The Nano Flower

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Greg watched the coast of Greenland sliding across the flatscreen on the cabin's forward bulkhead. A stark slate-grey line of rocky cliffs with grimy water churning against their base. Away to the north a fast-flowing river was spurting into the sea, spitting out irregular lumps of translucent white ice.

The Pegasus could easily have been the same one that he'd been using yesterday, the cabin had the same type of seats, same colour scheme, same tasteless air, the Event Horizon logo cut into each of the crystal tumblers behind the rose-wood bar. Except today there was only Melvyn Ambler sitting quietly beside him instead of Malcolm Ramkartra and Pearse Solomons.

He thought he'd learnt to deal with the memories of the dead. There had been enough in Turkey, and on Peterborough's chthonic streets. Hold on to the names, treat them with respect, and remember they'd be cheering you on.

He must have been out of practice, that or he'd softened down the years. The Pegasus had taken twelve minutes to reach Greenland from Listoel, and each lonely one had been spent thinking about the two security hardliners and Rachel. A sudden flare of light and heat swelling around them, penetrating the cabin. Maybe not even that. It had been very fast.

The sun hadn't risen yet, which made the dark undulating plains they were flying over seem even more forbidding, a barren expanse of grit and boulders, slicked with dew, features blurring as they lost height.

He couldn't work up any real enthusiasm about the meeting. It would be nice to see Vassili again, but talking about Event Horizon and the alien would sour the reunion.

The handset on Greg's armrest chimed. He picked it up.

"We've just lost our escort," Catherine Rushton said.

Catherine Rushton was the pilot. The first thing he'd done after coming through the belly hatch was go into the cockpit to meet her. It was an overreaction verging on the childish, but it assuaged him, identifying her as a person.

"We're safe then, are we?" he asked with a hint of mordancy. Three Typhoon air-superiority fighters had escorted them from Listoel. It looked like he wasn't the only one overreacting this morning. Julia had been worried about the kind of weapons which Clifford Jepson could supply to Leol Reiger; an arms merchant and a tekmerc was a real bastard of a combination.

"Yes," she answered. "The Russian zone Air Defence Regiment command is tracking us. We'll be landing at Nova Kirov in two minutes."

"Fine." He pulled his leather jacket off an empty seat.

The flatscreen was showing a tract of emerald-green land below, marked off into square fields by wire fencing. Even with the high vantage point and anaemic light he could tell the vegetation wasn't grass, too low, too uniform, almost like a golf course fairway. And it was lumpy; whatever the plant was, it flowed over boulders and rock outcrops like a film of liquid. There were sheep grazing on it, though.

Nova Kirov was the Wild West reinvented for the twenty-first century, a frontier town in aluminium and pearl-white composite. There were no trees anywhere, Greg noticed. No timber for houses and barns. These pioneers weren't as independent as the ones who'd hit the Oregon trail two hundred years earlier. To set up a homestead in Greenland you either needed to be rich, or have rich sponsors.

The town was spread out over a kilometre along the rocky southern bank of a white-water river. He could see big lumps of glass-smooth ice bobbing about amid the spray and foam. A broad single-span bridge connected the town with a dirt road that ran parallel with the north bank.

There was a large patch of ground on the east of the town which remained free of the vegetation mat. Five An-995 subsonic heavylift cargo planes were parked on it, fat cylindrical bodies with a rear wing and canard configuration, all of them in blue and white Air Russia colours. A long two-storey office block sat on one side of the makeshift airport. Satellite dishes were scattered along its solar collector roof, pointing south; a tall microwave antenna tower stood at one end, an array of horns covering the surrounding countryside.

The Pegasus curved round the town and slid over the An-995s to land close to the office block. Greg caught sight of a small reception committee standing waiting. Dull grey dust swirled up, obscuring the camera image.

The belly hatch opened, and Melvyn Ambler stood up, zipping his blue and red check woollen jacket up to his neck.

"General Kamoskin and I will probably have a private talk in his office," Greg said. "You'll have to stay outside, OK?"

"Sure thing," the hardline captain said easily.

Greg skipped lightly down the metal stairs. Powdery grey sand crunched below his desert boots. It was cool outside, a crisp clean humidity that came from morning ground frosts. Greg relished it for the sheer novelty value. His breath was turning to thin white vapour.

One day he'd have to bring the kids here, give them just a taste of the wind from ages past, how the world used to be. It would be terrible for them never to know.

General Vassili Kamoskin was standing at the front of the five-man reception committee, beaming broadly, his arms thrown wide. He was a solid stereotypical Russian, black hair receding from his temples, full face, thick neck. He wore his Russian Army uniform, dark green with scarlet epaulettes, knife-edge creases, five bands of medal ribbons. And they weren't show decorations, Greg knew, Vassili had earned them. Three of them in Turkey where they had served together.

He stepped into a bear hug, Vassili laughing in his ear.

"Gregory, as always it is too long. How is Eleanor?"

Greg released him. Vassili's hair was thinner than he remembered. It must have been five years since he'd visited Hambleton, just before Ricky was born. They'd kept in touch because the kind of friendships formed in combat weren't the ones you could let go. There was too much pain and effort invested. "Expecting again," Greg said.

Vassili clapped him delightedly on the shoulder. "You never sent word," he accused. "How many is that now?"

"This'll be the fifth."

"You devil, you. Do you give lessons?"

"How's Natalia keeping?"

"Bah," Vassili waved a hand dismissively towards the town. "She's an Army wife, she doesn't complain. Sometimes I think she should."

Greg looked at Nova Kirov. There was a cluster of warehouses behind the airport office block, tractors were already moving round them, tugging flat-bed trailers loaded with bales of wool. The buildings of the town proper were mostly single storey, spaced well apart, made up from standardized panels clipped on to a simple framework. An aluminium church stood by itself on a plateau above the river. Streets were wheel-rutted blue-grey mud. There were a couple of dogs running about.

Even without his espersense engaged, Greg could detect the buzz of optimism running through the place. The settlement was creating its own future, that always inspired.

"Looks pretty good to me," he said.

"Gregory," Vassili shoved out his arms theatrically. "It's a retirement posting. They pushed me out to grass, the bastards."

"Don't tell me you'd prefer to be shuffling bytes in Moscow?"

Vassili grunted. "No. No you're right at that, Gregory. I have a responsibility here, some independence from our glorious knowledgeable Marshals. I'd never get the Defence Minister post anyway, I lack the politics. So here I am, tsar of sixty thousand square kilometres, even if three-fifths of it is still under the ice."

The glacier was visible on the western horizon, a pristine white line disrupting the fusion of land and sky. It was beginning to shoot out orange-pink reflections of the rising sun. The image had a dream clarity about it. Greg stared, fascinated.

"Does it keep you busy, Vassili?" he asked.

"Bah, we're here to guarantee the zemstvo's boundaries until it's granted full independence by the UN. We've got the Indian zone to the north, and the French to the south. I don't think either of them is going to invade us, do you, Gregory?"

"No."

"All we are is a glorified police force, saving the zemstvo from paying for their own. Not that the colonists could afford a police force, anyway. My troops spend their evenings stopping fights between drunks. That's all the farmers do, Gregory, plant their gene-tailored arable moss over this desolation during the day, and drink at night. They come out here with such high hopes, stars in their eyes. Then they see the true reality of Greenland. A desert of grubby shingle, and rivers of sterile water colder than yeti's blood. This land they have bought will take a century to transform into the garden they were promised. They expected freedom, and they've found they've indentured their children. Of course they drink, but I forgive them for it. What else can I do?"

"Dreams are never cheap, Vassili."

"I know. But it saddens me to see so much heartache. They are so naïve. Never trust a man with stars in his eyes, Gregory. Never."

Greg was still facing the distant glacier. There was a cool wind gusting off it, ruffling his hair. The air was so clear.

He knew Event Horizon had funded a couple of settlements in the English zone. But Julia never mentioned them being a problem; Perhaps her smallholders had been equipped with drone planters. She did favour technological solutions to everything. But then colonizing Greenland was a very technical proposition. The idea behind the UN opening it up to settlers in the wake of the retreating ice was to turn it into a giant arable country. There was no ecology that would be destroyed by gene-tailored crops, no indigenous species to be usurped. Even the soil was devoid of bacteria. The farmers could use intensive cultivation techniques over every square metre with impunity.

He rubbed his arms. "It's cold here. I'd forgotten what real mountain air could be like."

"You English are wimps. It's too hot, it's too cold, it's too wet. Never satisfied."

"Yeah, right," Greg turned back to Vassili. "At least we're allowed to complain."

Vassili made a farting sound. "Now we've found the glories of democracy, when do Russians ever do anything else?"

Greg glanced at the four young officers standing blank-faced behind Vassili. "I need to talk with you, Vassili."

"Bah, one phone call telling me you're coming. Then another from the Defence Ministry itself telling me to be vigilant this morning, there are to be no unaccountable accidents in my airspace. So I ask myself, all this for my old orange farmer friend?"

"I'm not farming right now. It's the middle of the bloody picking season, and I've been dragged away."

"They never leave us alone, do they, Gregory?" Vassili said soberly.

"This isn't the Army, the English government, Vassili. I'm doing this for another friend of mine."

Vassili's bushy eyebrows rose. "This must be a tremendous friendship you have."

Greg jerked a thumb back at the Pegasus. "Julia Evans, the owner of Event Horizon."

"The Queen of Peterborough herself? What circles we two poor footsore soldiers move in these days, Gregory. Come then, come and tell me how a simple Russian general can be of help to the richest woman in the world."

Vassili's office was on the second floor of the airport building, taking up the entire western end, which gave him three glass walls looking out over Nova Kirov, the embryonic farms, and the glacier. There was a desk and high-back chairs, several bookcases, a long table for staff officer briefings. All the furniture was made from hard Siberian pine, with simple geometric carvings; it was old looking, cracked and worn, polished a thousand times. A battered samovar bubbled away on a table in the corner, its charcoal glowing rose-gold, filling the air with wisps of arid smoke. Polished artillery shells were lined up on bookcases and the desk. One wall had a row of framed pictures, beribboned generals Greg didn't recognize, Yeltsin, Defence Minister Evgeniy Schitov. One frame held a metre length of helicopter blade; there was a chunk missing, as though some animal had taken a bite out of it. It was from a Mi-24 Hind K. Greg had been in it, liaising with Vassili's troops, when it was hit by AA fire from the Jihad Legion. Thankfully, the pilot's autorotation technique had been flawless.

Vassili poured two cups of tea from his samovar as Greg sat at the long table. The tap squeaked each time he turned it. "It's been in my family since before the Bolshevik Revolution," he explained. "I get the Air Force boys to fly my charcoal in. A general has some privileges." He put the cup down in front of Greg. "Have you cut yourself shaving, Gregory?"

Greg's hand went to the scar by his eye. The dermal seal membrane had peeled off during the night, but the new flesh was pink and tender. "Did you hear about the Colonel Maitland crash?"

Vassili sat opposite him, frowning. "The airship? Certainly, it was on the news channels last night. It caught fire somewhere over the Atlantic. Most of the crew got out. You were on board?"

"Yeah. Tell you, it didn't catch fire, by accident."

"Gregory, my friend, you are too old and too slow to be thinking of combat. Leave it to the stalwarts like that fine young man accompanying you. Please."

"Christ, don't you start."

Vassili chuckled, and blew on the top of his cup. "So, what is it that Julia Evans wishes to know?"

"Is the Russian government mounting a covert deal against Event Horizon? And if so, she'd like to negotiate a peaceful solution."

Vassili put his cup down without drinking any of the tea. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah." Greg didn't like the way Vassili was looking at him, almost hurt. He hadn't liked asking, either. Maybe coming here hadn't been such a good idea.

"You seriously think my government would do such a thing?"

"I don't think you would, Vassili. But someone inside the republic is going balls out against her. I need to know who."

"Tell me, Gregory. Start at the beginning, and tell me all of it."

Greg took a sip of tea, and started to talk.

Vassili's rounded face was thoughtful when he finished. "No, it is not the Russian government that is doing this," he said. "I would know. I have been informed of this atomic structuring science. This Clifford Jepson you talk of approached Mikoyan two days ago with his development sharing proposition. Naturally as good Russians, Mikoyan informed the Defence Ministry. You'll see that I'm telling the truth, Gregory."

Greg pushed his empty cup over the table to Vassili, meeting the general's eyes. "I don't need to use my gland on you, Vassili."

"Bah, so morbid and serious you sound, Gregory. I have been of some help to you, have I not? Would you not do the same for me?"

"You have my address, and I'm on the phone. I can't offer you air defence cover, though."

Vassili slapped the table, laughing. "So, we now need to know who is dragging my country's good name through the mud. Yes?"

"Yeah." He thought for a moment. "You said it was Mikoyan who informed your government. Didn't Mutizen approach the Russian Defence Ministry with its generator data?"

"No. I did not realize we owned a kombinate."

"Only thirty-two per cent. But, yeah, it's as good as outright ownership."

"If the government has a controlling stake, they would have made sure the generator data was used to their advantage. It would never be offered to Event Horizon." Vassili stood up and took the cups back to the samovar. "I don't like this, Gregory. The briefing officer they sent over explained some of the possible defence applications of atomic structuring. There will be a terrible scramble to acquire it. All or nothing, Gregory. What country could afford to be without it? A shield which can protect whole cities against nuclear weapons and electron compression warheads. The citizens of the world would demand nothing less from their leaders. And I would venture that offensive capabilities will soon follow. People are so very good at that kind of thing. And now you tell me there are unknown players on the field seeking a monopoly. No, this is not good, and not just for Julia Evans."

Greg ran a hand across his forehead. Last night he had been too exhausted to give atomic structuring much thought. But Vassili's comments were opening his mind up to possibilities, few of them good. "You think it'll mean a new arms race?"

Vassili refilled the cups and returned to the table. "Arms race, economic upheaval." He gave Greg a sad smile. "And just when we were getting over the worse of the Warming."

"Yeah. England's a good place to live in again, Vassili. You wouldn't know it was the same country that suffered under the PSP."

"Do you have the names of the Russian export companies Jason Whitehurst was trading with?"

"Sure." Greg pulled his cybofax out, and called up the data. He handed it over to Vassili. "Mean anything to you?"

"Perhaps." Vassili walked over to his desk and activated his terminal. Greg saw him squirt the export companies' profiles into the key.

"I have a scrambled link with the military intelligence cores in Moscow," Vassili said. "And through that I can access the Federal Crime Directorate memory cores. This won't take a minute." He sat behind the desk.

The shiny artillery shells prevented Greg from seeing what data was in the cubes. He drank some tea.

Vassili suddenly let out a contemptuous grunt.

"What?" Greg asked.

"I'm surprised at you, Gregory. Mindstar gave you intelligence data-correlation training, did they not?"

"Three months of lectures and exercises, yeah. Why?"

"Shame on you, then. Do you not recognize that you are in familiar territory with this so-called Russian dealer? Have you no sense of deja vu?"

"Familiar, how?"

"Private organizations that form a powerful national cartel, influencing government departments. Who do you know that duplicates that pattern, Gregory?"

"Shit. Julia. Do you mean we're up against the Russian equivalent of Julia Evans?"

Vassili sighed, and switched off his terminal. "No, Gregory. Russia envies Julia Evans and Event Horizon. How could we not? A woman who devotes her wealth and power to nurturing her own country. Who does not abuse her position. An honourable person. No, Gregory, we have no equivalent of Julia Evans. Instead, this is something Russians are ashamed of. The other side of democracy's coin."

"What is it?"

Vassili came back to the table, and sat heavily. "Dolgoprudnensky," he spat.

"Never heard of it. Whatever it is."

"Bah, of that I am pleased. I would like you to have the good memories of Russia only. But they exist. They are our Mafia, our Yakuza, our Triads. Organized crime, Gregory. These fifteen export companies are all owned by known Dolgoprudnensky members. Every one of them. What was it you were always saying in Turkey? There is no such thing as coincidence."

"Right. And this Dolgoprudnensky is powerful enough to influence your government?"

"Influence is a strong word. They would not be able to buy our parliamentary cabinet members, not outright. But then, does Julia Evans actually hand over cash to make the New Conservatives do her bidding?"

"Point taken."

"They are everywhere, Gregory, our bureaucracy is rotten with them. It is only natural, they are the Communist Party's successors. They grew up in the party's shadows in the eighties and nineties. There were eight or nine of them in Moscow alone in those days, the Podolsk, Chechen, Solntsevo, others, but the Dolgoprudnensky was the largest even then. It was inevitable they would absorb the rest. Now there is only Dolgoprudnensky, stretching right across the republic. There had been criminals in the Soviet Union before them, but never so well organized, nor so brazen. Afghanistan was the start, the youths who returned from it were a breed the authorities had never dealt with before. The Afganrsi. They had no respect, no morals, no conscience. The war had burnt it out of them, they could see they were fighting for nothing, and worse, for a lie. Not all of them, of course, but enough, a hard core that turned to crime. Then the Communists fell, and the gangs began to fill the vacuum they left behind. The corruption, Gregory, the sheer misuse of power. Westerners still have little conception of how the Communists ransacked our country to maintain their personal status. Dolgoprudnensky doesn't have their stature, but it is just as insidious, with its rackets and syntho vats, and prostitutes; its legitimate companies defrauding factories and farmers, and the bought officials sanctioning both. We fight them through the police and Justice Ministry, Gregory, fight and fight, until buildings burn and blood is spilt, but the best we can do is hold what ground we have."

"I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"No, it is I who am shamed. It is a terrible thing to tell someone this is the land I am sworn to defend, the kind of people I will die for."

"We all have organized crime, Vassili. The number of people involved is so small you can't even call them a minority."

Vassili handed Greg's cybofax back. "But the trouble and misery they cause is vast. See what they've done to this old man, made him unable to look his friend in the face."

"Can we help?" Greg asked. "Hand over what we've got to the Russian Justice Ministry?"

"What have you got, Gregory? Fifteen companies traded with someone whose airship you say was attacked by tekmercs. Kombinates are jockeying for advantage over a new technology. How can this help us?"

Greg toyed with his empty cup, feeling stupid. "Yeah, right." For Victor Tyo it would've been enough, for a tekmerc it would've been enough. Circumstantial proof which condemned for all of time. How strange that illegality could accept what the law couldn't.

"I tell you this, Gregory, if you ever meet any of the Dolgoprudnensky face to face, then you shoot. That is the best help you can give us. Shoot. Shoot them down like rabid animals."

"Is there a name?" he asked. "A leader? I like to have a name for what I'm up against. I can form a picture that way."

"Kirilov. Pavel Kirilov. The bastard, he lives like a merchant from the decadent imperial days, he flaunts his wealth and luxuries, he has many young girls to amuse him. But he is smart, cunning. Nothing ever holds against him in the courts, he laughs at the very best our prosecutors can do."

Greg climbed to his feet. The sun was completely above the horizon now, casting long shadows. A thick blanket of mist had risen, glowing pink in the sunlight; it swirled gently above the cultivated land, filling Nova Kirov's broad streets. People and horses looked like they were wading through it.

"What will you do?" Vassili asked.

"Find out where Charlotte Fielder got the flower from, then go and meet the alien."

Vassili gripped both of his hands. "Gregory, if this alien turns out to be a threat, do not keep the knowledge to yourself. Do not become like the kombinates, and seek to gain advantage from it. It is the concern of all the peoples of this world."

"If it's dangerous, I'll scream the house down, no messing. No matter what Julia Evans or Royan might say."

"Good, for I confess, what you have told me about this alien has frightened me. This is very strange behaviour for a sentient creature. I am forced to say suspicious. Hiding like this, contacting weapons merchants before governments. Not good. You listen to me, my command network is plugged into the Chinese and Eastern Federation Co-Defence League's Strategic Defence platforms, and I am authorized to use them. I have the codes, and I am prepared to activate the systems, Gregory, on your word."

"That's… quite a responsibility."

"You are a soldier, Gregory, a true soldier. You will do what's right, I know you will." Vassili let go of his hands, and clapped him on the shoulder again, grinning. "Besides, since when did you go into battle without covering fire, eh? A soldier's most important maxim. Backup, Gregory. I will be your backup, once again." He shook his head, grin turning to a mock scowl. "Bah, listen to us. Two ageing warriors lost in the past. Portentous, are we not?"

"Very, but at least nobody else knows."

Vassili laughed.

"One last thing," Greg said. "Can you run another name through the Federal Crime Directorate memory core for me?"

"Surely. Whose criminal misdeeds do you wish exposed now?"

"Dmitri Baronski."