'Tell me what you know,' Fassin suggested. 'I'll fill in what I can.'
'They want lots of warships, Fass.' Sal gave a sad-looking smile. 'Lots and lots of warships. We're to turn out as many as we can for as long as we can, though they want them sooner rather than later, and any advanced projects that might take longer than a year, even existing ones, are being deprioritised. We're to gas-line a whole bunch of stuff for—' Sal paused, cleared his throat and waved one hand. 'Hell, idiot stuff; we're to rough-cut a whole load of civilian conversions: armed merchantmen, one-shot cloud-miners, tooled-up cruise liners and so on. We didn't even do that in the last Emergency. So whatever it is, it's serious, it's presumably what our military friends would call credible, and it's not very far away. Over to you.'
'Lot I can't tell you,' Fassin said carefully. 'Most of which I guess wouldn't interest you anyway.' He wondered how much he could say, how much he needed to say. 'Supposedly to do with something called the Epiphany-Five Disconnect.'
Sal raised an eyebrow. 'Hmm. Bit away. Wonder why they'd bother? Richer pickings inward of where they are.'
'But a significant part of the Summed Fleet is on the way. We're told.' Fassin grinned.
'Mm-hmm. I see. And what about you?' Sal asked, dipping closer to Fassin, voice dropping. 'What's your part in all this?'
Fassin wondered how much the continual rush of noise produced by the waves below would mask their words, if anybody was listening from far away. Since he'd arrived he'd showered and put on a change of clothes he'd requested from the house - caught without the necessary means of attire due to an extended stay away from home, he'd explained, needlessly. He got the impression the servants were perfectly used to providing clothes of varying sizes and for whatever sex to house guests. Still, even without the proscribed horror of nanotech, it was possible to make bugs very small indeed these days. Had the Shrievalty or the Hierchon's people put some sort of trace or mike on him? Had Sal? Did Sal put surveillance on his guests as a matter of course? His host was waiting for an answer.
Fassin looked into the drink. A few small bubbles of gas rose to the surface and broke, giving some tiny proportion of the substance of Earth to the atmosphere of a planet twenty thousand light years away. 'I just did my job, Sal. Delved, talked, took away what the Dwellers would let me take away. Most of which was not momentous, not important, not going to change anything much at all, not something everybody would want or risk everything for.' He looked Saluus Kehar in the eye. 'Just stumbled my way through life, you know? Over whatever turned up. Never knowing what would lead to what.'
'Whoever does?' Sal asked, then nodded. 'But I see.'
'Sorry I can't really tell you too much more.'
Sal smiled and looked out at the slope of artificial surf, the pandemonium of waves beyond and the sheer cliffs further away still, brown-black beneath a hazy azure sky.
'Ah, your minder,' he said. The esuit of Colonel Hatherence of the Shrievalty appeared to one side, low over the foam, floating out over the mad froth of waters like a great fat grey and gold wheel. Whirling vane-sets on either side of her esuit kept the Colonel from sinking into the maelstrom. For all its massive size when you were standing next to it, the esuit looked very small from up here.
'She giving you any problems?'
'No. She's okay. Doesn't insist I salute her or call her Ma'am all the time. Happy to keep things informal.' All the same, he was hoping to get the Colonel out of the way somehow, either before or once he got down into Nasqueron.
Fassin watched the Colonel as she picked her way across the scape of waves. 'But can you imagine trying to sneak into Boogeytown with that dogging your every move?' he asked. 'Even just for one last night?'
Sal snorted. 'The dives and the ceilings are too low.'
Fassin laughed. This is like sex, he thought. Well, like the seduction-scenario thing, like the whole stupid mating dance of will-you-won't-you, do-you-don't-you rigmarole. Tempting Sal, leading him on ...
He wondered if he'd seemed sufficiently mysterious yet hinted at maybe being available. He needed this man.
Dinner with Sal, his wife, their concubines and some business associates, including - amongst the latter - a whule, a jajuejein and a quaup. The talk was of new attacks on distant outposts, martial law, delays in comms, restrictions in travel and who would gain and who would lose from the new Emergency (nobody on any of the couches seemed to anticipate losing more than a few trivial freedoms for a while). Colonel Hatherence sat silent in one corner, needing no external sustenance, thank you, but happy, indeed honoured, to be there while they consumed nourishment, communicated conversationally and intercoursed socially while she continued her studies (much-needed!), screening up on Nasqueron and its famous Dwellers.
Drinks, semi-narcotic foods, drug bowls. A human acrobat troupe entertained them, floodlit beyond the dining room's balcony.
'No, I'm serious!' Sal shouted at his guests, gesturing at the acrobats, swinging through the air on ropes and trapezes. 'If they fall they almost certainly die! So much air in the water you can't float. Sink right down. Get caught up in the under-turbulence. No, idiot!' Sal told his wife. 'Not enough air to breathe!'
Some people left. Drinks later, just the humans. To Sal's trophy room, corridors and rooms too small, sorry, for Colonel Hatherence (not minding; so to sleeping; good nights!). Sal's wife, going to bed, and the remaining few. Soon just the two of them, overlooked by the stuffed, lacquered, dry-shrunk or encased heads of beasts from dozens of planets.
'You saw Taince? Just before the portal went?'
'Dinner. Day or two before. Equatower.' Fassin waved in what might have been the general direction of Borquille. You could see the lights of the Equatower from the house, a thin stipple of red climbing into the sky, sometimes perversely clearer above when the lower atmosphere was hazed and the higher beacons shone down at a steeper angle through less air.
'She okay?' Sal asked, then threw his head back and laughed too loudly. 'As though it matters. It was two centuries ago. Still'
'Anyway, she was fine.'
'Good.'
They drank their drinks. Cognac. Also from Earth, long, long ago. Far, far away.
Fassin got swim.
'Oh shit,' he said, 'I've got Swim.'
'Swim?' said Saluus.
'Swim,' Fassin said. 'You know; when your head kind of seems to swim because you suddenly think, "Hey, I'm a human being but I'm twenty thousand light years from home and we're all living in the midst of mad-shit aliens and super-weapons and the whole fucking bizarre insane swirl of galactic history and politics!" That: isn't it weird?'
'And that's what? Swing? Swirl?' Sal said, looking genuinely confused.
'No, Swim!' Fassin shouted, not able to believe that Sal hadn't heard of this concept. He thought everybody had. Some people - most people, come to think of it, or so he'd been told - never got Swim, but lots did. Not just humans, either. Though Dwellers, mind you, never. Wasn't even in their vocabulary.
'Never heard of it,' Sal confessed.
'Well, didn't imagine you might have.'
'Hey, you want to see something?'
'Whatever it is, I cannot fucking wait.'
'Come with me.'
'Last time I heard that—'
'We agreed no more of those.'
'Fuck! So we did. Total retraction. Show me what you got to show me.'
'Walk this way.'
'Ah now, just fuck off.'
Fassin followed Sal through to the inner recess of his study. It was kind of what he might have expected if he'd given the matter any thought: lots of wood and softly glowing pools of light, framed stuff and a desk the size of a sunken room. Funny-looking twisted bits of large and gleaming metal or some other shiny substance sitting in one corner. Fassin guessed these were starship bits.
'There.'
'Where? What am I supposed to be looking at?'
'This.' Sal held up a very small twisted-looking bit of metal mounted on a wooden pl
inth.
Fassin tried very hard not to let his shiver show. He was nothing like as drunk as he was trying to appear to be.
'Yeah? An whassat?' (Overdoing it, but Sal didn't seem to notice.)
Saluus held the piece of odd-looking metal up before Fassin's eyes. 'This is that thing I got out of that fucking downed ship, my man.' Sal looked at it, swallowed and took a deep breath. Fassin saw Sal's lip tremble. 'This is what—'
The fucker's going to break down, Fassin thought. He slapped one hand on Sal's shoulder. 'This is no good,' he told him. 'We need different, we need, I don't know; something. We need not this, not what is before us here. We need something different. Elsewhen or elsestuff or elsewhere. This might be my last night of freedom, Sal.' He gripped the other man hard by the shoulder of his perfectly tailored jacket. 'I'm serious! You don't know how bad things might get for me! Oh fuck, Sal, you don't know how bad things might get for all of us, and I can't fucking tell you, and this could be my last night of fun anywhere, and . . . and . . . and you're showing me some fucking coat hook or something, and I don't know . . .' He swiped weakly at the twisted piece of metal, patting it away and still missing. Then he sniffed and drew himself up. 'Sorry,' he said, soberly. 'Sorry, Sal.' He patted the other man's shoulder. 'But this is maybe my last, ah, night of fun, and . . . look, I feel totally charged for anything - wish Boogeytown was right outside, really do, but on the other hand it's been a long few days and maybe - no, not maybe. Maybe definitely. In fact, not that, just plain definitely the sensible thing to do is just go to bed and—'
'You serious?' Sal said, dropping the metal piece on its wooden plinth onto the desk behind him.
'About sleep?' Fassin said, gesturing wildly. 'Well, it-—'
'No, you moron! About Boogeytown!'
'What? Eh? I didn't mention Boogeytown!'
'Yes, you did!' Sal said, laughing.
'I did? Well, fuck!'
Sal had a flier. Automatic to the point of being nearly banned under the AI laws. Loaded with repair mechanisms that were not quite nanotech but only by such a tiny-tiny-tiny little bit. Deeply civilian but with total military clearance. If a Grand Fleet Admiral of the Summed Fucking Fleet stepped into this baby and toggled his authority it would only decrease the fucker's all-areas, multi-volumes access profile. Down in the hangar deck. Walk this way, har har.
They left the top down part of the way, to clear their heads. It was very, very cold.
They set down somewhere where litter blew about under the fans of the flier. Fassin hadn't thought there was still such a thing as litter.
Boogeytown was much as he remembered it. They hit the lows, looking for highs. They trawled the bowl-bars and narctail parlours, coming up with a brimming catch of buzz and girls, Fassin meanwhile trying to edge Sal in a certain bar's direction, while Sal - vaguely recalling this wasn't supposed to be just fun but also a way of getting his old pal Fass to open up with more potentially useful and lucrative details about whatever the fuck was going on - tried to get his old-new best buddy to move in a certain informational direction but without much success and anyway with decreasing amounts of concern and an increasing feeling of oh-who-gives-a-fuck?
Fassin too was getting frustrated, still angling for one more move and one particular streetlet, one particular bar, but they were here now in this diamond-walled emporium called the Narcateria where the sleaze was so coolly glitz it almost hurt, surrounded by people who hadn't seen Sal in so long and just had to keep him where he was, don't you dare go away, you wicked man you! And is this your friend? Where you been keeping him? Can I sit here, hmm? Me too me too! So eventually he had to stumble away and make a call in a private public booth and then head for the toilet where he threw up in a thin burning stream all the alcohol he'd drunk since the last time he'd been to the loo (over the hole, so it looked and sounded authentic), then wash his face and rejoin the drunken stoned-out fray of breath-catching loveliness, waiting for the right girl, the one all this had been about, all of it: asking to go to Sal's in the first place, then getting him drunk and seeming to get drunk himself (which he was, but not that drunk) and then dropping hints about Boogeytown, all so that he could get away and get here and see this one particular girl . . .
. . . Who finally appeared nearly an hour later when he was just starting to despair but there she was, perfect and calm and quietly beautiful as ever, though looking quite different, again, with white-gold hair swinging heavy as the real 24-carat article about her near-triangular face, chin just made for holding, strawberry-bruise lips for kissing, tiny little nose for nuzzling, cheeks for stroking, eyes for gazing into (depths, ah, depths!) brows for licking, forehead for licking too, licking dry of sex-sweat after - oo! oo! oo! just too strenuous a session!
Aun Liss.
The one real love of his life, his controlling passion.
Older again but not as old as she should be. Looking different, living different, being different, called different. Called Ko now (and that was all), not Aun Liss, but she would always be Aun Liss to him. No need to say her real name. A lot of what passed between them wasn't said anyway. Dressed in salarygirl clothes. Nothing special, revealing or provocative.
Nevertheless.
She held out her hand.
Nearby, surrounded by - actually, nearly drowning in - utter human female and super-stimulus hyper-pulchritude loveli-nessence, even Sal looked impressed.
'Fass, you dog!'
Aun Liss was still holding out her hand.
Back in Sal's flier. Sal was in the front, being grievously attended to by the infamous Segrette Twins, moaning.
Fassin and Aun in the back seat, utterly happy to appear so archetypical. They kissed for a long time, then - looking round, shrugging at the front-seat antics (the flier at this point not really going anywhere, circling in a holding pattern - a clinching pattern, Aun Liss suggested) - she rose up and straddled him, his hands up underneath the light dress she wore, fingers still kneading her back ... as they continued to do once they were finally returned to the idiot Kehar house poised over the column of water just as, Aun pointed out, she was poised over his column. (This aloud, for the benefit of anybody listening. They both laughed, not too loudly, he hoped.) Meanwhile she kept the dress on still, even in the heat of it, with his fingers pressing, kneading, moving above her arched spine producing little half-pained gasps until later when they were finally just lying together under a thin sheet she shucked off the dress and he just held her.
And this is what, over the course of those several hours, their fingers said, drawing and tapping out the private, effectively unbuggable code they had used for hundreds of years, since she first became his control, his link:
U STILL MY CNNECTN?
They were in the private booth deep inside the Narcateria, just kissing. She slid her hands between his jacket and shirt, knuckled back, YS. WOT U GOT 4 I?
1ST, I MAJR IN OCULA NW. GOT 2NDD.
Y?
COS I FND SMTING IN THE FMOUS DLVE. BOUT THE DWLLR LIST. YOU HRD OF?
VGLY.
2ND SHIP THERY, he sent. SCRT 'HOLE NTWRK.
WAIT, she sent back. WORMHOLE NTWRK?
YS. SCRT 1.
There was a pause. She kept on kissing him. Her fingers sent, YR CRZY.
Walking to the flier, hands up each other's jackets:
OL AFTR WHTI FND. E-5 DISCONINVDS IN 6 MNTHS TO 1 YR. THEY THNK BYNDRS WITH THEM. TRU?
CMPLCTD. SUM R, SUM RNT.
MRGNCY COS OF THS.
U STRTD THE FKNG MRGNCY?
YS. SORY. SUMD FLT ON WAY. BIG BIT AHED OF ESHIP. HYR IN 2 YRS MAYB. USD A.I. TRNSMTD FRM SUMD FLT 2 TEL US OL THIS.
AN A.I.?
YS.
HYPCRTS.
Then, in the flier:
WOT NXT 4 U?
DLVE SOON AGEN. WITH CHF C-R GNSRL, OERL SHRVLTY CNL & C-R PGS YRNVIC. TRY FND RST OF WHTVR WS I FND IN 1ST PLACE.
Straddled-ridden like that, they could talk, too.
'
How's that for you?' she whispered.
'Oh, that's very good. And you?'
'As above.'
WHT DID U FND?
DNT NO XCTLY. I NO RL2E AT TIME. OL CAME OUT MUCH L8TR WHN JELTCK DID ANLYS. SMTHNG ABT THIS 2ND SHIP & THNG CALLD A TRANSFORM, SPSD 2 MAK RST OF DWLR LIST MEAN SMTHNG. JLTCK SNT FLEET 2 TRY FIND. NO FIND. FLT WRKD.
She felt him pause, tense. She sent:
WOT?
ALGDLY THIS ALSO Y BYNDRS WRKD PORTL. TRU?
DNT NO. IJST A MSG GRL. She paused. SO U SAY NOT ONLY U START THIS MRGNCY, U COSD LAST 1 2 & GOT PRTL DSTRYD?
YS. GES I JST ACCDNT PRN.
FKNG HEL.
'Very good to see you again.'
'Copy that.'
'We should do this more often.'
'Indeed we should. Now, shh.'
BUT IF SO & THIS KNWN, Y I NOT ASKD 2 DLV & FIND MOR INFO 4 GUD GYS ERLYR?
NO IDEA.
OL NONSNS ANYWY BUT THEY WNT I 2 LUK.
SO LUK.
& WHT U MYN SUM BYNDRS 4 E-5 DISCON, SUM NOT?
FACTNS.
FACTIONS? YR GVNG I FKNG FACTIONS? RLY BEST U CN DO?
KYP BING PASSYN8. CVR SLPNG.
He made passionate moves, uttered passionate sounds.
In his bed, his hands at the small of her back:
I GO 2 3RD FURY MOON 3 DAYS TYM.
. . . OH.
OH?
KND OF A RMR. I SHLDNT EVN NO. MAYB ATK ON NASQ MNS.
NASQ MOONS? NOT 'GLNTN?
NO. LTL MNS.
CN U GET WRD, NO ATCK ON 3RD FURY MOON? NO ATK ON ANY SEERS?
The Algebraist Page 16
