Surface Detail

Lededje saw him look at her right hand and so put it out to him. His hand clasped her hand, fingers with too many joints closing around like a bony cage. His touch felt very warm, almost feverish, though perfectly dry, like paper. She saw him wince and noticed that two of his fingers were crudely splinted together with a small piece of wood or plastic and what looked like a piece of knotted rag. Somehow the wince didn’t travel all the way to his face, which regarded her without obvious expression.

“Good evening,” Lededje said.

“Ms. Y’breq.” His voice sounded dry and cold. He nodded at Jolicci then indicated the seats on either side of him. “Wheloube, Emmis. If you would.”

The two young men seemed about to protest, but then did not. They rose together with a sort of brisk contempt and walked proudly away. She and Jolicci took their places. The other handsome young men stared at them. Demeisen waved one hand; the table’s holo display, which had been depicting a gruesomely realistic skirmish between some horsemen and a larger force of archers and other foot-soldiers, faded to blank.

“A rare privilege,” Demeisen murmured to Jolicci. “How goes the business of General Contacting?”

“Generally well. How’s life as a security guard?”

Demeisen smiled. “Night watching is unfailingly illuminating.”

There was a small gold tube in front of him which Lededje had assumed was the mouthpiece of an under-table chill or water pipe – there were several other mouthpieces lying or cradled on the table – but which proved to be a stick with a glowing end, un -attached to anything else. Demeisen put it to his lips and sucked hard. The golden tube crackled, shortened and left a fiery glowing tip beneath a lofting of silky grey smoke.

Demeisen saw her looking and offered the stick to her. “A drug. From Sudalle. Called narthaque. The effect is similar to winnow, though harsher, less pleasant. The hangover can be severe.”

“‘Winnow’?” Lededje asked. She got the impression she’d been expected to know what this was.

Demeisen looked both surprised and unimpressed.

“Ms. Y’breq does not possess drug glands,” Jolicci explained.

“Really?” Demeisen said. He frowned at her. “Are you suffering some form of punishment, Ms. Y’breq? Or are you of that demented persuasion that believes enlightenment is to be found in the shadows?”

“Neither,” Lededje told him. “I am more of a barely legal alien.” She had hoped this might be amusing, but if it was, nobody round the table seemed to find it so. Maybe her understanding of Marain wasn’t as flawless as she’d been assuming.

Demeisen looked at Jolicci. “I’m told the young lady looks for passage.”

“She does,” Jolicci said.

Demeisen gestured with both hands, sending loops of smoke into the air from the hand holding the golden stick. “Well, Jolicci, for once you have the better of me. What on earth gives you the idea that I have turned into a taxi? Do tell. Can’t wait to hear.”

Jolicci just smiled. “There is a little more to the matter, I believe. Ms. Y’breq,” he said to her. “Over to you.”

She looked at Demeisen. “I need to get home, sir.”

Demeisen glanced at Jolicci. “Very taxi-sounding so far.” He turned back to her. “Go on, Ms. Y’breq. I cannot wait for this to achieve escape velocity from the mundanity well.”

“I intend to kill a man.”

“That’s a little more uncommon. Again though, one imagines a taxi would suffice, unless the gentleman concerned can only be dispatched using a warship. A state-of-the-art Culture warship, at that, if I may make so immodest. For some reason the word ‘overkill’ leaps to mind.” He smiled icily at her. “You may not be doing quite as well here as you thought you might at this point.”

“I’ve been told that I’ll be slap-droned.”

“So you were stupid enough to let slip that you intend to kill this man.” He frowned. “Oh dear. Might I suggest that this does not bode terribly well should your murderous plans include more than the absolute minimum of guile, subterfuge or, dare I say it, intelligence? My – trust me – highly limited empathic capacities remain resolutely un-engaged.” He turned to Jolicci again. “Have you quite finished humiliating yourself here, Jolicci, or do you really require me to-?”

“The man I intend to kill is the richest man in the world, the richest and most powerful man in my whole civilisation,” Lededje said. Even she could hear the edge of desperation creeping into her voice.

Demeisen looked at her, one eye-crease raised. “Which civilisation?”

“The Enablement,” she told him.

“The Sichultian Enablement,” Jolicci said.

Demeisen snorted. “Again,” he told Lededje, “not saying as much as you might think.”

“He killed me,” she told him, doing all she could to keep her voice under control. “Murdered me with his own hands. We have no soul-keeping technology but I was saved because a Culture ship called the Me, I’m Counting put a neural lace in my head ten years ago. I was revented here only today.”