"Yes, I'm sure they didn't kill Kitchener," said Greg. "Although how my opinion would stand up in court, I'm not so certain about. But the physical evidence does tend to corroborate my interviews. Besides, none of them had a mind anything like Bursken's."
"Your opinion is good enough for me," Morgan said.
"Even your new friend Rosette Harding-Clarke is in the clear," Eleanor flashed Greg a spartan grin. "Her family is very rich, and according to Julia's legal office the child wouldn't get a penny out of Kitchener's estate. If the Harding-Clarkes were poor, Rosette might have been able to apply for a maintenance order against the estate. However, the question doesn't arise."
"Then it must have been a tekmerc snuff," Morgan said.
YOUR SECURITY GEAR PROTECTING LAUNDE ABBEY WAS THE BEST NO ONE ON THE CIRCUIT HAS HEARD OF ANYBODY WANTING TO BUY THE KIND OF PROGRAMS WHICH COULD BURN THROUGH.
Morgan turned his head to look at the flatscreen. "How reliable are your sources?"
VERY VERY VERY
"Somebody got in."
"I still maintain it would be difficult for anyone to get in and out of the Chater valley that night," Greg said.
"Then who did do it?" Walshaw asked, his voice had risen a notch.
Gabriel caught his eye, a silent rebuke.
"Logically, it was a tekmerc snuff," Greg said unhappily. "Nobody else would have the know-how and operational expertise to get in and out without leaving a trace. That's what I find incredible. There wasn't a single trace, not one." He shook his head.
"We're missing method and motive at the moment," Eleanor said.
MOTIVE I HAVE PLENTY OF
"What?" Julia asked.
ACCORDING TO THE CIRCUIT KITCHENER WAS WORKING ON A BORON PROTON REACTOR FOR YOU.
"Edward was doing no such thing," Cormac objected.
Philip chortled, the sound reverberating out of hidden speakers, directionless. "Ah, but it fits, m'boy. Doesn't it? Kitchener's speciality was atomic and molecular interaction. A successful boron proton reaction would be almost as worthwhile as giga-conductor. Look at it from an economic point of view, a successful boron proton fusion produces energized helium, that's all, no pollutants, no radioactive emission. It's a bloody marvel, or it would be if we could build one. Kitchener is just the kind of man to iron out the bugs involved in getting a smooth fusion process going."
"It would be a logical assumption," Morgan said grudgingly. "If someone was aware Kitchener was contracted to Event Horizon, was receiving money from us, they could well think it was for energy research. Especially if they knew it was coming from Cormac's office, the inventor of the giga-conductor."
Eleanor rapped a knuckle lightly on the table, and tilted her head to look at Julia. "How are you going to power Prior's Fen?"
It took a second for her thoughts to jump between subjects. "I'm considering two options. The first is an Ocean Thermal generator system, with floating platforms anchored out in the Atlantic, and bringing the electricity ashore with superconductor cables. Second is to drill a couple of hundred deep bore holes across the Fens basin, then insert direct thermocouple cables down them, siphon energy right out of the mantle. The tower and the projected cyber precincts certainly can't be powered from existing mainland sources, the capacity simply doesn't exist. Costwise, direct coupling has the edge, naturally since there are no moving parts to maintain once the holes have been sunk. In engineering terms, ocean thermal is a more mature technology. So at the moment I'm just waiting to see if Cormac makes any significant progress on direct thermocoupling in the next ten months. We don't have to make the actual selection until the end of the year."
"I'd like it to be earlier," Philip muttered.
"Behave, Grandpa." She found the camera lens, above the flatscreen, and gave it a stern look.
"So it would make a lot of sense for you to be working on third, fourth, even fifth alternatives," Eleanor mused.
"Yes, absolutely. But we're not."
"What other embryonic technologies could supply the rise in industrial demand?" Greg asked. "And more importantly, who is working on them?"
"Grandpa?"
"Easy enough, m'girl. There are really only five viable candidates. Jetstream turbines, when you tether large vacuum bubbles twelve kilometres up and fit them out with giant rotor blades. The wind velocities up there are pretty impressive. Next, you've got cold fusion."
Cormac grunted disparagingly. But when Julia looked at him, he just moued and went back to gazing out of the window.
"Well they might crack it," Philip said grumpily. "I'm just listing options."
"Go on, Grandpa."
"Microfusion reactors, which is a sort of advanced version of cold fusion, using molecular-scale compression techniques to fuse extremely small clusters of deuterium atoms in a gizmo the size of a processor chip. Something that small does away with the heat sink problems you get in tokamaks, but you'd need to group a lot of reactors together to produce a decent output. Ocean current turbines. But there's a question mark over which currents. Gulf Stream, Mozambique current, the Kuro Shio, East Australian current, Cape Horn current; they're all possibles, but they're all remote from Europe. Then there's solar satellites. Cheap and practical, especially now we've got the Clarke spaceplane. But there isn't a government in the world that'll grant a licence to site a receiver array. Too many environmental—or rather environmentalist—problems when it comes to beaming energy through the atmosphere."
"Who is researching them?" Greg asked.
"Apart from the powersats, just about every kombinate, plus dozens of universities under government contract. The whole world needs an energy source which won't add to the Greenhouse effect."
Julia clasped her hands together, mind devouring the problem eagerly. She didn't even need to bring the nodes on line. "Grandpa, are there any research teams working on boron proton fusion?"
"Yes, several."
"OK, compile a list of the twenty-five most promising research and design teams for boron proton reactors, and each of the other projects you mentioned, then cross-reference them with Diessenburg Mercantile."
"Gotcha, girl."
"Isn't that one of our banks?" Morgan asked.
"Yes." She told them about the conversation with Karl Hildebrandt;
"Interesting," Greg said. "I wish I'd been there."
"Got one, Juliet," Philip said. He sounded slightly apprehensive, which was unusual. "The Randon company. They have a loan package of eight hundred and fifty million Eurofrancs with Diessenburg Mercantile, two hundred million New Sterling. Two-thirds of it was spent constructing a laboratory complex outside Reims, which is dedicated to investigating microfusion techniques."
"Has to be," Morgan said quietly.
"Randon also sponsor Nicholas Beswick," Philip said flatly. Greg sat up straight, staring at the terminal at the head of the table.
"No such thing as coincidence," Gabriel said. It came out almost as a challenge.
Greg glanced at her fleetingly. "No," he said firmly.
"Oh, come on, Greg. Psi isn't perfect."
"Tell you, if it had been any one of the others, I would have said, maybe. But Beswick, no chance."
"If you say so," she looked away, uninterested.
"This is all based on very spurious assumptions," Cormac said.
"Yeah, maybe," Greg said. He sounded troubled. "Royan, this rumour about Kitchener working on boron proton fusion, did it exist before he was snuffed?"
YES YES YES. HEAVY DUTY SPECULATION AS SOON AS EVENT HORIZON PAYMENTS WERE MADE TO HIS BANK ACCOUNT
"For Christ's sake," Morgan said tightly.
SORRY BUT PEOPLE LIKE KITCHENER ARE ALWAYS BEING SCANNED BY HOTRODS. HIS WORK IS INTERESTING, NOT TO MENTION COMMERCIAL.
"But nobody knew for certain what he was doing, right?" Greg persisted.