The Nano Flower

CHAPTER TWELVE

The interest was trickling back into Greg's brain, like a hit that charged his neurone cells with a dose of raw energy, leaving the mind clean, thoughts flowing with cold perfection. He hovered on the razor's edge between satisfaction and dismay. Tracing the girl, and through her Royan, was supposed to be a duty, not one of love's labours. But it felt good, the way he'd made it all come together in Monaco. Most of what they had learnt was negative information; it was a challenge making sense out of that. Dropped straight into a premier deal after fifteen years out in the cold, and still managed to hit the floor running. Not bad at all.

He knew Eleanor had feared this the most, that he'd enjoy himself, remember the good old days, how it used to be, the excitement and the danger. When they met she'd been more than a little impressed by the romance of being a private detective. Even now, time tended to obscure the years before that, when he was out on Peterborough's streets; the brain's natural defence mechanism fading out the pain and anguish associated with the Trinities. But if he really thought about it, those moments were there, hiding in the shadows beyond the firelight.

Eleanor didn't have anything to worry about, he decided, not really. Chasing after Charlotte Fielder wasn't about to trigger the male menopause. In any case, there was something slightly unreal about this investigation; carried from location to location in millionaire style, every fact uncovered pounced on by Victor's division and Julia's NN cores, producing a flood of profile data. All very swift and painless.

In fact the interest would be purely abstract if it hadn't been for his eagerness to talk to Baronski, it was almost impatience. The Pegasus had to fly subsonically over land. He resented that, knowing how fast the plane could go.

There was something else fuelling his mood, though, something darker, his intuition imparting a sense of time closing in. He hadn't confessed that to Suzi yet.

The flatscreen on the forward bulkhead showed the Austrian alps slipping by underneath the plane. They reminded Greg of Greenland's coastline after the ice had melted, a range of lifeless rock, scarred and stained. He could see massive landslides, where the pine forests had died leaving the soil exposed to torrential rains. Thick white-water rivers snaked down every valley, tearing out more soil and flooding the pastures. Reforestation was progressing slowly, the ecological regeneration teams had to build protective shields around their plantations. From the air they showed as green rectangles sheltering in the lee of the mountains, fragile and precarious. But there were new hydropower dam projects everywhere, ribbons of deep blue water accumulating in the deeper gorges. Most of the electricity was sold to the kombinate cyber-factory precincts in Germany. Austria had little heavy industry of its own, although low taxes and loose genetic-engineering laws had attracted investment from the biotechnology companies after the Warming. Event Horizon had several research centres in the country, he knew, as well as its main clinic at Liezen. He'd spent some time there himself, recuperating after tracking down the people who squirted the virus into Philip Evans' NN core. It was where he had proposed to Eleanor.

He smiled at the memory, then turned back to his cybofax which was showing Baronski's data profile. Dmitri Baronski was sixty-seven, a Russian émigré, leaving his motherland when he was twenty-three as an exchange student and never going back. He'd spent ten years as a PR officer for the Tuolburz kombinate, only to be dismissed for creaming off too high a percentage on the girls and boys he was supposed to supply for visiting executives. After that there were some arrests for pimping, one for fencing stolen artwork. Then fifteen years ago he'd hit on the idea of providing escorts for the wealthy, going for quality rather than quantity. He gave his girls an education in deportment equal to a Swiss finishing school, and discreetly presented them to European society.

He ran about a dozen at any one time, and the snippets of information they provided from pillow talk earned him about three-quarters of a million Eurofrancs a year from the stock exchange. It could have been more, but he was surprisingly honest with the girls, giving them a percentage.

"Christ, will you look at this!" Suzi exclaimed.

Greg left Baronski's exploits to look over her shoulder. She was busy reviewing Charlotte Fielder's profile on her cybofax.

"What's up?" he asked.

"This girl has run up a medical bill that a hypochondriac millionaire would envy."

"She's ill?"

"Neurotic, more like. There ain't much of the original Charlotte Fielder left, the biochemistry she's carrying around! Her piss'd rake in a fortune on the street." She ran her index finger down the wafer's screen. "Get this, vaginal enlargement! What's she been bonking, King Kong? Follicle tint hormones. Submaxillary gland cachou emission adaptation. What the flick is that?"

"It's a biochemical treatment to alter her saliva composition," Rachel said. "Makes her breath smell sweet the whole time, even the morning after. Especially the morning after."

"Jesus wept. Bigger tits, yes, I can understand that; but this lot…"

Greg enjoyed her growing choler; Suzi didn't show her real feelings often enough, keeping them bottled up in the mistaken belief that remaining unperturbed was more professional. "What? You mean it's not natural?"

Rachel laughed.

Suzi started to snap at him, then grinned weakly. "All right. But I don't know why we're bothering looking for off-planet aliens. This girl isn't anywhere near human any more."

"It's just a tool of the trade, dear. You and Julia have bioware nodes, I have a gland, Fielder has beauty."

Suzi turned the display off, and tucked the wafer into her shellsuit's top pocket. "Yeah, maybe. But it's acid weird, wouldn't catch me doing it."

"I'd hope not," he muttered.

The Pegasus was over a large town, shedding speed.

"Is that Salzburg?" Greg called forward to Pearse Solomons.

"Yes, sir. And we've got landing clearance for the Prezda."

"Fine." They were losing height rapidly, the Pegasus pitching its nose up at a respectable angle. Outside the town, the ecological-regeneration teams had triumphed. Rivers had been given gene-tailored coral banks to halt erosion. They were lined by surge reservoirs, like small craters, to cope with the sudden floods inflicted by Europe's monsoon season. Valley floors were a lush green again, speckled with wild flowers; llamas and goats grazing peacefully. Dark green tracts of evergreen pines were rising up the side of the slopes once more. They were a gene-tailored variety, nitrogen-fixing to cope with the meagre soil, their roots splaying out like a cobweb, clinging to exposed rock with an ivy-derived grip.

He wondered how much it would cost to repair the whole of the country in this way, a Japanese water garden treatment.

The Prezda arcology had been built into a natural amphitheatre at the head of a valley, facing south. It was as if the rock had been ground down into a smooth curved surface and polished to a mirror finish. A cliff face of a hundred thousand silvered windows looked out down the valley, he could see the mountains and lush parkland reflected in them. The image wavered as the Pegasus drew closer, as though the windows were rippling.

Between the two silver arms of the residential section was a low dome housing the inevitable shopping mall and the business community, along with the leisure facilities. The cyber-factories were buried in the rock behind the apartments. Power for the city-in-a-building came from a combination of nearby hydroelectric dams and hot rock exchange generators, bore holes drilled ten kilometres down to tap the heat of the Earth's mantle.

"Ant city," Suzi said as the Pegasus headed in for a pad above the western arm.

"You live in a condominium," Greg retorted.

"Yeah, but I get out to work and play."

The Pegasus landed on the roof, and taxied on to a lift platform at the edge. They began to slide down the side of the silver wall to the hangar level.

"Does Event Horizon have a contact in Prezda security?" Greg asked the two security hardliners.

"Not on the payroll," Pearse Solomons said. "But there is a commercial interests liaison officer, he deals with cases like data fencing, or bolt-hole suspects. He'll allow us to tap a suspect's communications, mount a surveillance operation, that kind of thing. You want me to call him?"

"No. We'll keep him in reserve."

There was a swift rocking motion as the Pegasus rolled forwards into the hangar. Greg stood up and made his way to the front of the plane.

"You think Baronski is going to co-operate?" Suzi asked as she followed him.

"According to his profile he goes out of his way not to annoy the big boys. Besides, he's old, he's not going to blow his chances of a golden retirement over something like a client's identity, not when we start bludgeoning him with Julia's name."

The belly hatch opened, letting in a whine of machinery and the shouts of service crews.

"Malcolm, you come with us this time," Greg said.

The hangar took up the entire upper floor of the Prezda, nearly two hundred metres wide, curving away into the distance. Bright sunlight poured through its glass wall, turning the planes parked along the front into black silhouettes. It was noisy and hot. Gusts of dry wind flapped Greg's jacket as they made their way across the apron. Executive hypersonics and fifty-seater passenger jets were taxiing along the central strip, rolling on and off the lift platforms. Drone cargo trucks trundled around them, yellow lights flashing.

The back half of the hangar had been carved into living rock, the rear wall lined with offices, maintenance shops, and lounges. Biolum strips were used to beef up the fading sunlight.

Greg walked through the nearest lounge and called a lift. He held his cybofax up to the interface key in the wall beside it, requesting a data package of the Prezda's layout. "Baronski lives seven floors down from here, and off towards the central well," he said, reading from the wafer's screen.

Suzi pressed for the floor and the lift door shut.

Greg tried to get an impression from his intuition. But all he got was that same pressure of time slipping away.

The lift doors opened on to a broad well-lit corridor with two moving walkways going in opposite directions. It was deserted, the only noise a low-pitched rumble from the walkways. They stepped on to the walkway going towards the centre of the arcology. There were deep side corridors every fifty metres on the right-hand side, ending in a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out across the valley.

The eighth walkway section brought them to the central well. A shaft at the apex of the amphitheatre, seventy metres wide, zigzagged with escalators. It was twenty storeys deep, Greg guessed the roof must be the hangar above. Each floor had a circular balcony, two-thirds of which was lined with small shops and bistros, the front third a gently curved window. The rails of glass-cage lifts formed an inner ribcage.

It was a busy time, the tables in front of the windows were nearly all full, smartly uniformed waitresses bustling about. People were thronging the concourse and the balconies, filling the escalators. Teenagers hung out. Strands of music drifted up from various levels, played by licensed buskers. Greg could see a team of clowns working through the window tables two storeys below, children laughing in delight.

"Baronski is back this way," Greg said, and pointed back down the corridor. "Couple of doors." That was when the ordered his gland secretion, seeing a flash of black muscle-tissue jerking. His espersense unfurled, freeing his thoughts from the prison of the skull. Minds impinged on the boundary as it swept outwards, deluging him with snaps of emotion, of tedium and excitement, the tenderness of lovers, and frustration of office workers. One fragment of thought had a hard, single-minded purpose that was unique in the whirl of everyday life about him. He stopped and searched round, seeking it again, knowing from irksome memory what it spelt.

"Wait," he said.

Suzi almost bumped into him as he halted. "Now what?"

There was a flare of interest in the mind. And again, another one on the edge of perception, a couple of floors higher up.

"There's a surveillance operation here," Greg said. "I've got two people in range. Probably more outside."

Suzi shifted her bag. "Targeting Baronski, do you think?"

"Dunno. They're interested in us, though, the direction we're heading."

"What now?"

"Malcolm, there's one on the other side of the well, opposite this corridor, not moving. Male. See if you can spot him."

Malcolm Ramkartra turned slowly and leant back on the walkway, resting his elbows nonchalantly on the rail. "Think so. Bloke in a blue-grey shortsleeve sports shirt, late twenties, brown hair cut short. He's outside a greengrocers, reading a cybofax."

Greg looked down the corridor. A woman and her ten-year-old daughter were riding the walkway towards the well. Ordinary thought currents. There was no one else.

Two people in the well implied a sophisticated deal. They couldn't stay there all the time, which meant a rotation, others held in reserve. Probably an AV spy disk covering Baronski's door as well. More people to trail the old man if he went down the corridor to a lift.

He realized he'd subconsciously accepted that it was Baronski who was the surveillance target. Not that there'd been much conscious doubt. The chance of this being a coincidence was way too slim.

"OK, this is how we handle it. Malcolm, you walk down the corridor to the first lift, call it, and hold it. When you've got it, Suzi and I will try and get in to see Baronski. If the observers start thinking hostile thoughts, we'll run for it, if not, we go in. Meantime, you get Pearse to contact that security liaison officer, go through Victor Tyo if it'll add more weight. But I want to know if that's an authorized surveillance. This might just be a police drugs bust, or something."

"Bollocks," Suzi said.

"Yeah, all right, some hope. But we check anyway."

"Gotcha," said Malcolm. He stepped on to the walkway that took him back down the corridor.

"We're running into a lotta heavy-duty shit for what was supposed to be a simple little track-down," Suzi muttered. "The Monaco lift, now this."

Greg was watching Malcolm, who was talking urgently into his cybofax. "Yeah, Julia didn't think this through properly."

"How do you mean?"

"Why did the people who took that sample from the flower bother taking it in the first place? I mean if they knew what the flower was they wouldn't need to take a sample. If they didn't, then there'd be no reason to do it. The flower was a specific message from Royan to Julia, he knew she'd be curious about it because flowers are special to the two of them. But for anyone else, it would be meaningless, a beautiful girl carrying a token from a lover."

"If they knew she was a courier they would have ripped her baggage apart to find the message. Analysed everything. Maybe even used a psychic to sniff out what she was carrying. You said the flower was giving off freaky vibes."

"Could be," he admitted. "Especially if they knew she was carrying a warning about the aliens, a living example would be an obvious way of providing proof. But if they are working for the aliens, then why let a message about their existence get out at all? Why not snuff her?"

Suzi rubbed her forehead. "Christ, Greg. I'm just here to hardline for you, remember?"

"I don't expect answers. All I'm saying is that this is weirder than it looks."

"That's what I've just fucking told you!"

"I'm trying to think what kind of allies these aliens might have plugged in with. For a start, whoever it is has got to be rich enough to afford these kind of deals."

"A kombinate, finance house, someone like Julia; Christ, take your pick."

"There's no one else like Julia."

"Independently wealthy, arsehole."

"But why?"

"Like I said to Julia yesterday. Starship technology is worth a bundle. Antimatter drives, boron hydride fusion, high-velocity dust shields. Any one of those would be instant trillionairedom."

"Right." He was amused by her reaction. Suzi, a starship buff. He knew the English Interstellar Society sponsored regular conventions, covering topics from propulsion systems down to the practicality of pioneers setting up homesteads in alien biospheres. And there was a large chapter active in Peterborough, naturally, the heart of England's high-tech industry. The thought of Suzi attending didn't fit his world view.

The observer on the other side of the well emitted a burst of annoyance. He began to walk away from his position, thought currents feverishly active.

Looking the other way, Greg saw Malcolm Ramkartra was holding the lift. The hardliner gave Greg a short nod.

Two new minds moved into his perception range, that same steely intent as the first observer prominent amongst their thought currents.

"Bugger."

"What?" Suzi asked.

"The observation team have realized we've seen them. Come on."

At least Baronski was at home. Greg could sense his mind. Thought currents moving normally, their tension slacker than the people in the well, the way it always was with older people. Another mind close by was denser, brighter, filled with expectancy, a streak of suspense.

"He's got someone in there with him," Greg said. "One of his girls, at a guess." He pressed the call button. The suspicion and interest of the observers rose.

"Yes?" Baronski's voice asked from the grille.

"Dmitri Baronage? Could we come in, please? We'd like a word."

"I'm not seeing anyone today."

"It is important."

"No."

"Just a couple of questions, I won't take a minute."

"No, I said. If you don't go away, I shall call arcology security."

Greg sighed. "Baronski, unless you open this door right now, I'll come back with arcology security, and they'll smash it down for me. OK?"

"Who are you?"

Greg showed his Event Horizon security card to the key, there was a near invisible flash of red laser light. "I'm Greg Mandel. Now can I come in? After all, you're not on our shit list… yet."

"You're from Event Horizon?"

"Yeah, and one of your girls met with our boss in Monaco the other night. Are you getting my drift?"

"I… Yes, very well." The door lock clicked.

Baronski's lounge was huge, its colour scheme navy-blue and royal purple. The chairs and settee were sculpted to look like open sea shells. Antique furniture cluttered the wall, delicate tables holding various art treasures, a genuine samovar, an icon panel of the Virgin Mary that was dark with age, what looked suspiciously like a Fabergé egg, which Greg decided had to be a copy. The paintings were chosen for their erotica, old oils and modern flour sprays side by side. They were illuminated by biolum lamps in the shape of a tulip, grey smoked glass with elaborate gold-leaf curlicues. Vivaldi was playing quietly out of hidden speakers.

Suzi whistled softly as they walked in. Greg's suede desert boots sank into the pile carpet. He was conscious of his leather jacket again, Eleanor's disapproval.

Baronski and the girl were both in silk kimonos. There was a pile of glossy art books on a low coffee table in front of the settee. Two tall glasses full of crushed ice on Tuborg beer mats standing beside the open volumes.

The girl was black, about sixteen, with that same athlete's build that instantly reminded him of Charlotte Fielder. She was obviously going to be beautiful; her cheeks and nose were covered in blue dermal seal, but her features were so finely drawn it almost didn't matter. She stood beside the settee, perfectly composed, looking at him with wide liquid eyes, unafraid.

Baronski was backdropped by the Alps beyond the picture window, a thin man with a thin face, nothing near Greg's simple mental image of burly red-faced Russian grandfathers. He was dainty, birdlike, longish snow-white hair brushed back, resembling a plume. But stress had marred his face, leaving bruised circles round his eyes, creases across his cheeks. His mind had such an air of weariness that it evoked a strong sense of sympathy. Greg wanted to urge him to sit down.

"What exactly is it you require?" Baronski asked stiffly. "I'm sure you must be aware that I've never sought to infringe upon any of Event Horizon's activities. My girls have very clear instructions on this matter."

Greg clicked his fingers at the girl. "Best if you disappear."

She glanced at Baronski.

"Go along, Iol. I'll call you when we're finished."

She curtsied, and walked silently across the lounge to the hallway door.

Suzi watched her go. "Give her a lot of artistic tuition, do you?"

The door closed.

"Miss…?"

"Suzi."

Baronski appeared to chew something distasteful. "Indeed."

"I expect you know the routine," Greg said.

"Remind me," the old man said vaguely.

"Hard or soft. We don't leave without the data we came for. And I do have a gland, so we'll know if it is the right data. Clear enough?"

"My word, am I really that important? A gland, you say. You obviously cannot read my mind directly."

"I'm an empath; you lie, and I know about it instantly."

"I see. And suppose I were to say nothing?"

"Word association. I reel off a list of topics, and see which name your mind jumps at. But it's an effort, and it annoys me."

"So what would you do should you become annoyed, beat it out of me? I imagine I would feel a lot of pain at my age. The old bones aren't very strong now."

"No, I wouldn't lay a finger on you. That's what she's here for."

There as a sharp pulse of indignation from Suzi's mind, but she held her outward composure.

Baronski studied her impassive face for any sign of weakness, then sighed and sat carefully in the settee. "I suppose this day was inevitable, I just pushed it away to the back of my mind, always secretly hoping that I would be proved wrong. But I can honestly say that I never intended to upset Julia Evans. In a way she is an admirable woman, so many would have squandered what she has. Yes, admirable. You can see that I'm telling the truth, can't you?"

"I knew that before I came," Greg said.

"Yes. Well, what do you wish to know?"

"Charlotte Diane Fielder."

"My yes, a beautiful girl, very smart. I was proud of Charlotte. One of my triumphs. What has she done?"

"Where is she?"

"I genuinely don't know."

Greg frowned, concentrating. There was a strong trace of disappointment in Baronski's mind. "Do you know who she left the Newfields ball with?"

"It was supposed to be Jason Whitehurst. My problem is that I can't find out if she actually did or not. I haven't been able to contact her or Jason since."

"This Jason Whitehurst, is he about fourteen, fifteen?"

Baronski gave him a surprised look, and picked up one of the beer glasses from the table. "Good Lord no, Jason is in my age bracket. He has got a son, though, Fabian. Fabian is fifteen, perhaps you mean him."

"Could be." Greg pulled out his cybofax, and summoned up the memory of Charlotte and the boy leaving the El Harhari.

"Yes," Baronski said, studying the wafer's screen. "That is Fabian Whitehurst."

"And this?" Greg showed him the chauffeur.

"No. I don't know that man at all."

"OK, what does Jason Whitehurst do?"

"He's a trader, shifting cargo around the world. A lot of it is barter, buying products or raw material from countries that have no hard cash reserves, then swapping it for another commodity, and so on down the line until he's left with something he can dispose of for cash. There's quite an art to it, but Jason is a successful man."

"Said it'd be some rich bastard," Suzi said. "Money lifted her over the border, no need for a tekmerc deal."

"Yeah," Greg agreed. "Where does Jason Whitehurst live?"

Baronski took a sip from the glass. "On board his airyacht, the Colonel Maitland."

"What the fuck's an airyacht?" Suzi asked.

"A converted airship. Jason tends to the eccentric, you see. He bought it ten years ago, spends his whole time flying over all of us. I visited once, it has a certain elegant charm, but it's hardly the life for me."

Greg sat heavily in one of the chairs. Wringing information out of the old man was depressing him. It was psychological bullying. Dmitri Baronski was a man who took confidentiality seriously. He'd built his life on it. "Do you know where Whitehurst was flying to after Monaco?"

"Yes. That's why all the heartache. The Colonel Maitland was supposed to be flying straight to Odessa, so Jason told me. But there's been no trace of them, no answer to any of my calls. I tell myself it cannot be an accident. Airships are the safest way to travel; a punctured gasbag, or a broken spar, the worst that can happen is a gradual deflation. The Colonel Maitland would simply float to the ground. But it hasn't happened. Such an event would be on every channel newscast, rescue services all around the Mediterranean would be alerted by emergency beacons. Jason Whitehurst and his airyacht have simply vanished from the Earth. I don't like that. I always keep an eye on my girls, Mr. Mandel, I'm very stringent about the patrons I introduce them to. There are certain members of my charmed circle who develop, shall we say, unpleasant tastes and requirements. I won't have that, not for my girls."

"Very commendable. Did you try phoning Whitehurst's office?"

"He has several agents dotted about the globe, and yes I called some of them. It was the same answer each time. Jason Whitehurst is currently incommunicado."

Greg looked at Suzi, who shrugged indifferently.

"Julia and Victor won't have any trouble locating something that size," she said. "There can't be that many airships left flying."

"Yeah," Greg acknowledged. There was something faintly unsettling about the way the world lay exposed to Event Horizon. A single phone call and someone's credit record was instantly available; a request to the company operating the Civil Euroflight Agency's traffic control franchise, and Europe's complete air movement records would be squirted over to Peterborough for examination. If an Interpol investigator had requested the data, it would take hours or even days for the appropriate legal procedures to be enacted and release it. Companies and kombinates were developing into an extralegal force more potent than governments, but only in defence of their own interests. It was a creep back towards medievalism, he thought, when people had to petition their local baron for real action, when the king's justice was just a distant figurehead.

One law for the rich, another for the poor. Nothing ever really changed, not even in the data currency age. And why was he getting so cynical all of a sudden?

Baronski was sitting listlessly in the settee, face morbid. "Please tell me, what has Charlotte done?"

"She hasn't done anything herself," Greg said. "It looks like she just got caught up in something a lot bigger. We're not angry with her, OK? But we do need to talk to her. Urgently."

"Yes. I'll tell her if she gets in touch. Thank you, Mr. Mandel."

Greg stood up. There was a sharp twang from his intuition, an intimation that he was being sold short. He glanced sharply at Baronski, a shrunken figure lost in his own anxiety. The curse of intuition was its lack of clarity, he was never quite certain.

"Anything you want to ask?" he asked Suzi.

"Nah."

"OK. If Charlotte does get in touch with you, ask her to call us, please. It will save everyone an awful lot of trouble."

"I shall," Baronski said. He put his glass down, and picked up a gold cybofax. Greg squirted his number over.

"Well?" Suzi asked as they left the apartment.

"Dunno. I get the impression he's cheating us somehow."

"So why didn't you ask him about it?"

"Ask him what? Sorry, Dmitri, but what haven't you told us? Fat lot of use that would be. You know my empathy is only good for specifics."

"Yeah. Skinny little fart, wasn't he?"

"It's not a crime." Greg saw Malcolm Ramkartra was still waiting by the open door of the lift. His espersense stretched out again. There were four observers in the well now, and that was just the ones within range. "I think it's about time we found out a bit more about the opposition."

"Suits me."

Greg walked out into the centre of the corridor, and beckoned Malcolm Ramkartra.

"What did the liaison officer say?" he asked when the hardliner reached them.

"He didn't know the surveillance team were here. There's no police operation on this floor."

"No shit?" Suzi said.

"OK. Malcolm, I want to talk to one of the observers. We're going back to the well; I'll physically identify one and we'll work a pincer on him. You go round the balcony clockwise, Suzi and I will take anticlockwise. If he backs off down a corridor, so much the better, he'll be isolated for a while. If you reach him first, then immobilize him, but make sure he's still conscious. Don't worry about visibility, tell you, this deal is important, OK?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Tyo explained that to us."

"Right, and the name's Greg."

Malcolm Ramkartra gave a quick smile, his thoughts tightening up. There wasn't any worry present, a true pro. Greg realized how little he knew about him, apart from the fact that he'd be the best. This deal was so bloody rushed.

"Let's go." They began to walk towards the well. "Two of them are sitting at a table in front of the window. The third is almost in the same place as the one Malcolm spotted earlier. The fourth is a woman, on the balcony above ours, hovering ten metres from the corridor on our left. So we'll take number three."

"How long do you need with him?" Malcolm Ramkartra asked.

"About a minute."

"Oh." This time there was a flutter of consternation in his thought currents.

"And no, I can't read your mind directly."

Suzi gave a wicked chuckle.

Two men stepped into the corridor from the well. The one in front had a pale face, wounded amber eyes, his ebony hair swept back and clinging to his skull. His suit was dark grey, baggy trousers and a black belt with a silver lion-head buckle. Everything about him shouted hardliner.

The other was an oriental, his hair in braids ending in tiny ringlets. He possessed a surly confidence bordering on egomania.

Suzi stopped dead.

The first man gave a start, and put his hand on the arm of his partner.

His mind was the perfect twin of Suzi's, Greg saw. The two of them flush with loathing and alarm, ricocheting back and forth, building.

"Suzi," said the man in the suit. "The oddest places. Yes?"

"Leol Reiger, still trailing way behind as per flicking usual."

"Depends what I'm after."

"Baronski," Suzi said firmly, and turned to Greg. "Was he?"

The initial confusion in Leol Reiger's had mind twisted to sharp alarm at the mention of Baronski's name.

"Yeah, he knows Baronski."

Leol Reiger's eyes never left Suzi. "Who's your friend, Suzi?" he asked softly.

"Never seen him before in my life."

"Chad," Leol Reiger said.

The younger oriental man grinned at Greg. "Hey, voodoo man, you do this?"

Greg was caught by surprise at the speed with which Chad's psi arose. Ordinary misty thought currents suddenly gleamed like chrome, rich with arrogant power. Chad's espersense unfurled, black daemon wings taking Greg into their implacable embrace.

The sensation was like a hot wet tongue slipping right through his temple, licking round his brain. Gone before he could harden his mind against it.

And he'd never even bothered to take the most elementary precaution. Jumped like a total novice. Chad must be loaded with sacs; themed neurohormones stored at critical sections through the brain, lifting the psi faculty from dormant to active like throwing a switch.

"Mr. Greg Mandel is a gland psychic," Chad said, his grin widening to mock.

"Really?" said Leol Reiger.

Greg could sense Suzi's annoyance, twined with a small thread of exasperation that she should be let down like this. He increased his gland's secretion, shame damping down as a cool anger surfaced in his thoughts; remembering the games the Brigade used to play in barracks. Squaddies' games, the kind played after days in combat, when life and dignity had been reduced to zero. The ones the Mindstar project directors had frowned upon, too dangerous for their valuable personnel to indulge in.

"And a Mindstar Brigade veteran as well," Chad went on. "A real top gun in his day. Like, a century ago."

"So what is this?" Leol Reiger asked. "You running a pensioner's outing, Suzi?"

"I'd hate to think you were treading on my turf, Leol. That'd piss me off real bad," Suzi growled back.

Greg tried to keep track of the observers' reactions. They were alert and interested by the confrontation. Nothing to do with Leol Reiger, then.

"Back off, bitch," said Leol Reiger. "And you," he flicked a finger at Malcolm Ramkartra, "keep your hand away from that shoulder holster. I'll chop you into fucking dogmeat, else. Got it?"

"That's enough," Greg said. "You two aren't going to see Baronski, he belongs to us now. Fuck off, the pair of you."

"Jesus, a geriatric control-freak," Leol Reiger sneered. "Chad, deal with him."

Greg thought of a knife, bright steel shimmering, needle tip pricking the skin on the bridge of Chad's nose.

Chad began to laugh, his thoughts flaring as the sacs discharged again and the neurohormone dose hit his bloodstream. "Gonna crack your mind open like an eggshell, war hero."

Greg tensed his mind behind the imaginary blade, and –

— reality flickered—

— and pushed. Chad's thoughts were too hard, too closely packed. The knife slithered across their congealed surface, denied an opening.

"Best you can do?" Chad asked.

"Yeah."

"Too bad."

"That's why I always bring my little friend along," Greg said, nodding at a point behind Chad.

Screams broke out in the well. People were pushing and shoving as they raced past the end of the corridor, terror in their faces. Display stands went crashing to the ground. One of the barrows was overturned, oranges and nectarines tumbling about across the tiled floor.

The beast was about the size of a lion, jet black, covered in an ice-smooth exoskeleton. Talons made skittering noises against the tiles as it padded round the corner into the corridor. Its head was a streamlined nightmare, eyes buried in deep recesses, razor fins on its crown, tapering reptilian muzzle.

Chad gaped at it, frozen in disbelief.

"Shit almighty," Suzi squawked in panic.

Leol Reiger stumbled a step backwards, his pale face shocked. The beast screeched, a metallic keen that threatened to shatter glass. Chad threw his hands over his ears, yelling in fright. The sound cut off.

"Kill," Greg said.

"No!" Chad wailed. He turned to run.

The beast leapt, forelimbs catching Chad's left shoulder, extended talons slashing. Blood squirted. Chad was flung into the walkway's handrail. He screamed at the pain as his mangled arm took the full weight of the impact. Tears squeezed out of his eyes. He doubled over, clamping his right hand over his left shoulder, blood bubbled through his fingers, staining his sleeve.

"Jesus Christ, call the fucker off."

Leol Reiger went for his weapon, hand fumbling inside his suit jacket. Malcolm Ramkartra's arm moved with a smooth fast piston motion, as if his body was working in accelerated time; his Tokarev pistol pressed against Leol Reiger's neck. "Don't," he whispered happily.

The beast turned, head swinging round to focus on Chad. Its long muzzle snapped shut with a crack like a rifle.

Chad whimpered, cowering, staggering backwards. "Please God, don't let it."

He was bowled over by the beast, his head smacking on to the tiles. The beast's powerful muzzle opened centimetres from his face, and it let out a long undulating howl. A narrow gap in the exoskeleton between its hindlegs split open, grotesque genitalia arose.

Chad's mouth shrieked soundlessly, and—

— reality flickered—

— and he puked.

There was no beast, no blood, no shredded arm. Chad was curled up on the floor, hands wrapped round his head, sobbing quietly. The stench of vomit and piss curled the air.

Leol Reiger was staring down at him an amazement. "What the fuck—" Amber eyes jerked up to fix Greg, betraying the wild flames of consternation that were burning in the mind.

"No expense spared, eh, Leol?" Suzi said. "You always have the best on your squad."

"Take him away," Greg told Leol Reiger in a dead voice. "And don't come back."

"Shit on you," Leol Reiger spat. He kicked Chad. "Up, you useless bastard. Get up."

Chad dropped his hands from his face, blinking tears from his eyes. He looked round in lost confusion. Saw Greg and flinched.

"Get up."

Chad grasped the walkway rail, breathing heavily, and hauled himself to his feet.

Greg could feel the first twinges of the neurohormone hangover scratching away behind his temple. With the effusion level he'd used they would soon accelerate into stabs of white-hot lightning crackling round the inside of his skull.

"Bugger, but I hate eidolonics," he muttered.

Leol Reiger and Chad turned the corner out into the well, Chad reeling like a drunk. Several shoppers watched their progress.

"I never knew you could do that," Suzi said.

Malcolm Ramkartra was looking at him with a studied expression, respectful, and more than a little disconcerted.

"Oh yeah," Greg said. "But it costs."

Each of the observers had become a whirlpool of excitement. One of them began to follow Leol Reiger.

"Who was that?" he asked Suzi.

"Leol fucking Reiger, real bundle of fun. Likes to think he's a premier-grade tekmerc, but he's just a jumped up hardliner with an attitude problem."

"I thought the two of you were trying to out-cool each other to death."

Suzi's face hardened. "Listen, he might be a prize prick, but if he's in on this deal there's serious trouble brewing."

"Yeah, he's not working with the observers for a start."

"Oh, bollocks. A third group involved." She sucked in air, letting it whistle through her teeth. "Greg, I don't like this."

"Tell you, me neither."

Leol Reiger and Chad sank out of his perception range. They had taken one of the glass cage lifts down the side of the well.

"What now?" Suzi asked.

"I still want to talk to one of those observers. But first I think we'd better make use of the small lead we've got."

"Are you going to warn Baronski?" Malcolm Ramkartra asked.

Greg thought for a moment. Leol Reiger's mind had been screaming for vengeance as he disappeared. "No. Reiger has gone to regroup, that's all. We've got a small breathing space. Baronski isn't our concern, if we try and safeguard him, Reiger will come after us, and I don't know what he's loaded with." He gave Suzi an enquiring glance.

"God knows," she said. "But he won't be travelling lightweight. He'll have hardline backup, and he'll have made sure it's enough to get him into Baronski's apartment."

"So scratch Baronski, maybe the observers will protect him when they see Reiger coming back. Then, maybe not. Our advantage is we know about Whitehurst, let's exploit that." Greg pulled his cybofax from his top pocket, and give it Julia's number. He squinted at the screen when she came on; she was sitting in the back seat of her Rolls. The real Julia. "How were the speeches?"

"Boring, I'll trade places with you next time."

"Deal. Listen, are you up to date?"

"Yes, her name's Charlotte Fielder, and you're going to see Baronski."

"Seen him. Trouble is, there's one very pissed off tekmerc here called Leol Reiger who wants to see him as well."

"Do you need assistance?"

"No, he's gone now. But Baronski is being watched, and not by Reiger. That means at least two other groups are on the same trail we are."

"Dear Lord. Who, Greg?"

"I don't know. I was hoping you could tell us."

Julia sucked her lower lip in concern. "No, sorry. I'll get my team on it."

"You do that. But at least we've got a lead on Fielder from Baronski. He told us that she's gone off with someone called Jason Whitehurst, a trader. Do you know him?"

"Jason? Yes, I know him, I even do business with him. He places some of my gear in Africa and the Far East; he runs some complex exchange deals, but he's reliable. I've met him at a few functions… Quite a nice old boy. You'd get on well with him, Greg, he's ex-military."

"No messing? Well, that boy who left the El Harhari with Charlotte Fielder was Jason Whitehurst's son, Fabian; so she's definitely with Whitehurst. The thing is, Baronski can't contact her. Apparently Whitehurst lives in an airship, and he's not answering calls. I need its co-ordinates."

"Jason's son?" Julia asked.

Greg picked up on the puzzlement in her voice. "Yeah."

"I don't think so, Greg, Jason's gay."

"Christ," Suzi muttered. "You said it, Greg, that old fart Baronski cheated you. How about we go back and find out who the kid really is?"

The neurohormone hangover was beginning to bite. He tried to concentrate. "Irrelevant; Charlotte left with that boy, and Baronski believed he was Jason Whitehurst's son. So whatever this Fabian character really is, he and Jason are operating together. And Jason is definitely plugged in somewhere down the line; why else did he pull his vanishing act? Julia, assemble a full profile on Jason Whitehurst for us, and find out where the bloody hell that airship is."

"OK, it's already underway."

"Fine, call me back when you have something." He tucked the cybofax back into his top pocket. "Right, let's go and lift one of those observers."

"I wonder who's paying Leol?" Suzi asked as they walked towards the well.

"One at a time, Suzi, please."