“Whoever does?” Sal asked, then nodded. “But I see.”
“Sorry I can’t really tell you too much more.”
Sal smiled and looked out at the slope of artificial surf, the pandemonium of waves beyond and the sheer cliffs further away still, brown-black beneath a hazy azure sky.
“Ah, your minder,” he said. The esuit of Colonel Hatherence of the Shrievalty appeared to one side, low over the foam, floating out over the mad froth of waters like a great fat grey and gold wheel. Whirling vane-sets on either side of her esuit kept the Colonel from sinking into the maelstrom. For all its massive size when you were standing next to it, the esuit looked very small from up here.
“She giving you any problems?”
“No. She’s okay. Doesn’t insist I salute her or call her Ma’am all the time. Happy to keep things informal.” All the same, he was hoping to get the Colonel out of the way somehow, either before or once he got down into Nasqueron.
Fassin watched the Colonel as she picked her way across the scape of waves. “But can you imagine trying to sneak into Boogeytown with that dogging your every move?” he asked. “Even just for one last night?”
Sal snorted. “The dives and the ceilings are too low.”
Fassin laughed. This is like sex, he thought. Well, like the seduction-scenario thing, like the whole stupid mating dance of will-you-won’t-you, do-you-don’t-you rigmarole. Tempting Sal, leading him on…
He wondered if he’d seemed sufficiently mysterious yet hinted at maybe being available. He needed this man.
Dinner with Sal, his wife, their concubines and some business associates, including — amongst the latter — a whule, a jajuejein and a quaup. The talk was of new attacks on distant outposts, martial law, delays in comms, restrictions in travel and who would gain and who would lose from the new Emergency (nobody on any of the couches seemed to anticipate losing more than a few trivial freedoms for a while). Colonel Hatherence sat silent in one corner, needing no external sustenance, thank you, but happy, indeed honoured, to be there while they consumed nourishment, communicated conversationally and intercoursed socially while she continued her studies (much-needed!), screening up on Nasqueron and its famous Dwellers.
Drinks, semi-narcotic foods, drug bowls. A human acrobat troupe entertained them, floodlit beyond the dining room’s balcony.
“No, I’m serious!” Sal shouted at his guests, gesturing at the acrobats, swinging through the air on ropes and trapezes. “If they fall they almost certainly die! So much air in the water you can’t float. Sink right down. Get caught up in the under-turbulence. No, idiot!” Sal told his wife. “Not enough air to breathe!”
Some people left. Drinks later, just the humans. To Sal’s trophy room, corridors and rooms too small, sorry, for Colonel Hatherence (not minding; so to sleeping; good nights!). Sal’s wife, going to bed, and the remaining few. Soon just the two of them, overlooked by the stuffed, lacquered, dry-shrunk or encased heads of beasts from dozens of planets.
“You saw Taince? Just before the portal went?”
“Dinner. Day or two before. Equatower.” Fassin waved in what might have been the general direction of Borquille. You could see the lights of the Equatower from the house, a thin stipple of red climbing into the sky, sometimes perversely clearer above when the lower atmosphere was hazed and the higher beacons shone down at a steeper angle through less air.
“She okay?” Sal asked, then threw his head back and laughed too loudly. “As though it matters. It was two centuries ago. Still”
“Anyway, she was fine.”
“Good.”
They drank their drinks. Cognac. Also from Earth, long, long ago. Far, far away.
Fassin got swim.
“Oh shit,” he said, “I’ve got Swim.”
“Swim?” said Saluus.
“Swim,” Fassin said. “You know; when your head kind of seems to swim because you suddenly think, ‘Hey, I’m a human being but I’m twenty thousand light years from home and we’re all living in the midst of mad-shit aliens and super-weapons and the whole fucking bizarre insane swirl of galactic history and politics!’ That: isn’t it weird?”
“And that’s what? Swing? Swirl?” Sal said, looking genuinely confused.
“No, Swim!” Fassin shouted, not able to believe that Sal hadn’t heard of this concept. He thought everybody had. Some people — most people, come to think of it, or so he’d been told — never got Swim, but lots did. Not just humans, either. Though Dwellers, mind you, never. Wasn’t even in their vocabulary.
“Never heard of it,” Sal confessed.
“Well, didn’t imagine you might have.”
“Hey, you want to see something?”
“Whatever it is, I cannot fucking wait.”
“Come with me.”
“Last time I heard that—”
“We agreed no more of those.”
“Fuck! So we did. Total retraction. Show me what you got to show me.”
“Walk this way.”
“Ah now, just fuck off.”
Fassin followed Sal through to the inner recess of his study. It was kind of what he might have expected if he’d given the matter any thought: lots of wood and softly glowing pools of light, framed stuff and a desk the size of a sunken room. Funny-looking twisted bits of large and gleaming metal or some other shiny substance sitting in one corner. Fassin guessed these were starship bits.
“There.”
“Where? What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“This.” Sal held up a very small twisted-looking bit of metal mounted on a wooden plinth.
Fassin tried very hard not to let his shiver show. He was nothing like as drunk as he was trying to appear to be.
“Yeah? An whassat?” (Overdoing it, but Sal didn’t seem to notice.)
Saluus held the piece of odd-looking metal up before Fassin’s eyes. “This is that thing I got out of that fucking downed ship, my man.” Sal looked at it, swallowed and took a deep breath. Fassin saw Sal’s lip tremble. “This is what—”
The fucker’s going to break down, Fassin thought. He slapped one hand on Sal’s shoulder. “This is no good,” he told him. “We need different, we need, I don’t know; something. We need not this, not what is before us here. We need something different. Elsewhen or elsestuff or elsewhere. This might be my last night of freedom, Sal.” He gripped the other man hard by the shoulder of his perfectly tailored jacket. “I’m serious! You don’t know how bad things might get for me! Oh fuck, Sal, you don’t know how bad things might get for all of us, and I can’t fucking tell you, and this could be my last night of fun anywhere, and… and… and you’re showing me some fucking coat hook or something, and I don’t know…’ He swiped weakly at the twisted piece of metal, patting it away and still missing. Then he sniffed and drew himself up. “Sorry,” he said, soberly. “Sorry, Sal.” He patted the other man’s shoulder. “But this is maybe my last, ah, night of fun, and… look, I feel totally charged for anything — wish Boogeytown was right outside, really do, but on the other hand it’s been a long few days and maybe — no, not maybe. Maybe definitely. In fact, not that, just plain definitely the sensible thing to do is just go to bed and—”
“You serious?” Sal said, dropping the metal piece on its wooden plinth onto the desk behind him.
“About sleep?” Fassin said, gesturing wildly. “Well, it — -”
“No, you moron! About Boogeytown!”
“What? Eh? I didn’t mention Boogeytown!”
“Yes, you did!” Sal said, laughing.
“I did? Well, fuck!”
Sal had a flier. Automatic to the point of being nearly banned under the AI laws. Loaded with repair mechanisms that were not quite nanotech but only by such a tiny-tiny-tiny little bit. Deeply civilian but with total military clearance. If a Grand Fleet Admiral of the Summed Fucking Fleet stepped into this baby and toggled his authority it would only decrease the fucker’s all-areas, multi-volumes access profile. Down in the hangar deck. Walk this way, har har.