Surface Detail

She thought. After a moment she said, “Would you help me kill Veppers?”

He put his head back and laughed, loudly. The simulation did a convincing job of making his laughter echo round the generously proportioned cabin. “Ah, if only,” he said, shaking his head. “You can cause your own major assassinatory incident, sweetheart, without making it a diplomatic one involving the Culture.”

“You can’t offer me any help at all?”

“I’m offering to get you there, quicker, and without the fucking slap-drone.”

“But no help in doing what I want to do when I get there.”

He slapped himself on the forehead. “Fuck me! What more do you want?”

She shrugged. “Help with killing him.”

He put one long-fingered hand over his eyes for a moment. “Well,” he said on an inward breath, taking his hand away and looking at her, “that is the only catch. Much as I’d like to offer you one of my own drones, or a knife missile or some magic force-field buttons for your cardigan or an enchanted gusset or what-ever the fuck, for protection if nothing else… I can’t, because in the unlikely event you do waste this fucker, or try to but fail — a much more plausible scenario, if we’re being honest here — and they find any Culture tech on you, suddenly we look like the bad guys, and — hilarious though that would be in so many ways, obviously — even I draw the line at that sort of shit. Unless I’m requested to by a properly constituted committee of my strategically informed intellectual superiors, naturally. That would be entirely different.”

“So why offer to help me at all?”

He grinned. “For my own amusement. To see what you get up to, to annoy the SAMWAF and Jolicci and all the other constipated smug-meisters of Contact and also because I’m heading in that direction anyway.” He lifted both eyebrow creases. “Don’t ask why.”

“And how do you know all this?”

“You told me quite a lot of it last night, babe. The rest…” He spread his arms again. “I’m just well connected. I know Minds that know stuff. Specifically, exactly this sort of stuff.”

“You’re part of Special Circumstances.”

He waggled one hand. “Technically no ships or Minds really are, not in an organised, hierarchic, signed-up- for-the-duration kind of way; all that any of us can ever do is just help out as best we can, making whatever small contribution we are able to as specific, time-limited opportunities present themselves. But yes.” He sighed, somewhere between patiently and in exasperation. “Look, I don’t have for ever; even this bumpkin of a taxi will twig to me being here eventually, so I’m going to go. You have a think. The offer stands for the next eight hours; local midnight. After that I really need to dash on ahead. But just you wait; they’ll spring this meet-up with the Me, I’m Counting or something representing it.” He sat back, nodding. “Semsarine Wisp. That’s the name to look out for: the Semsarine Wisp.” He flapped one long hand at her. “You can go back to sleep now.”

She woke with a start, sat up. The cabin lights reacted to her movement, turning slowly up from near total darkness to a pervasive gentle glow. The noise of the ship made a distant shushing noise all about her.

She lay back down in her little organised storm of well-behaved snowflakes.

After a few moments the lights faded away too.

“Whereabouts?”

“Hmm?”

“Where would this rendezvous take place?” she asked Kallier-Falpise. They were in a part of the ship’s lounge shaped like a giant bay window. She sat at a table, eating a meal that was part breakfast, part early supper. A breeze blew about her, bringing smells of the ocean. She had rolled the cuffs of her pyjamas up to feel the soft warm wind on her calves and forearms. The concave wall around her impersonated the view of a blue- green cloudless sky, a ruffled green ocean and snow-white breakers crashing onto the pale blue sand of a wide, deserted beach framed by gently swaying trees. Even the floor beneath her bare feet was taking part in the illusion, ridging and roughening to become a convincing impression of polished but uneven wooden boards, just like you’d find at a beach-side villa or resort somewhere nice and hot and far away. She’d almost finished the plate of completely unidentifiable but perfectly delicious fresh fruits. She’d been ravenous.

“There’s a place in a part of the sky called the Semsarine Wisp,” the little drone told her, as though she really didn’t need to bother her pretty little head about such boring details. “That’s where the rendezvous is expected to take place.”

“Mm-hmm.” She drank some water, sloshed it round her teeth.

The drone, floating over the table near her right hand, was silent for a moment, as though thinking. “You’ve… you’ve heard of it?”

She swallowed the water, dabbed at her mouth with a fluid-soft napkin. She gazed out at the fake view of the beach and sea, then looked at the little cream-coloured drone and smiled. “Would you ask the ship to contact the General Offensive Unit Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, please?”

“What? Why?”

“Go on; say it’s irregular.”

“Irregular is the very least of what it is. It’s rude, it is suspicious.” The boxy ship’s drone swivelled in mid-air, turning away from the grinning figure of Demeisen to point itself at Lededje. “Ms. Y’breq,” it said frostily. “I cannot emphasise strongly enough that I think this would be a profoundly unwise move; frankly, even a stupid and dangerous one. I’m sorry to be so blunt.” It glanced at Demeisen. “I thought you had seen something of how this person, this ship is liable to treat innocent human beings. I cannot believe that you are even contemplating such a hazardous and foolhardy choice.”

“Hmm,” Lededje said, nodding at this. “You know, I think I’ll leave these bags behind.” She frowned down at the two small cases Sensia had given her. They sat at her feet in the ship’s main lounge. Demeisen stood at her side; the two drones floated in front of them. She turned at Demeisen. “You can provide me—?”

“Of course.”

“Ms. Y’breq,” Kallier-Falpise said, sounding like it was trying to remain calm. “Obviously, I shall be coming with you…”

“Obviously,” the ship’s drone agreed, traversing to point at Demeisen.

There was only the faintest of pauses. “Eh? Oh. Yes, obviously,” Demeisen said, nodding strenuously.

“Ah. You agree then?” Kallier-Falpise said, flicking to look straight at Demeisen. “I accompany Ms. Y’breq?”

“I would have it no other way,” Demeisen said solemnly.

“Just so.” The little drone’s aura field glowed an agreeable pink. It turned smoothly back to Lededje. “As we all agree, then, I shall be coming with you, still charged, of course, with protecting you—”

“Mostly from yourself,” Demeisen said with a quick grin. He bowed his head and held up one hand as the little cream-coloured drone’s field flashed a bright grey. “Sorry,” he said.

“However,” Kallier-Falpise continued, “I too am very much of the opinion that this is, nevertheless, a foolish, dangerous and unnecessary move. Please, I beg you; reconsider.”

Lededje smiled at it. She looked at the ship’s drone. “Thank you for all your help,” she told it. She turned to Demeisen again. “Ready when you are.”

“I’ll prepare a shuttle,” the ship-drone said.

Demeisen flapped one hand. “We’ll Displace.”

“Has Ms. Y’breq been informed—?”

“There is a chance Displacements can be bad for you,” Demeisen said with a sigh. “Yes. I’ve read her her last rights.”

Kallier-Falpise’s fields went frosty grey again. “You did not think to ask me if I consent to being Displaced when a far more intrinsically safe method of transferring us between ships exists to hand.”

Demeisen rolled his eyes. “Fine, you take the shuttle, you rough, tough little protection-and-intervention drone; I’ll Displace the squidgy bag of guts, gas and fluids that is the painfully vulnerable but patently unafraid human being.”

“Frankly I wouldn’t trust you to wait for me,” the little drone said. “I shall Displace along with Ms. Y’breq. Within the same containment field, if you please.”