"Greg?" It was Philip. "The crash team will be with you in two minutes."
"Keep them in the air until I give the all clear."
"All right, boy, it's your show."
The laser picked out MacLennan running down a row of saplings, about eighty metres ahead. A clockwork humanoid, legs and arms pumping in a fractured rhythm. Slender grid lines chased after him coiling round his limbs and torso.
DO YOU WANT TARGET MODE???
"Not yet. I have to be sure."
SURE SURE SURE? WHAT KIND OF BLOODY SURE? HE TRIED TO KILL YOU.
Greg ran out into a tractor lane, four metres wide, the branches arching overhead, not quite meeting. It made the going a lot easier; he risked increasing his pace. "Sure about Clarissa Wynne."
MacLennan vaulted over the fence at the bottom of the grove, and sprinted over the field towards Hambleton Wood.
Gotcha, Greg thought. He arrived at the fence, scaling it quickly.
MacLennan reached the boundary of the wood, and charged through the waist-high fringe of undergrowth. He suddenly fell forwards, disappearing from sight below the nettles. Greg heard a distant curse.
The grass underfoot was awkward, shifty and slippery with rain. He had to slow down again, especially as he was cutting down the slope. There was that distinctive sound of brittle wood snapping up ahead as MacLennan thrashed about in the dead hawthorn bushes.
Christ, I hope it is MacLennan after all this! But his intuition was giving him a powerful high, as if he was just going through the motions. The outcome was already decided.
MacLennan's upper torso reappeared amid the bushes. He was flinging himself desperately at the knotted tangle of vines strung between the old trees. It wouldn't do him any good, you needed either a tank or a bulldozer to break into the wood. He jerked round, right arm coming up. Red dot.
LASER ACQUISITION.
Greg slowed to a halt thirty metres from the wood, raising the rifle to his shoulder. "Give me targeting mode, and expand the magnification." He ordered his cortical node to increase the neurohormone secretion level.
ABOUT BLOODY TIME.
Blue circles clicked into place. The targeting laser sweep contracted around MacLennan. It was as though he was standing two metres in front of Greg, the warped network of red lines bright enough to give off a faint coronal hue. An oversized pistol was gripped in his right hand, nozzle blazing. His espersense encountered the mind inside the reticulated head. It was MacLennan.
Greg aimed at the pistol and fired.
MacLennan howled, convulsing, right arm hugged to his chest. His pistol tumbling away. A hot throb of pain lanced into Greg's mind. Behind it came the raw malevolence, the near-frenzied fear, and the abhorrence.
"Hold it," Greg commanded as MacLennan began to look around his feet for the imprinter, the tendrils of desperation uncoiling in his gibbering mind. He walked forward until he came to the edge of the nettles. "Why did you come here, MacLennan? Why did you set them on me?"
"Because it was you!" MacLennan bawled. "You! Mindstar freak. You found the paradigm."
"How did you know that?"
"You were from the Home Office, you burnt into the memory core. You! It was you. Freak fucker."
"Oh shit." The rush of energy which had carried him out of the house and across the grove suddenly bled away. There was no determination left in him. No pride at completing the case, only weariness. He just wanted this over. Finished.
MacLennan started sobbing.
"Shut up!" Greg yelled.
"It hurts me! It hurts. You've burnt my hand in half, you bastard. Get me to a hospital, for Christ's sake."
Every emotion reached rock bottom. Greg felt dangerously calm. "It hurts, does it, MacLennan? How did Clarissa Wynne feel do you think? When you pushed her head under the lake. Did she hurt, MacLennan?"
"Clarissa?" It came out like a whinny.
"You killed her. Didn't you? Eleven years ago, you shot her full of syntho and killed her."
"She was going to claim all the credit!"
"Even now you're lying! It was her work."
"Wasn't!"
Guilt corrupted every thought in MacLennan's head. And there was nothing left to say.
Greg took a laboured breath. "Royan, shoot it over."
The grid snapped off for an instant as the targeting laser stabbed at MacLennan's eyes.
He heard the paradigm as it came surging through the communication link, a near-ultrasonic wheee in his earpiece, a blast of photons encapsulating the essence of Liam Bursken, accompanied by a monomaniac hatred for one man.
Poetic justice, or intuitive inspiration; Greg didn't know which, only that it was right. It fitted.
He pulled the photon amp strip from his face, twin circles of skin around his eyesockets pinching as it came free. The real world rushed back in on him, dark and dank, awash with human failings. The clean simplicity of the laser return virtual graphics was almost preferable. Somewhere behind him flames were soaring up into the night from the wreck of the jeep. Rain pattered down, beating the dusky vegetation towards the muddy ground.
MacLennan's prim face was contorted with pain, hair plastered down into a straggly cap. His jaw was working silently, as though he was choking.
"Do you know who you hate, Liam?" Greg asked quietly. "Do you?"
MacLennan stared back at him with insane eyes, mouth screwing into a joyous smile. "Yes. Me. It's me. Me!"
"That's right." He took the vibration knife from his belt, switched it on, and dropped it at MacLennan's feet.
MacLennan snatched it up with his good hand. "Redemption. He has granted me redemption." He laughed rhapsodically as he shoved the blade into his stomach. Blood foamed out. He sank to his knees, teeth clenched with effort, cheeks bulging, and pulled the blade up towards his sternum. "Yes. Oh, yes. My Lord."
Greg turned and walked away. Back to the farmhouse and Eleanor, where he belonged.
High above the reservoir, the security team's tilt-fan dived out of the clouds, turbines shrieking with urgency.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Julia found her hand straying towards Robin's hair. He was sleeping sprawled out on his belly in the middle of the bed, head fallen between two big fluffy pillows, mouth slightly agape. She stroked his hair softly, smoothing down the ruffled tufts. Seen in the lush morning light which was prising its way round the edges of the curtains he was even more handsome than the first time she had caught sight of him at the pool. And he was so terribly sweet. Tender, anxious, and eager all at once—excellent body too. He lacked Patrick's ruthless dynamism, which had made their sex far more sensual. She still wasn't quite sure if she was his first. But she was certainly near the front of the queue. A thought to treasure.
He stirred below her hand, and she held her breath. She didn't want to wake him up just yet. The poor dear must be tired after last night.
She would have a cup of tea, skim through the breakfast 'casts, nip into the toilet, then it would be time for him to perform again.
NN Core Access Request.
No peace for the wicked. And last night she had been gloriously wicked.
Open Channel To NN Core.
Morning, Juliet.
Morning, Grandpa. We can't be having a crisis this early.
Not a crisis, no.
Thank heavens for that. What then?
I'm curious about something you did yesterday
Spying on me again?
No. I was just reviewing some of your data traffic. Double checking. That's what I'm here for, your safety net.
Yah, go on. She had a pretty good idea where this was leading.
You accessed one of our biochemical research labs yesterday. Using your executive code, no less. Mind telling me what for, girl?