"Before now, when a family company grew too big for one person to pay attention to every detail it used to stall. It was inevitable. Responsibilities had to be delegated, the initial individual-led drive was diluted. But the NN core solves even that. I can devote myself one hundred per cent to each problem, no matter the size; co-ordinate every policy; supervise every division. No kombinate will be able to match a company run along these lines."

"You were doing pretty well before," Julia said acidly. "One ordinary person, and an ill one at that. With the right people in key posts Event Horizon will prosper. All that's needed is direction, a firmness of purpose, the big decisions made quickly and implemented without delay."

"And you can do that, Juliet, can you?"

"Yah."

"Rubbish. You don't have anything like the experience."

She was angry now, straight-backed rigid, gripping the arms of her seat. "I do."

"Node implants don't give you experience, girl, just theory. All that money you spent getting rid of Kendric, pure bloody folly."

Greg flicked a glance at Julia, intrigued. Her cheeks were burning red, embarrassed rather than angered. Implanted nodes had been banned in England by the PSP, for the usual heinous crime of elitism. The New Conservatives had yet to repeal the Act. But at least he could finally explain away her remarkably smooth thought currents, and that marvellous ability to fish obscure data out of memory cores.

"It's like chess," Philip Evans explained gently. "You know how each piece should move, but you don't know the rules, the strategy. You'll learn, Juliet, really you will. It just takes time. And I'm here to bridge the gap for you."

"But the NN core is untried," she said, fighting to keep her voice level. "How do we know all your memories translocated? Suppose these miraculous thought processes of yours are incorrect? And you're basing judgements about the company's entire future on them."

Finally Greg understood her terror. She was afraid of losing everything; that wonderful edifice which was Event Horizon collapsing to rubble because it was balanced on a single assumption. And she had no way of checking the NN core's integrity. No control.

"If I could bring us back to our current problem," said Morgan Walshaw. "Unless something is done to solve it we may lose the core anyway."

"You told me someone tried to kill you," Greg said.

"Damn right, boy. Yesterday evening the NN core's inputs were blitzed, saturated with override-priority data squirts. Every channel simultaneously; ground links and satellite circuits. It was clever, the attacker was attempting to force me out of the NN core with the sheer quantity of input. With all the data being given a priority code the core-function management program would have to assign it storage space, eventually displacing my memories. I would've been erased, for God's sake! That's attempted murder in my book."

"So what went wrong?"