Surface Detail

fails utterly. That’s why it’s almost never used — hideously risky. You use it in wartime, when it’s better than nothing, and possibly a few SC agents have been subject to the process, but, otherwise, never.”

“Still, the odds were in my favour.”

“Assuredly. And it’s better than being dead.” Sensia paused. “Though this still doesn’t answer the question regarding how you ended up with a full back-up-capable neural lace in your head complete with an entanglement facility targeted to a long passedon legacy sub-system which all concerned had quite thoroughly forgotten about.” Sensia turned, looked at Lededje. “You’re frowning.”

“I just thought of something.”

She had met him — met it, as it turned out — at a reception on the Third Equatower, in the space station port of one of Sichult’s five equatorial space elevators. A Jhlupian cultural and trade mission ship had recently docked, disgorging various notables of the Jhlupe, a high-level civilisation with which Veppers had commercial links. The carousel space where the reception was held was one of a number of giant sliding tori for ever revolving underneath the rotund bulk of the station’s docks, canted windows providing an ever-changing view of the planet beneath.

The Jhlupe, she recalled thinking, gave the impression that they were all elbows. Or maybe knees; they were awkward-looking twelve-limbed creatures like giant soft-shelled land crabs, their skin or carapace a bright, lustrous green. A trio of eyes on short stalks protruded from their main bodies, which were a little larger than a human who had rolled themselves into a ball. Rather than use their many spindly legs, they floated on what looked like metallic cushions. Their translated voices issued from the same source.

This had happened ten years ago. Lededje had been sixteen at the time, just coming to terms with the fact she was a woman and that her now almost fully matured intagliation would make her an object of fascination wherever she went — indeed that this was the whole of her purpose in life, as far as Veppers and the rest of the world were concerned.

She had just started being brought along to events like this, expected to accompany Veppers as part of his retinue. It was, in its full pomp, a sizeable retinue, too. As well as his assorted bag-carriers and various bodyguards — Jasken being the last line of defence — Veppers was the sort of oligarch who seemed to feel slightly naked without his Media Relations Advisor and his Loyaltician around.

She still wasn’t entirely sure what a Loyaltician actually did, but at least they had some sort of purpose and utility. She, she had come to realise, was no more than an ornament; something to be admired, to be stared at and cooed over, an object of fascination and astonishment, her duty being to exemplify and magnify the magnificence and sheer wealth of Mr. Joiler Veppers, President and Prime Executive Officer of the Veprine Corporation; the richest man in the world, in the whole Enablement, in charge of the most powerful and profitable company that had ever existed.

The man looking at her appeared terribly old. He was either a much-altered Sichultian or a pan-human alien; the human type had proved to be one of the galaxy’s more repetitively common life-forms. Probably an alien; making yourself look as skeletally, creakingly old as that would just be perverse, weird and creepy. Nowadays even poor people could afford the sort of treatment that let you stay young-looking pretty much until you died. It kind of meant you rotted from the inside, she’d heard, but that was a small price to pay for not having to look decrepit until right at the end. And there wouldn’t be any poor people up here anyway; this was an exclusive little party, for all that there were a couple of hundred people present.

There were only ten of the Jhlupe in attendance; the rest were Sichultian business chiefs, politicians, bureaucrats and media people, plus their various servants, aides and hangers-on. She supposed she counted as a hanger-on.

She was generally expected to hang around near Veppers, impressing all with the fabulousness of the human exotica he could afford, but he and his inner negotiating circle had peeled off to talk with two of the giant crab people in a sort of bay window section of the reception room, perimeter guarded by three of the Zei — Veppers’ massive, highly enhanced clone bodyguards. Lededje had come to understand that often the principal part of her worth lay in providing a distraction; a chattel to be wielded when Veppers required, dazzling and beguiling those he wished dazzled and beguiled, often so that he could slip something past them or just get them in a generally agreeable frame of mind. The Jhlupe might be able to appreciate that she looked significantly different to everybody else around her — darker, and extravagantly tattooed — but the Sichultians were so alien to them anyway it made little extra difference, which meant she was not required to be present when Veppers was talking with them on matters of any great seriousness.

She had hardly been abandoned though, being minded by one of the other Zei and in the company of Dr. Sulbazghi.

“That man is looking at you,” Sulbazghi said, nodding towards the slightly stooped, extremely bald human a few metres away. The man looked wrong: too thin and — even stooped — too tall to be normal. His face and head appeared vaguely cadaverous. Even his clothes were strange: too tight, plain and dull to be remotely fashionable.

“Everybody looks at me, Dr. Sulbazghi,” she told him.

Dr. Sulbazghi was a blocky-looking man with dark yellow skin — quite lined, on his face — and scant, thin brown hair, characteristics that marked him as either coming from or having ancestors who’d come from Keratiy, first amongst Sichult’s sub-continents. He could easily have had himself altered to look more handsome, or at least vaguely acceptable, but had chosen not to. Lededje thought this was very strange, even freaky. The Zei, towering nearby — soberly dressed, eyes always moving, flicking his gaze all around the room as though watching some ball game invisible to everybody else — was quite good-looking in comparison, and even he was kind of scarily muscle-blown, looking like he was about to burst out of both his suit and skin.

“Yes, but he’s looking at you differently to everybody else,” the doctor said. He nodded to a waiter, had his glass replaced, took a drink. “And look; now he’s coming over.”

“Ma’am?” the Zei rumbled, deep dark eyes looking down at her from a face at least half a metre above her own. The Zei made her feel like a child.

She sighed, nodded, and the Zei let the funny-looking man approach her. Veppers would not expect her to be stand-offish with anybody at an event as exclusive as this.

“Good day. I believe you are Lededje Y’breq,” the old man said, smiling at her and nodding briefly at Dr. Sulbazghi. His voice was real, not synthesised by a translation device. Even more surprising was that his voice was so deep. Veppers had had his voice surgically improved over the years, making it deeper, more mellifluous and rich in a series of small operations and other treatments, but this man’s voice eclipsed even Veppers’ succulent tones. Bit of a shock in someone so patently an old geezer and looking like he was on his last legs. Maybe age went differently with aliens, she thought.

“Yes, I am,” she said, smiling suitably and carefully pitching her voice into the middle of the Zone of Elegance that her elocution tutor kept wittering on about. “How do you do. And you are?”

“How do you do. My name is Himerance.” He smiled, swivelled from the waist in a slightly unnatural way and looked over to where Veppers was talking to the two crab-like aliens. “I’m with the Jhlupian delegation — a pan-human cultural translator. Making sure nobody commits some terrible faux pas.”

“How interesting,” she said, happy not to be committing one herself by yawning in the geriatric’s face.

He smiled again, looked down to her feet and then back up to her face. Yes, just you give me a good long inspection, you old perv, she thought. She supposed it was partly the dress, of which it had to be said there was not much. She was destined to spend her life in revealing clothes. She had long since decided to be proud of how she looked — she would have been a beauty even without the intagliation, and if she was to bear the mark of her family’s shame then she would do that too with all the dignity she could — however, she was still growing into this new role and sometimes men looked at her in ways she didn’t appreciate. Even Veppers had begun to gaze at her as though he was somehow seeing her for the first time, and in a way that made her uncomfortable.

“I confess,” Himerance said, “I am quite fascinated by the Intagliate. And you are, if I may say so, remarkable even within that exceptional category.”

“How kind,” she said.

“Oh, I am not kind,” Himerance said.

At that point, the Zei watching over them stiffened fractionally and rumbled something that might have been