If at First

barrier, no hesitancy at all. It would’ve been utterly sensational, if Kats hadn’t enchanted him first.
    Julia shivered slightly at the involuntary recollection of Primate Marcus and the cult. She’d been ten when the upheaval came, the big Texan, known later as Uncle Horace, had arrived to take her away. Over the sea to a near-mythical Europe and a grandfather she’d never even known she had. Lady Fauntleroy, the other commune kids had teased before she went, bowing, curtseying. She’d giggled with them, playing along, secretly terrified of leaving the gently curving sandstone passages with their broad light-wells and the eternal magnificent desert above. Her mother had stayed with the cult, her father had accompanied her.
    The bioware processors helped Julia suppress the name, the whole concept of
father
, pushing him below conscious examination, a fast, clean exorcism. He brought too much pain. Childhood ignorance was a blissful existence, she reflected.
    Europe and Philip Evans, her grandfather; and the astonishing revelation of Event Horizon. A company to rival a
kombinate
in size, heroically battling the British PSP, which surely made Grandpa a saint. Socialism was the ultimate Antichrist.
    Her grandfather had sent her to the school in Switzerland, where starchy tutors had crammed her with company law, management procedures, finance; twittery
grande dames
teaching her all the social graces, etiquette and deportment, refining her. She’d dropped her American 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