Surface Detail

stately progress marked by little lofted tufts and wisps of vapour which seemed to cling longingly to its tubes and spars as though reluctant to let go. The giant Wheel left a temporarily cleared track through the mist behind it like a wake, affording glimpses of the land beneath before the silent grey presence flowed slowly back in.

Veppers floated in the pool, looking out over the misted landscape to where some high, rounded hills rose out of the grey, maybe twenty or more kilometres away. The water around him trembled and pulsed as the pool car’s shock absorbers struggled to iron out the Halo 7’s trundling progress across the mist-swaddled terrain.

The Halo 7 was a Wheel, a vehicle built to navigate the great plains, rolling hills and shallow inland seas of Obrech, Sichult’s principal continent. One hundred and fifty metres in diameter by twenty across, the Halo 7 looked entirely like a giant fairground wheel which had broken free from its supports and gone rolling across the land.

The Veprine Corporation’s Planetary Heavy Industries Division (Sichult) constructed several standard sizes and types of Wheel. Most were mobile hotels, taking the rich on cruises across the continent; the Halo 7, Veppers’ own privately owned vehicle, was the grandest and most impressive of the largest spokeless class, being no greater in diameter than the rest but possessing thirty-three rather than thirty-two gondolas.

The Halo 7’s separate cars held sumptuous bedroom suites, banqueting halls, reception rooms, two separate pool and bath complexes, gyms, flower-filled terraces, kitchens, kitchen gardens, a command and communication pod, power and services units, garages for ground vehicles, hangars for fliers, boat-houses for speedboats, sailboats and minisubs, and quarters for crew and servants. Much more than a mode of transport, the Halo 7 was a mobile mansion.

Rather than being fixed to the Wheel’s rims, the thirty-three cars could alter position, either at Veppers’ whim or according to the dictates of the landscape beneath; negotiating — and especially traversing — a steep slope, where there was no ready-made Wheel road, all the heavier pods could be brought down close to the ground, preventing the device from becoming dangerously top-heavy and so allowing it take on angles of lean that looked both unlikely and alarming. Perched at the top in a gimballed observation gondola during such a manoeuvre, Veppers had been known to take great delight in terrifying guests with that trick. Getting from one pod to another could mean as little as a single step if the cars had been brought up against each other, or a ride in one of several circumferential elevator units that moved round a smaller-diameter ring fixed inside the Wheel’s principal structure.

Veppers gazed out at the distant blue hills, trying to remember if he owned them or not.

“Are we still within the estate?” he asked.

Jasken was standing at the pool-side, keeping politely out of his master’s view. Jasken was scanning the misty landscape, the Enhancing Oculenses covering his eyes zooming in on details, revealing the ground’s mostly chilly heat signature and showing him any radio sources. “I’ll ask,” he said, and muttered something, putting a finger to the comms bud attached to his ear as he listened. “Yes, sir,” he told Veppers. “Captain Bousser informs us we are about thirty kilometres inside the estate’s boundaries.” Jasken used a small keypad on the back of the cast covering his left arm to call up the requisite overlay on the view the Oculenses were presenting. Thirty klicks was about right.

The Halo 7’s commander, Captain Bousser, was female. Jasken suspected she had been hired for her pleasing looks rather than on merit, so, where possible, he checked any assertions she made, waiting, so far unsuccessfully, for a mistake he could use to convince Veppers of her unfitness for the post.

“Hmm,” Veppers said. Now he thought about it, he didn’t really care whether he owned the hills or not. His right hand went to his face without him thinking about it, his fingers very gently tracing the prosthetic covering that had replaced the tip of his nose while the flesh and cartilage re-grew beneath. It was a pretty good fake, especially with a bit of makeup on top, but he was still self-conscious about it. He’d cancelled a few engagements and postponed many more in the days since the debacle in the opera house.

What a mess that had been. They hadn’t been able to keep it completely quiet, of course, especially as he’d had to cancel that evening’s engagement at such short notice. Dr. Sulbazghi had come up with their cover story, which was that Jasken had accidentally sliced the tip of his master’s nose off while they were fencing.

“That’ll have to do,” Veppers agreed as he lay on the treatment couch in the clinic suite deep within the Ubruater town house, less than an hour after the girl had attacked him. He was painfully aware that his voice sounded strange, strangled and nasal. Sulbazghi was bandaging his nose and prepping it with coagulant, antiseptic and a stabilising preparatory gel; a specialist plastic surgeon had been summoned and was on his way. The girl’s body had already been bagged and placed in a mortuary freezer. Dr. Sulbazghi would see to its disposal later.

Veppers was still shaking a little, despite whatever Sulbazghi had given him for the shock. He lay there, thinking, as the doctor fussed about him. He was waiting for Jasken to return; he was on his way back from the opera house having made sure everything had been squared away and everybody had their stories straight.

He shouldn’t have killed the girl. It had been stupid, impetuous. On the rare occasion that sort of thing was necessary, you just never got involved directly; that was what delegation was for, what people like Jasken — and whoever he employed specifically for such tasks — was for. Always keep it deniable, always at a remove, always have a true alibi.

But, he’d been too excited by the chase, by the knowledge that the runaway was still so close, and so trapped within the opera house, practically waiting to be caught. Of course he’d wanted to be part of the hunt, the capture!

Still, he shouldn’t have killed her. It wasn’t just how much she’d been worth, how much wasted effort and money she represented, it was the embarrassment of having lost her. People would notice her continued absence. The cover story after she’d run off from the couturier’s had been that she was ill — the PR people had hinted at some rare ailment that only the intagliated suffered from.

Now they would either have to claim she’d died of it — meaning problems with the Surgeon’s Guild, the insurance people and possibly lawyers for the clinic that had overseen her intagliation in the first place — or go with the even more humiliating though partially true narrative that she’d run away. He’d already entertained the idea that they might claim she’d been kidnapped, or allowed to join a nunnery or whatever, but both would lead to too many complications.

At least he’d got the knives back. They were still tucked into the waistband of his trews. He touched their hilts again, reassuring himself they were still there. Jasken had wanted to dispose of them, the idiot. No need to dispose of the murder weapon when you were going to dispose of the body properly. Stealing the knives; the sheer fucking effrontery of it! In the end she’d been nothing more than an ungrateful little thief. And: biting him! Maybe even trying to bite his throat out and kill him! How dare the little bitch do that? How dare she put him in this situation!

He was glad he’d killed her. And it was a first for him, he realised; directly taking a life was one of the few things he’d never done. When this had all calmed down, when his nose had re-grown and things had gone back to normal, he’d still have that, he supposed.

He remembered that until he’d first taken her against her will, maybe ten years or so ago, he’d never raped anybody before either — there had been no need — so he’d got two firsts from her. If he was being generous, he would reluctantly concede that that was some sort of compensation for all the pain and inconvenience she was putting him through.

Quite a thing, though, doing something like that, actually plunging a knife into somebody and feeling them die. It shook you, no matter how strong you were. He could still see the look in the girl’s eyes as she’d died.

Jasken came in then, removing his Oculenses and nodding to the two Zei guarding the clinic suite’s door.

“You’ll have to be injured too, Jasken,” Veppers told him immediately, glaring at his chief of security as though it really had all been his fault. Which, now he thought about it, was true, as it had ultimately been Jasken’s responsibility to keep an eye on the scribble-child and make sure she didn’t go running off anywhere. “We’re going to say you took my nose off while we were fencing, but we can’t have people thinking you actually bested me. You’ll have to have an eye out.”