‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Glorious, wasn’t it? Makes me wonder about all those other victories we keep winning.’
Turning on his heel, he begins to stalk towards my troopers and then changes his mind. The next time I see our little colonel, he is laughing with Morgan and the blonde with four tits and thousand-mile eyes.
Strikes me, they are made for one another.
It is a long night and I lose the Aux somewhere down the line. Although I glimpse Colonel Vijay, with a glass of wine. The woman he’s talking to has her face close to his, and they are agreeing about something, strongly from the look of it.
‘I had no idea,’ she tells me later.
‘What?’ I demand.
‘That Octovians . . .’
Can hold their drink? Don’t fart in public? As she struggles with words I’m not interested in hearing, I wonder if it is a good idea for her to stand like that on a mirrored floor when she has clearly forgotten her knickers.
Who knows what she’s trying to say?
The woman hesitates. ‘Are so cultured,’ she says finally.
‘Not all of us.’
She laughs, tells me she wants to introduce me to a friend.
His name is Obsidian, and he’s Paper’s grandfather. Looking at him, I can’t see a likeness. Unless it is his eyes. They are narrow, slightly almond in shape and cold as ice. His smile is equally chilly. ‘Sven,’ he says. ‘I’ve heard interesting things about you.’
‘Can’t say I’ve heard of you.’
Obsidian Osamu tells me I’m part of an important mission. A chance . . . A rare, unmissable chance – their president thinks – for the U/Free to integrate with galactic society. He keeps an utterly straight face as he says this. I’m really hoping he doesn’t expect me to believe it. Even the U/Free can’t think we’re that stupid.
‘But first,’ he says, ‘a small favour.’
The request obviously means more to him than it does to me, because his voice trembles as he tells me what it is. Don’t think I have seen a U/Free nervous before. I file the fact away for later.
‘You’ll do it?’
Looking round the room, I say, ‘Way I feel now it would be a pleasure.’ It’s not the answer he’s expecting.
The cubicle walls are marble, the floor is warm and the lighting inside the cubicle so subtle it’s impossible to tell where it comes from. But it is the seashell in a little tray on the wall that interests me. What the fuck is that about?
Crumbling it between my fingers, I discover it’s real.
When I look back another replaces the one I took. So I smash that and keep watching. A third shell appears – and I mean appears – it doesn’t drop down or slide out. It simply appears.
This time when I take the shell, I don’t break it.
Comparing the third and fourth tells me each shell is different. I’m still not sure why they are there. I mean, all anyone comes in here to do is piss or take a shit. Flushing the pan, I wash my fingers and dry them on the seat of my trousers.
There’s nothing else to use.
A door opens in the restroom beyond.
Someone pees, water runs. That’s my cue to get myself out there. At the basin, a U/Free looks up. He is old, examining his face carefully in the glass as if he’s never seen it before.
Seeing a stranger behind him, he scowls. Then remembers his manners and forces a smile. I don’t know his name. But I know he has been watching us all evening.
‘So,’ he says. ‘You’re off to mend bridges . . .’
The coy way he says this irritates me. Also, I don’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about and that irritates me even more. He takes my grunt as an invitation to keep boring me. Meanwhile, I’m thinking mend bridges? Blowing them up is more my style.
‘What bridges?’ I demand, when he finishes.
‘Well . . . Maybe it’s more accurate to say you’re setting off on the final part of a vital search.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘And what am I meant to be searching for?’ That poncy little colonel said something about a missing observer. However, I’d like it confirmed by one of the U/Free.
‘What we’re all searching for. He looks at me expectantly. ‘Peace,’ he says. ‘Resolution to deep divisions. What else is there . . . ?’
The man turns to go.
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Tell me more about Hekati.’
Looking from my face to the way my hand now grips the edge of a sink, he sighs, ‘You’re drunk. Ask Paper about it in the morning.’
‘Not that drunk,’ I say.
He has just realized something.
I’m holding a dagger. It’s small and light and made of glass. And if I concentrate hard, I can remember the dampness of Lisa’s thigh as I took its sister from her garter. The man knows he’s about to be hurt. He knows it’s possible he will die. What he doesn’t know is his next death is going to be his last.
That is what the U/Free fear.
Paper Osamu told me this three months ago. She was doing that deprecating, we’re-also-human thing the United Free do when trying to pretend they don’t believe they are better than everyone else.
‘You can’t-’ he begins to say.
I can, and do. Stabbing hard and fast. ‘Say goodnight to your memories.’
His implant is where you would expect. At the back of his neck, just below the curve of his skull. It is very cross when I rip it free. Slicing away the last tendril, I crush the ‘biont underfoot and flush it. Pulpy threads wriggle as they spin round the pan, but that is just aftershock. Having flushed the man’s memories, I am left with his body.
Leave it, Paper’s grandfather said. We’ll handle that bit.
An interesting moral code. Unwilling to kill, happy to mop up the floor afterwards.
Taking the man’s watch, a handful of gold coins and a diamond ring, I leave him a little pearl-handled knife and the medal round his neck. The coins go in our kitty, the watch I’ll keep, and Franc can have the ring.
‘Where have you been?’ asks Colonel Vijay.
‘Taking a shit.’
He scowls.
Across the room Haze laughs, looking better than I have seen him in a while. As far as I know, he hasn’t vomited all evening. Like the nosebleeds, it is a reaction to the Uplift virus. They are going to stop sometime. Unfortunately, no one can tell us when.
Rachel’s still fretting that his head hurts. But as Haze points out, if she had metal growing through her skull her head would hurt too.
‘She stays here,’ Colonel Vijay says.
‘What?’
‘And the other two. You must know women are a liability in battle.’ He speaks with the absolute authority of someone who has never been near a battle in his life.
‘They’re Aux,’ I tell him.
The colonel stares at me.
So I add, sir. But that’s to annoy the U/Free. Paper’s just been telling Neen that she does not approve of hierarchies. Of course, she has to tell him what they are, before she can tell him why she doesn’t like them.
‘Paper,’ I say.
She inclines her head.
‘You asked for the Aux, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Paper Osamu nods. ‘You know we did.’
‘That’s us,’ I tell Colonel Vijay. ‘All of us.’ Saluting, I step back, and it is my turn to spin on my heels and stalk away. I don’t need to look back to know I have made an enemy.
Like I give a fuck.
Chapter 10
People turn out to see us off on our so-called cultural tour. More people than I expect. Come to that, more people than I imagined were in Letogratz. Almost all are wearing black and silver copies of our Death’s Head uniform. Some even have the leather thigh boots.
‘Started a craze,’ says Paper, standing behind me. She smiles at someone in the crowd. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of daggers the factor boxes have been asked to make in the past twenty-four hours. For decoration obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
She shoots me a glance. ‘You’ve made a big impression.’