Mindstar Rising

CHAPTER FOUR

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 decor justice. Evans had obviously gone to a lot of trouble recreating the old building's original glory.

The ageing billionaire chortled at the sight of Greg as he waited for his powerchair on the east wing's landing, flushed and fingering his starched collar. "Almost respectable-looking, boy." The powerchair stopped in front of him. Evans cocked his head, taking stock. "I hope you know which knives to use. I can hardly pass you off as my aide if you start savaging your avocado with a soup spoon, now can I?"

Greg wasn't sure if the old man was mocking him or the marvellously doltish niceties of table etiquette, so religiously adhered to by England's upper middle classes—what was left of them. Probably both.

"I was an officer," Greg countered. Not that he'd graduated from Sandhurst, nothing so formal. It was what the Army had called a necessity promotion, all the Mindstar candidates were captains—some obscure intelligence division commission. A week of learning how to accept salutes, and three months' solid slog of data interpretation and correlation exercises.

"Course you were, m'boy; and a gentleman too, no doubt."

"Well, I always took my socks off before, if that's what you mean," Greg said.

Evans laughed approvingly. "Wish I had you on my permanent staff. So many bloody woofter yes-men—"

The chair took off towards the main stairs at a fast walking pace. The old man looked much improved since the afternoon. Greg wondered how he'd pay for that later.

The three teenagers were heading for the stairs from the manor's west wing. Evans waited at the top for them. The taller girl bent over and gave his cheek a soft kiss, studying his face carefully. There was genuine concern written on her features.

"Now, you're not going to stay up late," she said primly. It wasn't a question.

"No." Evans was trying hard to make it come out grumpy, but fell miserably short. Her presence resembled a fission reaction, kindling a fierce glow of pride in his mind. "Greg, this is Julia, that wayward grandchild I've been telling you about."

Julia Evans nodded politely, but didn't offer her hand. Apparently her grandfather's employees didn't rate anything more than fleeting acknowledgement. In silent retaliation Greg tagged her as a standard-issue spoilt brat.

Actually, he acknowledged she was quite a nice-looking girl. Tall and slender, with a modest bust, and her fine, unfashionably long hair arranged in an attractive wavy style that complemented a pleasant oval face. She wore a slim plain silver tiara on her brow, and a small gold St. Christopher dangling from a chain round her neck. He thought her choice of a strapless royal-purple silk dress was sagacious; she had the kind of confident poise necessary to carry it well, and not many her age could claim the same.

The boys would look twice, sure enough. Because she was sparky in that way that all teenage girls were sparky. It was just that she hadn't developed any striking characteristics to lift her out of the ordinary. And right now that was her major problem. She was a satellite deep into an eclipse. Her primary, the girl she stood beside, was an absolutely dazzling seraph.

Her name was Katerina Cawthorp, introduced as Julia's friend from their Swiss boarding school. A true golden girl, with richly tanned satin-smooth skin, and a thick mane of honey-blonde hair which cascaded over wide, strong shoulders. Her figure was an ensemble of superbly moulded curves, accentuated by a dress of some glittering bronze fabric which hugged tight. A deliciously low-cut front displayed a great deal of firm shapely cleavage, while a high tight hem did the same for long elegant legs. Her face was foxy; bee-stung lips, pert nose, and clear Nordic-blue eyes which regarded Greg with faint condescension. He'd been staring.

Katerina must have been used to it. That sly almost-smile let the whole world know that butter would most definitely melt in her mouth.

Julia wheeled her grandfather's chair on to a small platform which ran down a set of rails at the side of the stairs.

"That father of yours, is he coming down?" Evans asked her sourly.

"Now don't you two start quarrelling tonight."

"Probably skulking in his room getting stoned."

She slapped his wrist, quite sharply. "Behave. This is a party."

Evans grunted irritably, and the platform began to slide down. Julia kept up with it, skipping lightly.

Naturally, Katerina's descent was far more dignified. She glided effortlessly, an old-style film star making her grand entrance at a blockbuster premiere.

It left Greg free to talk to the boy, Adrian Marler; he didn't have to ask anything, Adrian turned out to be one of nature's gushers. He launched into conversation by telling Greg how he'd just begun to study medicine at Cambridge, hoped to make the rugby team as a winger, complained about the New Conservative government's pitifully inadequate student grant, confided that his family was comfortably off but nowhere near as rich as the Evans dynasty.

Adrian was six foot tall with surf-king muscles, short curly blond hair, chiselled cheekbones, and a roguish grin that would send young—and not so young—female hearts racing; he was also intelligent, humorous, and respectful. Greg felt a flash of envious dislike for a kind of adolescence he'd never had, dismissing it quickly.

"So how did you meet Julia?" he enquired.

"Katey introduced us," Adrian said. "Hey listen, no way was I going to turn down the chance to crash out at this palace for a few days, meet the great Philip Evans. Then there's gourmet food, as much booze as you want, clean sheets every day, valet service." He leaned over and gave Greg a significant between-us-men look, before murmuring, "And our rooms are fortuitously close together."

"She seems a nice girl," Greg ventured.

Adrian's eyes tracked the slow-moving, foil-wrapped backside in front of them with radar precision. "You have no idea how truly you speak." His mind was awhirl with hot elation.

"Are we talking about Julia or Katerina?"

Adrian broke off his admiring stare with obvious reluctance. "Katey, of course. I mean, Julia's decent enough, despite her old man being a complete arsehole. But she couldn't possibly match up to Katey, nobody could." He dropped his voice, taking Greg into his confidence. "If I had the money, I'd marry Katey straight off. I know it sounds stupid, considering her age. But her parents just don't care about her. It's a scandal; if they were poor the social services would've taken her into care. But they're rich, they sit in their Austrian tax haven and treat her as a style accessory. To their set it's fashionable to have a child, the more precocious the better. That's probably why she and Julia are such closeheads. Near-identical backgrounds; both of them ignored from an early age."

Greg suddenly experienced a pang of sympathy, prompted by his intuition. Adrian was a regular lad, one of the boys, likeable. He deserved better than Katerina. Although he didn't know it, his infatuation was doomed to a terminal crash landing. His rugged good looks and lack of hard cash marked him down as a passing fancy. Naivety preventing him from realising that the teeny-vamp sex goddess whose footsteps he worshipped was going to chew him up then spit him out the second a tastier morsel caught her wandering, lascivious eye.

Still, at least it meant Greg could start the evening by giving Evans one piece of news which he wanted to hear. Though whether it was good news was debatable. To Greg's mind, Julia would be hard pushed to find a better prospect for prince consort.

Philip Evans received his guests in the manor's drawing room. Its arching windows looked out on to the immaculately mown lawns where peacocks strutted round the horticultural menagerie along the paths. Maids in black-and-white French-style uniforms circulated with silver trays of tall champagne glasses and fattening cheesy snacks. A string quartet played a soft melody in the background. Greg felt as if he'd time-warped into some Mayfair club, circa nineteen-thirty.

The men were all dressed in immaculately tailored dinner jackets, while the women wore long gowns of subdued colours and modest cut. It made Katerina stand out from the crowd; not that she needed sartorial assistance for that. A stunning case of overkill.

Greg saw that despite his blunt Lincolnshire-boy attitude Philip Evans made a good host. He slipped into the role easily. A lifetime immersed in PR had taught him how.

Julia stuck by his side; officially the hostess, being the senior lady of the family. The guests treated her with a formal respect not usually directed at teenagers. They must know she was the protégée, Greg realised. She accepted her due without a hint of pretension.

Greg hovered behind the pair of them, maintaining a lifeless professional smile as he was introduced as Philip Evans's new personal secretary. The old billionaire had assembled an impressive collection of top rankers for his party—a couple of New Conservative cabinet ministers, and the deputy prime minister; five ambassadors; financiers; a sprinkling of the aristocracy; and some flash showbiz types, presumably for Julia's benefit.

Lady Adelaide and Lord Justin Windsor, Princess Beatrice's children, were also mingling with the guests, two tight knots of people swirling gently round them the whole time. Greg had managed to exchange a few words with Lady Adelaide; she was in her early twenties, and as politely informal as only Royalty could be given the circumstances. He gave way to the press of social mountaineers well pleased; Eleanor would love hearing the details.

As he left, he saw Katerina moving with the tenacity of an icebreaker through the people around Lord Justin. She wriggled round an elderly matron with gymnastic agility to deliver herself in front of him, blue eyes hot with sultry promise. For one moment, watching Lord Justin's quickly hidden guilty smile, Greg allowed his cynicism to get the better of him. Could the young royal be the reason Philip Evans was unhappy about Adrian? Lord Justin was only five years older than Julia; a union between them was the kind of note an ultra-English traditionalist like Philip Evans would adore going out on. He eventually decided the thought was unworthy. Philip Evans might be devious, but he wasn't grubby.

The new arrivals seemed endless. Greg wanted to undo his iron collar, he wasn't used to it. But all he could do was smile at the blur of faces, sticking to form. The guests weren't a nightstalker crowd, he realised grimly, not the ones who cruised the shebeens searching for pickups and left-handed action. This was class, the real and the posed. Their conversation revolved around currency fluctuations, investment potential, and the latest Fernando production at the National Theatre. Nobody here would be looking for a quiet moment to slip upstairs with someone else's escort. Greg steeled himself for hours of excruciating boredom.

There was one guest for whom Julia abandoned all her decorum, rushing up and flinging her arms round an overloud American. "Uncle Horace, you came!" She smiled happily as he patted her back, collecting an overgenerous kiss. The man was in his late fifties, red-faced and fleshy, his smile seemingly permanent.

The name enabled Greg to place him: Horace Jepson, the channel magnate. He was the president of Globecast, a satellite broadcasting company which had multiple channel franchises in nearly every country in the world; screening everything from trash soaps and rock videos to wildlife documentaries and twenty-four-hour news coverage. The PSP had refused Globecast a licence while they were in power, although the company's Pan-Europe channels could always be picked up by Event Horizon's black-market flatscreens, complete with a dedicated English-language soundband. The PSP raged about imperialist electronic piracy; Globecast calmly referred to it as footprint overspill, and kept on beaming it down. Greg had never watched anything else in the PSP decade.

Horace Jepson gave Philip Evans a hearty greeting, while Julia clung to his side. Then she steered him adroitly away from a cluster of the celebrities who'd begun to eye him greedily, introducing him to one of the New Conservative ministers instead.

It was an interesting manoeuvre: if those manic self-advancing celebrities had sunk their varnished claws into Jepson he would've had little chance of escaping all evening. So Julia Evans wasn't quite the airhead he'd so swiftly written her off as, after all. In fact, her thoughts seemed extraordinarily well focused, fast-flowing. He couldn't ever remember encountering a mind quite like hers before.

She returned and took her grandfather's hand. They shared a sly private smile.

It was a rapport which was quickly broken when Philip Evans spotted a couple making their way towards him and muttered, "Oh crap," under his breath. Julia glanced up anxiously, and gave her grandfather's hand a quick, reassuring squeeze.

He studied the advancing couple with interest to see what had aroused the sudden concern and antipathy in both Julia and Philip. They were a handsome pair. She was in her mid-twenties, draped in at least half a million pounds' worth of diamond jewellery, and wearing a loose lavender gown which showed almost as much cleavage and thigh as Katerina. The man, Greg guessed, was forty; he had a dark Mediterranean complexion, and obviously worked hard to keep himself fit. Each strand of his thick raven-black hair was locked into place.

Greg's espersense sent a cold, distinctly prickly sensation dancing along his spine as they approached. Beneath those perfect shells something disquietingly unpleasant lurked.

"Philip. Wonderful party," the man said, his accent faintly continental. "Thanks so much for the invite."

Philip returned the smile, although Greg knew him well enough by now to see how laboured it was without resorting to his espersense.

"Kendric, glad you could come," he said. "I'd like you to meet my new secretary. Greg, this is Kendric di Girolamo, my good friend and business colleague."

Kendric smiled with reptilian snobbery. "Ah, the English. Always so eager to do down the foreign devil. Actually, Greg, I am Philip's financial partner. Without me Event Horizon would be a fifth-rate clothing sweat-shop on some squalid North Sea trawler."

"Don't flatter yourself," Evans said in a tight flat voice. "I can find twenty money men bobbing about any time I look into a sewer."

"You see," Kendric appealed to Greg, "a socialist at heart. He has the true Red's loathing of bankers."

The knuckles on Julia's hand were blanched as she gripped her grandfather's shoulder, holding back the tiger.

The sight of someone as ill as Evans being deliberately provoked was infuriating. Greg allowed the neurohormones to flood out from the gland and focused his mind on ice—hard, sharp, helium-cold. A slim blade of this, needle-sharp tip resting lightly on Kendric's brow, directly above his nose. "Don't let's spoil the party atmosphere," he said gently.

Kendric appeared momentarily annoyed by a mere pawn interrupting his grand game.

Greg thrust his eidolon knife forwards. Penetration, root pattern of frost blossoming, congealing the brain to a blue-black rock of iron.

It felt so right, so easy. The power was there, fuelled by that kilowatt pulse of anger.

Kendric blinked in alarmed confusion, swaying as if caught by a sudden squall. The hauteur which had been swirling triumphantly across his thoughts flash-evaporated. His knees nearly buckled, he took an unsteady step backwards before he regained his balance.

Greg's own unexpected flame withered, sucked back to whatever secret recess it originated from. Its departure left a copper taste filming his suddenly arid throat. He turned to the woman. "I don't believe we've been introduced."

"My wife, Hermione," Kendric said warily; and she held her gloved hand out, the jewels of her rings sparkling brightly.

Her eyes swept Greg up and down with adulterous interest. She seemed mildly disappointed when all he did was shake her long-fingered hand.

He found himself comparing her to Eleanor. Only a few years separated them, and put in a dress like that Eleanor would be equally awesome. Except Eleanor would laugh herself silly at the notion of haute couture, and she'd never be able to mix at this kind of party— Ashamed, he jammed that progression of thoughts to a rapid halt.

"Married, Mr. Mandel?" Hermione enquired. Her voice was the audio equivalent of Katerina's dress, husky and full of forbidden promise. Now why did he keep associating those two?

"No."

"Pity. Married men are so much more fun."

Temptation had never beckoned so strongly before. She was one hell of a woman, but there was something bloody creepy scratching away behind that beautiful façade.

"We will talk later," Kendric said to Philip in a toneless voice. "Scotland needs to be finalised. Yes?"

"Yes," Philip conceded.

Satisfied with this minor victory he moved on to give Julia a light kiss. Hermione followed suit, then wafted away with a final airy, "Ciao." But not before she winked at Greg.

Julia stood rigidly still for the embrace. Greg's espersense informed him she was squirming inside. She had good reason, there was a burst of unclean excitement in Hermione's mind as their cheeks touched.

"Who the hell are they?" Greg asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

Julia was kneeling anxiously by her grandfather's powerchair. The old man had sagged physically. His mind was grey.

She looked up at Greg with shrewdly questioning eyes. "Thank you for making Kendric back off," she said.

He detected her thoughts flying at light speed, never losing coherence. Odd. Unique, in fact.

"You have a gland," she said after a few seconds.

Philip's low chuckle was malicious. "Too late, Juliet, you've had your three."

"Oh, you," she poked him with a finger in mock-exasperation. But there was an underlying current of annoyance.

"Di Girolamo is moneyed European aristocracy," he explained. "And he's right about us having financial ties; although being my partner is a complete load of balls. Did you ever buy any of my gear when the PSP was in power?"

"Yeah. A flatscreen, and a microwave too, I think. Who didn't?"

"And how did you pay for 'em?"

"Fish mainly, some vegetables."

"OK. The point is this: at the local level it was all done by barter. There was no hard cash involved. I would fly the gear in, and my spivs would distribute it, sometimes through the black market, sometimes through the Party Allocation Bureau. So far a normal company production/delivery set-up, right? But none of your fruit and veg is any use to me, I can't pay the bankers with ten tonnes of oranges. So that's where Kendric and his team of spivs comes in; he makes sure I get paid in hard currency. His spivs take the barter goods and exchange them for gold or silver or diamonds, some sort of precious commodity acceptable internationally—New Sterling was no good, it was a restricted currency under the PSP. They lift them out of the country, and Kendric converts them into Eurofrancs for me. It was a huge operation at the end, nearly two hundred thousand people; which is partly why the PSP never shut us down, you'd need a hundred new prisons to cope. Since the Second Restoration I've been busy turning my spivs into a legitimate commercial retail network—they're entitled to it, the loyalty they showed me. But now New Sterling has been opened, there's no need for Kendric's people any more, not in this country."

"Kendric also used to make himself a tidy profit while he was arranging the exchange," Julia put in coldly.

"I would've thought you could have arranged the exchange by yourself without any trouble," Greg said.

"Nothing is ever simple, Greg," Philip replied. "Kendric's management of the exchange was part of my original arrangement with my backing consortium. I needed a hell of a lot of cash to fund Listoel, and I didn't have the necessary contacts with the broker cartels back in those days, not for something that dodgy. Kendric did. His family finance house is old and respectable, well established in the money market. And he offered me the lowest rates, a point below the usual interest charges in fact. We got on quite well back then, despite his faults he is an excellent money man. The trouble is, he's been getting a mite uppity of late, thinks he should have a say in running Event Horizon. Involve the consortium with the managerial decision process. Bollocks. I'm not having a hundred vice-presidents sticking their bloody oars in."

"So why are you still tied in with him? You're legitimate now."

"Scotland," Julia said bitterly.

"'Fraid so," Philip confirmed. "The PSP is still in power north of the border so my arrangement with Kendric is still operating up there. Our respective spivs are virtually one group now, they've worked together for so long. It'd be very difficult to disentangle the two, not worth the effort and expense, especially as the Scottish card carriers aren't going to last another twenty months."

"And of course the di Girolamo house has an eight per cent stake in Event Horizon's backing consortium. And guess who their representative on the board is."

"I still don't get it," Greg complained. "Why should a legitimate banker offer an illegal operation like yours a low rate in the first place? At the very least he should've asked for the standard commercial rate. And there are enough solid ventures in the Pacific Rim Market without having to go out on a limb here."

"It's the way he is, boy," Philip said quietly. "He doesn't actually need to get involved in anything at all. The family trust provides him with more money than he could ever possibly spend. But he's sharp. He sees what happens to others of his kind—they party; they ski, power-glide, race cars and boats, take nine-month yachting holidays; they get loaded or stoned every night; and at age thirty-five the police are pulling them out of the marina. Half of the time it's suicide, the rest it's burnout. So instead of pursuing cheap thrills, Kendric gets his buzz by going right out on the edge. He plays the master-class game, backing smugglers like me, leveraged buyouts, corrupting politicians, software piracy, design piracy—I bought the Sony flatscreen templates Event Horizon uses from him. It's money versus money. His ingenuity and determination are taxed to the extreme, but he can't actually get hurt. I might not like him personally, but I admit he's been mighty useful. And he's exploited that position to grab his family house a big interest in Event Horizon. Clever. I like to think I'd have done the same."

"I'll get rid of him," Julia whispered fiercely. Her tawny eyes were burning holes in Kendric's back as he chatted up a brace of glossy starlets.

Philip patted her hand tenderly. "You be very careful around him, Juliet. He eats little girls like you for breakfast, both ways."

Greg could sense her raw hostility, barely held in check by her grandfather's cautionary tones.

He sat next to Dr. Ranasfari for the meal, an exercise in tedium; the man seemed to be a sense of humour-free zone. Ranasfari's doctorate was in solid-state physics, and his conversation was mostly of a professional nature; it all flew way over Greg's head. Although, curiously enough, Ranasfari loosened up most when he was talking to the ever-jovial Horace Jepson.

In the event, dogged perseverance finally enabled Greg to check him out as clean. He couldn't believe Ranasfari even knew what duplicitous meant. The Doctor had a very rarefied personality, perfectly content within the confines of his own synthetic universe. A genuine specimen of a head-in-the-clouds professor. Whatever project Philip Evans had him working on it was completely safe.