Surface Detail

“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.