The Nano Flower Part 38

The b.u.g.g.e.r is Clifford Jepson's cyborg, her grandfather said bitterly.

And of course, securing Event Horizon the atomic structuring partners.h.i.+p with Globecast, as well as enlisting your help over the Welsh question, will effectWely guarantee him the leaders.h.i.+p of the New Conseriative party NN core two said.

Plus Clifford makes sure Event Horizon pays through the nose, Julia added. He would be in a position where he could virtually dictate whatever price he wants for the generator data.

Neat, Philip Evans conceded. Clifford's really pulling out the stops on this one. He gets you dancing to his tune, and his man in Number Ten.

The worst thing is, I don't blame him, Julia said. I'd do 315.

exactly the same. She couldn't help the cool bleakness that her world view had been correct in the final a.n.a.lysis. Michael Harcourt wasn't any different to the rest. n.o.body acted honourably any more, everybody had to have an angle.

Why do I bother? she mused.

Somebody's got to, Juliet.

But why me?1 My heritage, girl, Event Horizon gives you the power.

So it's your fault, then, Grandpa?

If you like. You could always sell it~ turn it over to someone else.

To people like Michael Harcourt and Clifford Jepson, you mean? No thank you, the world is in bad enough shape already.

That's your answer then, girl.

Yeah.

She gave Michael Harcourt her ice maiden smile, enjoying the way he shrank back. Even over the phone people feared her. Stupid, but occasionally useful. 'Very well, Minister, I'd be obliged if you would proceed with your unofficial liaison for me. I'll ask Peter Cavendish to contact you for the details, when to submit the bid and so on.'

'Excellent, so we can expect a statement from Event Horizon on the cyber-precincts; that they will only be sited in Wales if it remains part of England?'

'Yes, as soon as it is appropriate to make such an announcement.'

'I'll cqntact Clifford Jepson right away.'

'Thank you, Minister. It's always a joy to learn exactly who I can depend on. I certainly shan't forget what you've done today.'

Michael Harcourt gave a slight bow. There was no trace of his smile left. 'Whatever I can, Julia, you know that. Always.'

'Goodbye, Minister.' She made it come out like a p.r.o.nouncement. Rewarded by his flash of alarm just before his picture vanished.

She should never have allowed this situation to arise; it was her own fault; if she'd kept on top of the political scene, been decisive about Wales, the prospect of a leaders.h.i.+p 316.

contest would never have arisen, allowing upenings for people like Michael Harcourt. In fact she should never have let a Globecast puppet become Minister for Industry in the first place. Attention to detail; once she'd applied the maxim ruthlessly. But there had been so many distractions lately, worry building like a spring stormfront. Funny the NN cores hadn't caught on to Harcourt before. Could they be afilicted by Royan's absence? They reflected her thoughts after all, amplifying them a thousandfold. Did that mean the loss they felt was a thousand times the intensity of hers?

Arrange a conference with David Marchant, she said. I know we've left it late for damage limitation, but let's see what he can do. We can't have Harcourt as PM.

Who left it late? her grandfather queried drily.

Ignore him. We'll get on to it, NN core two said. Victor called while you were talking to Michael Harcourt He's found the s.p.a.ceplane and the payload facility room which handled Kiley. l'm accessing their memory cores now Fine. The patio's fuchsia flowers were bobbing in the light breeze, utterly beautiful, something G.o.d's own origami artist had folded together. Several bees had found them, crawling inside their ruff of petals. Julia watched them while she waited for the results of the memory core search, remembering other flowers on the bluff behind the bungalow. They were artificial, too, not gene-tailored, but placed there, organized. All of her environments were organized, Prior's Fen Atoll, Wilholm, the Mahone Bay island, resorts. She spent her time in bubbles of perfection.

A brief flash of alien flower blossoming in Wilholm's borders. She almost had it, the impression was vivid, crystalline.

Then the idea was gone.

We've found him, NN core two said.

This time the burst of emotion was absent as Royan materialized in her mind. Adoration would have been too painful.

h.e.l.lo, Snowy I suppose It must be getting bad. Tracking down this package means 1 screwed up, right?

I don't know. I'm looking for an alien stars.h.i.+p.

317.

His image appeared thoughtful. Do you think I can help you?

You warned me about it.

Sorry, I don't have any memory of that. It must be in my future.

When were you recorded?

June.

What have you been doing since the probe returned?

Made progress. Once I confirmed Kiley had brought back some microbes I had three more processor nodes implanted.

Oh, Royan, she said despairingly. How many times had they argued over implants? He had wanted them so badly after he was recovered and showing an interest in helping her with Event Horizon. She grudgingly paid for four, two processors, two memory stores.

I can handle it he said calmly. I knew you'd complain about that.

I'm not going to argue with a package, she said. What happened to the microbes?

I loaded my implants with biochemistry and genetics data, and started to map their chromosomes.

The package squirted an image of the microbe's genetic structure. It looked like a Christmas tree bauble, a softly gleaming metallic-purple sphere hanging in the null-s.p.a.ce of the node universe. As it grew larger she saw the surface was mottled with minute rings, it began to resemble a twined ball of chain.

Familiarity overwhelmed her. Dear Lord, that's the same genetic structure as the flower.

What flawer, Snowy?

You serif me a flower, an alien flower. It has toroidal chromosome-equivalents stacked in concentric sh.e.l.ls. Just like that.

I don't understand. The flower came from a stars.h.i.+p?

1... Yes, no, something. Greg said there was something behind the flower, waiting. He must have sensed the stars.h.i.+p. What else could it be?

And I warned you about it?

That's right. She thought furiously, summoning up a logic 318.

matrix from her processor node. The question was simple enough, trying to formulate a correlation between the microbes Kiley returned and a stars.h.i.+p, it couldn't be coincidence. Her processor reduced the question to equations, naked digits, feeding them into the matrix's channels. The construct wasn't the kind of prismatic graphics a terminal cube projected, more an instinctive awareness of maths, the true properties of numbers. Colourless, almost without form, she needed the bioware to a.n.a.logize it for her.

The equations flowed through the matrix channels, fusing, interacting, offering solutions. Could the microbes have been part of a waste dump? she asked. If an alien stars.h.i.+p has been orbiting Jupiter for any respectable length of time, the entire ring and moon system would be contaminated by now.

No, 1 don't believe that's your answer, Snowy.

Why not?

1 managed to identify some of the toroid sequences. I'll show you.

She watched the gleaming purple sphere turn. The chain was beginning to unwind. It was like a magician's trick, pulling a line of handkerchiefs out of one hat, a line that just kept coming. The chain spiralled round her perception point, forming a near-solid cylindrical wall, etched with a black groove.

This is just the outer sh.e.l.l, Snowy.

Dear Lord. The cylinder stretched out above and below her, there were no ends in sight. And you thought you could tame this?

It's all a question of processing power. Everything is soW- / able given time. I taught you that, remember?

So what have you solved?

Below her, the colour began to change. Fans of pale light were s.h.i.+ning into the cylinder, as if slots had appeared in the wall of chain letting in the dawn sun. They began to build, moving up towards her. When they were level, she could see it was lengths of the chain itself that were brightening. Individual toroids in the lengths glowed, becoming translucent; in some cases there were only twenty or thirty of them strung together, in others there were over a hundred. They were filled with alphanumeric codes.

It's funny, Royan said. Only the outer sh.e.l.l was active.

What do you mean?

The genes which dictate the microbe's structure are all contained in the outer sh.e.l.l The rest, the inner sh.e.l.ls, are inactive. ft's all s.p.a.cing. Waste toroids, nonsense.

They have no purpose?

The inner sh.e.l.ls aren't part of the microbe, no. In that respect this genetic structure is similar to human DNA. Ninety per cent of our DNA is rubbish, filling up the s.p.a.ces beM'een the active genes, the ones that make us what we are, gWe us our hair colour and height and blood type, every characteristic. But our active genes are strung out all the way along the DNA helix. Whereas in the alien microbe, they're only on the outside. And I can't think why.

Is it important?

I'm not sure. it doesn't affect the microbe in any way.

What's the significance of the sequences you have managed to identify? Why do they show the microbe isn't part of a waste dump?

it's not impossible, Snowy, i didn't say that, just highly unlikely. You see, I've found the sequences for the mechanism which breaks down minerals in rock The genetic mother-lode.

A lot of the glowing toroids reverted to purple, the majority of the ones that were left were situated in a broad band of the cylinder above her perception point. These ones, Royan said. It's like an osmotic process, but dry. The microbe envelope can be made porous to selected molecules, and gradually they diffuse across. And these- The glowing toroids began to blank out, others came on to replace them, scattered the whole length of the cylinder. These control its thermal absorption mechanism. The microbe becomes functional in a temperature gradient, one side hotter than the other. Perfect energy utilization for a s.p.a.ce environment.

She observed in silence as the identified toroids flashed at her like a mad nightclub lighting stack. Royan reeling off their functions, proud and possessive.

The point is, he said, it lives in a vacuum, it's perfectly adapted for sur'Mng interstellar transit, then multiplying on the asteroids and interplanetary dust orbiting a star. It's not a faecal parasite, Snowy. It's not something you have on board a stars.h.i.+p.

I'll grant you that, but there has to be a connection. Could it IWe on the stars.h.i.+p's hull?

Hey, yes. That might be it. On the ball, Snowy, as always.

The cylinder dissolved around her, leaving only the l.u.s.trous purple sphere.

So what was this package recorded for? she asked. What are you here to tell me?

That I've cracked it. It's all there, just like I said, Snowy. The potential. Think of it; a clump of cells you can smear on an asteroid, they'd grow, cover the whole rock in a photosynthetic membrane, and inside they'll be grazing on the ore, fruiting pods of solid minerals and metaL You could seed a hundred rocks, a thousand, turn the entire asteroid belt into a living mine. Then we'd launch a fleet of Dragonflight's cargo s.h.i.+ps to pick up the pods, bring them back to Earth. Enough wealth for everyone to live like a king. Imagine that, Snowy.

Yeah. Imagine that.

Cancel Integrity Monitored Link to Processor Node One. Squirt Package into NN Core Two.

The patio s.h.i.+mmered into place around her. Matthew's damp towel was lying in a heap on the York slabs, she picked it up and hung it over his chair.

Same as last time, she told the NN core. Review the package memories; but this time I want that microbe's genetic structure compared to the flower's. They obviously come from the same planet. See if you can find out how close the relations.h.i.+p is.

Right.

Cancel Channel to SelfCores.

Being free of the electronic voices and pictures in her mind was like an escape from prison. She could hear the children laughing and yelling, Brutus barking. When she looked round the stone pillar at the end of the patio she saw they were THE NANO FLOWER321.

playing with one of the big colourful inflatable b.a.l.l.s on the lawn. It looked like a grand game.

Her cybofax began to shrill.

more were ransacking cupboards and wardrobes. The fourth Listoel had changed since the last time Greg had visited, seventeen years ago, investigating his first Event Horizon case. Now he sat behind the t.i.tan's pilot watching their approach through the c.o.c.kpit windscreen. They were due west of Ireland, flying subsonically, descending slowly. Below him, the ocean was completely green. It was a ragged patch over a hundred kilometres wide, its shape varying according to currents and wind. Today it looked like a bloated comet, with a tail which streamed away to the south, broadening and diluting to invisibility three hundred kilometres distant.

He could see dirty-yellow specks floating at the centre of the discolouration, neatly arranged in a square formation, each one a couple of kilometres from its neighbour. That made the specks huge. Lights were twinkling on all of them as the sun sank towards the horizon.

Philip Evans had started the mid-Atlantic anchorage twenty-five years ago, a refuge for his cyber-factory s.h.i.+ps. The old man had put together a rag-tag fleet of converted oil-tankers and ore carriers, even an ex-US Marine Corps Harrier carrier, all floating with legal impunity in international waters during the entire PSP decade. The household gear they manufactured was smuggled into England, helping to kick-start the country's black market, worsening the economy, weakening the PSP.

Kombinates had been swift to recognize the potential of the tax-free anchorage, and more cyber-factories began to arrive. Investment poured in; banks and finance houses were running scared of the political and physical turbulence on mainland Europe. For a few brief glory-years Listoel was a centre of innovation rivalling Silicon Valley and the Shanghai special economic zone.

The cyber-factory s.h.i.+ps had been equipped with thermal generators, sucking up cool water from the bottom of the

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

ocean trench and running it through a heat exchanger, self-powering, virtually eternal. There had been pirate miners too, Greg recalled, scooping up the ore nodules that lay on the ocean bed to supply the cyber-factories. Marine harvesters, exploiting the bloom of aquatic life which the nutrient-rich ocean-trench water fuelled. But the most memorable aspect had been the s.p.a.ceport; a floating concrete runway for the hydrogen-fuelled Sanger s.p.a.ceplanes which ferried 'ware chips down from orbital industry parks so they could be incorporated into the cyber-factories' gear.

At its peak, Listoel had had the industrial output of a small European nation, exporting its gear right across the globe.