The Nano Flower

CHAPTER THREE

Julia Evans's office occupied half of an entire floor in the Event Horizon headquarters tower. When she sat at her desk the window wall ahead of her seemed to recede into the middle distance, a delusory gold band sandwiched between the expansive flat plains of floor and ceiling.

The office was decorated in beige and cream colours, the furniture all custom-made teak; work area, informal conference area, leisure area, separated out by troughs of big ferns. Van Goghs, Turners, and Picassos, selected more for price and pretension than aesthetics, hung on the walls. It would have been unbearably formal but for the crystal vases of cut flowers standing on every table and wall alcove. Their perfume permeated the air, replacing the dead purity of the conditioning units.

After her PAs politely but firmly ended her conference with the company's senior transport division executives, Julia poured herself a cup of tea from a silver service and walked over to the window, turning down the opacity. Virtually the only reason she had an office these days was for personal meetings; even in the data age the human touch was still an essential tool in corporate management, certainly at premier-grade level.

When the gold mirror faded away, she looked down on Peterborough's old landbound quarter lazing under the July sun, white-painted walls throwing a coronal glare back at her. The dense cluster of brick and concrete buildings had a kind of medieval disarray to them. She rather liked the chaos, it had an organic feel, easily preferable to the regimented soulless lines of most recent cities. Meticulous civic concepts like town planning and the green belt were the first casualties after the Fens had flooded; the refugees swooping on the city had wanted dry land, and when they found it they stubbornly put down roots. Their new housing estates and industrial zones erupted on any patch of unused ground. A quarter of a century on, and legal claims over land ownership and compensation were still raging through the county courts.

The old quarter had an atmosphere of urgency about it; there was still excitement to be had down on those leafy streets. From the few local newscasts Julia managed to see, she knew that smuggling was still a major occupation for the Stanground armada, a mostly quaybound collection of cabin cruisers, houseboats, barges, and motor launches that had flocked to the semi-submerged suburb from the Norfolk Broads. Unlicensed distilleries flourished; syntho vats were assembled in half-forgotten cellars, causing a lot of heat for the vice squad; brothels serviced visiting sailors; and tekmercs lived like princes in New Eastheld condominiums, ghouls feeding off company rivalries.

There was a certain romance about it all that appealed to a younger part of Julia's personality, the girlish part. Peterborough served as a kind of link to her past, and the few brief years of carefree youth she had been allowed before Event Horizon took over her life. She could have it all shut down, of course, if she'd wanted—ended the smuggling, sent the madams packing, banished the tekmercs. It was her city well enough; the Queen of Peterborough, the channels called her. And she did make sure that the police stamped down hard on any excesses, but held back from all-out sanitization; not so much out of sentiment these days, but because she recognized the need for the escape valve which the old quarter provided. There was no such laxity in the new sector of the city which was rising up out of the Fens basin.

Seventeen years ago, when Event Horizon returned to England after the PSP fell, Peterborough had been approaching its infrastructure limits. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the kind of massive construction projects Julia and her grandfather envisaged just couldn't be supported by the existing utilities. The city's eastward sprawl was already up to the rotting remnants of the Castor Hanglands wood, and threatened to reach the A1 in another decade even without Event Horizon's patronage; there simply wasn't room for their proposed macro-industry precincts on land.

The solution was easy enough: the Fens basin was uninhabited, unused, and unloved; and west of Peterborough the water was only a couple of metres deep. So fifteen years ago the dredging crews and civil engineers moved out into the quagmire, and began to build the first artificial island.

From where she was standing, on the sixty-fifth floor of the Event Horizon tower, Julia could see all twenty-nine major islands of the Prior's Fen Atoll, as well as the fifteen new ones under construction. Event Horizon owned twelve of them: the seventy-storey tower which was the company's global headquarters; seven cyber-factory precincts churning out household gear, cybernetics, light engineering, and gigaconductor cells; and four giant arcologies, each of them providing homes, employment, education, and leisure facilities for eleven thousand families.

Kombinates had followed Event Horizon to Peterborough, lured by Julia's offer of a lower giga-conductor licensing royalty to anyone who set up their production facilities in England. The subsequent rush of investment helped reinvigorate the English economy at a rate which far outstripped the rest of Europe, and allowed Julia to consolidate her influence over the New Conservative government.

It was those same kombinates and their financial backing combines who had built the rest of the Atoll she was looking down on, adding cuboidal cyber-factories, dome-capped circular amphitheatre apartment complexes, the city's international airport, and the giant pyramidal arcologies. Prior's Fen Atoll was now home to three hundred and fifty thousand people, with an industrial output ten times that of the land-bound portion of the city.

She could see the network of broad deep-water channels which linked the islands. Their living banks of gene-tailored coral were covered in sage reeds, showing as thin green lines holding the mud desert at bay. Container freighters moved along them, taking finished products from the arcologies and cyber-factories, and sailing down the kilometre-wide Nene to the Wash and the open sea beyond. The new expanded river course had been dredged deep enough so that the maritime traffic could even sail at low tide, most of the mud winding up as landfill on the airport island.

A thick artery of elevated metro rails stabbed out from the landbound city, splitting wide like a river throwing off tributaries. Individual rails arched over the deep-water channels to reach every island. Blue streamlined capsules slid along the delicate ribbons, slotting in behind one another at the junctions with clockwork precision. In all the time she had watched from her eagle's vantage point she'd never seen a foul-up.

But then, that was the way of this new conglomeration, she thought, no room for failure. That was why she preferred to gaze at the old quarter. The mega-structures of the Atoll, with their glossy low friction surfaces bouncing the sun like geometric crystalline mountains, were a pointer to the future. It looked like shit.

The nineteen-sixties paranoids were right; the machines are taking over.

She shook her head as if to clear it, and finished her tea. The knowledge of her own power did funny things inside her brain. Whatever she looked at, she knew she could change if she wanted to—give that neighbourhood better roads and services, improve the facilities at that school, stop that tower block from being built. So much she could do, and once she did it without even stopping to think. There hadn't been so much as a tremble of hesitancy when she began Prior's Fen Atoll. Now though, some of the old assurance was beginning to wear thin. Or maybe it was just age and cynicism creeping up on her.

Julia returned to her desk, a big teak affair with a green leather top. Her hands slid across the intaglio edges, feeling little snicks of roughness in the deepest insets. At least someone in England still knew how to work with wood. Cybernation hadn't engulfed everybody. She caught herself, frowning disparagingly. What a funny mood.

She touched the intercom pad. "Is Troy here yet?"

"Reception said he's arrived," said Kirsten McAndrews, her private secretary. "He should be up in another five minutes. Do you want him to come straight in?"

"Call me first," Julia said.

"The Welsh delegation is still here."

"Oh, Lord, I'd forgotten about them. How's my schedule for this afternoon?"

"Tricky. You said you wanted to be home by four."

"Yes. Well, if the last meeting doesn't run on I'll see them."

"OK, I'll tell them."

"And for Heaven's sake don't let them know my stylist has preference. If they do see Troy come through, tell them he's some kind of financial cartel president."

"Will do." There was an amused tone in Kirsten's voice.

Julia sank back into the chair, resignation darkening her mood further. The Welsh delegation had been laying siege to her office for over a week now; a collection of the most senior pro-independence politicians who urgently wanted to know her views on their country's bid for secession from the New Conservative-dominated Westminster parliament's governance. Event Horizon was currently considering sites for two new cyber-precincts, and Wales, under New Conservative rule, was one of the principal contenders. The referendum was due in another five weeks; it was a measure of their desperation that they were prepared to sit out in the lobby rather than hit the campaign trail. So far she had managed to avoid any comments, on or off the record.

Open Channel to Selfcores, she instructed her bioware processor implant.

Her view of the office was suddenly riddled with cracks, fracturing and spinning away. It always did that if she didn't close her eyes in time.

Everyone thought she ran Event Horizon with her unique sang-froid flare because of her five bioware node implants. They reasoned she simply plugged herself directly into the vast dataflows the company created to act as some kind of omnipotent technophile sovereign. Given that the nodes with their logic matrices and data storage space gave her an augmented mentality able to interpret reports in milliseconds and implement decisions instantaneously, it was an understandable mistake. Companies and kombinates gave their own premier-grade executives identical implants in the belief they could boost their own managerial control in the same fashion. None of them had ever come close to matching Event Horizon's efficiency.

Julia's consciousness slipped into a dimensionless universe; the body sensorium of colours, sounds, touch, and smell simply didn't apply here. Even her time sense was different, accelerated. She hung at the centre of three dense data shoals, like small galactic clusters, observing streams of binary pulses flash between the suns. They were bioware Neural Network cores, brains of ferredoxin protein: Event Horizon's true directorate. Their massive processing capacity enabled them to keep track of every department, follow up every project with minute attention, directing the company along the policy lines she formulated. Her confidence in them was absolute. All she did was review their more important decisions before authorization, a human fail-safe in the circuit.

Two of the NN cores had been grown by splicing her sequencing RNA into the ferredoxin, duplicating her neuronic structure. After that she had downloaded her memories into them. They echoed her desires, her determination, her guile, crafting Event Horizon with loving vigilance, uninterrupted by the multiple weaknesses of the body's flesh.

Calmness stole into her own thoughts, as if the rationality which governed this domain was seeping back through the linkage. Here, there was a subtle boost to her faith that all problems were solvable. It was just a question of correctly applied logic.

Good morning, she said.

You seem a bit peaky today, NN core one replied.

Yes, last night's Newfields' ball was a wash-out.

Total surprise. I don't know why you keep going to those dos.

To keep up appearances, I suppose, she answered.

Who for? NN core two asked.

There was a difference between the personalities of her two NN cores, slight but definite. Core two assumed a stricter attitude, more matriarchal. Julia always thought she must have been very up-tight the day she downloaded her memories into it.

Self-delusion is what makes the world go round, she said.

If other people believe everything's all hunky-dory with you, you might even begin to believe it yourself, said NN core one.

Something like that, yes, she admitted.

There's still no sign of him, then? NN core two asked.

Sensation penetrated the closed universe, a sliver of cold dismay trickling down her back. Royan had been missing for eight months now. Her lover, confidant, partner in crime, joy-bringer, keeper of the key to her heart, dark genius, father of her two children, haunted soul. Deliberately missing, as only he could be. Eight months, and the pain was still bright enough to hurt. And now worry was its twin.

You would know that, she said. Best of all. Their awareness was spread like a spectral web through the global data networks, alert for facts, whispers, and gossip they could use to Event Horizon's advantage. There were patterns to the flow of information, tenuous and confused, but readable to entities like the three NN cores. Everybody in the world betrayed themselves through the generation of data; you could not move, eat, wash, or make love without it registering in a memory core somewhere. Except for Royan, whose flight left no contrail of binary digits, mocking the most sophisticated tracker programs ever constructed.

What could someone with Royan's brilliance build in eight months? And why keep it a secret from her?

Shadow wings of sympathy folded round her, a sisterly embrace by two of the NN cores.

Don't fret yourself so, Juliet, the third NN core said gruffly. He'll be back. Boy always was one for stunts, little bugger.

Thank you, Grandpa, she said.

The thought patterns of Philip Evans reflected a brisk gratification.

He was a perfect counterbalance to her two NN cores, Julia thought, his cynicism and bluntness tempering her own gentler outlook. Together they made a truly formidable team.

And one which was unlikely to be repeated. She knew of some kombinates who'd loaded a Turing managerial personality into a bioware number cruncher, hoping to recreate Event Horizon's magic formula that way. They hadn't met with much success. Instinct and toughness, even compassion, weren't concepts you could incorporate into a program. Neural Networks could possess such qualities, because they weren't running programs, they were genuine personalities. But at sixty million Eurofrancs apiece, an NN core wasn't the kind of project to be attempted on a speculative basis. And even if one was built, there was the question of whose sequencing RNA to use as a template, whose memories to download. If the person selected didn't have the right mind-set to run the kombinate, it would be too late to change.

Philip Evans had done it because he was dying anyway. He had nothing to lose. It worked for him because he had a lifetime's experience of running the company in a dictatorial fashion. And it wasn't until she'd been in the hot seat for seven years that Julia had grown her first core.

I'm all right now, she said.

The intangible support withdrew.

My girl, her grandfather said proudly. At moments like this, he could be absurdly sentimental.

Let's get this morning's list crunched, Julia said. She opened her mind up to the stack of data packages the three NN cores had prepared over the past forty hours. There was no conscious thought involved, no rigorous assessment; she let the questions filter through her mind, instinct providing the answers.

They started with subcontracts; company names and products, their quality procedures, industrial relations record, financial viability, bid prices, and finally a recommendation. Julia would say yes or no, and the profile would be snatched away, to be replaced by the next. She couldn't remember them afterwards; she didn't want to remember them. That was the whole point. The system only involved her thought processes, not her memory, leaving her brain cells uncluttered.

Personnel was the second category. She handled the promotions and disciplining of everyone above grade five management herself. If only divisional managers knew how closely their boss really followed their careers.

Divisional review came next. Start-up factories' progress, retooling, enlargement programmes, new product designs.

Cargo fleets, land, air, rail, space, and sea.

New London biosphere maintenance.

New London second chamber progress.

Microgee materials processing modules.

Finance.

Energy.

Security.

Prior's Fen Atoll civil engineering.

That's the lot, said NN core one.

Julia consulted her nodes. Over eight thousand items in six and a half minutes. She couldn't remember one of them, although her imagination lodged an image of hard-copy sheets streaming by on a subliminal fast forward.

Any queries? she asked.

Only Two, said her grandfather.

Says you, NN core two rebuked. How you can think Mousanta is a problem I don't know.

What are they? Julia asked, forestalling any argument.

Well, the three of us share a slight concern about Wales, NN core two said. You are going to have to make a decision about who to support some time.

I know, she said miserably. I just don't see how I can win.

So choose the option which causes the least harm, said her grandfather.

Which is?

For my mind, the Welsh Nationalists have promised Event Horizon a bloody attractive investment package if you go ahead and build the cyber-precincts. I say see the delegation, they are bound to Improve on the offer. It would be a fantastic boost for them to come out and announce they've swung you over. Bloody politicians, never miss a trick.

In order for their promises to mean anything they have to win the referendum first, NN core two said patiently. They're terrified you won't commit to a site until after the vote, of course. People won't vote for secession unless they're sure it will be beneficial. Which is what the Nationalists have been promising all along. Catch twenty-two, for them anyway. If they win the referendum and can't produce the jobs independence was supposed to bring they'll be lynched.

Dead politicians, her grandfather chortled. If I had a heart, it would be bleeding.

Our civil projects development division has been getting daily calls from the New Conservatives' central office, NN core one said. And the Ministry of Industry is pledged to Lord knows how much support funding if you build the precincts around Liverpool.

What sort of concessions have they been offering Event Horizon if I do site the cyber-precincts in Wales?

Almost the same support deal, her grandfather said. Officially. But Marchant has been playing his elder statesman go-between role to some effect; he's made it clear that the offer only stands providing the Nationalists lose the referendum, and you announce a cyber-precinct for Wales after that. It'll show the New Conservatives aren't neglecting the area.

Which is precisely why the Nationalists have been getting so much support in the first place, NN core one said. Because Wales hasn't received much priority from this government.

What would a Welsh secession do to the New Conservative majority? Julia asked.

Reduce it to eighteen seats. Which is why they're taking Wales so seriously for once. Chances are, with an independent Wales they'll lose their overall majority at the next general election.

After seventeen years, Julia mused. That would take some getting used to.

It wouldn't affect us much, NN core two said. Not now, Event Horizon is too well established, in this country and abroad. And it's not as if any new government is going to introduce radically different policies. The party manifestos are virtually all variants on a theme; the only differences are in Priorities. This new breed of politicians are all spin doctor bred, they don't pursue ideologies any more, only power Itself.

Whatever you do, Juliet, it wants to be done soon.

Yes, I suppose so.

We recommend one cyber-precinct is sited in Wales and one somewhere else, presumably Liverpool, NN core two said. It's a compromise which makes perfect sense, and deemphasizes your role in the referendum.

Fine, I'll notify the development division.

That just leaves the question of timing the announcement.

She massaged her temple, wishing it would ease the strain deeper inside. Yes, OK, leave it with me, I'll think about it. What was the second query?

An anomaly I picked up on, Juliet.

A data package unfolded within her mental perception. Julia studied it for a moment. It was a bid which Event Horizon had put in for a North Italy solid state research facility, the Mousanta labs in Turin. Event Horizon's commercial intelligence office noted that the molecular interaction studies Mousanta was doing would fit in with a couple of the company's own research programmes. The finance division had made a buy-out offer to the owners, only to be outbid by the Globecast corporation.

Julia saw she'd turned down a request to make a higher bid. So?

So, why, Juliet, is Globecast, a company which deals purely in trash media broadcasts, making a too high offer for a solid state research lab?

Oh, come on, Grandpa; Clifford Jepson probably wants it to help with his arms sales. The chairman of Globecast had a profitable second occupation as an arms merchant. She knew that he handled a lot of extended credit underground sales to organizations which the US government didn't wish to be seen showing any open support. In consideration, Globecast's tax returns weren't scrutinized too closely.

Clifford is a middle-man, Juliet, not a producer.

You think there could be more to it?

It doesn't ring true, that's all.

Yes. OK, Grandpa, get commercial intelligence to take another look at Mousanta, what makes it so valuable. Perhaps they've got a black defence programme going for the North Italy government?

Could be.

Sort the details, then.

OK, girl. There was no mistaking his eagerness.

Exit SelfCores.

Julia was back in the office, grinning at her grandfather's behaviour. He did so love the covert side of company operations. One of the reasons he and Royan had got on so well, closeheads.

She was just refilling her teacup when the door opened and Rachel Griffith came in.

There weren't many people who could burst in on Julia Evans unannounced. And those that did had to have a bloody good reason, invariably troublesome.

Julia took one glance at Rachel's thin-lipped anxiety and knew it was bad. Rachel didn't fluster easily.

"What is it, Rachel?" Julia asked uneasily.

"God, I'm sorry, Julia. I just didn't pay it a lot of attention when she gave it to me." Rachel Griffith held out a slim white flower-presentation box.

Julia took it with suddenly trembling fingers. The flower inside was odd, not one she'd seen before. It was a trumpet, fifteen centimetres long, tapering back to what she assumed was a small seed pod; the colour was a delicate purple, and when she looked down the open end it was pure white inside.

There was a complex array of stamens, with lemon-yellow anther lobes. The outside of the trumpet sprouted short silky hairs.

She sent an identification request into her memory nodes' floral encyclopaedia section.

The envelope had already been opened; she drew out the handwritten card.

Take care, Snowy,

I love you always,

Royan

Julia's eyes watered. It was his handwriting, and nobody else called her Snowy.

With her eyes still on the card she asked, "Where did it come from?"

"Some girl handed it to me at the Newfields ball last night." Rachel sounded worried. "I don't know who she was, but she knew me. Never gave her name, just shoved it in my hands and told me to pass it on to you."

Julia looked up. "What sort of girl? Pretty?"

"She was a whore."

"Rachel!"

"She was, I know the type. Early twenties, utterly gorgeous, impeccably dressed, manners a saint couldn't match, and lost eyes."

There was no arguing, Julia knew, Rachel was good at that kind of thing, her years as a hardline bodyguard, constantly vigilant, had given her an almost psychic sense about people. Besides, Julia knew the sort of girl she was talking about, courtesans were common enough at events like the Newfields ball.

Her nodes reported that the flower species wasn't indexed in their files.

Open Channel to SelfCores. Get me a match up for this, would you? she asked silently. It was important she knew what he had chosen for her.

She looked back to the card, its bold script with over-large loops. She could remember him perfecting his writing, sitting at a narrow wooden table in her island bungalow, the sea swishing on the beach outside, his brow furrowed in concentration.

And the flower, the flower was the sealer. Royan adored flowers, and she always associated them with him, ever since the day when they finally met in the flesh.

Access RoyanRecovery. She had node referenced the memory because she knew it would always be special, wanting to guard the details from entropic decay down the years.

Six of them had walked into the Mucklands Wood estate that afternoon fifteen years ago, all of them wearing English Army uniforms. Morgan Walshaw, Event Horizon's security chief at the time, who was quietly furious with her. It was the first (and last) time she had ever defied him over her own safety, Greg Mandel, who was as close to Royan as she was, and who'd agreed to lead them as soon as he'd heard she was going in. Rachel, who was her bodyguard back then, and two extra hardliners, John Lees and Martyn Oakly.

Mucklands Wood was the home of the Trinities, a bleak tower block housing estate which the city council had thrown up in the first couple of years after the Fens flooded. It stood on the high ground to the west of the A1, looking down on Walton where the Blackshirts were based. Two mortal enemies, separated by a single strand of melting tarmac and the luckless residential district of Bretton.

Rescuing Royan was more than a debt. Two years before, he had saved Philip Evans from a virus that PSP leftovers had squirted into the NN core. One of the best hackers on the circuit, he had written an antithesis which purged the virus. He had never asked for payment. A strange kind of bond had developed between them afterwards. Both of them powers in their respective fields, both feared, both near friendless, both wildly different. The attraction/fascination was inevitable, affection wasn't, but it had come nevertheless. There was nothing sexual about the relationship, given the circumstances there couldn't be. Neither of them ever expected to meet in the flesh. But the association was mutually rewarding. Royan had helped Julia safeguard Event Horizon's confidential commercial data from his peers on the circuit, while Julia supplied the Trinities with weapons to continue their fight against the Blackshirts. She hated the Blackshirts almost as much as Royan did.

But only now was she seeing the real cost of sponsoring the Trinities. Nothing like the intellectual exercise of arranging Shipments through Clifford Jepson. An action whose only reaction was the occasional item on the evening newscasts. She didn't have distance between her and the Trinities any more. Mucklands Wood wasn't the adventure-excitement she had expected, the little scary thrill of visiting the darkside. This was raw-nerve fear.

The struggle was all over now. There were no more Trinities, no more Blackshirts. Fires still burnt in both districts, sending up pillars of thick oily smoke to merge with the low bank of smog occluding the sky above the city. Half a squadron of Army tilt-fans orbited the scene slowly, alert for any more trouble.

Peterborough's usual dynamic sparkle had vanished, shops closed, factories shut. The city's frightened, shocked citizens were barricaded in their homes, waiting for the all-clear to sound. Both sets of protagonists had known this was the last time, the showdown, they hadn't held back.

Julia walked over hard-packed limestone. The whole estate was a barren wasteland. There were no trees or shrubs, even weeds were scarce; a greasy blue-grey moss slimed the brick walls of abandoned roofless employment workshops. The Trinities symbol was sprayed everywhere, raw and challenging, a closed fist gripping a thorn cross, blood dripping.

Two of the estate's high-rise blocks had been razed in the battle, toppling over after a barrage of anti-tank missiles had blown out the bottom floors. Julia's little group threaded its way past one, a long mound of broken twisted rubble, with metal girders sticking out at low angles. Squaddies picked their way over it gingerly, helping city firemen with their thermal-imaging sensors. Futile gesture really. She could see pieces of smashed furniture crushed between the jagged slabs of concrete, torn strips of brightly coloured cloth flapping limply, splinters of glass everywhere, dust thick in the air. A long row of bodies lay at the foot of the tower, covered in blankets. Some had dark wet stains.

Morgan Walshaw looked at her as they marched past. But she forced herself into an expression of grim endurance, and never broke stride.

A two-man patrol halted them. The squaddies in their dark-grey combat leathers and equipment webs didn't even seem human. Sinister cyborg figures cradling stub-barrelled McMillan electromagnetic rifles, bulbous photon-amp lenses giving their helmet visors an insect appearance, there wasn't a square centimetre of skin visible. She couldn't understand half of the gear modules clipped to their webs, and didn't bother consulting her nodes. She didn't want to know. All she'd come for was Royan.

Greg and Morgan Walshaw exchanged a few words, and the squaddies waved them on. They had been guarding the approach to a field hospital, three inflated hemispheres of olive-green plastic. Land Rovers and ambulances stood outside, orderlies hurrying between the bloody figures lying on stretchers. The empty white plastic wrappers of disposable first aid modules littered the ground; the oddest impression of the day, a dusting of giant snowflakes.

For the first time, Julia heard the sounds of the aftermath. The moans and screams of the wounded. Guilt sent icy spikes into her belly.

"Morgan," she said in a small voice.

He glanced back at her, and she saw the genuine worry in his face. Despite the forty years between them, she had always considered him one of her closest friends.

"What?" he asked. There was an edge in his voice. He was ex-military himself. She wondered, belatedly, what sort of memories their visit must be raking up.

"I'd like to do something for the survivors. They'll need proper medical treatment after the Army triage. Lawyers too, probably."

"I'll get on to it when we're finished here." He dropped back to walk beside her. "You holding out all right?"

"I'll manage."

His arm went round her shoulder, giving her a quick comforting shake.

"Tell you, this is the one," Greg said over his shoulder. He was indicating the high-rise block straight ahead.

It was identical to all the others left standing. Twenty storeys high, covered in a scale of slate-grey low-efficiency solar cell panels. Most of its windows had blown out. Fires had been extinguished on several floors, she could see the soot stains, like black flames, rising out of the broken windows, Surrounding solar panels had melted and buckled from the heat.

"Been one hell of a scrap here," Greg muttered.

The burnt-out wreckage of an old-style assault helicopter was strewn on the ground fifty metres from the tower. She stared at it, bewildered. Assault helicopters? In a gang war? Three military microlights were crumpled on the limestone around it, wing membranes shredded by laser fire.

There were several squaddies on sentry duty outside the tower, under the command of a young lieutenant who was waiting for them near the entrance. An intelligence officer, Julia knew; the Minister of Defence had assured her the lieutenant would be briefed about the need for total security.

The lieutenant snapped off a salute to Greg, then his eyes widened when he saw the Mindstar Brigade badge on Greg's shoulder. If anything he became even stiffer. Julia wondered what he would do if she lifted up her own silvered vizor to let him see who she was.

Greg returned the salute.

"Nobody has entered the tower since the firing stopped, Captain," the lieutenant said. "But apparently some of the Blackshirts penetrated it on the first day. There was a lot of fighting around here, they seemed to think it was important. Do you want my squad to check it out?"

Morgan Walshaw glanced up at the blank grey cliff in front of them. "No, thank you. Give us forty-five minutes. Then you can commence a standard securement procedure."

"Yes, sir." The lieutenant had found the brigadier's insignia on Morgan Walshaw's uniform.

"At ease, Lieutenant," Morgan Walshaw said mildly.

Greg led them into the tower, leaving the lieutenant behind outside. He moved like a sleepwalker, eyes barely open. Julia knew he was using his bioware gland, neurohormones pumping into his brain to stimulate his psi faculty, espersense washing through the tower to detect other minds, seeing if anyone was lying in ambush. He always said he couldn't read individual thoughts, just emotional composition, but Julia never managed to feel convinced. His presence always exacerbated her guilt. Just knowing he could see it lurking in her mind made her concentrate more on the incidents she was ashamed over—losing her temper with one of Wilholm's domestic staff yesterday, twisting Morgan Walshaw's arm to come to Mucklands, the two boys she was currently stringing along—running loose in her mind and bloating the original emotion out of all proportion. An unstoppable upward spiral.

The inside of the tower was stark. Bullet craters riddled the entrance hall walls, none of the biolum panels were on. A titan had kicked in the two lift doors, warping and tearing the buffed metal. The shafts beyond were impenetrably black.

"Through here," Greg said reluctantly. He put his shoulder to the stairwell door. John Lees and Marryn Oakly had to lend a hand before it finally juddered open wide enough for them to slip through.

There was a jumble of furniture behind it, and two bodies: Trinities, lads in their late teens. She looked away quickly. They had been trying to get out, pulling at the pile of furniture. Their backs were mottled with laser burns.

By the time they reached the eleventh floor, Julia was sweating hard inside the heavy uniform, her breath coming in deep gulps. Nobody else was complaining, not even Morgan Walshaw who was over sixty, so she kept quiet. But she could see the difference between being genuinely fit like the hardliners, and her own condition, which was arrived at by following a Hollywood celebrity's routine to keep her belly flat and her bottom thin. It was damn embarrassing; she was the youngest of the group.

Greg held an arm up for silence, he pointed to the door which opened on to the corridor. "Someone a couple of metres inside. They're in a lot of pain, but conscious."

"What do you want to do?" Morgan Walshaw asked.

"Bad tactics to leave a possible hostile covering your escape route."

Morgan Walshaw grunted agreement, and signalled John Lees forwards. The hardliner drew his Uzi hand laser and flattened himself against the wall by the door. Greg tested the door handle, then nodded once, and pulled the door open. John Lees went through the gap with a quick professional twist.

Julia was always amazed by how fast her bodyguards could move. It was as if they had two sets of reactions, one for everyday use, and accelerated reflexes for combat situations. One time, she had asked Morgan Walshaw if it was drugs, but he'd just laughed annoyingly and said no, it was controlled fear.

"All clear," John Lees called.

It was a boy in his early twenties, dressed in a poor copy of Army combat leathers. He was sitting with his back propped against the wall, helmet off. Both his legs were broken, the leather trousers ripped. A thick band of analgesic foam had been sprayed over his thighs. Blood covered the concrete floor beneath him. His face was chalk white, covered in sweat, he was shivering violently.

"A Blackshirt," Greg said in a toneless voice.

The boy's eyes met Julia's, blank with incomprehension. He was the same age as Patrick Browning, one of her current lovers. She had never been so close to one of her sworn enemies before. Blackshirt firebombing was a regular event at her Peterborough factories, the cost of additional security and insurance premiums was a real curse.

"Don't hurt him," she said automatically.

The boy continued his compulsive stare.

"Your lucky day," Greg told him blandly. "I've gone up against a lot of your mates in my time." He pressed an infuser tube on the boy's neck, and his head lolled forwards.

"The Army will pick him up when they comb the tower," Morgan Walshaw said. "He ought to live."

They carried on up the stairs to the twentieth floor. Greg halted at the door which opened into the central corridor, his eyes fully closed. Julia could hear her heart yammering. Rachel caught her eye, and winked encouragement.

"Is he alive?" Julia asked.

Greg's eyes fluttered open. "Yeah."

Julia let out a sob of relief. This hardly seemed real any more, it was so far outside her usual life. She thought she would feel anticipation, but there was only a sense of shame and despair. It had taken so many deaths to bring about this moment, mostly people her own age, denied any sort of future, good or bad. And all for an indecisive battle in a war which had ended four years ago. None of this had been strategic, it was basic animal bloodlust.

The corridor was a mess. There were no windows, the biolum strip had been smashed. Greg and Martyn Oakly took out powerful torches.

There was something five metres down the corridor, an irregular hump. At first she thought one of the tower's residents had dropped a big bag of kitchen rubbish, there was a damp meaty smell in the air. Then she saw the ceiling above had cracked open; three smooth dark composite cones poked down out of the gap. A battered helmet lay on the floor, alongside a couple of ammunition clips, and a hand. It still had a watch round the wrist.

Julia vomited violently.

The next minute was a blur. Rachel Griffith was holding on to her as she trembled. Everyone else gathered round, faces sympathetic. She didn't want that sympathy. She was angry with herself for being so weak. Embarrassed for showing it so publicly. She should never have come, it was stupid trying to be this macho. Morgan Walshaw had been right, which made her more angry.

"You OK?" Rachel Griffith asked.

"Yes." She nodded dumbly. "Sorry."

Rachel winked again.

Bloody annoying.

Julia got a grip on herself.

Greg turned the handle of room 206, the door opened smoothly. There was a hall narrower than the corridor outside, then they were in Royan's room.

That was when she saw the flowers. It was so unexpected she barely noticed the rest of the fittings. Half of the room was given over to red clay troughs of flowering plants. She recognized some—orchids, fuchsias, ipomoeas, lilies, and petunias—a beautiful display, lucid colours, strong blooms.

Not a dead leaf or withered petal among them. The plants were tended by little wheeled robots that looked like mobile scrap sculptures, the junked innards of a hundred different household appliances bolted together by a problem five-year-old. But the clippers, hoses, and trowel blades they brandished hung limply. For some inane reason she would have liked to see them in action.

Past the plant troughs a wall had been covered by a stack of ancient vacuum-tube television screens, taken out of their cabinets and slotted into a metal framework. Julia ducked round hanging baskets of nasturtiums and Busy Lizzies. She saw a big workbench with bulky waldos on either side of it. The kind of 'ware module stacks she was familiar with from Event Horizon's experimental laboratories took up half of the available floor space.

A camera on a metal tripod tracked her movements. Its fibre-optic cables were plugged into the black modem balls filling Royan's eyesockets. He sat in a nineteen-fifties vintage dentist's chair in the middle of the room.

Julia smiled softly at him. She knew what to expect, Greg had told her several times. When he was fifteen, Royan was a committed Trinities hothead, taking part in raids on PSP institutions, sabotaging council projects. Then one night, in the middle of a food riot organized by the Trinities, he wasn't quite quick enough to escape a charge of People's Constables. The Constables' chosen weapon was a carbon monolattice bullwhip; wielded properly it could cut through an oak post three centimetres in diameter. After Royan had fallen, two of them set about him, hacking at his limbs, lashing his back open. Greg led a counter attack by the Trinities, hurling Molotovs at the People's Constables. By the time he got to Royan, the boy's arms and legs had been ruined, his skin, eyes, and larynx scorched by the flames.

Royan's torso was corpulent, dressed in a food-stained T-Shirt; his arms ended below the elbows; both legs were short stumps. Plastic cups were fitted over the end of each amputated limb, ganglioti splices, from which bundles of fibre optic cables were attached, plugging him into the room's 'ware stacks.

The bank of screens began to flicker with a laborious determination. The lime-green words that eventually materialized were a metre high, bisected by the rims of individual screens as they flowed from right to left.

JULIA. NOT YOU. NOT YOU HERE.

"'Fraid so," she said lightly.

NEVER WANTED YOU TO COME. NOT TO SEE ME. SHAME SHAME SHAME. Royan's torso began to judder as he rocked his shoulders, mouth parting to show blackened buck teeth.

Julia wished to God she could interface her nodes direct with his 'ware stacks here, they normally communicated direct through Event Horizon's datanet. Speedy, uninhibited chatter on any subject they wanted, arguing, laughing, and never lying; it was almost telepathy. But this was painfully slow, and so horribly public. "The body is only a shell," Julia said. "I know what's inside, remember?"

OH SHIT A RIGHT SMART-ARSE.

"Behave yourself," Greg said smartly.

HELLO, GREG. I KNEW YOU WOULD COME. GOING TO HAUL ME OUT OF THE FLAMES AGAIN?

"Yeah."

HIDE ME UNTIL THE ARMY HAS GONE

"No," Julia said. "It's over, Royan."

NEVER. THERE ARE STILL THOUSANDS OF PSP OUT THERE. I'LL FIND THEM, I'LL TRACK THEM DOWN. NO ONE ESCAPES FROM ME.

"Enough!" she stamped her foot. Tears suddenly blurred her vision. "It's horrible outside. You Trinities and Blackshirts, all lying dead. They're our age, Royan. They could have had real lives, gone to school, had children."

STOP IT

"I won't have it in my city any more. Do you hear? It stops. Today. Now. With you. You're the last of the Trinities. I'm not having you start it up again."

I CAN'T HAVE A LIFE. I'M NOT HUMAN. BEAST BEAST BEAST

Julia's resolution turned to steel. "And the first thing you can do is stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself," she said coldly.

SORRY. YOU THINK THIS IS SORRY? BITCH BITCH BITCH. WHAT DO YOU KNOW? COSSETED PAMPERED BILLIONAIRESS BITCH. HATE YOU. VILE.

"You're coming to the Event Horizon clinic," she said. "They'll sort you out."

Royan began to twist frantically in his dentist's seat. NO. NOT THAT. NOT HOSPITAL AGAIN.

"They won't hurt you. Not my doctors."

WON'T WON'T WON'T GO. NO!

"You can't stay here." Julia was aware of how unusually quiet Morgan Walshaw was, the other hardliners, too. But they didn't understand, deep down Royan wanted to be normal again, she'd seen his soul, its flaws, weeping quietly to itself. The fear barrier stopped him, the time he'd spent in the city hospital after the riot had been a living medieval hell, blind, voiceless, immobile. It had taken a long time for the health service to release funds for his ganglion splices and optical modems.

STOP HER, GREG. YOU'RE MY FRIEND. DON'T LET HER UNPLUG ME.

"Julia's right," Greg said sadly. "Today was the end of the past. There's no more anti-PSP war to be fought." He took an infuser out of his pocket.

NO NO NO. PLEASE GREG. NO. I'LL BE NOTHING WITHOUT MY 'WARE. NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. BEG YOU. BEG.

Morgan Walshaw moved to stand in front of the camera on the tripod. Royan was shaking his head wildly. Julia pressed her hand across her mouth, exchanging an agonized glance with Greg. He discharged the infuser into Royan's neck.

The letters on the screens dissolved into bizarre shimmers of static. Royan worked his mouth, wheezing harshly. "Please, Julia," he rasped. "Please no." Then the infusion took hold, and his head dropped forwards.

Julia found herself crying softly as Rachel Griffith hugged her. Greg and Morgan Walshaw hurriedly unplugged Royan's optical fibres from the 'ware stacks.

They trooped up the service stairs to the roof, Greg and Martyn Oakly carrying Royan on an improvised stretcher. Julia held his camera, careful not to get the cables caught on anything.

One of Event Horizon's tilt-fans, painted company colours, picked them up. It rose quickly into the overhanging veil of filthy smoke, away from curious squaddies, and the prying camera lenses of channel newscast crews. Julia looked down through a port at the broken landscape below, emotionally numb. The damage was dreadful, Mucklands Wood's desolated towers, Walton's smashed houses. So many bystanders made homeless, she thought; and this was the poorest section of the Peterborough, they didn't have much clout in the council chamber. She was going to have to do something about that, not just rebuilding homes, but bring hope back to the area as well. That was the only real barricade against the return of the miasmal gangs.

Now, fifteen years later, she could allow herself some degree of comfort with the result. From her office she could just make out the heavily wooded park and prim white houses, there were schools and light manual industries, an open-air sports amphitheatre, a technical college, the artists' colony. The residents of Mucklands and Walton could believe in their future again.

We can't find any reference to the flower, NN core one told her.

She focused slowly on the presentation box in her hands, her mind still lingering on the showy array of blooms in Royan's room. He told her later he grew them for their scent; smell was one of the few natural senses he had left. He put a lot of weight on flowers.

Are you sure? she asked.

Absolutely, it's not in Kew Gardens' public reference memory cores. They are the most comprehensive in the world.

Access all the botanical institutes you can. It has to be listed somewhere.

She frowned at the delicate enigmatic mauve trumpet. Why, after eight months without a word, would he send an unidentifiable flower?