Surface Detail

The boat was slightly absurd; it looked like a scaled-up version of the sort of paper boat a child might make. Even as a raft, of course, it could have been made from gold, or any element with a molecular number lower than mercury. Lead would still sink in mercury, but gold shouldn’t. It was one number down the Periodic Table and so ought to float. Veppers looked over the side of the vessel at where his ingot of gold had entered the liquid metal, but it showed no sign of surfacing yet.

After dropping them at the boat, the flier had taken off again, carrying the other two Jhlupians with it. Apart from showing his importance to the Jhlupian navy, Xingre hadn’t needed his aide along with him in the first place, and the Navy itself, while being contractually obliged to bring Veppers here safely, had wanted no part of whatever might transpire or be agreed here.

Another, smaller flier approached. Jasken watched it on his Oculenses. The paper boat lay about two hundred metres off the nearest section of cavern wall. Mercury Lake was not natural, though nobody knew who had chosen to place such a huge amount of the metal in an out-of-the-way spot within a natural labyrinth in a planet that was itself quite isolated. The approaching flier was only about three metres by four. Small, for two people of different species, Jasken thought. He had several weapons with him, including one concealed by the cast over his arm. He felt a need to check them again, but didn’t. He already knew they were primed and ready.

The Oculenses were a little confused by the mercury vapour swirling within the chamber. The cavern was roughly spherical, about half a kilometre across. It was a little under half full of mercury, and volcanic activity kept the very bottom of the chamber heated, producing – every now and again – gigantic belching bubbles within the liquid metal. Those bubbles produced the gasses that made the air in the chamber poisonous to pan-humans and many other biological beings, as well as making it next to impossible to monitor any vibrations through the air by laser or any other form of surveillance.

The paper boat kept near but not too close to the centre of the lake, sufficiently distant to ride any waves produced by the sporadic bubbles. The volcanic activity wasn’t natural either; several hundred thousand years earlier – long before the Sichultians arrived on the scene to find a happily habitable but sentiently uninhabited planet – a hole had been drilled down through many tens of kilometres of rock to create the tiny magma chamber that heated the base of the cavern and so kept the mercury simmering. Nobody knew who had done this, or why. The best guesses were that it was either a religious thing or an artwork.

While Jasken was watching the flier approach, Veppers looked over the side of the boat and saw the shining lozenge of the gold ingot, surfaced again at last. He prodded Jasken on the shoulder and he retrieved it.

The flier set down by the side of the paper boat. It looked like a fat bullet made of chrome and coloured glass. It split, opened and revealed a glistening mass within. Just about discernible inside was a dark elliptical shape, fringed or tentacled at either end.

“Welcome, friend from Flekke,” Xingre said.

“Good day,” said an obviously synthesised voice from the opened bullet of the flier. “Chruw Slude Zsor, Functionary-General.”

“An honour,” Xingre said, dipping on its floating cushion.

“We were expecting you to arrive with the Nauptrian negotiator,” Veppers said, talking through the mask.

“That is me, I am here,” said the flier containing the Flekke in what was – somewhat counter-intuitively, Veppers thought – a more organic-sounding voice. “Though I am not Nauptrian. I am of the Nauptre Reliquaria. Were you expecting a sample of our feeder species, or making a mistake?”

“Humble apologies,” Xingre said, extending the limb nearest Veppers towards the man by just enough for the movement to be interpreted as a gesture at all. Veppers had seen, and – reluctantly

– kept quiet. “We biological species,” Xingre said, putting a laugh into its voice, “in such niceties’ matterings err, with sporadic effect.”

Veppers had to suppress a smile. He had noticed before that Xingre’s grasp of language ebbed and flowed quite usefully on such occasions, allowing the Jhlupian to present itself as any where between razor smart and hopelessly bumbling, as desired.

The Reliquarian might have been nonplussed by this. It said nothing for a moment, then, “To introduce: I am 200.59 Risytcin, Nauptre Reliquaria Extra-Jurisdictional Service, rank Full Mediary.”

“Please,” Xingre said, gesturing. “On-boarding.”