers round the chief's desk craning their necks in his direction, impatience registering in their surface thoughts.

"You'd better be getting back," he told Sean Francis. "Glad to see you're getting ahead. One last thing: did you know Philip Evans is still alive?"

From an academic viewpoint Francis's reaction was a fascinating emotional evolution. His initial stare was pure disgust; from there Greg's espersense read him progressing through disbelief and into contempt, then back into worry, and finishing up plain confused.

"I saw the body," he said eventually.

"Right, well, thanks for your time."

"I hope you're not going to be so tasteless with Miss Evans. She was very close to her grandfather."

"Of course not. I'll tell you why I had to ask you that, one day," he said, projecting as much bonhomie as he could muster, which simply served to deepen Francis's confusion.

He flicked an uncertain glance at Gabriel, and departed, a much puzzled man.

"Congratulations," Gabriel said archly. "You've just ruined his entire day. He can't concentrate on anything, he's so mixed up by that last crack of yours."

"Tough. Life at the top isn't all roses. The sooner he learns, the better off he'll be."

"Do you have to be so bloody rude to everyone?"

"We don't have the time to piss about. Whether that arriviste likes me or not isn't something I'll lose any sleep over. I'm doing my job the only way I know how." He caught the antagonism rising in her. "Besides," he said resignedly, "it's Philip Evans who's tweaked me."

"Philip Evans?"

"Yeah. That NN core of his is fucking weird, unsettling. For a start I can't stop wondering if I'd translocate my thoughts if I was given the opportunity; I mean, it's a sort of immortality, isn't it?"

"And suppose some smart hacker breaks in, every dark secret you ever had will be wide-open to them. Blockbuster stuff, if they publish it."

"Yeah, you're right. Forget it. What did you see in Mr. Dynamism Francis's future?"

"Nothing much, a lot of frenetic activity here for the next few days, several consultations with young Julia Evans about the Merlin. In fact he seems to have taken rather a shine to our Miss Evans."

"Sean Francis?" Greg couldn't keep the reproach from showing in his voice. Cursed himself silently. "But he's years older than her."

Gabriel's grin was wicked. "He's three years younger than you. And she doesn't regard you as out of reach, now does she?"

Years of experience prevented him from showing the slightest ire. "The girl's got a silly crush, that's all. I can handle that. But Sean Francis, marrying the boss's granddaughter, well, that's…"

"Shocking? But Julia isn't the heir any more, she is the boss now." Gabriel put her hand over her heart, sighing fulsomely. "I think its romantic, myself."

"Does he? No, don't answer that, I don't want to know."

"Julia's really got you in a tizz, hasn't she?"

"Can we get back to the case, please?"

She chuckled. "Certainly, Gregory. You can forget about Sean Francis, he really is a clean-cut square, his only failing is his ambition. He looks at every problem to see how he can benefit from it."

"That's no crime."

There was a knock on the door, Martin Wallace poked his head round. "Dr. Ranasfari's here."

"Show him in," Greg said, and mouthed Kid gloves to Gabriel, suddenly wishing he'd thought to warn her in advance.

Dr. Ranasfari was in a foul mood. He looked like he hadn't slept for days. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair was hanging limply, small flakes of dandruff dusted his collar. Creases crisscrossed his white shirt. There was no tie. Even the Institute's regulation security tag was missing.

His mind reflected his physical appearance; dull, shot through with frissons of agitation. The prospect that his creation had failed, coupled with the blitz against his patron, had come as a severe shock, Greg guessed. Jolting the secure academic world through which he moved. And now he had to answer impertinent questions. He wore hostility like a hedgehog coat.

"I'll be as quick as I can," Greg said. "I'm sure you have to get back to the Merlin."

No response.

"Have you ever told anyone about Philip Evans's NN core?"

"Certainly not."

"What about the giga-conductor?"

"No." Ranasfari sounded uninterested.

"Unintentionally perhaps, a slip of the tongue? One mistake would be all it'd take. People place a lot of weight on your words."

"Please, Mr. Mandel. Ask your questions, reassure yourself. But don't attempt to ingratiate yourself. I fully appreciate the emphasis Philip Evans places on your investigation, I have already discussed it with him. That is why I agreed to see you. Your conclusions from a minimum data source during your earlier instance of employment indicate your professional competence. Although, I personally suspect a degree of intuition was involved on your part."

"It was."

"Interesting. Is that part of your psi-enhancement?"

"It seems to be, although it's very much a secondary facet. Now, a loose word?"

"No. I don't make that sort of mistake."

"You of all people must appreciate the logic that there has been a serious leak within Event Horizon. Knowing about both the giga-conductor and the core logically makes you a suspect. However, now I'm satisfied you are not the origin of any leak" — Ranasfari smiled thinly—"that leaves the team which grew the core, and your own giga-conductor researchers."

The physicist's thin lips compressed dolefully. "I realise this. It… is difficult to accept that one of my people is responsible. I hope you are not asking me to point an accusatory finger?"

"No. But I'd appreciate any other leads from your department. For instance, the lightware cruncher you used to design the original cryogenic giga-conductor with, could that have been hacked?"

"No, it is isolated from the Event Horizon datanet."

Greg paused for a moment, waiting for any ideas to surface from his subconscious. He was aware of a background ache behind his temple. Options were converging at an alarming rate, he had a growing sense of conviction that the assistants weren't going to be the leak origin. Perhaps he'd picked the assumption off Gabriel. She was sitting on the bottom tier of seats, eyes closed, lost among the Tau multiplicities.

"Exactly how serious is this Merlin failure?" Greg asked, intuition prompting.

"Unless the cause can be determined precisely then it will be a major setback to both programmes," Ranasfari answered.

"Both?"

"Yes, the Merlin prospecting missions, and the commercial production of the giga-conductor."

"When did the Merlin actually fail?"

Ranasfari picked up on the flash of excitement in his voice. "I think I see what you are driving at. Yes. The Merlin failed yesterday morning, eight twenty-four, to be precise."

"After the blitz."

"Correct; approximately ten hours. Do you believe the two events are connected?"

Greg was certain of the connection. But there was a fragment of bedlam jarring what would otherwise have been an immaculate fusion of disjointed thoughts. The implication that it wasn't an obvious union. Yet it seemed straightforward. He almost let out a groan; this was as bad as the memox spoiler.

"The attack against Philip Evans could've been a blind," Greg ventured. "Remember the blitz was perpetrated against the whole Event Horizon network; one of the hackers could easily have tampered with the Merlin control programs while it was going on."

"But why the delay?"

"An attempt at disassociating the events? No, wait a minute, how much altitude could the Merlin add in ten hours? Would it make recovery more difficult?"

"Altitude increase over ten hours would be approximately one thousand five hundred kilometres; you have to remember that at the start of the flight the Merlin masses four times as much as it will when it rendezvouses with its target asteroid. That means a low initial acceleration. But certainly that additional fifteen hundred kilometres would add considerably to the cost of recovery. Its current three-and-a-half-thousand-kilometre orbit is way above the Sanger ceiling. An inter-orbit tug would have to be chartered specially, which is a totally uneconomic prospect. Physical recovery was well down our option list. In fact, given normal circumstances, it wouldn't be considered unless a second Merlin suffered a similar failure. There are a great many conceivable reasons for the shutdown; the giga-conductor cell is not the only new component in series-four models. Few components are common to every Merlin, its development is a continual process of evolution. And, of course, the giga-conductor cells performed perfectly in the space environment simulation tests, they were most extensive."

"But in the meantime a question mark hangs over introducing the giga-conductor cell."

"Yes, unfortunately. A Ministry of Defence team from Boscombe Down has already arrived to review our fault-analysis data."

"What has happened to the Merlin? Is it a total breakdown?" Greg asked.

"It looks like it. The propulsion system has shut down, and the communication link has been severed. It won't even respond to signals directed at its omnidirectional antenna."

"Could its state have occurred by transmitting a rogue set of instructions, ordering it to shut down?"

"Indeed," Ranasfari agreed. "Providing you had the correct codes."

"Which, presumably, are stored here in the Institute's memory cores."

"Yes."

"And are they isolated from the Event Horizon datanet?"

"No."

"So the attack could be an attempt to discredit Event Horizon's giga-conductor, which at the very least would delay military funding of your production lines, giving your rivals an opportunity to make up lost ground."

"That is certainly a theoretical possibility." The shadowy overtones of worry were lifting from Dr. Ranasfari's mind. "I congratulate you, Mr. Mandel."

Greg felt a weight of relief lifting. "I'd like to be kept informed of your progress on analysing the Merlin failure."

"Certainly."

"And if you can't find anything concrete may I suggest chartering an inter-orbit tug to recover it."

"I doubt the expense would be authorised."

"Mission planning will cost nothing. And if I don't come up with any positive leads I'll press Philip Evans to cough up the money."

"I'm sure someone as persuasive as yourself will have no trouble. Good day, Mr. Mandel." Dr. Ranasfari exited with what might have been the ghost of a smile on his mouth.

Gabriel gave him a slow laconic clap, the sound echoing hollowly in the empty gallery, Her eyes were still closed. "I am impressed. That was one of the slickest pieces of seduction I've seen for many a year. Poor Eleanor couldn't have stood a chance."

Greg ignored the crack. "Simple logic. You want wholehearted co-operation, get them on your side. And empathy does have its uses. Like charm, some of us have it."

He slouched on the journalists' seats next to her, letting the foam below the black imitation leather mould itself to his buttocks, and stretched his legs out. Beyond the glass, dismay seemed to be tightening its grip.

"How goes it with Ranasfari's team?"

"Total washout." Her eyes fluttered open. "If you interviewed every one of them all you'd find is a couple who've got a nice racket flogging off Event Horizon equipment and five synthoheads. You were right, Morgan Walshaw knows how to handle security."

"Has to be either the Ministry of Defence, or a mole, then."

"Shaping up that way," she agreed. "So what now?"

"Elimination. My intuition says the Merlin failure and the blitz are related in some way. At the moment the only way I can reconcile the two is if the attack on Philip Evans was intended to divert his attention while the Merlin was hashed up to discredit the giga-conductor."

"That's pretty tenuous, Greg. A few giga-conductor cells which may or may not have failed aren't going to bring the whole enterprise to a grinding halt. The breakdown could've been some kind of freak overspill from the attack on the NN core. That would be a connection of sorts."

"No, the Merlin breakdown wasn't an accident."

Gabriel didn't respond. At least she never questioned his intuition.

"Can you see the result of the failure analysis?" he asked.

"Sorry. Too far in the future from where we are."

"Well, not to worry, we'll find out in due course. It might all turn out to be empty hypothesis, Lord knows psi intuition isn't stone-scripted. But I'd put a great deal of money on that connection. I'll decide for sure after we've interviewed the NN core team. Walshaw should have reeled them in by the day after tomorrow. By the way, what can you see of Ranasfari?"

"Oh, God." She let out a long contemptuous breath. "Definitely a contender for the world's most boring human being. He just doesn't have any interests outside his professional work, I'm sure it can't be healthy."

"Leaves him open to blackmail?"

"I shouldn't think so. What could you possibly corrupt him with? In any case, he doesn't do anything remotely incriminating for the next few days, make that a week. And you've already cleared him."

"True." He pushed all the suspicions emanating from intuition out of his mind, cancelling the gland secretions, trying to sketch in a wholly logical course on the resultant virgin whiteness. "I want to take you to Wilholm and meet Philip Evans sometime."

"What for this time?"

"Two things. Give the staff the once-over to see if they knew about the NN core. And see if there's going to be another attack on him. If there is, it would mean I'm wrong about the opposition aiming at the giga-conductor. We'd be back to vengeance, Kendric di Girolamo, and the mole."

"Makes sense. When?"

"Tomorrow afternoon. I'm busy in the morning."

"So you are."

He couldn't tell whether her carefully neutral tone was disguising anger or amusement. Her mind gave the impression of total indifference. A balance of the two, perhaps?

"Will Julia be at Wilholm in the afternoon?" he asked.

A broad smile spread across Gabriel's chubby face. "You know, I do believe she will."