The Nano Flower Part 8

'This was a pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p?' she asked.

'Yes. Airs.h.i.+ps came into their own after the Warming and the Energy Crunch. d.a.m.nable era, that one, the whole world went positively insane for over a decade. Still, I expect that was before your time, my dear. And very fortunate you were too, missing it. But after the jet fleets were grounded by impossibly expensive fuel, beauties like the old Colonel were all we had until Event Horizon cracked the giga-conductor's molecular structure. After that, of course, everybody went b.l.o.o.d.y speed mad. Hypersonics, s.p.a.ceplanes; nothing but rush and bustle. One shouldn't complain, one supposes; the world is a better place now, so everyone says. But airs.h.i.+ps have such cla.s.s. That's why I couldn't resist buying this old chap when it came on the market.'

Charlotte took a sip of her white wine. l'his a.s.signment was turning into a complete waste of time. Jason Whitehurst 80.spent most of his time on board the Colond Maidand, so he said, only touching the ground for parties like the Newflelds ball and other social events, the occasional business meeting. His trading empire was mostly handled by his cargo agents, and ninety per cent of his financial business conducted via private satellite relays. That didn't bode well at all. A large part of her arrangement with Baronski was listening to table talk. It was amazing what premier-grade kombinate executives and company chairmen would say when they were relaxed in a convivial atmosphere, safe amongst their own. Of course, they didn't expect her to follow a word of what they were saying. Youth, a pretty face, and a perfect figure equals no brain at all. So the next day she would call up Baronski, and he played the bytes of insider knowledge on the stock markets. Charlotte only got two per cent on that deal, but it would often come to more than the price her patron's gifts brought in.

Except now there were no guests on board, nor any prospect of them before they reached Odessa. And Fabian was supposed to be her patron; the only gifts she was likely to get from him would be rock concert tickets and a Playboy channel subscription.

One of the waiters brought her a chicken salad. Charlotte waited until Jason Whitehurst started eating, then tucked in. Her usual patrons, with their overhanging bellies and multiplying chins, tended to become irritable when they saw her nibbling at her food while they chomped their way through five-course meals, it showed them up. So she had had her digestive enzymes alerted with biochemicals to reduce her digestion rate; now it didn't matter how much she ate, she didn't put on weight. With slenderness guaranteed, a simple regimen of light exercise was all she needed to keep her ballerina muscle tone.

'So where did you take this holiday of yours?' Jason Whitehurst asked.

'New London.'

'No, really?' Fabian stopped eating, his fork halfway to his mouth. 'You mean the asteroid?'

'Yes.'

81.The boy's eyes shone. 'What's it like?'

Charlotte moistened her lips with the wine again. 'Formidable. The ffight out leaves you with a most peculiar impression; it's both big and small at the same time. On the approach you see this huge mountain of rock adrift in s.p.a.ce halfway out to the moon. Then, inside, it's a tiny little world-let, the centre hollowed out and planted with trees and gra.s.s and crops. Yet even that is big, because you can see it all, and know how small you are by comparison.'

'Crikey. I'd like to get up there myself sometime.'

'When you're older,' Jason Whitehurst said.

'Yes, Father.'

Jason Whitehurst reached over, and ruffled the boy's hair. 'Ah, impatience of youth. Just wait a few more years, Fabian, you can do what you like after that. Tell your poor old father to get stuffed then.'

Fabian did a half-squirm below his father's hand, glancing anxiously at Charlotte, so obviously fearful of how she would interpret the gesture. Daddy's little boy.

'I imagine there can't be very much to do up there,' Jason Whitehurst said.

'Oh no, there's much more to it than the microgee industries and Event Horizon's mineral mining operation,' Charlotte said. 'They're trying to develop it as a finance and tourist centre.'

'Good heavens, a sort of Disneyland in orbit, that kind of thing?'

'Not quite, it's rather more exclusive than that. They have casinos, nightclubs, if anything it's rather like a giant cabana club.'

'Sounds ghastly,' Jason Whitehurst muttered.

'And there's zero gee, as well,' Charlotte said.

'From what I've been given to understand, it makes people sick.'

'Not much nowadays, the medical people have got the anti-nausea drugs worked out fairly well. They had to. Sports form a big part of the attraction. There are a lot of games that you can play in the various low gee terraces. Tennis, badminton, squash, handball; they're all a lot of fun up there.

82.The ball travels completely differently, you have to develop a whole new set of reflexes to cope. And then there's the fall surfing, that's worth the price of the ticket alone. You must have seen it on the channels.'

Jason Whitehurst dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin. 'Yes. Well that settles it, I certainly won't be going. I'm far too old to team anything new.'

'Oh, come on, Father. It sounds terrific.'

'Maybe for your sixteenth birthday.'

'Great!'

'I said maybe.' Jason sat back as the waiter removed his plate. 'You obviously enjoyed yourself up there, my dear?'

'Yes. I'd like to go back.'

Jason Whitehurst pulled thoughtfully at his beard as he looked at her. 'How long were you up there for?'

'Ten days.'

'I see. And then straight from the s.p.a.ceport to the New-fields ball. You were in a bit of a rush, weren't you?'

Charlotte didn't like the way he was asking her questions, it wasn't polite conversation-making any more. 'I support the Newfields charity, it means a lot to me.'

'Dead boring, though,' Fabian said. 'Except when we were dancing,' he added hurriedly.

'Thank you,' Charlotte smiled at him.

'Do you still want to come swimming?'

It was the third time he'd asked. Charlotte had finally twigged why he was so persistent: swimming meant bikinis. Devious old Fabian. 'I certainly do, yes.'

'Not until you've digested your lunch,' Jason Whitehurst said. 'Why don't you show Charlotte round the old Colone( first'

The gondola was a hundred metres long, thirty wide, with two decks containing all the cabins, lounges, and staff quarters. Fabian led her down the central corridors, opening various doors. The flight centre was at the front of the lower deck, a big room with panoramic windows; three bored officers monitored the airs.h.i.+p's systems on five horsesh~ 83.consoles. Fabian introduced her to them, then they went up into the main hull.

'This is where it gets interesting,' Fabian said as they climbed a short flight of stairs at the rear of the gondola, right above the dining-room they'd had lunch in.

The stairs came out on to a narrow composite walkway with a rail at waist height, illuminated by a row of biolum strips. Charlotte was standing in a three-metre gap between a spherical helium balloon and the solar cell envelope. Long girders made from improbably thin monolattice carbon struts curved away on both sides, disappearing into darkness. The walkway was a narrow thread of light which stretched out into infinity fore and aft.

She s.h.i.+vered from the cool air. The gap seemed to suck sound away.

Fabian started walking towards the stern. 'There are nine of these big spherical gasbags,' he said, pointing up, 'and two smaller ones in the conical sections at both ends.'

Charlotte pressed her hand against the blue-grey roof of plastic. It felt tacky, slightly cooler than the surrounding air.

'Then there's these ten doughnut-shaped ones s.p.a.ced between the spheres, so we don't waste any volume,' Fabian continued. They were underneath a deep curving valley where the spherical gasbag pressed up against a doughnut, taut wires securing both of them to the monolattice spars.

Charlotte let him guide her, not really listening to the details of what she was seeing. Fabian found a walkway leading off at right angles to the main one. It began to curve upwards. She was soon climbing a ladder to another walkway halfway up the side of the fuselage.

'I'm sorry about the way the staff treated you,' Fabian said. 'It was jolly rude.'

Charlotte watched him ifip the hair out of his eyes. She hadn't realized he'd noticed the chill of the waiters as they served her at lunch, not many did. 'They don't count,' she said.

He considered this. 'Oh. Does it happen to you a lot?'

'Sometimes.'

There were more turns, another flight of stairs. They arrived at a doorway. Charlotte didn't have a due where they were any more, except the unending buzz of the fans was slightly louder.

'Here we are,' Fabian said happily, and showed his card to the lock.

Charlotte looked round as biolum strips covered in protective grilles came on. The room had an industrial feel to it; a gloomy high ceiling, the walls covered in big thermal insulation panels. It had housed some heavy machinery in the past; the mountings were still there, jutting out of the walls, two rows of thick pipes rose out of the floor like stumpy chimneys, capped by metal plates, a spiderweb of empty cable ducts arched around the door. But it was a teenager's den now. A rich teenager. There were flatscreens screwed to the walls, several hardware terminals and display cubes on old tables, piles of cus.h.i.+ons, a music deck, a couple of electric guitars, large speakers, clothes scattered round, empty boxes, and ten large tanks full of tropical fish.

'This chamber used to hold the MHD units,' Fabian said. 'When it was an ordinary pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p on the Pacific run the Colonel Maidand burnt hydrogen for power. The solar cell envelope doesn't catch enough energy to power the fans, you see. But when Father had it refitted, we switched the gigaconductor cells. Saves an awful lot of weight.'

'So where does the power come from now?' she asked.

Fabian fell back into one of the beanbags, hands behind his head, beaming. 'The Gulfstream has extra cells fitted, they charge up from the industrial grid every time it lands, then it transfers the electricity when it gets back.'

'So this is where you hang out, is it?' She peered at one of the fish tanks, admiring the vivid rainbow patterns on the guppies, suspecting genetic engineering featured prominently in their heritage.

'Yep.'

'Doing what, exactly?'

'I'll show you.' Fabian jumped up, limbs jerking erratically, as though he was operated by wires. He tugged his T-s.h.i.+rt off. 'This is really the most scorching game on the market. I love this. I'm good at it, too. Really good.'

She frowned, slightly bemused as he started to delve through a pile of junk. He pulled on a sleeveless s.h.i.+rt that was stained and torn, then started to clip on what looked like body armour. A metal breastplate painted in jungle camouflage; it had a small spotlight that stood above his left shoulder on a stalk.

'That screen,' Fabian told her, urgently. Watch that one.' He was typing quickly on a complicated-looking terminal. 'Please, Charlotte.'

'Sure.' Your daddy's paying for it, after all. She saw he had acquired a GI helmet with a small radio mike hanging down. He picked up a bulky gun, some sort of cross between a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle, and stood in the centre of a circular black mat.

There was something weirdly familiar about the costume. Then the theatre-sized flatscreen on the rear wall lit up.

A cramped room illuminated by dull red lighting, metal lockers forming walls and narrow aisles. Figures frozen in an alert pose, all of them holding the same kind of~ rifle as Fabian, all looking up at the ceiling with expressions of worry and concern. Charlotte recognized the woman in the centre: Sigourney Weaver. 'I know this,' she said. 'It's from Aliens.'

Fabian laughed. He was abruptly engulfed by a two-metre bubble of holographic light, a shadowless pearl haze. Faint coloured lines flickered around him, an exoskeleton drawn in blue, as though he had been coc.o.o.ned by a computer graphics display.

The scene on the flatscreen came alive. And there was Fabian, one of the s.p.a.ce marines, firing his gun wildly as the aliens crashed down through the command centre's roof. He had obviously perfected his chosen role, screaming obscenities, blasting the creatures apart in eruptions of green and yellow gore, covering the retreat back to the medical centre. Then one of the aliens punched up through the floor at his feet, and he went down firing defiantly until a black skeletal hand clamped over his face, dragging him to oblivion. A last terrified scream and he was gone.

Charlotte laughed delightedly, clapping and whistling. 'Encore!' She didn't have to fake it. Almost all of her patror tried to impress her, showing off their sophisticated art collections or delicate antiques, lecturing her extensively on every piece, demonstrating how cultured and refined they were, always hoping for an admiration which wasn't entirely bought. No one had ever tried to woo her with anything remotely like this before, not simple enjoyment. It was all so gloriously childish. She couldn't help wondering how she would look up there on the big screen.

Fabian clambered back to his feet, and slung the chunky rifle over his shoulder. His face split with a rich happy smile. 'See, told you I was good. You can pick whatever character you like. I love playing Hudson; he's a real fighter. He's scared the whole time, but he's tough too when it counts. I know his dialogue off by heart.'

'You were brilliant.' She went over to the terminal he had activated, there were three times the usual number of keys. ~What is this?'

'Videoke. All the companies and kombinates say it's going to be their supernova sales item this Christmas. Father got me this deck in advance; he's trying to buy a big consignment of them for Central America. The software houses have only remastered fifty movies for interactivity so far. I've got them loaded in the deck's AV memox; all the real cla.s.sics since cinema started, even some black and white ones.'

'It's wonderful, Fabian.'

'Do you want to try it?' he asked generously. 'You could be Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, or Laura Dern in Jura.s.sic Park, you're easily beautiful enough.'

'Thank you, flatterer. I will some time, once I've learned the lines. If I'm going to do it, I want to do it properly, like you. I'll have to find the right clothes, too.'

'I could do the Humphrey Bogart part with you.'

'Yes.' She read the list of films the videoke deck's flatscreen was displaying. Snow White in the Disney cartoon would certainly be a challenge. And which dwarf could Fabian be? She chuckled quietly to herself.

Fabian slowly took his helmet off. His hair was all sweaty, clinging to his scalp. 'Charlotte.'

She looked round at him, surprised by his serious tone.

87.'I meant it when I said you were beautiful.'

'Thank you, Fabian.'

'I couldn't believe it the first time I saw you.' His pose of a.s.sured confidence crumpled, shoulders slumping inside the green armour. 'I thought I was dreaming. I knew you'd be pretty, but-'

'Give you a tip, never oversell.'

His head came up, lips pressed together defiantly. 'Are you laughing at me?'

'No, Fabian. I'm not laughing at you. Life is cruel enough without people deliberately adding to it.'

'Oh. You're nothing like... I don't mind what you do, you know.'

'What do I do?'

Fabian blushed, the invisible wires tugged his shoulders into a lopsided shrug. 'You know. The others, before me. Hiring yourself out.'

'Cars and flats are hired out, Fabian. They're objects.'

'You mean you want to?'

'I mean there are limits. I have a choice.'

His youthful uncertainty had returned. He looked almost fragile, she thought.

'So you only came on board the Colonel because you wanted to?' he asked.

'More or less, yes.'

'With me?' his voice was disbelieving.

Charlotte was strongly tempted. Revenge for all the s.h.i.+t she'd been made to eat over the years. She could hit him now, beat him with words, sarcasm and derision, cripple him up inside. He was one of them, the indifferent rich, floating effortlessly through life. Never caring, that was their real crime.

His face hovered halfway between pride and trepidation. The kind of innocence she'd never had.

She couldn't do it.

It wasn't often like this. She was supposed to be a pa.s.sing fancy, an interesting diversion. Not someone who could leave a lasting impression. But with Fabian, she knew she'd be a wonderful memory for the rest of his life. The greatest present a fifteen-year-old could ever be given - judged from a fifteen-year-old's viewpoint. And who knows, I might even alter his perspective on life.