Nightingale lament

achievement. And now someone, or something, is trying to shut it down. Which is why I asked Walker to contact you, John. Can you help me?'

'Perhaps,' I said. 'I'm still trying to get a feel for what's going on here. Talk me through it, from the be­ ginning.'

Vincent leaned back in his manager's chair and linked his fingers together across his expansive waist­coat. While he talked, his voice was calm and even, but his gaze kept flickering to the CCTV monitors.

'It started two weeks ago, John. Everything normal, just another day. Until one of the main turbines sud­ denly stopped working. My people investigated and found it had been sabotaged. Not a professional job - the whole interior had simply been ... ripped apart. My people repaired it and got it back online in under an hour, but by then systems were breaking down all through the plant. And that's been the pattern ever since. As fast as we fix things, something else goes wrong. It's costing us a fortune in spare parts alone. There's nothing sophisticated about the sabotage, just brutal, senseless destruction.

'No-one ever sees the saboteur. You've seen the se­curity I've hired, but they haven't made a blind bit of difference. I've got cameras everywhere, and they never see anything either. I've had the videotapes checked by experts, but there's no trace of anything. We can't even tell how the bastard gets in or out! The destruction's getting steadily worse. Repairs and recon­struction are starting to fall behind. It's only a matter of time before it starts affecting our power output. And a whole lot of people depend on the electricity we pro­duce here.'

And if Prometheus Inc. goes down, so do you, I thought, but I was still being polite, so I didn't say it aloud.

'How about rivals?' I said. 'Perhaps someone in the same line of business, looking to profit at your ex­ pense?'

'There are always competitors,' said Vincent, frowning. 'But there's no-one else big enough to take over if we go under. Prometheus Inc. supplies 12.4 per cent of the Nightside's electricity needs. If we crash, there'll be power outages and brownouts all across the Nightside, and no-one wants that. The other companies would have to push themselves almost to destruction to take up the slack.'

'All right,' I said. 'How about people who just don't like you? Made any new enemies recently?'

He smiled briefly. 'A month ago, I would have said I didn't have an enemy in the world. But now . . .' He looked at the wedding photo on his desk again. 'I've been having dreams . . . about Melinda and Quinn, and the day they died. And I have to wonder ... if the bas­tard who killed them is coming after me.'

I hadn't seen that twist coming. 'Why you? And why wait six years?'

'Maybe the killer thinks I know something, though I'm damned if I know what. And just maybe it's all started up again because you're back, John. An awful lot of old grudges and feuds have bubbled to the sur­face since you returned to the Nightside.'

He had a point there, so I decided to change the subject. 'Let's talk about the actual damage here. You said it was . . . unsophisticated.'

'Hell yes,' said Vincent. 'It's clear the saboteur has no real technical knowledge. There are a dozen places he could have hit that would shut the whole plant down if they were even interfered with. But none a layman could hope to recognise. And, of course, there's the se­cret process at the heart of Prometheus Inc. that makes this whole operation possible. I invented it. But that's kept inside a steel vault, protected by state-of-the-art high-tech defence systems. Even the Authorities would have a hard time getting to it without the right pass codes.' Vincent leaned forward across the desk and fixed me with a pleading gaze. 'You've got to help me, John. It's not only my livelihood we're talking about here. If Prometheus Inc. is forced offline, and power levels drop all across the Nightside, people are going to start dying. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk.'

I should have seen what was coming. But I always was a sucker for a sob story.

Vincent took me on a tour through the plant, the under­ground section that outsiders never got a chance to see. It was all spotlessly clean and eerily quiet. The actual generators themselves turned out to be much smaller than I expected, and made hardly a sound. There were panels and gauges and readouts and any amount of gleaming high tech, none of which meant anything to me, though I was careful to make impressed sounds at regular intervals. Every bit of it had been designed by Vincent, back when he was the Mechanic, rather than the Manager. He kept up a running commentary throughout the tour, most of which went right over my head, while I nodded and smiled and kept an eye out for the saboteur. Eventually Vincent ran out of things to point at, and we stopped at the end of a cavernous hall, before a large, closed, solid steel door. He looked at me, clearly expecting me to say something.

'It's all ... very clean,' I said. 'And very impres­sive. Though it's hard to believe you produce so much of the Nightside's electricity with . . . just this. I was expecting something ten times the size.'

Vincent grinned. 'None of the power comes from this. All the machinery does is convert the power pro­duced in there into electricity. The secret lies in my own special process, behind this sealed door. A scien­tific marvel, if I do say so myself.'

I glared suddenly at the steel door. 'If you're about to tell me you've got a nuclear pile in there . . .'

'No, no . . .'

'Or a contained singularity . . .'

'Nothing so crude, John. My process is perfectly safe, with no noxious by-products. Though I'm afraid I can't show it to you. Some things have to remain se­cret.'

And then he broke off, and we both looked round sharply as we heard something. A harsh juddering began in one of the machines at the far end of the hall, and black smoke billowed suddenly from a vent, before an alarm shrilled loudly and the machine shut itself down. Vincent shrank back against the steel door.

'He's here! The saboteur . . . he's never got this far before. He must have been following us all this time . . . Are you armed, John?'

'I don't use guns,' I said. 'I've never felt the need.'

'Normally I don't, either, but ever since this shit began happening, I've felt a lot more secure knowing I've got a little something to even out the odds.' Vin­cent produced a gleaming silver gun from inside his jacket. It looked sleek and deadly and very futuristic. Vincent hefted it proudly. 'It's a laser. Amplified light to fight the forces of darkness. Another of my inven­tions. I always meant to do more with it, but the power plant took over my life. I can't see anyone, John. Can you see anyone?'

A machine a little further down the hall exploded suddenly. More black smoke, and the hum of the other machines rose significantly, as though they were hav­ing to work harder. A third machine blew apart like a grenade, throwing sharp-edged steel shrapnel almost the length of the hall. Some of the overhead lights flickered and went out. There were shadows every­where now, deep and dark. Some of the other machines began making unpleasant, threatening noises. And still there was no sign of the saboteur anywhere.

Vincent's face was pale and sweaty, and his hand trembled as he swept his laser gun back and forth, searching for a target. 'Come on, come on,' he said hoarsely. 'You're on my territory now. I'm ready for you.'

Something pale flashed briefly at the corner of my eye. I snapped around, but it was already gone. It ap­ peared again, just a glimpse of white in the shadows between two machines. It flashed back and forth, ap­pearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye, darting up and down the length of the hall. Glimmers of shim­mering white as fleeting as moonlight, but I thought I was beginning to make out an impression of a pale, haunted face. It moved in the shadows, never venturing out into the light. But it was gradually drawing nearer. Heading for us, or perhaps for the steel door behind us and the secret vulnerable heart of Prometheus Inc.

My first thought was that it had to be a ghost of some kind, maybe a poltergeist. Which would explain why the CCTV cameras hadn't been able to see anything. Ghosts could operate in science- or magic-dominated areas, provided their motivation was strong enough. In which case, Vincent needed a priest or an exorcist, not a private eye. I suggested as much to Vincent, and he shrugged angrily.

'I had my people do a full background check on this location before we began construction; and they didn't turn up anything. The whole area was supposed to be entirely free from magical or paranormal influences. That's why I built here. I'm the Mechanic, I build things. It's a talent, just like your talent for finding things, John. I don't know about ghosts. You're the ex­pert on these matters. What do we do?'

'Depends what the ghost wants,' I said.

'It wants to destroy me! I would have thought that was obvious. What was that?'

The white figure was flashing in and out of the shad­ows, on every side at once, drawing steadily closer all