Presently, someone knocked on the door.
“That’ll be Barton,” Aveling said.
Barton turned out to be a younger version of Aveling, only with a slightly more enlightened attitude towards civilians. He ushered them out of the transport, through a connecting airlock and into a rock-walled spherical cavern that was recognisable as a much smaller counterpart to the one at the Phobos end. Much equipment surrounded the recovery bubble, but there was no means to swap the existing transport for a refurbished one. Despite the damage it had sustained on the trip (light, Aveling said), the ship would simply be rotated through 180 degrees and sent on its way again.
Auger was introduced to two other people in the chamber: a tough-looking female military specialist called Ariano and another civilian technician called Rasht, a small, feline man with a sallow complexion. Neither of them looked like Slashers, and both appeared to have been working double shifts for at least a week.
“Any news on the others?” Aveling asked Ariano.
“Nothing,” she said. “We’re still transmitting on the usual frequencies, but nobody’s called home.”
Auger leaned against a red-painted handrail, unsteady on her feet. “What others?”
“Our other deep-penetration agents,” Ariano said. “There are eight of them out there, some as far away as the United States. We’ve been sending out orders for them to return here.”
“Because of what happened to White?”
“That’s part of it. The link is also showing signs of instability, and we don’t want anyone to end up marooned here.”
“This is the first I’ve heard about any instability,” Auger said uneasily.
“It’ll hold long enough for you to complete your mission,” Skellsgard replied.
“We’re also concerned about the political situation at home,” Ariano said. “We know things are hotting up back there, and that some people are talking about a Slasher invasion. If they’re right, there’s a danger we’ll lose Phobos. We can’t afford to have anyone still here if that happens.”
“All the more incentive to get things done as quickly as possible,” Aveling said. He clicked his fingers at Ariano and Rasht. “Get the ship prepped for the return leg. I take it you have cargo?”
Rasht was standing next to an incongruous-looking tower of cardboard boxes. The topmost box was crammed with books, magazines, newspapers and gramophone records. “Five hundred kilograms’ worth. A few more trips and we’ll have sent home everything Susan delivered.”
“Good,” Aveling said. “Get it loaded and secured. You can ship out as soon as you’re ready.”
“Wait,” Auger said. “Is that ship leaving without me?”
“There’ll be another one back sixty hours after this one departs,” Aveling said, his voice unctuous with sarcastic sweetness. “That gives you at least two and a half days to complete your mission. If you get back with the tin sooner than that, you can simply sit tight here and wait for the next transport.”
“I still don’t like the idea—”
“This is the way it’s going to happen, Auger, so deal with it,” Aveling said bluntly, terminating the conversation by turning away.
The three of them trooped off the catwalk, leaving Barton, Ariano and Rasht to load the transport for its return flight. They reached a circular deck surrounding the chamber. Prefabricated cubicles ringed the deck, along with equipment lockers and control consoles. In the deep pit below the bubble, powerful generators snored to themselves, umbilicals snaking across the floor like draped tentacles.
Everything she saw, she realised, must have come through the link—even the bubble itself. The first few journeys must have been interesting, if not fatal.
“Let’s get you freshened up,” Skellsgard said, leading Auger to one of the cubicles. “There’s a shower and washroom in there, and a wardrobe full of indigenous clothes. Help yourself, but remember you need to be comfortable wearing what you choose.”
“I’m comfortable with what I’m wearing now.”
“And you’d stick out like a sore thumb as soon as you entered Paris. The idea is to be as inconspicuous as possible. Any hint of strangeness and Blanchard may get other ideas about handing over the goods.”
Auger showered, rinsing away the musty smell of the transport. She felt oddly alert. During the past thirty hours she had only slept intermittently, but the novelty of her situation served to hold tiredness at bay.
As Skellsgard had promised, the wardrobe was well equipped with clothes from the same time period as the E2 artefacts she had already examined. Trying them on in various permutations, she couldn’t help but remember the ludicrous fancy-dress party she had attended on the Twentieth Century Limited in a desperate bid to ward off boredom. At least the garments here all originated from the same period, even if there was no guarantee that she was putting them on in anything resembling a sensible combination. It was trickier than she had expected. Lately, Tanglewood fashions had tended towards the utilitarian and consequently Auger was not used to things like dresses and skirts, stockings and heeled shoes. Even at the kind of academic functions where everyone else made an effort to dress up, she’d always been the one who made a point of showing up in work-stained coveralls. Now she was expected to pass as a woman from the mid-twentieth century, a time when even the wearing of trousers was uncommon.
It took half an hour, but eventually she settled on a mix that didn’t strike her as glaringly off key, and which—equally importantly—she could still just about walk around in without looking drunk. She chose the shoes with the flattest heels amongst those on offer, which were still higher than she would have liked. She added black stockings and a knee-length skirt in navy blue with fine silver pinstripes that allowed her to walk without too much trouble, and paired these items with a pale-blue blouse and a jacket in the same fabric as the skirt. Rummaging in the back recesses of the wardrobe, she found a hat that completed the ensemble. She tugged here and shrugged there, settling the unfamiliar garments in place. She then stood in front of the mirror and toyed with the angle of the hat, trying to see herself as an anonymous woman rather than as Verity Auger in fancy dress. Only one thing mattered: if she saw herself in the background of some pre-Void Century photograph, would she merit a second glance?
She couldn’t tell. She didn’t think she looked disastrous, but neither was she certain that she was about to blend in with anything or anyone.
“You ready in there?” Skellsgard called from outside.
Auger shrugged and let herself out. Skellsgard, to her surprise, had also put on clothes from the same period. They seemed to suit her about as well as they suited Auger.
“Well?” Augur asked, self-consciously executing a little twirl.
“You’ll do,” Skellsgard said, cocking her head as she appraised the outfit. “Main thing is not to worry about it too much. Look confident, as if you know you belong, and no one will give you a second glance. You hungry?”
They’d eaten rations on the way over, but the weightlessness had done nothing for her appetite. “A bit,” she decided.
“Barton’s fixed us some food. While we’re eating we can go over the rest of the stuff you need to know. Before that, though, we need to put you through the censor.”
“I was wondering when we’d get to that.”
ELEVEN
When they had finished eating, Floyd left Greta smoking a cigarette while he persuaded the waiter to let him use the telephone. Fishing out his notebook, he called Blanchard’s number and waited for the landlord to answer.