Surface Detail (14 page)

The Veprine Corporation’s Planetary Heavy Industries Division (Sichult) constructed several standard sizes and types of Wheel. Most were mobile hotels, taking the rich on cruises across the continent; the Halo 7, Veppers’ own privately owned vehicle, was the grandest and most impressive of the largest spokeless class, being no greater in diameter than the rest but possessing thirty-three rather than thirty-two gondolas.

The Halo 7’s separate cars held sumptuous bedroom suites, banqueting halls, reception rooms, two separate pool and bath complexes, gyms, flower-filled terraces, kitchens, kitchen gardens, a command and communication pod, power and services units, garages for ground vehicles, hangars for fliers, boat-houses for speedboats, sailboats and minisubs, and quarters for crew and servants. Much more than a mode of transport, the Halo 7 was a mobile mansion.

Rather than being fixed to the Wheel’s rims, the thirty-three cars could alter position, either at Veppers’ whim or according to the dictates of the landscape beneath; negotiating – and especially traversing – a steep slope, where there was no ready-made Wheel road, all the heavier pods could be brought down close to the ground, preventing the device from becoming dangerously top-heavy and so allowing it take on angles of lean that looked both unlikely and alarming. Perched at the top in a gimballed observation gondola during such a manoeuvre, Veppers had been known to take great delight in terrifying guests with that trick. Getting from one pod to another could mean as little as a single step if the cars had been brought up against each other, or a ride in one of several circumferential elevator units that moved round a smaller-diameter ring fixed inside the Wheel’s principal structure.

Veppers gazed out at the distant blue hills, trying to remember if he owned them or not.

“Are we still within the estate?” he asked.

Jasken was standing at the pool-side, keeping politely out of his master’s view. Jasken was scanning the misty landscape, the Enhancing Oculenses covering his eyes zooming in on details, revealing the ground’s mostly chilly heat signature and showing him any radio sources. “I’ll ask,” he said, and muttered something, putting a finger to the comms bud attached to his ear as he listened. “Yes, sir,” he told Veppers. “Captain Bousser informs us we are about thirty kilometres inside the estate’s boundaries.” Jasken used a small keypad on the back of the cast covering his left arm to call up the requisite overlay on the view the Oculenses were presenting. Thirty klicks was about right.

The Halo 7’s commander, Captain Bousser, was female. Jasken suspected she had been hired for her pleasing looks rather than on merit, so, where possible, he checked any assertions she made, waiting, so far unsuccessfully, for a mistake he could use to convince Veppers of her unfitness for the post.

“Hmm,” Veppers said. Now he thought about it, he didn’t really care whether he owned the hills or not. His right hand went to his face without him thinking about it, his fingers very gently tracing the prosthetic covering that had replaced the tip of his nose while the flesh and cartilage re-grew beneath. It was a pretty good fake, especially with a bit of makeup on top, but he was still self-conscious about it. He’d cancelled a few engagements and postponed many more in the days since the debacle in the opera house.

What a mess that had been. They hadn’t been able to keep it completely quiet, of course, especially as he’d had to cancel that evening’s engagement at such short notice. Dr. Sulbazghi had come up with their cover story, which was that Jasken had accidentally sliced the tip of his master’s nose off while they were fencing.

“That’ll have to do,” Veppers agreed as he lay on the treatment couch in the clinic suite deep within the Ubruater town house, less than an hour after the girl had attacked him. He was painfully aware that his voice sounded strange, strangled and nasal. Sulbazghi was bandaging his nose and prepping it with coagulant, antiseptic and a stabilising preparatory gel; a specialist plastic surgeon had been summoned and was on his way. The girl’s body had already been bagged and placed in a mortuary freezer. Dr. Sulbazghi would see to its disposal later.

Veppers was still shaking a little, despite whatever Sulbazghi had given him for the shock. He lay there, thinking, as the doctor fussed about him. He was waiting for Jasken to return; he was on his way back from the opera house having made sure everything had been squared away and everybody had their stories straight.

He shouldn’t have killed the girl. It had been stupid, impetuous. On the rare occasion that sort of thing was necessary, you just never got involved directly; that was what delegation was for, what people like Jasken – and whoever he employed specifically for such tasks – was for. Always keep it deniable, always at a remove, always have a true alibi.

But, he’d been too excited by the chase, by the knowledge that the runaway was still so close, and so trapped within the opera house, practically waiting to be caught. Of course he’d wanted to be part of the hunt, the capture!

Still, he shouldn’t have killed her. It wasn’t just how much she’d been worth, how much wasted effort and money she represented, it was the embarrassment of having lost her. People would notice her continued absence. The cover story after she’d run off from the couturier’s had been that she was ill – the PR people had hinted at some rare ailment that only the intagliated suffered from.

Now they would either have to claim she’d died of it – meaning problems with the Surgeon’s Guild, the insurance people and possibly lawyers for the clinic that had overseen her intagliation in the first place – or go with the even more humiliating though partially true narrative that she’d run away. He’d already entertained the idea that they might claim she’d been kidnapped, or allowed to join a nunnery or whatever, but both would lead to too many complications.

At least he’d got the knives back. They were still tucked into the waistband of his trews. He touched their hilts again, reassuring himself they were still there. Jasken had wanted to dispose of them, the idiot. No need to dispose of the murder weapon when you were going to dispose of the body properly. Stealing the knives; the sheer fucking effrontery of it! In the end she’d been nothing more than an ungrateful little thief. And: biting him! Maybe even trying to bite his throat out and kill him! How dare the little bitch do that? How dare she put him in this situation!

He was glad he’d killed her. And it was a first for him, he realised; directly taking a life was one of the few things he’d never done. When this had all calmed down, when his nose had re-grown and things had gone back to normal, he’d still have that, he supposed.

He remembered that until he’d first taken her against her will, maybe ten years or so ago, he’d never raped anybody before either

– there had been no need – so he’d got two firsts from her. If he was being generous, he would reluctantly concede that that was some sort of compensation for all the pain and inconvenience she was putting him through.

Quite a thing, though, doing something like that, actually plunging a knife into somebody and feeling them die. It shook you, no matter how strong you were. He could still see the look in the girl’s eyes as she’d died.

Jasken came in then, removing his Oculenses and nodding to the two Zei guarding the clinic suite’s door.

“You’ll have to be injured too, Jasken,” Veppers told him immediately, glaring at his chief of security as though it really had all been his fault. Which, now he thought about it, was true, as it had ultimately been Jasken’s responsibility to keep an eye on the scribble-child and make sure she didn’t go running off anywhere. “We’re going to say you took my nose off while we were fencing, but we can’t have people thinking you actually bested me. You’ll have to have an eye out.”

Jasken’s face, already pale, went paler. “Ah, but, sir …”

“Or a broken arm; something serious.”

Dr. Sulbazghi nodded. “I think the broken arm.” He looked at Jasken’s forearms, perhaps choosing on Veppers’ behalf.

Jasken glared at Sulbazghi. “Sir, please—” he said to Veppers.

“You could make it a clean break, couldn’t you Sulbazghi?”

Veppers asked. “Quick to heal?”

“Easily,” Sulbazghi said, smiling at Jasken.

“Sir,” Jasken said, drawing himself up. “Such an action would compromise my ability to protect you, in the event that our other layers of security were disabled and I was all that stood between you and an assailant.”

“Hmm, I suppose so,” Veppers said. “Still, we need something.” He frowned, thinking. “How would you like a duelling scar? On the cheek, where everybody would see it.”

“It would have to be a very big, very deep scar,” Dr. Sulbazghi said reasonably. “Probably permanent.” He shrugged as Jasken glared at him again. “To be proportionate,” he protested.

“Might I suggest a fake cast, for a couple of weeks?” Jasken said, tapping his left arm. “The broken-arm story would still hold but I would not be truly disabled.” He smiled thinly at the doctor. “I might even conceal additional weaponry within the cast, for any emergency.”

Veppers liked that. “Good idea.” He nodded. “Let’s go with that.”

Now, floating in the pool at the summit of the Halo 7, his fingers feeling tentatively around the strange, warm surface of the prosthetic, Veppers smiled at the memory. Jasken’s compromise had been sensible, but seeing the look on his face when he’d thought they were going to put out one of his eyes or actually break his arm had been one of the few truly bright spots in a dreadful evening.

He gazed out at the mountains again. He’d ordered the gondola containing the pool to be kept at the summit of the great vehicle while he had his early morning swim. He turned round and struck out for the other side of the pool, where one of his Harem Troupe had fallen asleep wrapped in a thick robe and lying on a sun-bed.

Veppers had what he honestly believed was the best-looking ten-girl Harem Troupe in the Enablement. This girl, Pleur, was special even within that august selection: one of his two Impressionist girls, able to take on the appearance and mannerisms of whatever female public figure he had taken a shine to recently. Of course, he’d had his share – much more than his fair share, as he was the first to acknowledge – of super-famous screen stars, singers, dancers, screen presenters, athletes and the very occasional hot politician and so on, but such pursuits could be terribly time-consuming; the truly famous, even when they were available, not committed, expected to be wooed over time, even by the richest man in the Enablement, and it was usually a lot simpler just to have one of the Impressionist girls alter herself – and have herself altered surgically, where the change would take too long otherwise – to look like the relevant beauty. It wasn’t as though he really wanted them for their minds after all, and this way also had the advantage of letting you compensate for any bodily deficiencies in the original.

As he swam, Veppers looked over at Jasken, and nodded towards the sleeping girl, who currently looked identical to – unusually for Veppers – an academic. Pleur had recently taken on the appearance of a severely beautiful doctor of eugenics from Lombe whom Veppers had first glimpsed at a ball in Ubruater City earlier in the year but who had proved annoyingly determined to remain faithful to her husband, even in the face of the sort of blandishments and gifts that were guaranteed to turn almost anybody’s head (husbands included, where it merely meant turning a blind eye). Jasken walked over towards Pleur’s sleeping form as Veppers arrived at the side of the pool, then trod water and mimed what Jasken was to do.

Jasken nodded, went to the back of the sun-bed, gripped its lower frame and, only slightly hindered by the fake cast on his arm, swiftly hoisted the rear of the sun-bed up to head height, tipping the girl into the pool with a splash and a spluttering scream. Veppers was still laughing and fending off Pleur’s flapping blows, while pulling her robe off, when Jasken frowned, put one finger to his ear, then got down on both knees at the pool side and started waving urgently.

“What?” Veppers shouted at Jasken, exasperated. A near miss from one of Pleur’s hands skiffed one cheek and splashed water into his eyes. “Not on the nose, you dumb bitch!”

“It’s Sulbazghi,” Jasken told him. “Highest urgency.”

Veppers was much bigger and stronger than Pleur. He gripped her, turned her round and held her tightly while she cursed at both him and Jasken, coughing and spitting water all the while. “What? Something happening in Ubruater?” Veppers asked.

“No, he’s in a flier, on his way here. Four minutes out. Won’t say what, but insists it’s highest urgency. Shall I tell Bousser to summit the landing platform?”

Veppers sighed. “I suppose.” He got Pleur’s robe off at last. She had mostly stopped struggling and coughing. “Go and meet them,” he told Jasken, who nodded once and walked off.

Veppers pushed the naked girl towards the side of the pool. “As for you, young lady,” he said, biting her neck hard enough to produce a yelp, “you’ve been terribly ill-mannered.”

“I have, haven’t I?” Pleur agreed. She knew just what Veppers liked to hear. “I need to be taught a lesson, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes I would. Assume the position.” He shoved the floating weight of the robe out of the way as Pleur braced herself against the edge of the pool with both hands. “Won’t be long!” he called after Jasken’s retreating back.

Still a little breathless, still with the pleasant glow of satiation about him and still dripping from inside his fluffy robe, Veppers sat forward and looked at the thing lying in Dr. Sulbazghi’s broad, pale yellow palm. He, Sulbazghi – still wearing his lab coat, which was an unusual sight – Jasken and Astil, Veppers’ butler, were the only people in the lavishly furnished lounge. Outside, beyond plump brocade bolsters, waggling tassels, gently clinking chandeliers and trembling gold-thread window fringes, the view was of the slowly clearing mists before and behind the Wheel as it continued on its journey through the spreading pastel light of dawn.

“Thank you, Astil,” Veppers said, accepting a cup of chilled infusion from his butler. “That’s all.”