The Nano Flower Part 28

It wasn't as if she could offload the burden, confess to someone. 'b.u.g.g.e.r you, Royan,' she snapped.

The terminal on the desk bleeped for attention. Now what?

She braced herself and turned.

Her personality package had returned from Eienso's mainframe. Clifford Jepson had paid the money into Leol Reiger's account.

T.

he Pegasus was spiralling down towards the Colonel Maidand. Greg watched the vast bulk of the airs.h.i.+p appear on the bulkhead flatscreen, its contra-rotating fans dawdling in a doidrum calm. Their shallow approach angle showed it as a large black oval above the glistening deep-blue of the ocean. He found it disconcerting, the absorptive black surface, sharp edges, it didn't seem to belong here at the centre of nature's pa.s.sive domain, an intrusive foreigner.

'So why the guilty smile?' Sun asked.

Greg clamped his lips together, he hadn't realized he was smiling. 'Nothing.'

He and Eleanor had taken their honeymoon on one of the Lakehurst-cla.s.s airs.h.i.+ps, that was back in the days when all long-distance flights were made by airs.h.i.+ps. Two weeks spent circling around Greenland and back down Canada's east coast. A first-cla.s.s cabin to themselves, day trips to resort centres, the eager buzz of third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers on their way to a new life on homesteads springing up behind the retreating permafrost. The black shape was evocative, tripping his mind's gates, delicious memories spilling out along his synapses.

Above all was the gentleness, time spent entwined, time spent floating above fresh landscapes, above sunsets and dawns, gourmet meals, idle chatter, laughter. It had been stately.

He rued the day of the airs.h.i.+p's pa.s.sing, replaced with hypersonic planes powered by Julia's all-pervasive gigaconductor. The last commercial trans-Atlantic airs.h.i.+p flight had rated half a column in The Times one morning; he'd pa.s.sed the cybofax over the breakfast table to Eleanor who quirked her lips in remorse. They had always said they would repeat the trip, but then there had been the kids, the groves

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

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to tend, responsibilities. Now all it ever could be was a sunny memory.

Greg had never really adapted to hypersonics, the second age of air travel; two-and-a-quarter hours to New Zealand from England; j.a.pan a hundred-minute streak over the slushy remnants of the North Pole. Where could you escape in a world like that?

Jason Whitehurst had found the answer the hard way. The Pegasus had broken away from the Italian mainland over Genoa, hitting Mach eight above the Ligurian Sea. They were pa.s.sing over the Straits of Gibraltar fifteen minutes later without slowing down, curving round north-west Africa to line up on the Cape Verde islands. Total elapsed time from Julia sending him the co-ordinates to arrival at the Colonel Maidand was forty-seven minutes.

'We've just been given landing clearance by the captain,'

Pea.r.s.e called.

'Fine,' Greg said. 'Take her down.' He stood up as Pea.r.s.e spoke into the handset. Suzi got to her feet beside him. He noticed she used her arms to push herself up out of the deep chair. 'You OK?'

She pulled a face. 'Sod it, yeah, I'll do.'

The leg of her sh.e.l.lsuit was torn, stained with a ribbon of blood, blue dermal seal visible through the open fabric. And what would Jason Whitehurst make of that?

Greg's face still stung, but he'd checked it in the toilet mirror. Appearance-wise it wasn't too bad. His leather jacket had deflected a lot of the gla.s.s splinters. Out of the three of them, he had come off best. Even his neurohormone hangover had run its course.

Two converging lines of bright strobe lights were flas.h.i.+ng along the top of the Colonel Maidand, leading them in towards the recessed landing pad. At the front edge of the pad a large blister rose out of the fuselage, which he guessed was a hangar for Jason Whitehurst's own plane.

Greg walked forward as the Pegasus descended, compensating for the inclined deck. The chair at the front of the cabin had been straightened and tilted horizontal. Malcolm was lying on it; all he had on were jockey shorts, his brown I.

243.

skin mottled with big patches of dermal seal. Diagnostic probes were stuck to his torso and the nape of his neck, the medical unit's screen showing an ecorche representation of his body, large sections coloured amber, two red pinpoints near his spine.

'Is he going to be all right?' Greg asked Rachel.

She looked up from the plasma bladder's LCD. 'Yes. Nothing critical punctured or broken, just blood-loss trauma. But we got the plasma into him in time. He might need some skin replacement for his back, otherwise fine.'

'Thank Christ for that.'

'Never thought I'd be doing this again.'

'Yeah, you and me both,' he said.

The Pegasus touched down with a slight tremor.

Greg shrugged out of his jacket. 'Pea.r.s.e, give me a Tokarev and shoulder holster.'

'Right.' The hardliner went to one of the lockers. 'Sun, do you want a holster for your Browning?'

'Nah, I stowed it.'

Greg glanced at her. The Puma bag had been lost in the Prezda's well. Her sheilsuit wasn't all that baggy, though. He didn't ask.

Pea.r.s.e handed him the holster. 'You want me to come with you?'

'No,' Greg said, veicroing the holster's straps. 'The deal is for me and Suzi. We shouldn't be more than half an hour, forty minutes at the outside. Buy the girl and bring her back. After that we zip Malcolm here straight to a decent medical facility.'

'Buy the girl,' Pea.r.s.e repeated. 'That sounds so... G.o.d, I don't know. Medieval?'

'Something like that.' Greg checked the Tokarev's charge before slotting it into the holster. 'But it's preferable to the alternative, for her and us.' He pulled his jacket back on, and pressed the belly hatch activation b.u.t.ton.

There were two people waiting for them on the pad. Hard-liners, dressed in dark grey trousers and light jade V-neck sweaters, as if they were cabin stewards.

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Greg ordered a small neurohormone secretion. The hardliners were cautious, but not hostile.

They took a lift down to the gondola, riding in silence. A long windowless corridor, lit by a bright biolum strip, blank doors in either wall, and n.o.body else in sight. He thought the hardliners were leading them towards the prow, but it was difficult to be certain. A cleaning drone rolled past them going in the opposite direction.

He sensed the background s.h.i.+mmer of the crew's minds, a continual whisper of emotions. Rea.s.suring to know the Colonel Maidand wasn't actually the ghost s.h.i.+p it looked.

The hardliners stopped outside one of the doors near the end of the corridor. It opened into Jason Whitehurst's clinically plain study. He was sitting behind his gla.s.s desk, playing with an old-fas.h.i.+oned gold Parker biro. The hologram display inside the desk top was angled so that it could only be read by him. From where Greg stood inside the door the symbology array was just an Expressionist laser frieze. Pretty, but meaningless.

A grey rectangle on the floor in front of the desk began to bulge up, silently sculpting itself into a settee.

'Please,' Jason Whitehurst opened his hand, gesturing at the newly formed settee.

Greg sat, sensing the two hardliners behind him withdrawing. Suzi plonked herself down beside him, her heels barely reached the floor.

'Do you require medical attention?' Jason Wbitehurst asked Sun. He was looking at her knee, the torn sheilsuit leg.

'I have a doctor on board. Someone my age, it is advisable...'

He trailed off with a dismissive wave.

'I've already had it patched, thanks,' Sun said.

'Of course.'

'A hazard on our way here,' Greg said. He studied the mind before him. Jason Whitehurst put on a good front. Behind the bemused tolerance expression he was hiding a mix of fretfulness and expectancy. Greg recognized the mind set. Jason Whitehurst was a mastercia.s.s gambler, it was his out, his bang. He didn't merely play the game, he was part of the game.

I.

245.

'You see, we're not the only people looking for you,' Greg said. He wanted a reaction, see how Jason Whitehurst bore up under some pressure.

'I am aware of this,' Jason Whitehurst said. 'After all, the delectable Charlotte is in some demand, a valuable commodity. I simply did what I always do in such a case, and trade on it.'

'A pity you didn't think to warn Baronski.'

'Is he in some sort of trouble?'

'You judge. Suzi and I managed to escape the tekmerc team that was going to interrogate him about Fielder's location. That's where we picked up our little scratches.'

Jason Whitehurst pulled on his beard. Greg sensed the first traces of alarm rising into his mind, thought currents brightening.

'Baronski knew the risks,' Jason Wbitehurst said bluntly.

'Baronski was a cautious man. He didn't know what Fielder has got herself involved in; if he had, he would have stopped her.'

'You have come all this way, by dint of considerable effort on the part of your employer, simply to remonstrate with me, Mr Mandel?'

'No. All I came for was Fielder. Just telling you this deal isn't all cosy advantage trading, that's all. Maybe you don't know how valuable this Fielder girl is.'

'I believe I have a fair idea of her financial status, or more precisely, the price of the information stored in that pretty little head of hers. Dear Charlotte is unique. And like all monopolies, she does not come cheap.'

'How much?'

'One hundred million Eurofrancs.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks,' Sim snorted.

Greg had seen it coming, watching Jason Whitehurst nerve himself up. There was determination, but he was also testing, interested to see how important Fielder really was. It fitted Greg's initial impression. Jason Whitehurst knew he had something, he just wasn't sure exactly what.

Greg increased his neurohormone secretion. 'Did you know first contact has been made?' he asked.

246.

Shadows of doubt flittered across Jason Whitehurst's mind. 'Whatever are you talking about, Mr Mandel?'

'First contact, with aliens.'

Jason Whitehurst's face registered impatience. Suspicion rose, his thought currents racing, then a slow dawn of comprehension which brought cold fright. 'That is the source of atomic structuring technology? Aliens?'

'Yeah,' said Greg.

'My G.o.d, of course, her holiday.' Jason did his best to recover his composure, physically he managed it, mentally his mind surged with phobic dread. 'Is Julia Evans really sure she knows what she is doing dabbling in this affair?'

'She's sure.'

'Very well. Then as I said before, if you are unwilling to pay the reserve price, dear Charlotte will be placed on the open market, available to the highest bidder.'

Wrong,' said Greg. 'We will pay you sixty-five million for her.'

'Greg!' Suzi protested.

'Julia has been most foolish sending you,' Jason Whitehurst said. 'All you have done is simply confirmed dear Charlotte's worth to me. The reserve price stands. I must say, it's most unlike Julia to make this sort of mistake.'

'I told you about the aliens as a favour,' Greg said. 'That's the second one today. I'm trying to make you realize that you're in way over your head. This whole deal frightens me very badly, and I'm ex-Mindstar. Charlotte Fielder will be removed from the Colonel Maidand today; either by us paying for her, or by one of the tekmerc squads the kombinates have employed to hunt her down. And they're not far behind us, a few hours at most. if she comes with us, you will receive y~ur sixty-five million. Wait until they arrive, and you can kiss goodbye to a lot more than money. That's the bottom line, Whitehurst. No third favour.'

Sparkling blue eyes fixed on Greg. 'The Mindstar Brigade?' Jason Whitehurst said it with reluctant admiration.

'Yeah. You want my advice, then leg it out of here as soon as we take Fielder. Head back to Monaco, where it's safe, 247.

and where you're visible, in a crowd. Tell the other bidders that Fielder's gone. Best I can offer.'

'I was in the King's Own Hussars,myself.'

'I know, I've read your profile. Good troops, the King's Own; they were in Turkey.'

'After my day. Mexico was my last campaign.' Jason White-hurst sighed, dropping the Parker on the desk. 'Didn't know you were a brother officer. Sorry if I sounded off.'

'I really would like you to leave the Colonel Maidand after us.'

'Yes, quite. Good idea. Sixty-five million, you say?'

'Yeah, sixty-five.'

Suzi let out a disgusted hiss of breath, rolling her eyes.

'Very well, Mr Mandel. We have a deal.'

Greg fished around in his jacket pocket, and produced the ident card Julia had given him: pure white, except for the LCD display and a small triangle and flying-V logo filling the top right corner.