“The odd glass of wine wouldn’t hurt.”
Eleanor’s hand fluttered irritably. “Ha, you know what Greg’s like. Bloody men. One prenatal clinic, and they’re all qualified gynaecologists.”
Julia pulled out a chair, and poured some Perrier out of the bottle. “Royan was the same. I suppose it’s excusable in his case. After I had him stitched back together he was very health conscious-exercise, diets, screening cream. The works.”
“You miss him?”
“Course I miss him.” She rolled the glass between her palms. “That’s the problem, I think. The way I treated him. I made him, Eleanor, took him out of Mucklands Wood and turned him into my ideal man. So stupid.”
“Don’t be silly, he had to leave Mucklands. You knew it, I knew it, Greg knew it. Royan did too, afterwards.”
“Yes, but I never let him go free, did I? I had it all planned out, his role in life. We were such good friends, you see, after he saved Grandpa’s NN core from the virus. It was a dream for me. I had to go out in public and be the Julia Evans, talk contracts, deal with politicians, arrange finance with banks. Dear Lord, I was only eighteen. Then when all that company work was finished for the day, I could run away into my mind, and there he’d be, waiting for me. It was like having one of those imaginary friends children invent to keep themselves company. No one else knew he was there, no one else could see him. He was all mine; and we talked, and he sympathized with me, and I felt sorry for him. What we had was precious. I thought it would be the same after Mucklands. I wanted it to be the same.”
“He did too.”
“Maybe. But he never knew there could be anything else, not at first. He really was born again. A whole new and bright world. But I kept giving him things to do, hotrod for me, father children. That was it, all along, the one thing that was always in our way: I couldn’t change, not with Event Horizon to manage. So he had to fit into my life. We could never begin together.”
Eleanor stood up, pressing her fist into her back as she straightened, and opened one of the wooden cupboards below the workbench. It was a fridge inside. She took out a bottle of white wine with a Kent label. “So he felt smothered,” she said. “Men always do around women like you.”
“Maybe. So how does Greg cope? You’re not exactly a quiet obedient little housewife.”
Eleanor poured a glass of wine and handed it to Julia, a faint smile at distant memories playing on her lips. “We worked it out. The gulf wasn’t as big as you and Royan, mind.”
“Yeah. Do you know what he called himself, Royan? A prince consort. Says a lot about how much consideration I gave him.”
“Oh, come on, Julia, the whole world lives in your shadow. He knew that right from the start, the failure isn’t all down to you.”
She drank some of the wine, it was nice, dry and smooth. Eleanor understood, thank God; she was one of the few people Julia could really let her hair down with. They’d known each other long enough now; Julia had been the chief bridesmaid when she married Greg. “He wanted to be my equal, that’s what he said.”
Eleanor sniffed her wine and took a sip. “And what if he fails? Had he thought of that? What was he going to do then? Find a different alien?”
“Lord knows. He’s causing enough trouble with this one. Like a child really, he never learned to accept failure. Week-long setbacks are as close as he’s ever come. Everything is solvable in the end.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yes.”
They smiled, and drank some more wine.
CHAPTER 28
The waves were moving in irregular patterns across the North Sea, small, high white horses clashing in fast flicks, whipped up by submerged obstacles. The North Sea Farm Company wasn’t as big as Listoel, there were only a hundred developed fields so far, but the water fruit it harvested raised a much higher price than krill. And tasted one hell of a lot better, Victor reckoned, but then what didn’t?
Water fruit globes resembled pumpkins, a thick wrinkled yellow-brown rind enclosing an almost apple-like flesh. Victor always thought of them as tasting like salty melons. But they were protein rich, and popular throughout Europe.
New varieties were introduced each year as the geneticists them.
They had developed into quite an important industry. Most countries had plantations dotted around their coasts. And the shallower southern half of the North Sea, with it’s warmth and low salinity, provided excellent conditions.
Julia had started the North Sea Farm Company three years earlier, assisted by a large Ministry of Fisheries grant. The division wasn’t as large as some of the food comt farms which had sprung up in the North Sea, but it was turning in a reasonable profit now.
When the nodes squirted a profile of the Farm into his mind, he’d seen the organization was top-heavy with research personnel, and a lot of the fields were experimenting with new techniques. Julia covering her options again, he suspected.
It would have been precisely those research facilities that attracted Royan. The station’s genetics laboratories were equipped to handle very sophisticated gene-tailoring operations.
Victor could make out the fields below the surface as Pegasus began its approach run. Kilometre-long walls of brick-red gene-tailored coral formed a broad chessboard of squares. New walls were growing out from the edges, a tracery of spindly lines probing the stark sand. The colours of the water fruit crops planted inside the walls ran through every shade of brown.
There were various towers and platforms protruding from the water at regular intervals. Some he recognized as twentieth-century oil platforms. Waste not, want not. But the majority of structures were built up from the same concrete sections as the thermal-generator platforms at Listoel, mass-produced by Event Horizon’s yards on the Nene. Cargo ships were docked with the platforms, loading up. Squat, heavily laden barges crisscrossed the fields, small bright yellow submarines were visible underwater.
The Pegasus landed on one of the concrete platforms, and Victor trotted down the belly hatch stairs. Eliot Haydon, the Farm’s director, was waiting for him, dressed in navy-blue shorts and a baseball cap with the Event Horizon triangle and flying-V logo on the peak.
Victor accessed his personnel profile: forty-seven years old, graduated from Norwich University with a marine biology degree, been with the company nineteen years, appointed as a divisional director five years ago, largely credited with making the Farm a profitable concern. Another of those smoothly professional Event Horizon premier-grade executives. He wondered if Julia classed him in the same category. Probably.
Eliot Haydon shook Victor’s hand in a warm dry grip. “Mr Tyo, not often we get a visit from your office.”
“Judy Tobandi is a good officer,” he said. “The Farm’s never been a problem from a security point of view. If people have their finger on the pulse, don’t interfere, I say.”
Eliot Haydon smiled, showing four solid gold teeth. “Well now, how about that? Enlightened administration, and at the highest level, too. You must have slipped through the personnel catchment net. What can I do for you?”
“I’m chasing after Royan. Do you know him?”
“Yes, of course. But I’m afraid you’re too late if you want to talk to him, he left us three weeks ago. Didn’t you check with our management cores?”
“That’s part of my problem. We did check. There’s no record of him at all.”
“What?”
“It’s rather complicated, but he’s covering his tracks very thoroughly. Can you tell me what he was doing here?”
“Yes, he was researching coral genetics, trying to improve mineral absorption rates.” A flicker of unease darkened Eliot Haydon’s broad sunny face. “Well, that’s what he said. It was a temporary posting, of course. We get quite a few scientists visiting from other Farms and national marine institutes. Now the first rush of competition is easing off, we all find co-operation helpful.”