Jezzibella tried to smile at him, but the whole charade of pandering to him bored her now. She was standing, stark naked, in the middle of the green room while Libby Robosky, her personal image consultant, worked on her dermal scales. The bitek covering was a lot more subtle than a chameleon layer, allowing her to modify her body’s whole external texture rather than simply changing colour. For some numbers she needed to have soft, sensitive skin, a young girl who quivered at her first lover’s touch; then there was the untainted look, a body which was naturally graceful without workouts and fad diets (like the girl she’d seen through the hall’s sensor); and of course the athlete/ballerina body, supple, hard, and muscular—big favourite with the boys. It was the feel of her which everyone out there in the hall wanted to experience; Jezzibella in the flesh.
But the tiny scales had a short lifetime, and each one had to be annealed to her skin separately. Libby Robosky was an undoubted wizard when it came to applying them, using a modified medical nanonic package.
“You don’t have to meet them,” Jezzibella told the boy patiently. “I can take care of them by myself.”
“I don’t want to be left alone all night. How come I can’t pick someone out of the audience for myself?”
As the reporters had been allowed to discover, he really was only thirteen. She’d brought him into the entourage back on Borroloola, an interesting plaything. Now after two months of daily tantrums and broodiness the novelty value had been exhausted. “Because this is the way it has to be. I need them for a reason. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“Okay. So why don’t we do it now, then?”
“I have a show in a quarter of an hour. Remember?”
“So what?” Emmerson challenged. “Skip it. That’ll cause a real publicity storm. And there won’t be any backlash ’cos we’re leaving.”
“Leroy,” she datavised. “Take this fucking brat away before I split his skull open to find out where his brain went.”
Leroy Octavius waddled back over to where she stood. His bulky frame was clad in a light snakeskin jacket that was an optimistic size and a half too small. The tough, thin leather squeaked at every motion. “Come on, son,” he said in a gruff voice. “We’re supposed to leave the artists to it this close to a show. You know how spaced out they get about performing. How about you and I have a look at the food they’re laying on next door?”
The boy allowed himself to be led away, Leroy’s huge hand draped over his shoulder, casually forceful.
Jezzibella groaned. “Shit. Why did I ever think his age made him exciting?”
Libby’s indigo eyes fluttered open, giving her a quizzical look. Out of all the sycophants, hangers-on, outright parasites, and essential crew, Jezzibella enjoyed Libby the most. A grandmotherly type who always dressed to emphasise her age, she had the stoicism and patience to absorb any tantrum or crisis with only the vaguest disinterested shrug.
“It was your hormones which went a-frolicking at the sight of his baby dick, poppet,” Libby said.
Jezzibella grunted, she knew the rest of the entourage hated Emmerson. “Leroy,” she datavised. “I paid that hospital we visited enough fucking money; have they got a secure wing we could leave the juvenile shit in?”
Leroy gave a backwards wave as he left the green room. “We’ll talk about what we’re going to do with him later,” he replied.
“You fucking finished yet?” Jezzibella asked Libby.
“Absolutely, poppet.”
Jezzibella composed herself, and ordered her neural nanonics to send a sequence of encoded impulses down her nerves. There was an eerie sensation of wet leather slithering on the top of her rib cage, all four limbs shivered. Her shoulders straightened of their own accord, belly muscles tightened, sinuous lines hardened under skin that was turning a deeper shade of bronze.
She dug deep into her memory, finding the right sensation of pride and confidence. Combined with the physique it was synergistic. She was adorable, and knew it.
“Merrill!” she yelled. “Merrill, where the fuck’s my first-act costume?”
The flunky hurried over to the big travelling trunks lined up along a wall and began extracting the requisite items.
“And why haven’t you shitheads started warming up yet,” she shouted at the musicians.
The green room abruptly became a whirlwind of activity as everyone found legitimate employment. Private, silent datavises flashed through the air as they all discussed the impending frailty of Emmerson’s future. It diverted them from how precarious their own tenures were.
• • •
Ralph Hiltch accessed various reports as he flew back over the city. The priority search which Diana Tiernan’s department had initiated was producing good results. According to the city’s route and flow road processor network, fifty-three lorries had left Moyce’s that evening. The AIs were now chasing after them.
Within seven minutes of Diana assigning the lorries full priority, twelve had been located, all outside the city. The coordinates were datavised into the Strategic Defence Command up in Guyana, and sensor satellites triangulated the targets for low-orbit weapons platforms. A dozen short-lived violet starbursts blossomed across Xingu’s southern quarter.
By the time Ralph’s hypersonic landed another eight had been added to the total. He’d stripped off his damaged lightweight armour suit in the plane, borrowing a dark blue police fatigue one-piece. It was baggy enough to fit over his medical nanonic package without restriction. But for all the package’s support, he was still limping as he made his way over to Hub One.
“Welcome back,” Landon McCullock said. “You did a good job, Ralph. I’m grateful.”
“We all are,” Warren Aspinal said. “And that’s not just a politician speaking. I have a family in the city, three kids.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ralph sat down next to Diana Tiernan. She managed a quick grin for him. “We’ve been checking up on the night shift at Moyce’s,” she said. “There were forty-five on duty this evening. As of now, the AT Squads have accounted for twenty-nine during the assault, killed and captured.”
“Shit. Sixteen of the bastards loose,” Bernard Gibson said.
“No,” Diana said firmly. “We think we may have got lucky. I’ve hooked the AIs into the fire department’s mechanoids; their sensors are profiled for exploring high temperature environments. So far they’ve located a further five bodies in the building, and there’s still thirty per cent which hasn’t been covered. That accounts for all but eleven of the night shift.”
“Still too many,” Landon said.
“I know. But we’re certain that six of the lorries zapped so far contained a shift member. Their processors and ancillary circuits were suffering random failures. It matched the kind of interference which Adkinson’s plane suffered.”
“And then there were five,” Warren Aspinal said quietly.
“Yes, sir,” Diana said. “I’m pretty sure they’re in the remaining lorries.”
“Well I’m afraid ‘pretty sure’ isn’t good enough when we’re facing a threat which could wipe us out in less than a week, Chief Tiernan,” said Leonard DeVille.
“Sir.” Diana didn’t bother to look at him. “I wasn’t making wild assumptions. Firstly, the AIs have confirmed that there was no other traffic logged as using Moyce’s since Jacob Tremarco’s taxi arrived.”
“So they left on foot.”
“Again, I really don’t think that is the case, sir. That whole area around Moyce’s is fully covered by security sensors, both ours and the private systems owned by the companies in neighbouring buildings. We accessed all the relevant memories. Nobody came out of Moyce’s. Just the lorries.”
“What we’ve seen tonight is a continuing pattern of attempted widespread dispersal,” Landon McCullock said. “The embassy trio have been constant in their attempt to distribute the energy virus as broadly as possible. It’s a very logical move. The wider it is spread, the longer it takes for us to contain it, and the more people can be infected, in turn making it more difficult for us to contain. A nasty spiral.”
“They only have a limited amount of time in the city,” Ralph chipped in. “And the city is where we have the
