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accent, adopting a crystal-cut English Sloane inflection to lend a touch of class. A proper Lady. Then on her sixteenth birthday she’d left the school and spent a month in Event Horizon’s ultra-exclusive Austrian clinic.
    She was given five bioware implants, nodes of ferredoxin protein meshed with her synaptic clefts: three memory-cellclusters, two data processors; a whole subsidiary brain to cope with the vast dataflows generated by Event Horizon. The parallel mentality didn’t make her a genius, but it did make her analytical, objective. A conflation of logic and human inspiration, she was capable of looking at a problem from every conceivable angle until she produced a solution. An irrational computer.
    ‘It’s the only way, Juliet,’ Philip had told her. ‘I’m losing track of the company, it’s slipping away from me. All I ever get to see in cubes are the summaries of summaries, a shallow overview. That’s not enough. Inertia and waste are building up. Inevitably, I suppose. Department heads just don’t have the drive. It’s a job to them, not a life. Maybe these nodes will enable you to control it properly.’
    Julia let desire war with her conscience. How did you captivate a boy like Adrian?
    Access Surveillance Camera: West Wing, Guest Suite Seven .
    A laughing Kats was straddling Adrian, playing with him, her hands caressing, tongue working slowly down his chest. He was spreadeagled across the mattress, clutching the brass bedposts with a strength which came close to bending them, face warped in agony and ecstasy, pleading with her.
    Commit AmourKats .
    Julia had never done anything like this, not leading, not making all the moves. She wasn’t sure she would have the nerve. Kats seemed so totally uninhibited. Shameless. Was that the key? Could boys home in on abandon? Kats sat back on Adrian’s abdomen, then crossed her arms and gripped the hem of the camisole. She peeled it languidly over her head, shaking her hair out. Julia felt a sharp spasm of envy at seeing her friend’s well-developed body. That was one reason why Kats had Adrian, she acknowledged bitterly, they looked like godlings together. At least she had longer legs than Kats. Skinny, though; nothing like as shapely, two beanpoles really.
    Exit Surveillance Camera .
    Her mental yell was contaminated with anger and disgust. Peeking on the lovers had seemed like a piece of harmless fun.Certainly using the security cameras to spy on the manor’s servants had been pretty enlightening. But this wasn’t the gentle romantic love-making she’d been expecting. Nothing near.
    Pandora’s box. And only a fool ever opens it.
    Anger vanished to be replaced with sadness. Alone again, more than ever now she knew the truth.
    Boys were just about the only subject she never discussed with her grandfather. It never seemed fair somehow. He’d taken over every other parental duty, a solid pillar of comfort, support, and love. She couldn’t burden him with more. Not now.
Certainly
not now.
    Part of the reason for her being at Wilholm was so she could be his secretary. Philip Evans needed a secretary like he needed another overdraft, but the idea was to give her executive experience and acquaint her with Event Horizon minutiae, preparing her to take it over. A terrifying, yet at the same time exhilarating prospect.
    Then this morning at breakfast he’d taken her into his confidence, looking even more haggard than usual. ‘Someone is running a spoiler operation against Event Horizon,’ he’d said. ‘Contaminating thirty-seven per cent of our memox crystals in the furnaces.’
    ‘Has Walshaw found out who was behind it?’ she’d asked, assuming she was being told after the security chief had closed down the operation. It was the way their discussions of the company usually went. Her grandfather would explain a recent problem, and they’d go over the solution, detail by detail, until she understood why it’d been handled that particular way. Remote