"It will give my assessment team time to draw up a full report based on the data they already have. That's reasonable, surely? Two days isn't going to make any difference to a project of this undertaking. Besides, it will take that long for you and Peter to thrash out the confidentiality clauses; even I don't put two hundred million on the line without reading the small print first."

"Very well, Ms Evans. I think Mutizen can agree to that."

"Odd," Peter Cavendish said after Eduard Muller and his two assistants had left.

"Yes," Julia agreed. "They produce a few giga-bytes of data, and we embark on an open-ended research project for them." There was something else, the way Eduard Muller had been wanting a decision straight away. Even if he had wanted it, he shouldn't have shown her that he did. Either he wanted her to know, which made even less sense, or he was under a great deal of stress. Whatever the answer, she had more cards to play with than she'd started with.

She got up and walked over to the window. The mist had melted away under the first rays of the sun, exposing the chocolate mud of the quagmire. Tepid oil-rainbows shivered across its surface. "He was right about one thing, though. I can't afford not to be involved."

Peter Cavendish rose from his seat. "You think they have solved the generator problem?"

"No. At least, nothing past a fundamental theory, a notion how it might be built; that's why they want to bring in Nicholas and his team."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"I'll need you to draw up two sets of contracts. The worst case, where we have to agree to Mutizen's current terms. The second, I want Mutizen paying half of the development costs with us, and Event Horizon owning fifty-one per cent of the marketing subsidiary stock."

Peter Cavendish let out a whistle. "Do you think you can get them to agree to that?"

Julia abandoned the view of Prior's Fen Atoll. If she closed her eyes she could see hologram-colour data streams like arched fairy bridges looping around her. She was woven into the web via her implant nodes, digesting and contributing, but never controlling. The topography of the global data net had long left human understanding behind.

The key to the modern world is retrieval, Royan had told her. All the answers you could possibly want exist somewhere within the world's data cores.

She didn't know what questions to ask. The glowing data web was contracting. Smothering.

Julia opened her eyes, seeing Peter Cavendish's concerned face.

"We've got two days to find some leverage," she said. "In the mean time, I've got a speech day to attend."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Greg slipped his leather jacket over a sky-blue sweatshirt. The black leather was thin enough to move easily, thick enough to shield him from the chill of early morning. It had been a present from Eleanor a couple of years back when his old one had finally torn.

"You're going to wear that in Monaco, are you?" Eleanor asked. She was sitting on the edge of their bed, wrapped in a quilted housecoat. Hands fidgeting in her lap, knotting and unknotting the belt.

Greg glanced at himself in the bedroom's antique full-length mirror. Flat stomach, sideburns frosted with grey, a hint of excess flesh building up on his neck. Not bad for fifty-four. He managed to get down to the gym in Oakham twice a week, the fitness bug was something he'd caught during his Army days. After surviving the war in Turkey and the street violence in Peterborough, it would be silly to succumb to clogged arteries and wasted muscles.

"I thought it was all right," he said. "Fits the image of an English gentleman farmer."

Eleanor tsked in disapproval.

"It's not as if I'm going to a social function with the Prince."

"Don't I know it," she mumbled.

Greg went and sat beside her on the bed, his arm going round her shoulders. Eleanor's head remained bowed, focusing on her hands.

There was none of the old pre-mission exhilaration that used to fire his blood. He'd thought there might have been, the one final deal, proving he could still hack it. He knew plenty of married officers in the Army, combat deployment was something their wives accepted. But family had come after that stage of his life, there was no way the two could be reconciled now.

"If you don't want me to go, then I won't," he said.

"That's blackmail, Greg. Putting it off on me. You know you have to go."

"Yeah." He kissed her on the side of the head, tasting hair.

"And you behave yourself around that Suzi."

Greg laughed and gave her a proper kiss.

Eleanor responded hungrily, then pushed him away. "Don't, you know where that sort of thing leads." She looked down at her belly, smile fading.

"Tell you, it's funny," he said quietly. "Even five or six years back I would probably have pleaded with Julia for the chance to do this. I mean, Royan missing, in trouble. What could be more important? But now… I resent it, this being ruled by the past. And I think Suzi does, too. That was a nice girl she's living with. Pregnant, as well."

"Suzi?" Eleanor exclaimed.

"No, the girl, Andria. Not that Julia and I were actually told. But you can't hide that from a psychic."

"Oh. That ought to be interesting. Suzi, a parent."

"Yeah." He went over to the dresser and picked up the Event Horizon cybofax Julia had given him yesterday. "For your own safety," she'd said. "It's got a locater beacon for the security crash teams to keep track of you. If you need hardline help, just shout, they'll be there in minutes. And I've loaded one of my personality packages into the memory. You never know, I might actually be of some use to you."

Greg slipped the palm-sized wafer into his breast pocket. God alone knew what else her security division had squeezed into its 'ware.

He drew back the honey-coloured curtains. Cool early morning sky, halfway between grey and white. A narrow spire of smoke rose from the dead ashes of the Berrybut estate's bonfire on the opposite shore. Heavy dew coated the grass of the paddock. The pole jumps for Anita's pony made sharp splashes of colour among the pale blades. They wanted a fresh coat of paint, he saw, and the grass was too long.

"I'd better get off," he said. "This is going to be a long day."

Rutland Water's high-water level was marked by a thick band of quarried limestone blocks thrown round the entire shoreline to prevent erosion when the reservoir was full. But it had been a hot summer, the farms and citrus groves of the surrounding district had siphoned off a lot of water for irrigation. The vertical water level was already two metres below the bottom of the limestone; on the Hambleton peninsula that produced a broad expanse of mudflats which had dried as hard as concrete under the relentless sun.

Greg and Eleanor walked down the slope from the farmhouse to the limestone, and stood on the top of the crumbling blocks. The travellers' camp was just beginning to stir.

They heard a shout as Christine came running down the slope after them. "Dad, you were going to leave without saying goodbye," she accused.

Greg saw the Event Horizon Pegasus hypersonic sink out of the wispy cloud band and skim across the reservoir towards him.

"I'll only be gone a couple of days, at the most," he said.

Christine threw her arms round him and gave him a wet kiss. Eleanor's peck on the cheek was more demure.

The three of them watched the arrowhead-planform Pegasus slowing; a hundred metres from the shore its nose pitched up. Slats opened in its underbelly, venting the compressor fans' efflux straight down. The undercarriage unfolded, and it settled on the rusty-coloured mudflats in a swirl of dust. A flock of swans drifting on the water behind it rose into the sky, wings pumping frantically.