"No problem, I'm dispatching a couple of my people, they'll have her out of there in twenty minutes." He said it all crisp and efficient, which she figured was his way of not showing surprise.
"They've got to be good, Victor."
He was looking at something off-screen, typing. "They will be. Call her now and tell her they're coming: Howard Lovell, and Katie Sansom. Got the names?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Victor."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Victor came down out of the Pegasus on to Wilholm Manor's lawn. He was greeted by a rich scent of honeysuckle in the moist air. The sprinklers had been on, drenching the lawns, keeping the grass lush and green. His shoes were swiftly coated in the artificial dew.
The Manor in front of him was a long classical grey-stone building, three stories high. It dated back to the eighteenth century, although it had undergone considerable modernization and refurbishment over the years. The last major overhaul had come when Julia and Philip Evans bought it, right after PSP fell, ousting the communal farmers and virtually gutting the interior before returning it to an opulence of a bygone age.
Wilholm estate was a rare enclave of gracious living, Victor always thought, out of sync with the present and all its digital bustle. A true English country house, basking in an eternal Indian summer. Birds always singing, flowers always in bloom. Time slowed down here.
Rick Parnell trotted down the stairs out of the executive hypersonic's belly hatch, carrying his suit jacket over his shoulder. When he was clear of the plane he turned a full circle, gawping at the grounds like an overawed tourist. "Bloody hell, you mean somebody actually lives here? It looks like a theme park."
"It's your boss who lives here, just remember," Victor said.
Rick Parnell was staring at the trout lake at the bottom of the gardens; now the hypersonic's compressors had wound down the noise of the waterfall on the far side was clearly audible. Beyond the dark water was a dense stretch of woodland. The Chinese yew and virginciana trees were draped in a lacework of dark green ivy and clematis vines, clusters of plate-sized red and lilac flowers dangling. They had survived the spring hurricanes again, the few trunks that had keeled over adding to the rustic authenticity of the spinney. It was hard to believe that the grounds were only eighteen years old.
Paths crisscrossed the lawn, fenced by topiary drimys and japonicas, elaborate cockerels, dogs, bears, concentric spheres, and one giant pair of shears. A wide lily pond had a statue of Venus in the centre, shooting a fountain five metres into the air. Boxy orange drones crawled along the flower borders, digesting faded roses and forking out weeds.
Victor started off towards the manor, Rick Parnell following reluctantly. Daniella and Matthew were playing in the big outdoor pool. They'd got Brutus, their sheepdog, in with them. Victor watched Matthew slide down the water chute along one side, nearly landing on top of the excited animal. Qoi, their nanny, was sitting at a table on the patio behind the pool, reading her cybofax, and occasionally glancing up to check on her wayward charges.
Victor liked the children; Julia had brought them up well, deliberately ensuring they didn't have the hauteur of their contemporaries. She had almost gone too far in Matthew's case, the boy could be a bit of a pain at times. Though what he probably needed was a father. Daniella was growing up along similar lines to her mother, tall and slim, though her hair was darker, and not worn as long. Nice kid, occasionally very serious, as if she was suffering bouts of premature adulthood. She waved, smiling, and shouted something at him. He guessed it was an invitation to join them, but the barking dog made it hard to tell. He gave her an exaggerated shrug and walked into the drawing room through open French doors.
"Open house here, isn't it?" Rick said.
"Oh no, nothing like. If you weren't with me you wouldn't have made it off the bottom step of the Pegasus. Julia just doesn't like the security hardware to spoil the look of the place."
"I can believe that. What this place must have cost to build."
Victor opened the door. "She's entitled."
They came out into a big hall hung with oil paintings. Victor led the way up a broad curving stairway and on to the landing. Rick struggled into his jacket on the way up.
The door to Wilholm's study was solid teak, with a simple polished brass handle. Victor turned it and pushed. "Lion's den," he said with a grin.
Rick gave him a thanks-for-nothing glance, and walked in still adjusting his tie.
The room was oak panelled, its lead-glazed windows looking out over the Manor's rear lawns. There was a long oak table down the centre, with ten black wooden chairs along each side. Julia sat at the head, studying the data displayed in the cubes of an elaborate terminal in front of her.
Rick's greeting died unspoken. Victor was expecting it, a reaction he had seen a thousand times before. Julia in the flesh did that to people. She belonged on channel newscasts, in gossipcasts, there was even a university which included her management of Event Horizon as part of its business finance course. She wasn't real.
"Dr Rick Parnell," Victor said innocently. "Your SETI director."
Julia offered her hand. "Do sit down, though I have to say I don't quite understand why Victor brought you."
Victor pulled out a chair for himself, and sat on one side of Julia. "I brought him because Royan's been playing silly buggers with our memory cores. Tell her about the microbes, Rick."
Rick settled in the chair on the other side of Julia, his bulk filling it dangerously. Victor listened to him launch into an explanation of the Matoyaii probe, its unsubstantiated discovery in Jupiter's rings. Rick's usual bluster had vanished, replaced by a boyish eagerness.
Julia leaned back in her chair after he finished. "Now you've jogged my memory, I do remember hearing about the flu theory," she said slowly. "Years ago, probably when I was back at school. But why do you assume these microbes come from the stars? I would have thought Jupiter itself is a more obvious choice. The chemistry and the energy exists to support microbic life forms in its atmosphere, surely some spoors could have leaked out to the rings, maybe even riding up the Io flux-tube."
Victor watched the last of Rick's assurance crumple. Of course, an interstellar origin was so much easier for him to believe in, more important, more dramatic. It gave the whole SETI discipline that edge of certainty, respectability. The same reason people wanted to believe in flying saucers rather than swamp gas.
"The origin is irrelevant to our present situation," Victor said. "The point is, when he heard the microbes existed, or might exist, Royan had a probe built to investigate them."
Julia looked at him blankly, as if the words he'd spoken had come out wrong. "When?"
"He approached me about sixteen months ago," Rick said. "I expect that was because I suggested a probe to verify Matoyaii's findings as soon as you appointed me. It was turned down."
Julia's expression became cool, she didn't say anything. Rick swallowed and went on, "After Royan came to us, my office advised the design team on the kind of sensors required to locate the microbes."
"There's no record of this," Julia said. Her eyes were closed. Victor knew she was using her nodes, probably talking to her NN cores, running tracers through Event Horizon's memory cores. He had done it himself on the flight back from the Astronautics Institute, and drawn a complete blank. But if there were any bytes on the probe hidden in the company's memory cores, Julia would find them. He always thought it a considerable irony that the boss of Event Horizon was one of the greatest hotrods on the planet.