A Quantum Murder

The whispers grew bolder, caressing her.

Exit.

The nodes shut off with an almost audible snap.

She took a deep gulp of air, shuddering violently.

"What is it?" Morgan asked sharply.

"I'm all right." She held up her hands, surprised to find them trembling. "I was accessing some of the paradigm's visual routines, that's all. Greg's right, it is made up from Bursken's memories." She stopped, remembering the confused montage. A smell of the street's sweet fresh rain lingered in the executive conference room. And she detested the God-violator Edward Kitchener. Feeling a wild primitive joy that he was dead dead dead. "Dear Lord, he's not human." She stared at Greg. "And you looked into his mind all the time you interviewed him?"

"Goes with the job."

"Yech!"

"So that settles it, then," Greg said. "Royan, do you understand the paradigm?"

MOST SECTIONS ARE ANALOGUE BUT THERE IS ONE SEQUENCE WHICH IS A DIGITAL COMPOSITION.

"Is it the instruction to kill Kitchener?"

GREEDY GREEDY GREEDY IS WHAT YOU ARE! THE DIGITAL SEQUENCE IS STRANGE, I WILL HAVE TO WRITE A DECRYPTION PROGRAM. TELL YOU TOMORROW.

"OK," Greg said casually, as though he didn't care.

Liar! Julia thought.

Teddy walked back from the drinks cabinet to stand next to Greg, a dumpy German beer bottle in his hand, condensation mottling its silver and ice-blue label. "Hell, man, all this shit about paradigms turning the Beswick kid into a cyborg, it's kinda screwy, but I'll buy it. But you still ain't told us the why of it. How come this MacLe

"Wrong question," Gabriel said. She was smiling faintly, head tilted right back on her chair, stating at the ceiling.

"What you ought to ask is why did MacLe

"The neurohormone!" Julia exclaimed, quietly pleased she could keep up with Gabriel.

WELL DONE, SNOWY

Morgan flicked an ironic glance at the camera.

Gabriel suddenly leant forward, resting her elbows on the table, fixing Teddy with an intent stare. "MacLe

"I couldn't have seen that far back," Eleanor said. "A week was a hell of an effort. Eleven years would have been utterly impossible."

"Yes," Gabriel said. "I never used to look more than a couple of days into the future when I had my gland. That was partly psychological, admittedly. But… well, with Kitchener working on it, who knows what might have been accomplished in the end."

"I think I've found the reason why she was murdered," Philip said.

"Yeah?" Greg perked up. "Go on."

"Ten years ago there was a paper published on the possibilities of laser paradigms applied to education. The first of its kind. It was co-authored by James MacLe

"Ten years?" Morgan asked. "We confirmed that World Bank loan was eleven years ago."

"Published posthumously," Greg said. "That's why MacLe

"Ah!" Julia cried. She gri

"You all hear that?" Philip's voice boomed. "Now that is a true Evans. Laser sharp. My granddaughter."

There were times—like now—when she wished the NN core was only loaded with a simple Turing management program.

"Got it," Philip said. "The Berkeley company has borrowed eight hundred million Eurofrancs from Diessenburg Mercantile. There are extension options covering another two and a half billion, but they're all subject to some kind of clause. Du

"MacLe

"Very probable," Philip agreed.

"Three and a half billion," Julia said, ruminating out loud. "That's more than Diessenburg loaned us before Prior's Fen."

"How much would it cost to build and operate an entire continent's educational and penal services?" Greg asked.

"A lot," she said. "And Karl Hildebrandt is on holiday. Unavailable for two months. I asked his office yesterday after you said you wanted to meet him."

"We can't really blame them," Morgan said. "They were just protecting their investment. Natural corporate reflex."

Julia didn't approve of that attitude at all. "That doesn't take away the fact that MacLe

"You'll have a terrible job trying to establish degrees of complicity," Morgan said. "I doubt Karl will ever reappear anywhere under English jurisdiction. The Diessenburg Mercantile directors will disclaim any knowledge of the affair. And if the bank does allow any of them to come into our courts to testify, you can be sure they will be genuinely ignorant so that Greg here won't be able to implicate them."

"Maybe," Greg said. "But at least we've got MacLe

"Yes," Morgan said. "I'll get on to the Home Office, they'll have MacLe

"I'd like the Oakham police to handle the actual arrest," Greg said. "They need the credit. I'll rap with Langley, explain what actually happened. And we'd better have a premier-grade programmer on hand to serve the data warrant. I'd hate anything to happen to that paradigm now."

"Right." Morgan loaded a note into his cybofax.

Greg climbed to his feet, stretching laboriously.

Julia stood and tugged her windcheater jacket from the back of the chair. "Thanks again for helping, Teddy."

He took a last swig from his beer bottle, and gave her a shrewd look. "No problem, gal, does me good to get out and about, keep my hand in. But you leave off Greg once this case is over, hear me? He's a fucking orange farmer now. Nothing else."

"I hear you, Teddy." She blew him a kiss.