"2 Quantum Murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

'Me of all people?'
Kellam squirmed, searching round for support, finding none. 'Christ, Greg, yes1 What you are, what you did. You know, the Trinities.'
'Oh. That.' No one in Hambleton had actually mentioned it out loud before. They all knew he had been a member of the Trinities, Peterborough's urban predator gang, fighting the People's Constables out on the city's sweltering streets; the stories, fragmented and distorted, had followed him over the water from the Berrybut estate. But the New Conservatives, as a legitimate democratically elected government, could not officially sanction the massive campaign of hard-line violence which had helped rout the PSP. So Greg's involvement had earned him a kind of silent reverence, a wink and a nudge, the only gratitude he was ever shown. As if what he had done wasn't quite seemly.
'Yeah, me of all people,' he said deliberately, looking round the troubled faces. 'I would have known if Roy was Party. Wouldn't I?'
12
PETER F. HAMILTON
They began to shuffle round, desperately avoiding his eye. The high-voltage mob tension shorting out.
'Well, is he?' Kellam asked urgently.
Greg moved forwards. Collister was groaning softly on the floor, fresh blood oozing out of the gashes which Foster's heavy rings had torn. Foster and Sutton exchanged one edgy glance, and hurriedly scrambled to their feet.
'Do you really want to know?' Greg asked.
'What if he is?' Kellam said.
'Then you can call the police and the Inquisitors, and I will testify in court what I can see in his mind.'
Kellam gave a mental flinch, stains of guilt blossoming among his thought currents. Panic at Greg's almost casual reminder that he could prise his way into minds triggering a cascade of associated memories.
'Yes, sure thing, Greg, that's fine by me.'
There was a fast round of mumbled agreement. Greg pursed his lips thoughtfully, and squatted down beside Roy Collister. He focused his espersense on the solicitOr's mind. The thoughts were leaden with pain, sharp stings of superficial cuts, heavier dull aches of bruised, probably cracked, ribs, nausea like a hot rock in his belly, warmth of urine between his legs, the terror and its twin, the knowledge that he would do anything say anything to make them stop, a bitter tang of utter humiliation. His mind was weeping quietly to itself. There was little rationality left, the beating had emptied him of all but animal instinct.
'Can you hear me, Roy?' Greg asked clearly.
Saliva and blood burped out from between battered lips. Greg located a small flare of understanding amid the wretched thoughts.
'They say you were an apparatchik, Roy. Are they right?'
He hissed something incomprehensible.
'What did he say?' Mark Sutton asked.
Greg held up a hand, silencing him. 'What were you doing in the PSP decade? Don't try and speak, just picture it. I'll see.' Which wasn't true, not at all. But only Eleanor knew that.
A QUANTUM MURDER
13
He counted to thirty, trying to recall the various conversations he and Roy had had in the Finch's Arms, and rose to his feet. The lynch mob stood with bowed heads, as sheepish as schoolboys caught smoking. Even if he said Collister was guilty, there would be no vigilante violence now. The anger and nerve bad been torn out of them, sucked into the black vacuum of shame. Which was all he had set out to do.
'Roy wasn't an apparatchik,' Greg said. 'He used to work in a legal office, handling defence cases. Did you hear that? Defence work. Roy was supporting the poor sods that the People's Constables brought into court on trumped-up charges. That's how he was tied in to the government by your bollock-brained Inquisitors, his name is on the Market Harborough legal affairs committee pay-slip package. The Treasury paid him for providing his counselling services.'
The silence which followed was broken by Clare Collister's anguished wail. She ran over to her husband, sinking to her knees, shoulders quaking. Her fingers dabbed at his ruined face, slowly, disbeievingly, tracing the damage; she started to sob uncontrollably.
Douglas Kellam had paled. 'We didn't know.'
Greg increased the level of his gland secretion, and thought of a griffin's claw, rigged with powerful stringy muscles and tendons, talons black and savagely sharp. Eidolonics took a lot out of him, he had learnt that back in his Mindstar days:
his mind wasn't wired for it, which meant he had to push to make it work. On top of that, he hated domination stunts. But for Kellam he'd overlook scruples this once. He visualized the talon tips closing around Kellam's balls. 'Goodbye,' he said, it was a dismissal order. Black needles touched the delicate scrotum.
Kellam's eyes widened in silent fright. He turned and virtually ran for the door. The others filed out after him, one or two bobbing their heads nervously at Eleanor.
'Oh sweet Jesus, look what they've done to him,' Clare groaned. Her hands were covered in blood. She looked up at Greg and Eleanor, tears sticky on her cheeks. 'They're animals. Animals!'
14
PETER F. HAMILTON
Greg fished round in his overall pockets for his cybofax. He pulled the rectangular palm-sized 'ware block out, and flipped it open. 'Phone function,' he ordered, then told Clare:
'I'll call for an ambulance. Some of those ribs are badly damaged. Tell the doctors to check for internal haemorrhaging.'
She wiped some of her tears with the back of a hand, leaving a tiny red streak above her right eye. 'I want them locked up,' she said, fighting for breath. 'All of them. Locked up for a thousand years.'
Greg sighed. 'No, they didn't do anything wrong.'
Eleanor flashed him a startled glance. Then understanding dawned, she looked back down at Clare.
'Nothing wrong!' Clare howled.
'I only said Roy was innocent,' Greg said quietly.
She stared at him in horror.
'When the ambulance comes, you will leave with it. Pack a bag, some clothes, anything really valuable. And don't come back, not for anything. If I ever see you again, I will tell Douglas and his friends exactly whose mind is rotten with guilt.'
'I never hurt anybody,' she said. 'I was in Food Allocation.' Greg put his arm round Eleanor, urging her out of the lounge. The sound of Clare Collister's miserable weeping followed him all the way down the hail.


Eleanor kissed him lightly when they reached the EMC Ranger. There was no sign of the lynch mob. Nor the watching faces, Greg noted. The only sound was the bird-song, humidity gave the air an almost viscid quality.
'Are you all right?' she asked. Her lips were pressed together in concern.
His head had begun to ache with the neurohormone hangover which was the legacy of using the gland. He blinked against the sunlight glaring round the shredded clouds, combing his hand back through sweaty hair. 'Yeah, I'll live.'
'That bloody Collister woman.'
'Tell you, she's probably right. Food Allocation was a little