Peter F. Hamilton - A Quantum murder

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CHAPTER ONE

It was the third Thursday in January, and after a fortnight

of daily drizzles the first real storm of England's monsoon

season was due to arrive sometime in the late afternoon.

The necklace of Earth Resource platforms which the Event

Horizon corporation maintained in low Earth orbit had observed the storm forming out in the

Atlantic west of Portugal for the last two days: the clash of air fronts, the favourable

combination of temperature and humidity. Multi-spectrum photon amps tracked the tormented

streamers of cloud as they streaked towards England, building in power, in ve1ocity~ The satellite

channels bad started issuing the Meteorological Office warnings on the breakfast 'casts. Right

across the country, in urban and rural areas alike, people were hurrying to secure their property

and homes, lead animals to shelter, and protect the crops and groves.

Had the Earth Resource platforms focused on the county of Rutland as the dawn rose, any observer

would have been drawn to the eastern boundary, where the vast Y-shaped reservoir of Rutland Water

was reflecting a splendid coronal shimmer of rose-gold sunlight back up into the sky. The

Hambleton peninsula protruded from the reservoir like a surfaced whale, four kilometres long, one

wide. Hambleton Wood was sprawled across a third of the southern slope, its oak and ash trees

killed off by the torrid year-long heat of the Warming which had replaced the old seasons. The

rotting trunks were now besieged by a tangled canopy of creepers and ivy, carrion plants feeding

off the muichy bark of the once sturdy giants they choked. Another, smaller, expired copse lay

broken on the northern side, adding to the general impression of decay. But a good half of the

remaining farmland had been converted to citrus groves, sprouting a vigorous green patina of life.

The peninsula was an ideal location to grow fruit; Rutland Water provided unlimited irrigation

water

2 PETER F. HAMILTON

during the parched summer months. Hambleton itself, a hamlet of stone houses with a beautiful

little church and one pub, nestled on the western side, the whale's tail, above a narrow spit of

land which linked it with the Vale of Catmose. There was a single road running precariously along

the peninsular spine; grass and weeds nibbling away at the edges of the tarmac had reduced it to a

barely navigable strip.

At quarter-past nine in the morning, Corry Furness turned off the road a kilometre past Hambleton,

freewheeling his mountain bike down the sloping track to the Mandel farmhouse, tyres slipping

dangerously on the damp moss and loose limestone.

Greg Mandel caught a glimpse of the lad from the corner of his eye, a slash of colour skidding

down the last twenty metres of the slope into the farmyard, clutching frantically at the brakes.

Greg had been out in the field since half-past seven, planting nearly thirty tall saplings of gene-

tailored lime trees in the sodden earth, binding them to two-metre-high stakes which he hoped

would given them enough anchorage to withstand the storms. When it was finished the lime grove

would cover half a hectare of the ground between the farmhouse and the eastern edge of Hambleton

Wood. The planting should have been safely completed a week ago, but the saplings had arrived late

from the nursery, and the mechanical digger he was using had developed a hydraulic fault that took

him a day to fix. He still bad two hundred trees left to put in.

Greg had thought his early start would give him enough rime to finish at least fifty before lunch:

he was already resigned to carting the rest into the barn until the storm passed. Fit watching

Corry barely miss the side of the barn, then shout urgently at Eleanor who was painting the ground-

floor windows, he knew even that small hope had just vanished. Eleanor pointed at him, and Corry

ran over the shaggy grass.

Greg switched off the little digger and climbed out of the cab, wellingtons squelching in the mud.

He was on the last row, just twenty saplings and stakes left to go. They were all

A QUANTUM MURDER

laid out ready. Patchy clouds tumbled across the sky, and the reservc~ir's far shore gleamed from

last night's rain, wisps of mist already rising as the day's heat began to build.

'Sir, sir, Dad sent me, sir,' Corry shouted. The lad was about ten or twelve, his face ruddy from

exertion, fright and exhilaration burning in his eyes. 'Please sir, they're going to kill him,

sir!' He slithered the last two metres, and Greg caught him.

'Kill who, Corry?'

Corry struggled to gulp down some air. 'Mr Collister, sir. There's everybody up there at his house

now. They're saying he used to be a Party Apache.'

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'Apparatchik,' Greg corrected grimly.

'Yes, sir. He wasn't, was he?'

Greg started walking towards the farm. 'Who knows?'

'I liked Mr Collister,' Corry said insistently.

'Yeah,' Greg said. Roy Collister was a solicitor who worked in Oakham; an unobtrusive, pleasant

man. He came into the village pub most nights. Someone who moaned about work and the price of beer

and inflation. Greg had shared a pint with him often enough. 'He's a nice man.' And that's always

the worst thing about it, Greg thought. Four years after the People's SociaJjsm Party fell, ending

ten years of a disastrous near-Marxist style government, people found it hard to forget, let alone

forgive the misery and fear they had endured. Hatred was still simmering strongly below the

surface of the nation's psyche. As for Collister, Greg had seen it before:

the allegations, the pointed finger. One hint, one whispered suspicion, was all it took: the

serpent of guilt never rested after that, gnawing at people's minds. Even the informants working

for the People's Constables weren't as bad; at least they had to produce some kind of evidence

before they got their blood money.

Eleanor was already backing the powerful four-wheel-drive English Motor Company Ranger out of the

barn when he reached the yard. It was a grey-painted farm utility vehicle, with a squat boxy body

on high, toughened suspension coils; the marque was the first of a new generation, powered by~

PETER F. HAMILTON

Event Horizon giga-conductor cells instead of the old-fashioned high-density polymer batteries.

She gave him a tight-lipped look which said it all. It took a lot to upset Eleanor.

They had been married just over a year. She had been twenty-one years old the day she walked down

the aisle of Hambleton's church, seventeen years younger than him, although that had never been an

issue. Her face was heart shaped, liberally splattered with freckles; a petite nose and wide green

eyes were framed by a mane of thick red hair which she brushed back from a broad forehead.

Physically, she was an all-out assault on his preferences. An adolescence spent on a PSP-

subsidized kibbutz where manual labour was emphasized and revered had given her the kind of robust

figure a channel starlet would kill for. Eleanor didn't see it quite in those terms, though she

had come to accept his unending enthusiasm and compliments with a kind of bemused tolerance. Even

now, dressed in a paint-splattered blue boiler suit, she looked tremendous.

Greg climbed into the Ranger's passenger seat, and shut the door. 'I want you to walk back into

the village,' he told Corry. 'Will you do that for me?' He didn't want the lad to wimess the lynch

mob, whatever the outcome was.

'Yes, sir.'

'And don't worry?

'I won't, sir.'

Eleanor steered the Ranger out of the farmyard and on to the track, moving expertly through the

gears as the tyres fought for traction on the treacherous surface.

'Did you know about Collister?' she asked.

'No.' Which was odd. Not even his intuition had given him an inkling. And it should have done.

Intuition was one of his two psi faculties 'liich were educed by neurohormones.

It was the English army which had given him a bioware endrocrine gland implant, a sophisticated

construct of neurosecretory cells which consumed his blood and extravasated psi-stimulant

neurohormones under the control of a cortical processor.

A QUANTUM MURDER

He had been transferred out of his old parachute regiment when the combined services' assessment

test graded him ESP positive and shoved straight into the newly formed Mindstar Brigade, along

with five hundred other slightly befuddled recruits. Psi-stimulant neurohormones had been

demonstrated the year before by the American DARPA office, and Mindstar was the Ministry of

Defence's eager response to the potential of psychics providing the perfect intelligence-gathering

corps. An idea the tabloid channels swiftly dubbed 'Mind Wars'. It was a pity nobody paid much

attention to the number of qualifiers in the early DARPA press releases.

Based on the assessment test results, Mindstar expected Greg to develop an eldritch sixth sense, a

continent-spanning X-ray sight which could locate enemy installations, no matter how well

concealed. Instead he became empathic. It was a useful trait for interrogating captured prisoners,

but hardly warranted the million and a half pounds invested in his gland and his training.

He wasn't alone in disappointing the Mindstar brass. The assessment tests only indicated the

general area of a recruit's ability; how a brain's actual psychic faculties would develop after a

gland was implanted was beyond prediction. The results were extremely mediocre: very few Mindstar

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recruits produced anything like the performance expected. The brigade had been reluctantly

disbanded a few months before the PSP took its ideological knife to the defence budget.

Greg's claims that his intuition had also been enhanced by the gland were discounted by the

sounder minds of the general staff as typical squaddie superstition. He shrugged and kept quiet:

never volunteer for anything. But intuition had saved him and his tactical raider squad on more

than one occasion when he saw action in Thrkey.

So why hadn't it given him any forewarning about Ray Collister?

'Nobody expects you to be perfect,' Eleanor said quietly.

He nodded shortly. She could plug into his emotions with the same efficiency as his espersense

rooted around in other people's minds. 'I'll bet Douglas Kellam is leading the pack,'

PETER F. HAMILTON

he said. Douglas Kellam, who fancied himself in the role of local squire, the village's loudest

anti-PSP Momus. Now it was safe to speak out.

'From the rear, yes,' she agreed.

He grunted wryly. 'Who would have thought it, you and I rushing to rescue an appanuchik.'

'But we are though, aren't we? Instinctively. It's not so much what Collister was, but what

Kellam's mob will do. There'll be hell to pay the morning after, there always is.'

'Yeah.'

'But?'

'What if he turns out to be one of the high grades?'

'He won't,' she said firmly. 'You would have known if he was anything important.'

'Now there's confidence.' He hoped to God she was right. The EMC Ranger lurched out on to the

road. Eleanor gunned the accelerator, wheels tearing gashes in the tarmac's thin moss covering.

Fans of white spray fountained up as they shot through the long puddles which lay along the ruts.

Greg looked out of the window. On the other side of the reservoir's broad southern prong he could

see the Berrybut Spinney time-share estate sitting on the slope directly opposite the farmhouse.

It was set in a rectangular clearing above the shoreline, a horseshoe of wooden chalets with a big

stone clubhouse and hotel at the apex. The spinney was a mix of dead trunks festooned with

creepers and new trees, tanbark oaks, Californian laurels, Chinese yews, and other varieties

imported from tropical and sub-tropical zones as the year-round heat killed off native vegetation.

Their shapes and colours were strange in comparison to the glorious old deciduous forests which

occupied so many of his childhood memories.

The hurriedly enacted One Home Law had enabled the 1 Local council to commandeer the chalets and

hotel to provide ~ emergency accommodation for people displaced from lowlying coas% lands by

rising seas. He had spent the PSP Jecade living in one of the chalets, telling people he was a

private detective, a perfect cover occupation for someone with

A QUANTUM MURDER

his ability. He even managed to attract a few paying cases to add authenticity. Then a couple of

years after the P5P's demise Eleanor came into his life, and at the same time the gigantic Event

Horizon company hired him to clear up a security violation problem. The case had turned out to be

far more complex and involved than anyone had realized at the start, and the bonuses and favours

he and Eleanor were given by its extremely grateful owner, Julia Evans, were enough to retire on -

enough for their grandchildren to retire on, come to that. Multi-billionairesses, especially

teenage ones, he reflected, had no concept of gracious restraint, certainly not when it came to

money.

It left him and Eleanor with the problem of what to do next. Lotus eating was fine, they both

agreed, providing it was in the context of a break from real life. They had sunk some (a fraction)

of their money into the run-down farmhouse with its neglected fields, and moved in after their

honeymoon, both of them eager for the kind of quiet yet busy life the citrus groves would give

them.

He could see a pile of ash just below the chalets, a pink glow still visible. The residents lit a

bonfire each night, using it to bake food, and as a focal point for company. An undemanding style

of life; not quite the archetypical poor but happy existence, but damn close. Geography wasn't all

the move across the water entailed.

A horse-drawn cart, piled high with bales of hay, was clumpmg slowly down Hambleton's main street

as they drove in. Eleanor swerved round it smoothly, drawing a frightened whmny from the mud-caked

shire horse and a shaken fist from the driver. If it wasn't for the glossy black solar panels

clipped over the slate roofs and a clump of well-established coconut trees in the churchyard the

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hamlet could have passed as a rural scene from the nineteen-hundreds. Gardens seemed to merge

lazily into the verges. Tall stumps of copper beech and sycamore trees lined the road, festooned

in vines which dangled colourful flower clusters; a frost of greenery which

PETER P. HAMILTON

brought a semblance of life to the dead trunks. But only from a distance; wind, entropy, and

vigorous insects had already pruned away the twigs and smaller branches, leaving frayed ends of

pale-grey sun-bleached wood jutting out of the shaggy hide.

Roy Collister's home was one of the smaller cottages a couple of hundred metres from the Finch's

Arms. It personified the retirement-cottage dream; gentrified during the end of the last century,

yellow-grey stonework pointed up, windows double-glazed, brick chimney-stacks repaired. More

recently it had acquired a row of solar panels above the guttering to provide power after the gas

and electricity grids were shut down at the start of the PSP years. Three bulky air conditioners

had been mounted on the side wall to cope with the stifling air which invariably saturated the

interior of pre-Warming buildings. The front garden was given over to vegetable plots, and the

fence had disappeared under a long mound of gene-tailored brambles, with clumps of ripe

blackberries as large as crab-apples hanging loosely.

Greg was already opening his door as Eleanor drew up outside. He was vaguely aware of pale faces

in the windows of the houses opposite, interested and no doubt appalled by what was going on, but

not doing anything about it. The English way, Greg reflected. People had learned to keep their

heads down during the PSP decade, avoiding attention was a healthy survival trait while the

Constables were on the prowl. A habit like that was hard to snuff.

The wooden gate through the dune of brambles was swinging slowly to and fro on its hinges, and two

of the ground-floor bay windows had been smashed. When he reached the front door he saw the wood

around the lock was splintered; judging by the marks on the paintwork someone had taken a

sledgehammerto it. There was the sound ofangryvoices inside.

Greg walked into the hail and ordered a low-level secretion from his gland. As always, he pictured

a lozenge of liver-like flesh nestled rumour-fashion at the heart of his brain, squirting out cold

milky liquids into surrounding synapses. In fact, neither gland nor neurohormones looked anything

like the

A QUANTUM MURDER

mental mirage, but he'd never quite managed to throw off the idiosyncrasy - Mindstar psychologists

had told him not to worry, a lot of psychics developed quirks of a much higher order. His

perception shifted subtly, making the universe just that fraction lighter, more translucent. Auras

seemed to prevail, even in inert matter, their misty planes corresponding to the physical

structures around him. Living creatures glowed. A world comprising coloured shadows.

There were twelve people in the lounge, making the small room seem oppressively crowded and

stuffy. Greg recognized most of them. Villagers, that same quiet friendly bunch in the pub each

night. Frankie Owen, the local professional doledependant and fish poacher, leaning on his

sledgehammer, resting after a bout of singularly mindless destruction. He had set about the

furniture, smashing up the Queen Anne coffee table and oak-veneered secretaire and dresser; the

three-metre flatscreen on the wall had a big frost star dead centre. Expressing himself the only

way he knew how. Mark Sutton and Andrew Foster, powerful men who worked as labourers in the

groves, were sitting on Roy Collister behind the overturned settee. The slightly built solicitor's

clothes were torn, his face had been reduced to pulped flesh, cuts weeping blood on to the beige

carpet.

Clare Collister was being held by Les Hepburn and Ronnie Kay. Greg hadn't seen much of her since

he moved into the farm, she didn't venture out very often; an ordinarily prim thirty-five-year-

old, with rusty brown hair and a long face. She had obviously been struggling hard, one eye was

bruised, swelling badly, her blouse was torn, revealing her left breast. Les Hepburn had a vicious

grip on the back of her head, knuckles white with the strain of forcing her to watch her husband

being beaten.

And of course, Douglas Kellam, chief cheerleader, standing in the tight circle of onlookers, a

forty-five-year-old with a round face, slender moustache and fading brown hair; dressed in blue

trousers and white shirt, thin green tie. Smart and respectable even now, although his face was

flushed from the kind of exhilaration Greg was wearily familiar with: the

PETER F. HAMILTON

thrill of the illicit. Douglas was the descendant of the original Victorian toff, a master of

duplicity. Perfectly suited to attending a charity dinner then going on to a pit-bull fight,

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watching Globecast's Euroblue channel at night, condemning it by day.

The jeering and shouting cut off dead as Greg stepped into the lounge. Andrew Sutton froze with a

fist cocked in midair, his knuckles wet with Collister's blood, looking up at Greg, suddenly

pathetic with guilt.

With his espersense expanded, the group's emotions impinged directly into Greg's synapses, a

clamour of blood-lust and anger and secret guilt. They were feeding off each other, building up a

collective nerve for the finale. It would end with a shot-gun blast, the cottage set on fire,

consuming bodies and direct evidence. And the police would turn a blind eye; overstretched,

undermanned, and still trying to regain public trust, to shake off the association with the

People's Constables. They couldn't afford to be seen taking sides with PSP relics.

'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' Greg asked, and there was no need to force a tired tone

into his voice, it came all too easily.

'The bastard's Party, Greg,' someone called.

'No messing? Have you seen his card? Was it signed by President Armstrong himself?' He was aware

of Eleanor coming to stand behind him. Her presence sparked off a ripple of severe agitation in

the minds around him.

'He's guilty, Greg. The Inquisitors said he was an apparatchik over in Market Harborough.'

'Ah.. .' he said. The Inquisitors (actually, the Inappropriate Appointee Investigation Bureau) had

been set up by the New Conservative government to purge PSP appointees from Civil Service posts,

where it was feared they would deliberately misuse their positions to stir up trouble in their own

interest. Identifying them had turned out to be an almost impossible task, a lot of records had

been lost or destroyed when the PSP fell. Nearly all the old Party's premier grades had been

routed out, they were notorious enough in their own areas for the Inquisitor teams not to need

official data-

A QUANTUM MURDER

work; but the small fry, the invisible Party hacks who did the committees' groundwork, they were

hard to pin down. A lot of suspect names had been leaking from the Inquisitors' office lately.

Rough justice eradicated the tricky problem of no verifiable evidence.

'An official charge has been brought against him, has it?' Greg asked.

'No,' Douglas Kellam said. 'But we've heard. Bytes that came straight from the top.' His voice

changed to a slicker, more appealing tone. In his mind there was still the hope that he could win

through, a refusal to admit defeat. And nervousness that was beginning to churn up through his

subconscious, like all of them, all disqweted by Greg and the infamous gland.

Sometimes, Greg reflected, an unending diet of tabloid crap could be useful. He smiled

humourlessly. 'Sure they did. Your cousin's friend's sister, was it?'

'Come on, Greg. He's Red trash, for Christ's sake. You don't want him around Hambleton. You of all

people.'

'Me of all people?'

Kellam squirmed, searching round for support, finding none. 'Christ, Greg, yes1 What you are, what

you did. You know, the Trinities.'

'Oh. That.' No one in Hambleton had actually mentioned it out loud before. They all knew he had

been a member of the Trinities, Peterborough's urban predator gang, fighting the People's

Constables out on the city's sweltering streets; the stories, fragmented and distorted, had

followed him over the water from the Berrybut estate. But the New Conservatives, as a legitimate

democratically elected government, could not officially sanction the massive campaign of hard-line

violence which had helped rout the PSP. So Greg's involvement had earned him a kind of silent

reverence, a wink and a nudge, the only gratitude he was ever shown. As if what he had done wasn't

quite seemly.

'Yeah, me of all people,' he said deliberately, looking round the troubled faces. 'I would have

known if Roy was Party. Wouldn't I?'

PETER F. HAMILTON

They began to shuffle round, desperately avoiding his eye. The high-voltage mob tension shorting

out.

'Well, is he?' Kellam asked urgently.

Greg moved forwards. Collister was groaning softly on the floor, fresh blood oozing out of the

gashes which Foster's heavy rings had torn. Foster and Sutton exchanged one edgy glance, and

hurriedly scrambled to their feet.

'Do you really want to know?' Greg asked.

'What if he is?' Kellam said.

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file:///F|/rah/Peter%20F.%20Hamilton/Hamilton,%20Peter%20F%20-%20Quantum\%20Murder,%20A.txtCHAPTERONEItwasthethirdThursdayinJanuary,andafterafortnightofdailydrizzlesthefirstrealstormofEngland'smonsoonseasonwasduetoarrivesometimeinthelateafternoon.ThenecklaceofEarthResourceplatformswhichtheEventHoriz...

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Peter F. Hamilton - A Quantum murder

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