Surface Detail

The continual sputtering yellow-orange blaze of the reaction gave the light in the place an unsteady, flickering quality a lot like firelight and made the space feel stickily warm. A strange, bitter smell hung in the air.

“Lead, the element, very finely ground, just dropped through the air,” Jolicci had muttered to her as they’d entered the place and she’d remarked upon the strange sight.

Just getting in hadn’t been that easy, either. The venue was housed in a stubby, worn-looking Interstellar- class ship housed in one of the GSV’s Smallbays and the ship itself made it very clear — as they stood in the darkly echoing depths of the Bay — that this was essentially a private club, one that the GSV had no immediate jurisdiction over and a place that was certainly not under any obligation to admit anybody who any one of its patrons took exception to.

“My name is Jolicci, avatar of the Armchair Traveller,” Jolicci told the single small drone floating by the ship’s closed lower hatchway. “I think you know who I’ve come to see. Please let him know.”

“I’m doing so,” the boxy little drone said.

The ship was called the Hidden Income. It was maybe a hundred metres in length. Looking round, squinting into the gloomily cavernous depths of the Bay, Lededje reckoned the Smallbay could have squeezed in at least another three ships the same size without them touching fins or engine pods or whatever all the various bits were. Small was obviously a relative term when it came to ships and the vast hangars required to accommodate them.

Lededje looked at the little drone, hanging in front of them at head height. Well, this was a new experience, she thought. Whenever she’d been taken somewhere by Veppers — the most expensive new restaurant, the most exclusive new club, bar or venue — he and his entourage had always been ushered straight in, whether he’d had a reservation made or not, even to the ones which he didn’t own. How odd to have to come to the reputedly obsessively egalitarian Culture finally to experience the phenomenon of hanging around outside a club waiting to see if she’d be allowed in.

The hatchway dropped without warning, immediately behind the little drone. It fell so fast she expected a clang when it met the finely ridged floor of the Bay, but it seemed to cushion its descent at the last moment and landed silently.

The drone said nothing but it floated out of their way.

“Thank you,” Jolicci said as they stepped on.

Jolicci held her arm as the hatch rose smoothly up towards a small, barely lit hangar volume inside the Hidden Income. “Demeisen is a little odd,” he told her. “Even by ship avatar standards. Just be honest with him. Or her. Or it.”

“You’re not sure?”

“We haven’t met for a while. The Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints changes avatars fairly frequently.”

“What is this place anyway?”

Jolicci looked awkward. “War porn club, I think.”

Lededje would have asked more but they were met by another small drone and escorted into the place.

“Demeisen, may I present Ms. Lededje Y’breq,” Jolicci said to the man sitting at the table near the middle of the room.

The place looked like a sort of strange restaurant with substantial round tables scattered about, each featuring at their centre a trio or more of screens or a tankless holo display. A variety of people, mostly human, sat or lounged around the tables. In front of most of them, drug bowls, drinks glasses, chill pipes and small trays of food lay arranged, scattered or abandoned. The screens and holos all showed scenes of warfare. At first Lededje assumed they were screen; just movies; but after a few moments, and a few grisly sequences, she decided they might be real.

Most of the people in the room weren’t looking at the screens and holos; they were looking at her and Jolicci. The man Jolicci had addressed was at a table with several other young men, all of them with that air that implied they were, within their own subset of pan-human physiognomy, quite strikingly handsome.

Demeisen stood. He looked cadaverous, hollow-cheeked. Dark eyes with no whites, two ridges instead of eyebrows, a flat nose and mid-dark skin, scarred in places. He was only medium tall but his height was emphasised by his thinness. If his physiology was the same as a Sichultian’s then the slight bagginess about his face implied the weight loss had been recent and rapid. His clothes were dark, perhaps black: skinny trews and a tight-fitting shirt or jacket, partially closed at the neck by a thumb-sized, blood-red glittering jewel on a loosened choker.

Lededje saw him look at her right hand and so put it out to him. His hand clasped her hand, fingers with too many joints closing around like a bony cage. His touch felt very warm, almost feverish, though perfectly dry, like paper. She saw him wince and noticed that two of his fingers were crudely splinted together with a small piece of wood or plastic and what looked like a piece of knotted rag. Somehow the wince didn’t travel all the way to his face, which regarded her without obvious expression.

“Good evening,” Lededje said.

“Ms. Y’breq.” His voice sounded dry and cold. He nodded at Jolicci then indicated the seats on either side of him. “Wheloube, Emmis. If you would.”

The two young men seemed about to protest, but then did not. They rose together with a sort of brisk contempt and walked proudly away. She and Jolicci took their places. The other handsome young men stared at them. Demeisen waved one hand; the table’s holo display, which had been depicting a gruesomely realistic skirmish between some horsemen and a larger force of archers and other foot-soldiers, faded to blank.

“A rare privilege,” Demeisen murmured to Jolicci. “How goes the business of General Contacting?”

“Generally well. How’s life as a security guard?”

Demeisen smiled. “Night watching is unfailingly illuminating.”

There was a small gold tube in front of him which Lededje had assumed was the mouthpiece of an under- table chill or water pipe — there were several other mouthpieces lying or cradled on the table — but which proved to be a stick with a glowing end, unattached to anything else. Demeisen put it to his lips and sucked hard. The golden tube crackled, shortened and left a fiery glowing tip beneath a lofting of silky grey smoke.

Demeisen saw her looking and offered the stick to her. “A drug. From Sudalle. Called narthaque. The effect is similar to winnow, though harsher, less pleasant. The hangover can be severe.”

“‘Winnow’?” Lededje asked. She got the impression she’d been expected to know what this was.

Demeisen looked both surprised and unimpressed.

“Ms. Y’breq does not possess drug glands,” Jolicci explained.

“Really?” Demeisen said. He frowned at her. “Are you suffering some form of punishment, Ms. Y’breq? Or are you of that demented persuasion that believes enlightenment is to be found in the shadows?”

“Neither,” Lededje told him. “I am more of a barely legal alien.” She had hoped this might be amusing, but if it was, nobody round the table seemed to find it so. Maybe her understanding of Marain wasn’t as flawless as she’d been assuming.

Demeisen looked at Jolicci. “I’m told the young lady looks for passage.”

“She does,” Jolicci said.

Demeisen gestured with both hands, sending loops of smoke into the air from the hand holding the golden stick. “Well, Jolicci, for once you have the better of me. What on earth gives you the idea that I have turned into a taxi? Do tell. Can’t wait to hear.”

Jolicci just smiled. “There is a little more to the matter, I believe. Ms. Y’breq,” he said to her. “Over to you.”

She looked at Demeisen. “I need to get home, sir.”

Demeisen glanced at Jolicci. “Very taxi-sounding so far.” He turned back to her. “Go on, Ms. Y’breq. I cannot wait for this to achieve escape velocity from the mundanity well.”

“I intend to kill a man.”

“That’s a little more uncommon. Again though, one imagines a taxi would suffice, unless the gentleman concerned can only be dispatched using a warship. A state-of-the-art Culture warship, at that, if I may make so