Surface Detail (73 page)

~Fascinating. You obviously have your fields full. I’ll leave you to it. Do let’s keep in touch.

“The Me, I’m Counting? The ship with Himerance?” Lededje asked. Suddenly she was back in her room in the town house, ten years earlier, listening in the darkness to the tall, stooped, bald old man as he talked softly about taking an image of her that was faithful and precise down to the individual atom.

“The very same,” Demeisen said. Element twelve of the picket ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints was bearing down on the inner system of the Quyn system, heading straight for a region of space a few hundred kilometres above where the city of Ubruater on the planet Sichult would be in just a few minutes. The ship element was braking hard and negotiating even more strenuously with the relevant authorities on and around the planet. “It still has the image of you that it took when you were younger.”

“What’s it doing here?” Lededje asked. In a suspicious tone, Demeisen thought. They were stepped-back from full foamed-up ultra-alert, sitting in their seats on the module, Lededje’s helmet visor lying opened so that she and the avatar could look at each other.

“I suspect it’s carrying a person from Quietus called Yime Nsokyi,” Demeisen told her. “Didn’t mention her by name but a little research makes it highly likely it’s her.”

“And what’s she doing here?”

“Quietus might be interested in you. As a revented little icicle they may feel that somehow you’re their responsibility.”

She looked at the avatar for a moment. “Are they always this … keen?”

Demeisen shook his head emphatically. “No. There’s probably some other reason.”

“Care to take a guess?”

“Who can say, doll? They may have some interest in the relationship between you and Mr. Veppers, especially as it might manifest itself in the near to medium future. They may not feel that your intentions towards him are entirely peaceful, and wish to forestall some untoward diplomatic incident.”

“What about you; would you act to forestall this untoward diplomatic incident?”

“Might do. Depends on the likely consequences. You have my sympathies, goes without saying, but even I at least have to look like I’m taking account of the bigger picture. Consequences are everything.” The avatar nodded at the screen. “Oh, look; we’re here.”

Sichult filled the screen; a fat hazy crescent of white cloud, grey-green land and streaks of glinting blue seas lay tipped and swollen across the screen. They were close enough for Lededje to see depth in the clear, thin wrapping of atmosphere and make out the shadows of individual storm cells throwing their dark, elongated shapes across the flat white plains of cloud levels extending beneath them.

“Home at last,” Lededje breathed. She did not, the avatar thought, sound all that pleased about it. He’d thought she would have shown more interest in the image of her held by the other Culture ship, too. He’d never understand humans.

“Ah, found him,” Demeisen said, smiling.

Lededje stared at him. “Veppers?”

Demeisen nodded. “Veppers.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Hmm, interesting,” the avatar said. He looked at her. “You should dress for the occasion. Let’s get you out of those cumbersome suits.”

She frowned. “I like these suits. And they’re not cumbersome.”

Demeisen looked apologetic. “You won’t need them where we’re going. And they do constitute Culture tech. Sorry.”

The seat around Lededje gently released her from its grip. Behind her, the module’s bathroom had reformed.

Yime Nsokyi stood on the rim-rock of the shallow, jagged canyon carved into the karst. Above, the stars wheeled slowly. Some long, ragged lengths of clouds obscured patches of the sky, and in one place the cloud was lit up as though by an enormous searchlight, light spilling from an aperture above one of the outlying tributary tunnels of Iobe Cavern City. The resulting blob of uncannily glowing light, seemingly hovering just a couple of kilometres above the still-cooling desert, looked unsettlingly like a ship.

“There were people in that tower,” Himerance said quietly at Yime’s side. The avatar was monitoring signals from all over the planet while trying to establish contact with the Me, I’m Counting.

“There were?” Yime asked. She closed her eyes, shook her head.

They had commandeered five more vehicles on their way out of the city to this point, where finally the avatar felt they were safe. Himerance had commandeered them, anyway, using what-ever Effector tech was built into the human-seeming body of a ship avatar; she felt like nothing more than his baggage, hauled along from place to place.

She remembered the stone tower, way back in the early evening, when she’d had to cling on to his back as they raced down the winding steps, dashing out through a thick door in the base – Himerance had muttered something about it being locked from the inside at the time – and then, with her once more on her own feet, running out across a courtyard, down some more steps and into a crowded pedestrian street just as a pink beam lanced from the cavern ceiling and struck the tower, bringing it down. She had wanted to keep her head down and keep on walking away, but of course that would have looked suspicious, so they had to stop and stare with everybody else for a while.

“How many?” she asked.

“Two,” Himerance said. “Lovers, reading between the lines.”

Yime sighed, looked down. The canyon floor held a dirt track, scribbled like dropped string between the jagged jumble of fallen rocks and scrawny, light-blasted scrub. “One of us is spreading destruction in their wake, Himerance,” Yime said. “And I’m afraid that it’s me.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the avatar said. It looked at her. “I’m afraid I am unable to contact the ship. Not without alerting the NR vessel, anyway.”

“I see. What now, then?”

“We resort to a much older form of signalling,” Himerance said, smiling. There was a hint of a glow on the horizon to one side, where the dawn would come soon. The avatar nodded in that direction. “We know which direction the ship is coming from. With luck and good timing, this will work. Excuse me.” The avatar stepped in front of her, raising his hands, shallowly cupped, palms outwards, in front of his face, oriented towards the dim pre-dawn light-sliver over the distant hills. He looked round at her. “You would be advised to turn your back, put your hands over your eyes and close your eyelids.”

Yime held his gaze for a moment, then complied.

Nothing happened for a few seconds.

“What are—?” she was asking, when a sudden flash distracted her. It was gone almost before she registered it happening.

“All clear,” Himerance said quietly. She turned back to find the avatar waving his hands around. They were smoking. The flesh on the palms and fingers was blackened. He blew on them, smiled at her, then nodded at the ground. “We should assume the position,” he told her.

They squatted, side by side, her knees and back protesting. Oh shit, she thought, as she clasped her hands round her shins and laid her head on her knees. Here we go again.

“Won’t be for long,” he said. “One way or the other, we’ll know quite soo—”

“I don’t want him to see me,” Lededje said. “I don’t want him to be able to identify me.”

“Ah,” Demeisen said, nodding. “So you might be able to surprise him later; of course.”

She remained silent.

“So do something with your tattoo,” Demeisen said. “Scroll it over your face so it obscures your features. May I?” The avatar gestured towards her face.

She was standing in the doorway of the module’s bathroom area, dressed in the sort of casual clothes she’d been wearing and feeling perfectly happy and comfortable in ever since she’d been brought back to life, yet feeling oddly naked, vulnerable and exposed, now that she’d taken off both the outer armoured suit and gel suit within. Demeisen wore pale, loose, casual clothes.

She had thought of setting the tat to transparency, so that if Veppers saw her he wouldn’t know she had it. She still had plans to use its – by Sichultian standards – unprecedented abilities to get close to him at some point in the future, when she’d have a weapon. Let him hear of some fabulous creature with a tattoo of unheard-of complexity and subtlety, better and more exclusive than anything he had ever possessed, and have him come calling, unsuspecting.

“All right,” she said.

She watched in a reverser field as the tattoo rearranged itself on her face. In less than a second, she didn’t recognise herself. The effect was astounding; all that had happened was that the lines bunched here and thickened there, became very fine here, hinted at shading there, at gradients that didn’t really exist here and here and here, cast a sort of hinted-at ruddiness all over her skin … and just with that, with the suggestion of different planes and lines and altered surfaces, colours and textures, had easily done enough to make her face look quite completely different.

She moved her face this way and that, put the reverser onto mirror, all to check that the effect didn’t just work from one angle or when lit only from one direction. The effect of disguise remained; her face looked broader and darker, her brows thicker, her nose flatter, her lips fuller and her cheekbones less prominent.

She nodded. “That is quite good,” she conceded. She turned to the avatar. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Demeisen said. “Now, can we go?”

“As though I have any choice.”

“Sounds like a hearty affirmation to me.”

“Wait; who do we say—?” she said, but then she was staring at the dim distorted reflection of her new, stranger’s face for a moment, listening to the words “—I am?” sound loud and strange in her ears.

Before she knew it, she was standing blinking in the cool, pleasantly fragranced air of a large, bright room in what must be a tall building.

The view was of afternoon sky, puffy white clouds, and a city across a broad wooded park. The city looked like Ubruater. The room was very large and high ceilinged, with a large desk in one corner and some tall potted plants dotted about a gleaming wooden floor strewn with beautiful rugs. Those items aside, it was minimally furnished with large pieces in cream and grey. On one long seat, lounging, one arm flung over the back, the other holding a small cup, sat Joiler Veppers. To his side sat Jasken; on the other side of a low table sat a large, very straight-backed middle-aged woman Lededje half recognised. She had a child on her knee. A drone like a small smooth suitcase floated near the woman’s shoulder. A wall screen, sound muted, was cycling through news channels; fuzzy images and clear graphics of dense fleets of ships filled the screen, interspersed by well-groomed, very serious-looking presenters.

The woman waved one arm languidly towards them. “Mr. Veppers, may I present Av Demeisen, representative of the Culture ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, and guest. Ship: Mr. Joiler Veppers, Mr. Hibin Jasken, the drone Trachelmatis Olfes-Hresh Stidikren-tra Muoltz—”

“Though I answer to ‘Olf’,” the drone said, with a sort of side-ways bow. “Too much spittle ruins these floors.”

“And this is my son Liss,” the woman continued, smiling, ruffling the blond hair of the young child on her knee. He was biting on a biscuit, but spared the time to wave. Then he patted his hair back down. “I’m Buoyte-Pfaldsa Kreit Lei Huen da’ Motri,” the woman went on. “Culture ambassador to the Enablement.” She waved her arm again, towards a couch across from her, at right angles to the one that Veppers and Jasken sat on. “Please; sit down.”

“Hello, all,” Demeisen said loudly, radiating bonhomie.

Lededje watched Veppers watching her as she and the avatar approached the seating area. He looked pretty much as he had. Hair and skin as full and luxuriant as ever. Dressed more casually and soberly than he usually was when in the city; almost dully, as though he was trying to blend in for once. Nose a little pink and thin at the tip. She met his gaze only briefly, tried to look unconcerned. He was smiling at her. She recognised that particular smile. It was the one that acknowledged beauty but hinted at vulnerability, the one that was meant to say “I may be the richest man in the world but I can still be a little unsure of myself around beautiful women like yourself.” She was aware that Jasken was also looking at her, but she ignored him.

She took a couple of quick steps just before they got to the seats, so that she sat closer to Veppers than Demeisen seemed to have intended. The avatar was to her right, Veppers at an angle, left and in front. The low table held what looked like the remains of a small picnic: pots, small trays, unfolded take-away plates, cups, saucers and some scattered cutlery.

“Won’t you introduce your guest, Demeisen?” the ambassador said.

“Tsk!” the avatar said, slapping his forehead. “My manners, eh?” Demeisen waved one arm from Lededje to Veppers. “Doll, this is your rapist and murderer. Veppers, you ghastly cunt, this is Lededje Y’breq, back from the dead.”

There was a tiny pause. Lededje took only that moment to register what had just happened. Then she bounced out of the couch she had barely sat down on, scooped up the sharpest-looking knife on the table and threw herself at Veppers.

It was only later she understood how little chance she’d really had. The knife disappeared from her grip, plucked away by Demeisen, despite the fact he was on her far side from Veppers.

Jasken moved less quickly, seeming almost to hesitate for a fraction of a second, but even as Lededje got one hand on Veppers’ throat – he was shrinking back, eyes widening, as she threw herself forward – Jasken suddenly had her wrist in a grip like steel.

Meanwhile the drone Olfes-Hresh had snapped through the air to her other side, whipping a blue-glowing force field between her torso and Veppers’ and gripping her left arm, keeping that hand held up and away. Lededje heard herself make an anguished, strangling noise as she tried to close her fingers round Veppers’ throat.

She heard a brief, deep humming noise and experienced a sort of coldness wash over her, making her skin crawl, then – her hand still clutching at Veppers’ throat as he thudded back into the back of the couch – she felt herself being grabbed round the waist. She tried to kick, but her legs seemed to have lost contact with her brain; she felt hopelessly, childishly dizzy, her hand was forced back, and she was pulled away across the low table in a further scatter of food, crockery and cutlery to be plonked down on the couch, not where she had been but with Demeisen between her and Veppers, who was sitting back up now and rubbing his throat.