them on the desk in front of the TV. What else? Oh ... I pull on my jacket, frown, then casually take the pen from my inside pocket and toss it on the desk. Finally I sit down and spend the next five minutes doing the obvious thing in the most obvious way imaginable, just in case they're watching.
I'm about ten minutes into the 'Making of ...' documentary feature when suddenly the door opens. 'Mr.
Howard? You're wanted upstairs for a breakfast meeting.' I turn round then stand up slowly. The guard stares at me impassively from behind his mirrored aviator shades. The uniform hereabouts tends towards black — black beret, black tunic, black boots — and so do the guns: he's not actually pointing his Glock at me right now but he could bring it up and nail me to the bulkhead faster than I could cover the distance between us.
'Okay,' I say, and pause, staring at the weapon. 'Are you sure that's entirely safe'
He doesn't smile: 'Don't push your luck.'
I slowly move towards him and he steps back smartly into the corridor before gesturing me to walk ahead of him. He's not alone, and his partner's carrying a cut-down Steyr submachine gun with so many weird sensors bolted to the barrel that it looks like a portable spy satellite.
'How much is he paying you?' I ask casually, as we reach a staircase leading back up to owner territory.
Beret Number One grunts. 'We got a really good benefits package.' Pause. 'Better than the Marine Corps.'
'And stock options,' adds the other joker. 'Don't forget the stock options. How many other dot-coms offer stock options for gun-toting minions'
'You can't afford us,' his partner says casually. 'Not after the IPO, anyway.' — I can tell when they're trying to fuck with my head; I shut up. At the top of the stairs I glance over my shoulder. 'Door on the left,' says Beret Number One. 'Go on, he won't bite your head off.'
'Unless you make him eat his hash browns cold,' adds Beret Number Two.
I open the door. On the other side of it is a large, exquisitely panelled dining room. The table in the middle of the room is currently set for breakfast and I can smell frying bacon and eggs and toast and fresh coffee. My stomach tries to climb my throat and chow down on my sinuses: I am hungry. Which would be great except I'm simultaneously exposed to an appetite-suppressing sight: two stewards, the Billingtons, and their special breakfast guest, Ramona.
'Ah, Mr. Howard. Would you care for a seat?' Ellis smiles broadly. Today he's wearing one of those odd collarless Nehru suits that seem to be de rigueur for villains in bad technothrillers — but at least he hasn't shaved his head and acquired a monocle or a dueling scar. Eileen Billington is a violent contrast in her cerise business suit with shoulder pads sized for an American football quarterback. She grimaces at me like I'm something her cat's dragged in, then goes back to nibbling at her butter croissant as if she's had her stomach stapled.
I glance at Ramona as I step towards the table, and we make eye contact briefly. Someone's raided her hotel room for her luggage — she's swapped last night's gown for casuals and a freshly scrubbed girl-next-door look. 'Is that coffee?' I ask, nodding towards the pot.
'Jamaican Blue Mountain.' Billington smiles thinly.
'And yes, you may have some. I prefer not to conduct interviews while the subjects are comatose.'
The steward pours me a cup of coffee as I sit down, and I try hard not to be obvious about how desperate I am for the stuff. (Another couple of hours without it and the merciless headache would be setting in, visited on me by my caffiend in retaliation for withdrawal of his drug.) As I take the first mouthful something brushes up against my ankle. I manage to control my knee-jerk reflex; it must be the cat, right?' The coffee is as good as you'd expect from a billionaire's buffet. 'I needed that,' I admit. 'But I'm still somewhat perplexed as to why you want me here at all.' (Although it beats the hell out of the alternatives, I don't say.) 'I'd have thought that was perfectly obvious.' Billington grins, with the boyish charm of a boardroom bandit whose charisma is his most potent weapon. 'You're here because you're both young, intelligent, active professionals with good prospects. It's so hard to get the help these days — ' he nods at Eileen, who is sitting at the opposite end of the table, ignoring us by staring into inner space ' — and I've found that interviewing candidates in person is a remarkably good way of avoiding subsequent disappointments. Human resources will only get you so far, after all.'
I notice that Ramona is watching Eileen. 'What's up with her?' I ask.
'Oh, her mind wanders.' Billington picks up his knife and fork and slices into a sausage. 'Mostly all over her manufacturing sites; remote viewing is a marvelous management tool, don't you think?' The sausage bleeds juice across his plate. I suddenly realize there are no hash browns or tomatoes or mushrooms or anything like that in front of him — it's wall-to-wall dead animal flesh. 'You should try it sometime.'
Ramona looks me in the eye. 'He told me what he wants me to do, Bob.'
I raise an eyebrow. 'What, ride the grab down to the abyssal plain ...'
'With you providing a running commentary,' Billington slides in unctuously. 'After all, your current unfortunate state has certain transient advantages, does it not?' He smiles.
'He also told me what he was offering.' She looks away, distraught. 'I'm sorry, Bob. You were right.'
'You — ' I stop. **You're going to trust him?** I ask via our private channel.
**It's not just the, the binding to my aspect,** she says, tongue-tied as she hunts for words. **If I do this for him, he makes McMurray set me free. What alternative do I have?** Billington's been watching us in silence for the past short while. Now he interrupts, in my direction: 'If I may explain?' He nods at Ramona. 'You have a simple choice.
Cooperate and I will have one of my associates perform the rite of disentanglement. You two will be free of each other forever if you so choose, and free of Ms Random's daemon.
You'll both live happily ever after, aside for a period of a few weeks during which you will be guests with limited freedom of movement, while I complete my current project. After it is finished, I can promise you there will be no reprisals from your employers. Nothing can possibly go wrong. You see, I don't need to be nasty: it's a win- win situation ail round.'
I lick my dry lips. 'What if I don't want to cooperate'
Billington shrugs. 'Then you don't run my errand, and I don't pay you for it.' He spears a strip of bacon, saws it in half, and raises it to his teeth. 'Business is business, Mr.
Howard.'
I flinch as if someone's walked over my grave. He's making me an offer I can't refuse, disguising a threat of lethal violence as passive inaction. All he has to do to threaten us is let the nature of our entanglement take its course. I flash back to the yawning horror hiding behind Ramona's soul, the dead weight of Marc's body lying on top of her, suffocating and squeezing the breath from her body. Lock her up in her cabin for a few days and what will she eat? The thing inside her needs to feed. I have a sudden, disquieting vision: Ramona and myself, blurring at the edges, one confused mind in two bodies locked in separate cells, stalked by the dark side of our hybrid soul as the Other works itself up into an orgiastic fever that can only be satisfied by swallowing our minds — **I'm not giving up,** I tell her silently, then nod at Billington. 'I get the picture. Business is business; I'll cooperate.'
'Excellent. Or jolly good, as I believe you English would say.' He smiles in evident delight as he spears the other half of the strip of bacon and dangles it at knee level. A white streak blurs out of the shadows under the table and snaps the bacon right off his fork.
'Ah, Fluffy. There you are!' Billington reaches down and picks up the large, white cat, who turns his head and stares at me with sky-blue eyes that are disturbingly human. 'I believe it's about time you were introduced. Say hello to Mr.
Howard, Fluffy.'
Fluffy stares at me like I'm an oversized mouse, then hisses charmlessly.
Billington grins at me from behind six kilos of annoyed cat. 'Fluffy is what this is really about Mr. Howard. I'm only doing this to keep him in kitty kibble, after ail.'
'Kitty kibble?' I shake my head. Fluffy is wearing a diamond collar that belongs in the Tower of London with a platoon of Beefeaters standing guard over it. 'I for one welcome our new feline overlords.' I tip the cat an ironic nod.
'I thought you could cover the cat-food bill out of the petty cash?' asks Ramona.
'Fluffy has very expensive tastes.' Billington dotes on the wretched animal, which has calmed down slightly and is permitting him to scratch it behind the ears.
Eileen chooses this particularly surreal moment to quiver as if electrocuted, then she shakes her head,
