She made a mental note that she really should stop doing it with him, particularly in public. People were beginning to label them, and there was nothing more tiresome than being labelled.
Inside her apartment A.A. Catto tore off her black Art Nouveau party dress and flopped on the bed in her underwear. She grinned at how her silk stockings and basque corset had come from the pornography of a slightly later period, but nobody had even noticed. With the exception of Valdo, she decided, the people she knew were exceedingly ignorant, She kicked her legs and stared at the ceiling. It was the morning problem again. Sleep or stay awake. It was a choice between dormax or altacaine. A.A. Catto rolled over and watched the sunlight begin to filter through the perspex of the balcony. She glanced at the clock. It was 08.15. She reached out and punched up Information. The blonde in the pink uniform flickered into life and smiled.
‘Information. May I help you?’
‘What’s going on this morning?’
‘There is a full directorate meeting at 10.00. All family members are expected to attend, Miss Catto.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Catto. I’m only relaying information.’
‘All right, all right.’
She hit the off button. The directorate meeting would wipe out anything happening for most of the day. She might as well sleep right through it. She was reaching for the dormax when a thought struck her. Maybe it would be fun to go to a meeting once. If Valdo was there to back her up, between them they might throw some shocks into those old fools. She punched Valdo’s combination, and another pink-clad Hostess-l appeared.
‘Mr. Catto’s residence.’
‘Is Valdo conscious?’
‘If you’ll wait one moment, please, Miss Catto, I’ll find out.’
The screen dissolved into a pattern of neutral colours. It stayed that way for almost a minute, and A.A. Catto tapped her silver nails impatiently on the console. Finally Valdo’s image appeared on the screen.
A.A. Catto had often thought that the reason she liked her brother so much was that he resembled her so closely. He had the same straight nose and large blue eyes. He even had the same full mouth. It was something that didn’t quite fit on a male. Valdo revelled in the fact that he was definitely borderline.
The image on the screen was far from Valdo at his best.
He still had on the pale blue wig that he had worn the night before, and his makeup was smudged and streaked.
‘What do you want, sister? I thought you’d be dormaxed out by now.’
‘You look awful, brother. What do you plan to do this morning?’
‘Sleep. There’s nothing happening except a directorate meeting.’
A.A. Catto pretended to be scandalized.
‘You mean you’re going to miss a directorate meeting?’
Valdo scowled.
‘What are you talking about? We always miss directorate meetings.’
‘I thought we ought to go to this one.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘I thought it would be a good idea if we went to the meeting.’
‘Have you gone mad, sister? Directorate meetings are boring, tedious, and, very positively, no place to be.’
‘Think about it, brother. If we took on maybe three pay-loads of altacaine, and then went along and caused trouble for the parents, I thought it would be fun.’
‘Aren’t you rather scraping the barrel?’
‘I thought if we worked on it, we might be able to force through some dictates that could make life more amusing.’
Valdo looked unconvinced.
‘Like what, sister?’
‘Maybe we could have a war.’
‘There’s no one worth having a war with.’
A.A. Carto waved his objections aside.
‘I only just thought of it. We can work out details later. Say you’ll come.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Listen, sister, I’d rather sleep than spend the day with those boring old farts.’
‘But we could take it over, brother. We could really put them through.’
‘It still seems like a waste of time. A whole day spent in pursuit of the tiresome. It almost seems an insult to good drugs to take on a load and then sit with awful, OLD people.’
‘It’s because we never go to meetings that these old awful people have it their own way. That’s the reason that the entertainments are so wretched.’
‘My dear sister. Is it that you’ve become a concerned citizen?’
A.A. Catto’s eyes flashed with anger.
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
‘It does rather sound like it. I never thought I’d see my dear sister wanting to go to a meeting. Perhaps you’re getting old.’
‘You can be very insulting when you try.’
‘That kind of remark isn’t going to persuade me to come with you.’
‘Then will you come?’
‘I’ll consider it. You haven’t tried to bribe me yet.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t know. There’s very little that you have that I want.’
A.A. Catto’s mouth twisted.
‘You didn’t say that four hours ago, brother.’
‘I was simply accommodating you, sister dear.’
‘Then accommodate me now.’
‘Will you promise to come back here and allow me to use you in a cruel and original manner for a whole hour if this meeting’s as boring and loathsome as I fear it will be?’
A.A. Catto nodded quickly.
‘Yes, yes, anything you like. Say you’ll come?’
‘I’ll come.’
‘Wonderful. I’ll see you at 10.00 outside the Boardroom.’
Valdo grimaced.
‘Oh god, sister, don’t say you want to be punctual.’
‘Sorry, make it 10.45.’
‘That’s a little better.’
‘Thank you, brother. You won’t be disappointed.’
Valdo yawned.
‘Anything to amuse my little sister.’
***
Like a wave of coarse flesh the Shirik poured out from trenches and dugouts and charged howling towards the Harodin lines. The enemy immediately opened a withering fire and dead Shirik fell one on top of another. Some dropped like stones while others fell twisting and snarling, clawing at their wounds. Although they died in their hundreds, still more came on, clambering over the bodies to get at the enemy.
One small group actually made it across no man’s land and reached the opposite trenches. They discharged their single shot scrap guns and then fell on the remaining defenders, clubbing, hacking and biting. They were shot down, but the Harodin line was breached and more Shirik poured into the gap. A horrible slaughter began in the narrow confines of the Harodin trenches.
Billy wiped the sweat from his face. It was their first time in action. They had hung round the dugout for five days, and then, along with two other machines, they had been ordered to back up and consolidate the Shirik assault.
As he watched, a handful of Harodin leaped from, the forward trenches and tried to run away. They had only gone a few yards when they were cut down by blasts of scrap metal from Shirik guns. The men who had run seemed indistinguishable from the mercenaries. Duck had been right when he’d described them as being regular guys.
From the driver’s seat, the Rainman grunted.
‘Looks like we’ll be moving up soon.’
Billy swivelled the turret a little to look at the other two fighting machines. Sure enough, a red flag appeared through the turret hatch of the lead machine. Billy glanced at the Rainman.
‘Okay, here we go, roll it.’
The Rainman eased the machine into gear and it began to move forward in formation with the either two. Billy licked his dry lips and glanced down at Reave, who crouched in the standby position, ready to move if anything happened to either of the other two. Billy grinned tensely at him.