Surface Detail (77 page)

“Before you do that,” Demeisen’s voice said from Huen’s desk. “May I add something?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lededje breathed, taking her hands away from her face and rolling backwards to lie on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “Is there no getting away from this fucking machine?”

Huen was frowning at the drone. “I thought we were clear?” she said.

“As did I,” the machine said, aura field purple-grey with embarrassment.

“Well, couldn’t help overhearing,” Demeisen’s voice said.

“Liar,” Huen muttered.

“And I thought you might like to hear this. Just dropped into my in-box, at it were. Theoretically anonymous, but it definitely came from my new best chum, the bright and breezy NR Bismuth category ship 8401.00 Partial Photic Boundary. Slightly lo-fi after a lot of processing de-manglement, but I think you’ll forgive it that. It’s from about three hours ago, between Mr. V and Legislator-Admiral Bettlescroy-Bisspe-Blispin III, the bod in charge of the GFCF forces here in the Enablement. Here we go:”

“Anyway,” Veppers’ voice said, also coming from whatever comms gear was hidden in Huen’s desk, “to reiterate: every trackway is underlain by what to the untutored eye looks like some sort of giant fungal structure. It isn’t. It’s substrate. Low-power, bio-based, not ultra-fast running, but high-efficiency, highly damage-resistant substrate; anything from ten to thirty metres thick under and amongst the roots, but adding up to over half a cubic kilometre of processing power spread throughout the estate. All the comms traffic to and from is channelled through the phased array satellite links dotted round the mansion house itself.

“That’s what you have to hit, Bettlescroy. The under-trackway substrates contain over seventy per cent of the Hells in the entire galaxy. Of those we know of, anyway. Used to be slightly more, but very recently I sub-contracted the NR Hell, just to be on the safe side. I’ve been buying Hells up for over a century, Legislator-Admiral, taking the processing requirements and legal and jurisdictional implications off other peoples’ hands for most of my business life. The majority of the Hells are right here, in system, on planet. That is why I have always felt able to be so relaxed regarding the targeting details. Think you can get enough ships to Sichult to lay waste to my estate?”

“Truly?” another voice said. “The targets are on your own estates? Why would you do that?”

“Deniability, Bettlescroy. You’ll have to raze the trackways, wreck my lands, blast the satellite links and damage the house itself; maybe even destroy it. That house has been in my family for centuries; it and the estate are inestimably precious to me. Or at least so everybody assumes. Who’s going to believe I brought all that destruction on myself?”

“And so on,” Demeisen’s voice told them. “Then there’s this really good bit:”

“And the people?”

“What people?”

“The people on the estate when it is laid waste.”

“Oh. Yes. I assume I have a few hours before any attack takes place.”

“There’s a bit of blah-blah-blah here from our boy Bettlescroy,” Demeisen’s voice said, “then:”

“So, bottom line,” they heard Veppers say, “I’d have time to get a few people out. Not too many, of course; it still has to look convincing. But I can always hire more people, Bettlescroy. Never a shortage of those, ever.”

“… Fascinating, what?” Demeisen’s voice said from Huen’s desk. “Specially the bit about handing the NR’s theme-park of woe over to somebody else before all the other Hells got wasted. Bet he thought that was being clever, getting the NR off his back. Just like the GFCF thought they were being clever swiping all that NR comms knowledge, back in the whenever-when, never thinking it might come with trap-doors the NR could tap into and copy their comms any time they wanted. Don’t you think it’s hilarious when people think they’re being terribly clever? I know I do. Just as well some of us genuinely fucking are or we’d be in a hell of a fucking state. Well, my work here is done. Mostly, anyway; still more smatter-ships to smashify. Be seeing you!”

There was silence in the room for a while.

The drone Olfes-Hresh made a shaking motion. “Well,” it said to Huen, “again, I think we’re clear, and it’s gone, but then I thought that the last time.”

On the floor, lying loosely spread, shaking her head, Lededje sighed.

Huen looked up from her to Yime and Himerance.

“Obviously,” she said, “there are things we ought not to be doing or taking part in here, either for first-principle moral reasons, or due to the regrettable exigencies of realpolitik.” She paused. “However.”

“The Scoudenfrast, I think. No, Jasken, that’s a Scundrundri.

The Scoudenfrast is the one alongside, the purple one with the yellow splodges. I always did think Scundrundri was over-rated. Besides, with these gone, the rest I have in the town house will be worth more. Nolyen, give Mr. Jasken a hand with these out to the flier, would you?”

“Sir.”

“Quickly, both of you.”

“Sir,” Jasken said. He lifted an armful of old masters and headed for the end of the long, curved gallery, followed by Nolyen, similarly laden. It was gloomy in the place; the house was relying on its emergency lighting, and not even all of that was functioning properly. Nolyen – a big, dim country lad from the kitchens – dropped one of the paintings he was carrying, and struggled to pick it up again; Jasken came back and used his foot to help lever the thing back up into the boy’s hands. Veppers watched all this, sighing.

He was actually a little bit disappointed in his staff and their commitment. He’d expected to find more people here in the house, worried over the fate of their master – they still thought he might be dead, after all – and determined to help save the house from the surrounding and encroaching fires. Instead, he’d discovered that most of them had already fled the place.

They’d taken to the wheeled vehicles that the estate used on a day-to-day basis, and to those from Veppers’ own collection of automotive exotica, stored and cared for in some of the mansion’s underground garages. There were some fliers left dotted about the place but it looked like they’d fallen victim to the same stray radiation pulses that had knocked out the local comms.

Nolyen had greeted them joyfully as they’d left the flier and somebody had shouted a glad-you’re-safe-sir or something similar from the roof as they’d walked across the courtyard, but that was about it. “Ingrates,” Veppers had muttered as they made their way to the gallery with the most expensive paintings.

“Four minutes and I’ll see you at the Number Three Strongroom!” Veppers called after Jasken, who, arms full of paintings, just turned and nodded. Veppers supposed they could have cut the paintings from the frames, like thieves did, but that had seemed wrong somehow.

Veppers jogged along the gallery, down a radial corridor towards some splendidly tall windows – my, there was a lot of smoke and even some flame out there, and it was far too dark for the time of evening – and let himself into his study. He sat at his desk.

The study was dark in the patchy emergency lighting. He allowed himself the poignant luxury of one last look round the place, thinking how sad, and yet also how oddly exciting it was that it might all soon be gone, then he started opening drawers and compartments. The desk – self-powered, identifying him by his smell as well as by his palm and fingerprints – made soft, sighing, snicking noises as it obeyed him; a little familiar oasis of calm and reassurance in all the chaos. He filled a small hide carrybag with all the most precious and useful things he could think of. The last thing he lifted, after a slight hesitation, was a pair of knives, sheathed in skin-soft hide, that had belonged to his grand-father and, before that, to somebody else’s.

A wind seemed to be getting up, judging from the way smoke was moving on the far side of the barely visible formal gardens; however, despite all the commotion outside, little sound got through the multiply glazed and bullet-proof windows. He was just closing the last drawer, ready to go, when he heard a noise like a faint “pop”.

He looked up and saw a tall, dark alien figure standing looking at him from near the closed doors. For a moment he thought it might be ambassador Huen, but it was somebody else; thin, with a too-straight, contorted-looking back. Dressed in different shades of dark grey.

“Can I help you?” he said, putting the still-open hide bag down at his feet where he sat, and dipping one hand into it, feeling around. He made a waving, distracting gesture with his other hand. “For example, with your manners? We tend to knock first, here.”

“Mr. Joiler Veppers, my name is Prebeign-Frultesa Yime Leutze Nsokyi dam Volsh,” the figure said in an oddly accented voice that might have been female but that definitely didn’t appear to be entirely in synch with its lip-movements. “I am a citizen of the Culture. I am here to apprehend you on suspicion of murder. Will you come with me?”

“How can I put this?” he said, raising and firing the alien-tech gun in the same movement. The gun made a loud snapping noise, light flared in the dim study and the alien disappeared in a silvery shimmer. The doors immediately behind where it had been standing burst open against their hinges, swinging broken and hanging into the corridor beyond in a flurry of black dust, a semi-circular hole punched in each, circumferenced with glowing yellow-white sparks. Veppers looked at the gun – a present from the Jhlupian Xingre, long ago – then at the still-swinging, smoking doors, and finally at the patch of rug where the figure had been standing. “Hmm,” he said.

He shrugged, stood, stuffed the gun into his waistband, snapped the hide bag shut and waved some of the noxious fumes away from his face as he exited through the wrecked doors, which were starting to burn.

“

Jasken.”

He heard the female voice pronounce his name behind him, and knew it was her. He placed the paintings carefully on the floor of the flier and turned. Nolyen had stopped in the doorway of the flier. He was staring over the top of the paintings he held at the young woman standing by the door to the flight deck. Perhaps he was intimidated by the scroll-work of faint, tattooed lines covering her face.

“Miss,” Jasken said, nodding to her.

“It is me, Jasken.”

“I know,” he said. He turned his head deliberately, nodding to Nolyen. “Leave those, Nolyen; never mind anything else. Just leave; get well away from the house.”

Nolyen set the paintings down. He hesitated.

“Get away, Nolyen,” Jasken said.

“Sir,” the young man said, then turned and left.

Lededje watched him go, then turned back to Jasken.

“You let him kill me, Hib.”

Jasken sighed. “No, I tried to stop him. But, in the end, all right; I could have done more. And I suppose I could have killed him after he killed you. So I’m as bad as he is. Hate me if you like. I don’t claim to be a particularly good person, Led. And there is such a thing as duty.”

“I know. I thought you might feel some towards me.”

“My first is towards him, whether either of us likes it or not.”

“Because he pays your wages and all I did was let you fuck me?”

“No; because I pledged myself to his service. I never said anything to you that contradicted that.”

“No, you didn’t, did you?” She gave a wan smile. “I suppose I should have spotted that. How very correct of you, even while you were … despoiling his property. All those little whispered words of tenderness, about how much I meant, what we might hope for in the future. Were you always reviewing them as you said them? Running them past some lawyer bit in your brain, looking for inconsistencies?”

“Something like that,” Jasken told her, meeting her gaze. He shook his head. “We never had a future, Led. Not the sort you wanted to imagine. More quick couplings while his back was turned, hidden from everyone, until one of us got bored, or he found out. You belonged to him for ever, didn’t you ever under-stand that? We were never going to be able to run away together.” He looked down, then back up into her eyes again. “Or are you going to tell me you loved me? Because I always thought you took me as a lover just to get back at him and have me on-side for the next time you tried to escape.”

“Didn’t fucking work, did it?” she said bitterly. “You helped him hunt me down.”

“I had no choice. You didn’t have to run. As—”

“Really? That’s not how it felt to me.”

“As soon as you did, I had to do what my duty to him demanded.”

“So, none of it meant anything.” She was crying a little now, but quickly wiped both cheeks with the back of her wrists, tears smeared across the tattoo lines. “More fool me. Because I didn’t come back just to kill Veppers. I needed to ask how …” She stopped, swallowed. “Did it mean nothing to you?”

Jasken sighed. “Of course it meant something. A sweetness. Moments I’ll never forget. It just couldn’t mean what you wanted it to mean.”

She laughed, without hope or humour. “Then I am a fool, am I not?” she said, shaking her head. “I really did think you might love me.”

He gave the smallest of smiles. “Oh, I loved you with all my heart, from the very first.”

She glared at him.

He stared at her, eyes bright. “It’s just that love is not enough, Led. Not always. Not these days; maybe not ever. And never around people like Joiler Veppers.”

She looked down at the floor of the flier, brought her arms up and hugged herself. Jasken glanced at the time display on the flier’s bulkhead.

“Could be as little as a quarter of an hour till the second wave arrives,” he said. His tone was concerned, even kind. “You seemed to get here pretty fast. Can you get away again just as quickly?”

She nodded. She sniffed back her tears, wiped her cheeks and eyes again. “Do one thing for me,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“Go.”

“Go? I can’t just—”

“Now. Just leave. Take the flier and go. Save the servants and staff; all you can find. But leave him here, with me.”

She looked into his eyes. Jasken hesitated, his jaw working. She shook her head. “He’s finished, Hib,” she said. “The NR – the Nauptre – they know. They can intercept whatever passes between him and the GFCF; they know about his agreement, about how he tricked them. The Culture know everything too. The Hells are gone, so he can’t use those to save himself now. He won’t be allowed to get away with all he’s done. Even if the Enablement can turn a blind eye to something on this scale, he’s got the NR and the Culture to answer to.” She smiled a small, half-despairing smile. “He finally found people more powerful than he is to fall foul of.” She shook her head again. “But the point is: you can’t save him. All you can save now is yourself.” She nodded towards the open door of the flier. “And anybody else you can find out there.”