"People like us, Julia, I mean, working close on this deal, spending time together, maybe you'll see more to me than you do now."

"But I still have to put in the best bid if I want this new technology you're offering?"

"Yeah, you've got some stiff competition lining up for a slice of this pie. I'm not hiding that from you. But I'll show you what I'm offering on a confidential basis, and you can decide what sort of offer to make. I'm confident you'll come out tops. You'll understand what this means, you've got the kind of vision the kombinate boards lack. And this needs someone with vision behind it, Julia."

Dear Lord, he makes you want to vomit, NN core two said. So dreary and predictable.

This all sounds very familiar, Julia said. Do you think Clifford could be the one Mutizen stole the molecular structuring data from?

If they did, then where did he get it from? NN core one asked. Globecast doesn't employ a single physicist.

Oh yes they bloody well do, my girl, Philip Evans said. I told you there was something wrong about Globecast bidding to acquire the Mousanta labs.

So you did, Grandpa. But they haven't acquired it yet. Which means Mousanta can't be the source. Did commercial intelligence come up with anything?

Sod-all! Idle buggers. You hit this Clifford, Juliet, hit him hard. Make him know he's a cheap nobody.

Behind Clifford Jepson a couple of umpires had walked out on to the cricket square. They began to set up the wickets.

"What's the matter, Clifford?" she asked. "Hasn't Mousanta got the resources to hack the atomic structuring theory? Is that why you've come running to me and the kombinates to build the generator for you?"

"Motherfuck!" Clifford Jepson gasped.

It was all she could do not to laugh. His fall from oily confidence to bewildered fright was classic comedy. The lack of control surprised her, though, she hadn't been expecting that, not from a trained executive. Another demonstration that he didn't really have what it took. She could never understand why he carried on the arms trading. In his father's day it was different, the post-Warming world was unstable, astutely placed arms shipments could quite often shift the balance of power in small countries. But now life had calmed down again, the only people who wanted arms on the black market were the alienated, increasingly bitter and desperate radical political groups. It made Clifford Jepson little more than an extension of the terrorists he served.

"How?" he demanded.

"One has contacts."

"Not for that. Atomic structuring is the biggest ultra-hush there's ever been."

"Not so, apparently."

Squeeze him, Juliet, go for the slam. You can dictate your own terms now. I never did like the little bugger, not a patch on his father.

"Do you still want to offer me a partnership?" she asked.

"I'll consider any bid you submit."

"Good. Have your office contact Peter Cavendish. I'm sure we can come to some arrangement. I'll be generous, Clifford. The person who delivers the theory for a nuclear force generator to Event Horizon will be a very rich person indeed. I hope it's you, Clifford, I really do. For old times' sake."

My girl, Philip Evans said smugly.

Ask him about the source, NN core two said.

"Clifford." He looked at her, not angry. Wary, though, she thought, a wounded animal, cornered but prepared to fight. "If you provide me with your source, where you obtained the data from, I'll offer you forty-five per cent royalties, and we'll close the deal this afternoon."

"No way, Julia. You want the generator, you deal through me."

"As you wish." She rose to her feet, brushing down her skirt.

"Hey, wait."

"Call Cavendish, you have the number. I'll review what the two of you come up with; if I think it's good enough, I'll thumbprint on the dotted line, if not, your opposition get their big day."

"Who are they? Who else is offering this?"

She gave him a sweet smile. "No way, Clifford," said with her old Arizona twang. Philip Evans's gusty laughter echoed through her brain, her cybernetic mind twins projected quiet satisfaction. She left an acutely flummoxed Clifford Jepson on the bench, and headed back to the marquee. Her bodyguards closed in to escort her.

An end-of-term-prankster had fastened a crude bra made out of pillowcases to the top of the flag-pole above the school's art and design block. It was flapping slowly in the breeze. The bishop and the governors had been facing it all through the speeches. Julia started to laugh.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The interest was trickling back into Greg's brain, like a hit that charged his neurone cells with a dose of raw energy, leaving the mind clean, thoughts flowing with cold perfection. He hovered on the razor's edge between satisfaction and dismay. Tracing the girl, and through her Royan, was supposed to be a duty, not one of love's labours. But it felt good, the way he'd made it all come together in Monaco. Most of what they had learnt was negative information; it was a challenge making sense out of that. Dropped straight into a premier deal after fifteen years out in the cold, and still managed to hit the floor running. Not bad at all.

He knew Eleanor had feared this the most, that he'd enjoy himself, remember the good old days, how it used to be, the excitement and the danger. When they met she'd been more than a little impressed by the romance of being a private detective. Even now, time tended to obscure the years before that, when he was out on Peterborough's streets; the brain's natural defence mechanism fading out the pain and anguish associated with the Trinities. But if he really thought about it, those moments were there, hiding in the shadows beyond the firelight.

Eleanor didn't have anything to worry about, he decided, not really. Chasing after Charlotte Fielder wasn't about to trigger the male menopause. In any case, there was something slightly unreal about this investigation; carried from location to location in millionaire style, every fact uncovered pounced on by Victor's division and Julia's NN cores, producing a flood of profile data. All very swift and painless.

In fact the interest would be purely abstract if it hadn't been for his eagerness to talk to Baronski, it was almost impatience. The Pegasus had to fly subsonically over land. He resented that, knowing how fast the plane could go.

There was something else fuelling his mood, though, something darker, his intuition imparting a sense of time closing in. He hadn't confessed that to Suzi yet.

The flatscreen on the forward bulkhead showed the Austrian alps slipping by underneath the plane. They reminded Greg of Greenland's coastline after the ice had melted, a range of lifeless rock, scarred and stained. He could see massive landslides, where the pine forests had died leaving the soil exposed to torrential rains. Thick white-water rivers snaked down every valley, tearing out more soil and flooding the pastures. Reforestation was progressing slowly, the ecological regeneration teams had to build protective shields around their plantations. From the air they showed as green rectangles sheltering in the lee of the mountains, fragile and precarious. But there were new hydropower dam projects everywhere, ribbons of deep blue water accumulating in the deeper gorges. Most of the electricity was sold to the kombinate cyber-factory precincts in Germany. Austria had little heavy industry of its own, although low taxes and loose genetic-engineering laws had attracted investment from the biotechnology companies after the Warming. Event Horizon had several research centres in the country, he knew, as well as its main clinic at Liezen. He'd spent some time there himself, recuperating after tracking down the people who squirted the virus into Philip Evans' NN core. It was where he had proposed to Eleanor.