The Nano Flower

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

We have a data alert situation, NN core one said.

Exit VentureCost Package. The three-dimensional accountancy lattice slipped out of Julia's mind. Event Horizon's finance division had put together a preliminary estimate of how much money she could raise to bid for the generator data. The numbers were ridiculous. At this level it wasn't even money any more, just digits in a memory bank. Risk and estimates; you were worth only what people thought you were, how you'd proved yourself. It was all so incredibly cynical. Yet it made the world go round.

She used to think she would prefer a life where wealth was a good solid nugget of gold. Nothing ephemeral about that.

But now she actually had Event Horizon tabulated and defined, some of it quite creatively. Banks and finance houses were reviewing their position, finalizing their figures, coming together in a consortium to back her. Market rumour said there were only three real contenders, Event Horizon, a Mitsubishi/General Electric partnership, and Jonathan-Hewit, with a Boeing/SAAB bid as a dark outsider.

The finance consortium members had a lot of confidence in Event Horizon's potential. And, of course, the intangibles. Mainly herself, and what she would do to them if they failed her.

She found herself thankful for her reputation again. The second time in one day. Must be a record.

What's the problem? she asked.

Charlotte Fielder has been issued with a replacement Amex card.

Oh, Lord.

Quite. We've been running constant monitor programs on the critical units of this deal to see if there has been any movement. Charlotte applied for a replacement card through a New London office, but her identity was verified by the company's memory core on Earth. She followed that by buying clothes at Toska's.

Clothes? At a time like this?

Yes.

Idiot girl! And if we know…

Correct. Leol Reiger, the Dolgoprudnensky, and Clifford Jepson are all hunting her. The hotrods will be running monitor programs similar to ours. We must assume one of the three will be told, if not all of them.

Bloody hell What does Greg think he's doing?

Perhaps he doesn't know.

Well, he ought to. She opened her eyes. The study was as depressingly sober as always. Wilholm without the children had little appeal. She might just as well be in the office.

Open Channel to Victor Tyo.

Where are you? she asked.

I'll be landing at Prior's Fen in five minutes.

Forget that. Come direct to Wilholm; you and I are going up to New London.

I'm sure Greg and Melvyn Ambler can handle the situation.

Ha! She told him about Charlotte's Amex. That gives us three reasons to join them. Greg says the alien is there. Royan told me he's gone up there to test his prototype nanoware. And now everyone and their mother knows Charlotte Fielder is up there. I'd have to go up eventually, might as well be now.

All right, Julia. But I still don't see how Royan and the alien can be tied together. Not now we've established that he grew the flower himself, that it didn't arrive in the solar system on a starship. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that there is an alien any more.

Greg says he sensed it.

I know. Julia, I've known him as long as you, remember? But, well, I admit his espersense is perfection. Hell, I wish I had psychics half as good in security. It's just this intuition of his—

You don't believe him.

I'm sceptical, that's all I'm saying. Especially when you should be concentrating on the bid for the generator data.

There's no such thing as coincidence.

That's one hell of a bon mot to gamble your entire future on.

She sighed and gave a half-smile. Thank heavens for Victor, always gave his opinions straight.

What do you three think? she asked the cores.

I think Greg knows what he's talking about, Juliet, her grandfather said. This atomic structuring is just too odd.

Yes, we concur, said NN core two.

Unanimous, then. Sorry, Victor, you've just been outvoted.

All four of you?

'Fraid so.

OK, Julia. I'll be at Wilholm in seven minutes.

Fine. In the mean time, I'm going to phone Clifford Jepson.

Whatever for?

A truce. I want this hardlining to stop. There's been too much already.

Clifford Jepson was behind his desk in the Globecast office, dressed in an expensive light grey German Suit. His round manufactured face gave her a vicious smile. "Julia. Gonna make your bid?"

"No, Clifford. I want to ask you a favour."

He lounged back in a high-backed leather chair, toying with a pearl-textured light-pencil. "A favour? Changing your tune, aren't you, Julia? Coming down to Earth with the rest of us?"

Burn the conceited little shit, Juliet, Philip Evans raged.

No, Grandpa. And please don't interrupt unless it's a relevant observation.

That was a relevant observation in my book, girl.

Behave, NN core two said.

"My bid will be in tonight, Clifford. But I'd point out that you haven't filed a patent on the nuclear force generator yet."

"It'll be filed. Don't you worry about that."

"If you say so. But in the mean time, I'd appreciate it if you put the brakes on Leol Reiger."

The light-pen pointed rigidly at the ceiling. "Goddamn, Julia, it was your people at the Colonel Maitland."

"Only after Reiger went on the rampage. I think your judgement in selecting him was execrable, Clifford."

"Not your type, huh? A bit too direct for you, Julia? I've got no complaints."

"Well, you ought to have. After all, what has he accomplished for you so far? And Jason Whitehurst was a friend of mine."

"Yeah." A muscle twitched under Clifford Jepson's right eye. "I couldn't help that. Reiger wouldn't have done anything if Whitehurst had seen reason. The old man told his bodyguards to shoot Reiger's squad. He didn't leave Leol with any choice."

"I was there, Clifford, and what you're saying is absolute tabloid. You have no control over Reiger, he's as much a danger to you as anyone else."

"What do you mean, you were there?"

Julia gave him a level stare, then accessed her personality package memory files in Wilholm's 'ware and pulled the recording taken from the camera in Jason Whitehurst's study. She squirted it over to Clifford's terminal. He watched the scene as Leol Reiger confronted Jason Whitehurst. The rip gun fired.

"Motherfuck." Clifford Jepson winced, lips peeling back from his teeth.

"I know Reiger got clear of the hospital in Lagos," she said. "Call him off, Clifford, pay off his contract and dump him."

Clifford Jepson raised his gaze to a point above the camera. Julia watched the shadows of doubt forming across his face, she imagined cogs turning behind his too-smooth skin.

"And then what?" he asked faintly.

"Sorry?"

"What happens after that? I mean, let's not flick around here, Julia. You've got the Fielder girl, right?"

"She's under my protection. I won't let anyone harm her, least of all you and Reiger."

"That's just it, Julia. This goddamn AV recording; lifting her out from under Reiger's team like that; and now I'm told Harcourt might get blown away in a cabinet reshuffle. Jesus, Julia, how do you do that? You're just laughing at me. Reiger was one of the best, and he barely gets out alive. I mean, nobody's that good. It's goddamn frightening the way you operate. I'm fighting for my life here, Julia. You know what I mean: the Fielder girl. She could screw me. My contact is playing a very elusive game, I'm not hiding that. You go barging in there with Fielder and that freak Royan, and I'm flushed. I ain't gonna roll over and let that happen. No way."

Julia watched the light-pen being tapped on the edge of the desk, it was hypnotic. The pressure was starting to get to Clifford Jepson.

And he's not the only one.

"Risk you take playing in this league, Clifford. So I'll make you an offer. In return for giving me your source and dumping Reiger, I'll cut you in on forty per cent of the profits from atomic structuring."

"No." He shook his head. It was paper defiance, she thought.

"If I get to the source first, you won't get a penny."

"I play to win, Julia. I'm not backing out now. You're just as worried as me or you wouldn't have called."

"Don't count on it," she said, and broke the circuit.

He hasn't got the generator data yet, her grandfather said. We could come out of this holding the trumps.

Providing we secure the generator data first, NN core two said. Clifford knows he's going to have to produce it tomorrow to satisfy the bidders. He must be reasonably confident about that. That doesn't give us much time.

Are we all agreed that the alien is the source? Julia asked.

Yes.

Looks that way, girl.

And it's currently up in New London?

Concurred.

Right then. Let's see if we can prevent it from squirting the data down to Clifford.

Sean Francis's face formed on the study's phone screen. His shoulders straightened when he saw who was calling.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," he said respectfully.

She smiled, showing him he was in favour. Sean Francis took life a mite too seriously, but he was the best executive in the company. Even so, she considered forty-five thousand kilometres was just about an ideal separation distance.

"Afternoon, Sean. Has Greg Mandel's team settled in?"

"Absolutely fine, no problem. They've just left the residence to go and look for Miss Fielder's Celestial Apostle."

"Excellent. I'll be joining you myself in about three hours. In the mean time I want you to cut New London's communication links with Earth."

Sean Francis looked as though he'd misheard. "Cut our communications?"

"Completely. I want New London isolated from Earth. Leave the company security link, but shut down all business, private, and finance links. And all the channel linkages as well, please. We have the franchise from English Telecom, it shouldn't be difficult."

"But what can I say, what reason? And there's the spacecraft traffic, yes? They'll need guidance updates from flight control."

"I was just coming to that. Turn back all vehicles on their way up from Earth, their docking clearance is revoked as from now. Keep the local communication frequencies open, of course, we don't want any accidents with the commuter pods and tugs. But the direct relays to geostationary platforms must go; tell them it's solar flare activity, or the exchange 'ware has crashed. Nobody will believe it, but cover yourself. It's only until tomorrow."

"I suppose I could," he said unhappily.

"You're my representative up there, you've got the authority. I'll take full responsibility. But unplug New London, now."

Victor was waiting on the lawn outside the library's French windows as she hurried out, still sealing the front of her topaz-coloured shipsuit.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"No use. Clifford's scared of me. But he's more scared of losing out on atomic structuring."

"Pity."

They walked over to the CHO-808 Falcon spaceplane sitting between the two Pegasus hypersonics. It looked like a stretched version of the executive jets, slightly fatter, a lead grey in colour, with a single induction ram intake protruding from the underbelly. There was something coldly daunting about its lines, an impression of hidden power.

Event Horizon produced the marque: it was a rapid response vehicle for the RAF, and the Greater European Defence Alliance. They used it primarily to investigate new satellites, checking to make sure they weren't kinetic harpoons. It could also carry six technicians and a two-tonne payload up to geostationary orbit.

Might as well concrete the lawn over, she thought as she went up the Falcon's composite airstair. It's used as a landing pad more than anything else.

The small cabin had seating for seven including the pilot, Maria Garrick. She was an ex-RAF officer who had flown Julia around for eight years, highly competent, and loyal. Julia liked her, one of that rare breed, like Victor, who gave an honest opinion when asked.

Julia ducked her head to avoid the low ceiling as she walked over to the seat behind Maria. The Falcon had none of the padding and trimming of commercial spaceplanes, apart from the active cushioning of the seats. A functional composite cave.

"Take us straight up to New London," Julia said. The seat cushioning flowed round her legs, gripping them like a vice made of sponge.

Maria twisted round, giving her a bright stare. "How straight?"

"Fast as we can, please."

"Right-oh, one purple corridor coming up." Maria turned back to the graphics on the heavily shielded windscreen slit.

Pilots were all the same, Julia reflected, can't resist a dramatic race against time.

The cabin hatch slid shut, its actuators drowned out by the sound of compressors winding up. They lifted with a jolt, the cabin tilting up thirty degrees. Acceleration pressed Julia down into the seat, rising quickly to two Gs. The Falcon was already doing Mach two when it passed over Yaxley and charged out over the Fens basin.

There was a rush of giddiness when the induction ram cut off abruptly, dropping Julia into freefall; with her eyes closed she could believe she was diving headlong through space. There was nothing to be seen through the curving windscreen, a few stars and the diffuse rose-pink glow of the friction-heated nose. It faded to nothing as she watched.

"I can't establish a datalink with New London," Maria said. "Inmarsat says their microwave antennas have shut down. Solar-flare activity." She turned her head, glancing back over her shoulder. "That's pure bullshit, you know that."

"Yes," Julia said. "Use the company security link, you'll get through that way."

"You're the boss."

"Did you unplug New London?" Victor asked.

"Yes. I want the alien isolated until we've made contact."

"It might not like that."

"I thought you didn't believe in it?"

"If it exists, it might not like that."

Somehow Julia couldn't raise a smile. "I don't like the way it's messed me around."

Twenty-five thousand kilometres up, and the Earth was a gibbous white and blue apparition beyond the windscreen.

Julia watched the terminator crawl across Italy and Africa, igniting a multitude of city lights in its wake. Apart from the equatorial band, she noted. That remained ominously dark.

"We've got company," Maria said.

"What sort?" Victor asked sharply.

"Spaceplanes. One is three thousand kilometres behind us, the other another ten behind them. Both on a New London intercept trajectory. I wouldn't mention it, but neither had clearance, not with Inmarsat's linkage still down."

Open Channel to Falcon Command Circuitry. Access External Sensor Feed.

The starfield wrapped itself around her, Earth dominating one quadrant, the silver splash of New London directly opposite it. There was the beginnings of a faint necklace in geostationary orbit, bright sequins strung out in a fragmented loop, the vast commercial communication dishes interspaced with strategic defence platforms from all five major defence alliance networks.

The high-orbit platforms were an act of mass political paranoia which always rankled, despite the fact that Event Horizon earned a great deal of money from supplying the Greater European Alliance with platforms, and components to all the other networks.

Over half the global armaments budget was spent on low Earth orbit SD platforms to guard against the possibility of sneak attacks. Since the West African slamdown war, kinetic bombardment from space had been the number one public bogeyman. Anybody with a spaceplane could launch harpoons at any target on the planet. A ten-tonne projectile protected against re-entry ablation, travelling at orbital velocity, was a thousand times cheaper than nuclear or electroncompression weapons. And there was no worry about radioactive fallout if the intended victim was a neighbouring country.

It resulted in the five independent defence networks, assembled more or less along regional groupings rather than the political combinations which dominated the previous century. A triumph of practicality over ideology, Julia always thought, with nominally hostile neighbours co-operating. She had drawn a lot of comfort from that at the time; political commentators were hoping it would lay the foundations for a more stable world order. There were even discussions of combining some of the networks into a single global defence system under the control of the UN. But so far nothing had come from them.

The geostationary platforms were a good reminder that for all the progress made in defusing the worst international tensions, there was still a long way to go. There was so much commercial hardware in geostationary orbit, along with national military communications satellites, that the aerospace-force generals and marshals had worried about harpoons being hidden among the antenna platforms. Squadrons of sensor satellites from the Asian-African Pact and the Greater European Alliance had been positioned in geostationary orbit to watch for clandestine harpoon launches. They were swiftly followed by similar spysats from the Chinese and Eastern Federation Co-Defence League, and the Pacific Treaty Nations. The Southern and Central American Defence Partnership brought up the rear three months later. And after the sensors came the weapons platforms. Strictly for defensive interception duties, the network chiefs said.

Julia observed them glimmer in the raw sunlight with a feeling of sad resentment. How little the politicians change. Watching you watching me; the old Cold War slogan resurrected and given fresh respectability. It was bandied about quite a lot on the current affairs 'casts these days. Pure governmental machismo.

As well as the capability to attack other systems in geosynchronous orbit the high-orbit platforms could also launch an assault on New London. She had seen confidential intelligence assessments about New London and the other four asteroids currently being manoeuvred into Earth orbit. Military intelligence was always defined in terms of potential, and what was worrying the generals was the sheer mass of rock available: enough to flatten every city on the planet a thousand times over if it was ever flung down.

Potential.

Possible threat.

Theoretical capability.

I was right not to warn the government about Royan's alien.

Superimpose Radar Return.

Two stars turned red, and the 'ware assigned them five-digit codes, followed by velocity readings, size, and projected course vectors.

NEGATIVE TRANSPONDER RESPONSE, the Falcon's 'ware reported, printing it over the image.

"They don't want us to know who they are," Maria said.

Exit Falcon Command Circuitry.

Julia looked over at Victor. "Coincidence?" she asked archly.

"There's no need to get nasty. The question is, which two?"

"Clifford Jepson and Leol Reiger are tied in together, so one of them has to be carrying Reiger. Whether Clifford would come up with him, I don't know. He was pretty desperate for that generator data."

"I'm not having Reiger inside New London," Victor said flatly.

"No," she agreed. "Maria, can I have a communication channel to Sean Francis, please."

Maria unclipped a handset from her chair, and handed it back to Julia.

"Yes, ma'am?" Sean Francis said.

"There are two spaceplanes on a rendezvous trajectory with New London."

"Yes, we know. We've been tracking them."

"Open a datalink to them, and order them to stop outside your flight-control zone. If they come inside, use the defence systems to kill them. Under no circumstances are either of them to dock with New London."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good enough?" she asked Victor.

"Yes. I wish we could find out if Reiger really is on board one of them."

"Not without X-ray sight."

"Can you get an ident on the type of craft?" Victor asked Maria.

"I'll run a comparison program on the nearest, see what the 'ware's best guess is. But the furthest one is well outside sensor definition range."

The handset bleeped.

"Yes?" Julia asked.

"No reply, I'm afraid," Sean Francis said.

"Put the message on repeat, and keep sending it until they violate New London's flight-control zone."

"Yes, ma'am."

"No good," Maria said. "It's jamming the sensors. I can't burn through their ECM at this range."

"Well, that confirms they aren't legitimate," Victor said mordantly.

"Yes, there is that," Julia said. But it did clear up a lingering doubt about ordering Sean Francis to use New London's defences.