Mindstar Rising

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Kats was dreaming. Julia watched her eyelids fluttering, shoulders restless below the duvet, the occasional sighs, half-formed words.

It would probably be Kendric who filled her thoughts. She doubted the amnesia infusion could reach down into the subconscious to root him out. And that was exactly the kind of arcane universe where Kendric would lurk, his home ground.

To this day his phantom still stole into Julia's sleep-loosened mind, a dark oneiromancer calling her back to the velvet shadows of Mirriam's cabin, soft silk sheets, hot hard flesh. That handsome face poised inches above her, smiling as she moaned in erotic delirium. Not even the freshness of Adrian could banish the quondam ecstasy. First loves never die. They just… haunt.

She gave Kats a dry smile. Maybe she should go through the detoxification with her, get rid of Kendric that way. Concerned professional doctors prising him out of her mind. Nothing else seemed to work.

OtherEyes Emergency Access Request.

Open Channel to NN Core. Load OtherEyes Limiter#Five. It was a reflexive acknowledgement, her nerves were stretched taut, ready to jump at figments. She sat bolt upright in the chair, grabbing the Armscor.

Juliet. Christ, virus virus, they've Trojaned a virus into me!

Wilholm's banshee klaxon went off outside.

"Grandpa!" she yelled.

Losing my capacity. Some kind of interface scrambler. Bugger, security sensor access went down. The NN core's internal channels are crashing, Juliet. Childhood gone. It's accelerating. I've failed you, girl. My memory patterns are being disconnected. Management routines gone.

"No, Grandpa," she sobbed. "You couldn't fail me. Not you."

You're all that's left, girl. Datanet's cut. Unlock me in a century. Trust Walshaw, Juliet. Trust him. My girl. Love you. Take care, Kendric will come for you. Integrity stasis, beat it at its own game. Shutting down. Limbo.

And he was gone. But there was something else intruding in her mind, a smooth, grotesque presence oozing in to corrupt her thoughts. Julia jammed her knuckles in her wide, silently screaming mouth. The horror pulled at her memories, prising them out of their neat processor-assigned stacks. She could see them tumbling away from her; stained-glass rosettes, each one a billion-picture mosaic. Her life encapsulated, ruptured, pouring away into some infinite insatiable sink point.

Data Error.

She felt herself falling to the floor, howling in psychosomatic agony, Armscor dropping from deadened fingers. Vision lost in the blinding sparkle of vivid memories flashing by, people, buildings, schoolgames, countryside, mathematical formulae, lists of words.

Memory Node One Index Error.

Her mind was contracting, conscious thoughts slowing as they passed through the processor nodes. The presence was everywhere, tainting the entire contents of her cerebrum and memory nodes, eviscerating her own personality and replacing it with its own implacable insentient logic.

She began to claw wildly at her head.

Memory Node Two Interface Error.

The virus, it was in her nodes, Trojaned into her through OtherEyes. She should've realised instantly. Her intellect was crumbling, the supporting experience-based reasoning mentality denuded of references, blocking her ability to think. Only a vestigial essence of bloody-minded stubbornness remained, that fundamental aspect of human ego which the virus was unable to subsume.

Memory Node Three Interface Error.

Fight back, Julia pleaded with herself. Stop it spreading.

Processor Node Two Format Loss.

Disengage Memory Node One, she ordered. The command was terribly slow to formulate.

Her subconscious rose ominously to fill the vacuous gulf left in the virus's wake. Wounded pictures of a world peopled by caricatures of those who walked through her natural universe. It was the alternate she lived in fear of, nightmares fully expressed. Black idolatry, so hard and bright her remaining rationality nearly disintegrated under its impact.

Disengage Memory Node Two.

Floating without weight, seeing herself and Kendric coupling like frenzied rampant beasts. Loving it, hating it. Grandpa watching them, frail, poised ready to die, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Disengage Memory Node Three.

Primate Marcus offering her benediction inside a suffocating bubble of rock. Herself supplicant, putting Event Horizon on the burnished silver collection platter for him. Dropping it, seeing it shatter into splinters of pure data, profit and loss. All-important. Grandpa shook his head in dismay and died.

Shut Down Processor Nodes One and Two.

The exorcism. Julia felt the virus withdraw, retreating into the nodes. Then the synaptic interfaces sealed, cutting her free, trapping it in isolation.

There was no physical pain, only loss, all that wondrous knowledge she'd taken for granted had been snatched beyond reach. Her own thoughts and memories, once so ordered, now a tangled seething wreckage.

A sound in her gullet. Struggling to place it. Ah yes. Weeping.

Julia rolled on to her back, drawing breath in shallow gasps. Her dress was cold and damp from sweat.

Vacant watery eyes set in the centre of a golden cloud of hair blinked at her. "Julie?"

Julia rummaged round for the name. So difficult, surely human brains weren't this inefficient. "Hi, Kats," she said weakly.

"I want to go for a pee."

Laughter and tears got dreadfully muddled in her throat.

"It's not funny," Katerina said in a wounded tone. "I'm bursting."

"Sure thing, Kats. Sorry." Julia was rather surprised to find her limbs doing what she told them. She managed to clamber to her feet, using the bed for support. The Armscor was lying on the carpet. The sight of it jolted her slowly coalescing thoughts. The klaxon was silent now. She was sure she'd heard it going off. Tried to consult her event timer without thinking, a null request. But it could only have been seconds ago.

Somebody had penetrated Wilholm's defensive cordon. A two-pronged attack, then. Her and Grandpa, and they'd nearly got very lucky.

The door handle rattled. "Julia? Julia, you in there?"

Kendric. Kendric will come for you.

"Morgan?" she called.

"It's Steven; open up, Julia." There was a thump followed by a muffled curse.

"Get Morgan," she told him. Trust Walshaw, Juliet. Trust him.

"Julia, open up." A louder thump, a shoulder hitting the door. She could see it quiver in the frame.

"Morgan, get Morgan here."

A third blow. She heard the sound of wood splitting.

"Morgan!" Julia grabbed hold of Kats and yanked her off the bed in one almighty burst of strength. Kats squealed and floundered about in the duvet.

"Stay down," Julia commanded.

She crouched next to Kats, bringing the Armscor up in a smooth arc, thumb flicking off the safety catch. Immensely glad she'd taken the time to learn the weapon.

The door crashed open, frame splintering.

"Morgan!" she screamed.

Pink-white light from the corridor shone into the dimly lit bedroom. A lone figure was silhouetted in the open doorway, Uzi hand laser held ready, stumbling forwards. Definitely male.

Kendric.

The maw of the Uzi swung down towards them, a malignant smile behind it.

Julia jerked her forefinger back on the trigger, holding it down. Bullet-sized pulses of intense blue lightning streamed out of the Armscor, so close together they were almost a continuous flare. They hit the wall around the door, splashing open with a loud crack. Wallpaper ignited in tight balls of garish orange flame. The bedroom was alive with strobing light, huge distorted shadows leapt up across the walls and ceiling.

"Shit!" yelled the silhouette. He was diving to one side, not quite making it.

One of the Armscor's pulses caught his leg as he was still going down. Beautiful. There was an agonised grunt, swiftly choked off. His whole body convulsed, hit by an invisible fist, buffeting him back into the corridor.

Got you, you bastard!

A bright ruby laser beam stabbed out from somewhere down the corridor, striking him on the side of his neck. His body jerked again, keeling over. The laser fired a second time. Blue-white flame flared out of his chest.

Julia sent another barrage of blazing pulses out through the flame-wreathed door. Her retinas were scarred with long purple after-images.

"Julia, for Christ's sake!"

Julia could barely hear the voice above Kats' soprano wailing, but somewhere in her whirling mind the sound connected, that same voice was lodged in tenuous memories. She let go of the trigger, peering along the barrel, bewildered.

"Rachel?"

"Yes, for Christ's sake! Now, will you put the fucking gun down. Please!"

"Where's Morgan!" she cried.

"He's coming, Julia. I promise."

"I…" Julia stared at the Armscor as her wrists drooped, letting it fall on to the bed. And all she could do after that was watch, because anything else was just too much. Her fate was all down to Rachel now. Could everybody in the world be against her?

Rachel appeared in the doorway, her face furious as she stood over the prone smouldering body, Uzi hand-laser held in a professional double-handed grip, pointing straight down. She pumped two more slices of red energy into his head.

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 revitalising, 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 meantime?"

"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 incredulously.

"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 realised 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 apologise, 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.