Surface Detail

Demeisen looked apologetic. “You won’t need them where we’re going. And they do constitute Culture tech. Sorry.”

The seat around Lededje gently released her from its grip. Behind her, the module’s bathroom had reformed.

Yime Nsokyi stood on the rim-rock of the shallow, jagged canyon carved into the karst. Above, the stars wheeled slowly. Some long, ragged lengths of clouds obscured patches of the sky, and in one place the cloud was lit up as though by an enormous searchlight, light spilling from an aperture above one of the outlying tributary tunnels of Iobe Cavern City. The resulting blob of uncannily glowing light, seemingly hovering just a couple of kilometres above the still-cooling desert, looked unsettlingly like a ship.

“There were people in that tower,” Himerance said quietly at Yime’s side. The avatar was monitoring signals from all over the planet while trying to establish contact with the Me, I’m Counting.

“There were?” Yime asked. She closed her eyes, shook her head.

They had commandeered five more vehicles on their way out of the city to this point, where finally the avatar felt they were safe. Himerance had commandeered them, anyway, using what-ever Effector tech was built into the human-seeming body of a ship avatar; she felt like nothing more than his baggage, hauled along from place to place.

She remembered the stone tower, way back in the early evening, when she’d had to cling on to his back as they raced down the winding steps, dashing out through a thick door in the base – Himerance had muttered something about it being locked from the inside at the time – and then, with her once more on her own feet, running out across a courtyard, down some more steps and into a crowded pedestrian street just as a pink beam lanced from the cavern ceiling and struck the tower, bringing it down. She had wanted to keep her head down and keep on walking away, but of course that would have looked suspicious, so they had to stop and stare with everybody else for a while.

“How many?” she asked.

“Two,” Himerance said. “Lovers, reading between the lines.”

Yime sighed, looked down. The canyon floor held a dirt track, scribbled like dropped string between the jagged jumble of fallen rocks and scrawny, light-blasted scrub. “One of us is spreading destruction in their wake, Himerance,” Yime said. “And I’m afraid that it’s me.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the avatar said. It looked at her. “I’m afraid I am unable to contact the ship. Not without alerting the NR vessel, anyway.”

“I see. What now, then?”

“We resort to a much older form of signalling,” Himerance said, smiling. There was a hint of a glow on the horizon to one side, where the dawn would come soon. The avatar nodded in that direction. “We know which direction the ship is coming from. With luck and good timing, this will work. Excuse me.” The avatar stepped in front of her, raising his hands, shallowly cupped, palms outwards, in front of his face, oriented towards the dim pre-dawn light-sliver over the distant hills. He looked round at her. “You would be advised to turn your back, put your hands over your eyes and close your eyelids.”

Yime held his gaze for a moment, then complied.

Nothing happened for a few seconds.

“What are-?” she was asking, when a sudden flash distracted her. It was gone almost before she registered it happening.

“All clear,” Himerance said quietly. She turned back to find the avatar waving his hands around. They were smoking. The flesh on the palms and fingers was blackened. He blew on them, smiled at her, then nodded at the ground. “We should assume the position,” he told her.

They squatted, side by side, her knees and back protesting. Oh shit, she thought, as she clasped her hands round her shins and laid her head on her knees. Here we go again.

“Won’t be for long,” he said. “One way or the other, we’ll know quite soo-”

“I don’t want him to see me,” Lededje said. “I don’t want him to be able to identify me.”

“Ah,” Demeisen said, nodding. “So you might be able to surprise him later; of course.”

She remained silent.

“So do something with your tattoo,” Demeisen said. “Scroll it over your face so it obscures your features. May I?” The avatar gestured towards her face.

She was standing in the doorway of the module’s bathroom area, dressed in the sort of casual clothes she’d been wearing and feeling perfectly happy and comfortable in ever since she’d been brought back to life, yet feeling oddly naked, vulnerable and exposed, now that she’d taken off both the outer armoured suit and gel suit within. Demeisen wore pale, loose, casual clothes.