Surface Detail

Twenty-seven

xLabtebricolephile oLOU (Eccentric) Me, I’m Counting

Child, greetings. I enclose a recording of certain recent proceedings involving a mind-state representation of one Space Marshal Vatueil and a Specialist Agencies Prompt Response Committee. Please take note and act accordingly.

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xGSV Dressed Up To Party oPS Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints

Take a look at this. SAPRC local franchise stuff; seems Space Marshal V. our son of a bitch.

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xPS Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints oLOU (Eccentric) Me, I’m Counting

There was me about to call you Unknown Craft and wave a message beam vaguely in your direction, but now a degree of signal/identity regularity appears to be infecting the locality and I’ve been informed you are, after all, some sort of proper Culture ship. Hi. Me? Oh, I’m mostly kicking the living-dead shit out of the biggest sorta-smatter outbreak you ever did see in all the whole wide wonderful galaxy. What exactly are you up to? Do call; we’re close enough — let’s talk.

~Hello. I made a possibly foolish promise to a human on a mission and must discharge that before I am able to help you with the smatter outbreak, if that is what you would wish me to do and are hinting at. I appreciate you are being kept busy and might be able to use some assistance. I am seeing a remarkable amount of weapon blink from where I am.

~Which would appear to be on a very tight loop centred round sunny Vebezua, indulging in a translight comet impression. Well, there you are. I’m sure you have your reasons. But thank you. I am, as you say, keeping busy.

~I would hope to join you within a few hours.

~Heck, no rush. Aren’t you the ship who took the image of Ms. Y’breq, few years ago?

~I am. Hence a feeling of responsibility for what has transpired.

~Decent of you. I have a presently soloing element carrying the revented Ms. Y towards Sichult even as we chat. You weren’t thinking of trying to reunite her and the image at all, were you?

~No. The image remains stored, inanimate, and I intend to preserve it in that state. My promise was to get my human guest to where she wishes to go. Though my immediate concern is to avoid being attacked by the NR ship which seems aggressively interested either in whatever happens on Vebezua or in what I do. Or possibly what my guest does, or where the rescued Mind from the Quietus GCU Bodhisattva happens to be, which at the moment is within my field enclosure following the trashing of its ship by the Unfallen Bulbitian in the Semsarine Wisp. The offending NR vessel is reticent regarding divulging what precisely its priorities are, though they certainly seem to include threatening me. Much as I hate to add to your Do list, given your current preoccupation with clunking herds of near-mindless smatter vessels, there is nevertheless this highly capable NR craft giving a fellow Culture ship grief for no apparent good reason. I am a humble and rather elderly Limited Offensive Unit, by inclination and declaration devoutly Eccentric for many a century and hence long unused to the hurly-burly of even simulated battle and profoundly out of the circuit regarding recent advances in EqT ship weaponry and tactics; subjects in which I imagine you must excel. A thought, merely. When you have the time. Now, I must continue trying to arrange a high-speed Displace of two persons, including a non-lace-equipped human, from a planetary surface while an NR ship tries to stop me. Always assuming I can locate the two persons concerned; they appear to have vanished.

~Fascinating. You obviously have your fields full. I’ll leave you to it. Do let’s keep in touch.

“The Me, I’m Counting? The ship with Himerance?” Lededje asked. Suddenly she was back in her room in the town house, ten years earlier, listening in the darkness to the tall, stooped, bald old man as he talked softly about taking an image of her that was faithful and precise down to the individual atom.

“The very same,” Demeisen said. Element twelve of the picket ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints was bearing down on the inner system of the Quyn system, heading straight for a region of space a few hundred kilometres above where the city of Ubruater on the planet Sichult would be in just a few minutes. The ship element was braking hard and negotiating even more strenuously with the relevant authorities on and around the planet. “It still has the image of you that it took when you were younger.”

“What’s it doing here?” Lededje asked. In a suspicious tone, Demeisen thought. They were stepped-back from full foamed-up ultra-alert, sitting in their seats on the module, Lededje’s helmet visor lying opened so that she and the avatar could look at each other.

“I suspect it’s carrying a person from Quietus called Yime Nsokyi,” Demeisen told her. “Didn’t mention her by name but a little research makes it highly likely it’s her.”

“And what’s she doing here?”

“Quietus might be interested in you. As a revented little icicle they may feel that somehow you’re their responsibility.”

She looked at the avatar for a moment. “Are they always this… keen?”

Demeisen shook his head emphatically. “No. There’s probably some other reason.”

“Care to take a guess?”

“Who can say, doll? They may have some interest in the relationship between you and Mr. Veppers, especially as it might manifest itself in the near to medium future. They may not feel that your intentions towards him are entirely peaceful, and wish to forestall some untoward diplomatic incident.”

“What about you; would you act to forestall this untoward diplomatic incident?”

“Might do. Depends on the likely consequences. You have my sympathies, goes without saying, but even I at least have to look like I’m taking account of the bigger picture. Consequences are everything.” The avatar nodded at the screen. “Oh, look; we’re here.”

Sichult filled the screen; a fat hazy crescent of white cloud, grey-green land and streaks of glinting blue seas lay tipped and swollen across the screen. They were close enough for Lededje to see depth in the clear, thin wrapping of atmosphere and make out the shadows of individual storm cells throwing their dark, elongated shapes across the flat white plains of cloud levels extending beneath them.

“Home at last,” Lededje breathed. She did not, the avatar thought, sound all that pleased about it. He’d thought she would have shown more interest in the image of her held by the other Culture ship, too. He’d never understand humans.

“Ah, found him,” Demeisen said, smiling.

Lededje stared at him. “Veppers?”

Demeisen nodded. “Veppers.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Hmm, interesting,” the avatar said. He looked at her. “You should dress for the occasion. Let’s get you out of those cumbersome suits.”

She frowned. “I like these suits. And they’re not cumbersome.”

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.

She had thought of setting the tat to transparency, so that if Veppers saw her he wouldn’t know she had it. She still had plans to use its — by Sichultian standards — unprecedented abilities to get close to him at some point in the future, when she’d have a weapon. Let him hear of some fabulous creature with a tattoo of unheard-of complexity and subtlety, better and more exclusive than anything he had ever possessed, and have him come calling, unsuspecting.

“All right,” she said.

She watched in a reverser field as the tattoo rearranged itself on her face. In less than a second, she didn’t recognise herself. The effect was astounding; all that had happened was that the lines bunched here and thickened there, became very fine here, hinted at shading there, at gradients that didn’t really exist here and here and here, cast a sort of hinted-at ruddiness all over her skin… and just with that, with the suggestion of different planes and lines and altered surfaces, colours and textures, had easily done enough to make her face look quite completely different.

She moved her face this way and that, put the reverser onto mirror, all to check that the effect didn’t just work from one angle or when lit only from one direction. The effect of disguise remained; her face looked broader and darker, her brows thicker, her nose flatter, her lips fuller and her cheekbones less prominent.

She nodded. “That is quite good,” she conceded. She turned to the avatar. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Demeisen said. “Now, can we go?”

“As though I have any choice.”

“Sounds like a hearty affirmation to me.”

“Wait; who do we say—?” she said, but then she was staring at the dim distorted reflection of her new, stranger’s face for a moment, listening to the words “—I am?” sound loud and strange in her ears.

Before she knew it, she was standing blinking in the cool, pleasantly fragranced air of a large, bright room in what must be a tall building.

The view was of afternoon sky, puffy white clouds, and a city across a broad wooded park. The city looked like Ubruater. The room was very large and high ceilinged, with a large desk in one corner and some tall potted plants dotted about a gleaming wooden floor strewn with beautiful rugs. Those items aside, it was minimally furnished with large pieces in cream and grey. On one long seat, lounging, one arm flung over the back, the other holding a small cup, sat Joiler Veppers. To his side sat Jasken; on the other side of a low table sat a large, very straight-backed middle-aged woman Lededje half recognised. She had a child on her knee. A drone like a small smooth suitcase floated near the woman’s shoulder. A wall screen, sound muted, was cycling through news channels; fuzzy images and clear graphics of dense fleets of ships filled the screen, interspersed by well-groomed, very serious-looking presenters.

The woman waved one arm languidly towards them. “Mr. Veppers, may I present Av Demeisen, representative of the Culture ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, and guest. Ship: Mr. Joiler Veppers, Mr. Hibin Jasken, the drone Trachelmatis Olfes-Hresh Stidikren-tra Muoltz—”

“Though I answer to ‘Olf’,” the drone said, with a sort of side-ways bow. “Too much spittle ruins these floors.”

“And this is my son Liss,” the woman continued, smiling, ruffling the blond hair of the young child on her knee. He was biting on a biscuit, but spared the time to wave. Then he patted his hair back down. “I’m Buoyte-Pfaldsa Kreit Lei Huen da’ Motri,” the woman went on. “Culture ambassador to the Enablement.” She waved her arm again, towards a couch across from her, at right angles to the one that Veppers and Jasken sat on. “Please; sit down.”

“Hello, all,” Demeisen said loudly, radiating bonhomie.

Lededje watched Veppers watching her as she and the avatar approached the seating area. He looked pretty much as he had. Hair and skin as full and luxuriant as ever. Dressed more casually and soberly than he usually was when in the city; almost dully, as though he was trying to blend in for once. Nose a little pink and thin at the tip. She met his gaze only briefly, tried to look unconcerned. He was smiling at her. She recognised that particular smile. It was the one that acknowledged beauty but hinted at vulnerability, the one that was meant to say “I may be the richest man in the world but I can still be a little unsure of myself around beautiful women like yourself.” She was aware that Jasken was also looking at her, but she ignored him.

She took a couple of quick steps just before they got to the seats, so that she sat closer to Veppers than Demeisen seemed to have intended. The avatar was to her right, Veppers at an angle, left and in front. The low table held what looked like the remains of a small picnic: pots, small trays, unfolded take-away plates, cups, saucers and some scattered cutlery.

“Won’t you introduce your guest, Demeisen?” the ambassador said.

“Tsk!” the avatar said, slapping his forehead. “My manners, eh?” Demeisen waved one arm from Lededje to Veppers. “Doll, this is your rapist and murderer. Veppers, you ghastly cunt, this is Lededje Y’breq, back from the dead.”

There was a tiny pause. Lededje took only that moment to register what had just happened. Then she bounced out of the couch she had barely sat down on, scooped up the sharpest-looking knife on the table and threw herself at Veppers.

It was only later she understood how little chance she’d really had. The knife disappeared from her grip, plucked away by Demeisen, despite the fact he was on her far side from Veppers.

Jasken moved less quickly, seeming almost to hesitate for a fraction of a second, but even as Lededje got one hand on Veppers’ throat — he was shrinking back, eyes widening, as she threw herself forward — Jasken suddenly had her wrist in a grip like steel.

Meanwhile the drone Olfes-Hresh had snapped through the air to her other side, whipping a blue-glowing force field between her torso and Veppers’ and gripping her left arm, keeping that hand held up and away. Lededje heard herself make an anguished, strangling noise as she tried to close her fingers round Veppers’ throat.

She heard a brief, deep humming noise and experienced a sort of coldness wash over her, making her skin crawl, then — her hand still clutching at Veppers’ throat as he thudded back into the back of the couch — she felt herself being grabbed round the waist. She tried to kick, but her legs seemed to have lost contact with her brain; she felt hopelessly, childishly dizzy, her hand was forced back, and she was pulled away across the low table in a further scatter of food, crockery and cutlery to be plonked down on the couch, not where she had been but with Demeisen between her and Veppers, who was sitting back up now and rubbing his throat.

Demeisen had an arm across Lededje’s upper chest, pinning her against some flattened cushions. One of his legs was trapping both her legs under the couch.

“Gasslikunt!” said a small voice.

Kreit Huen glared at the avatar. “See what you’ve done?” she muttered. She cuddled the boy to her, patting the nape of his neck and back of his head with her hand.

“Motherf—!” Lededje began, struggling mightily to get out from under Demeisen’s limbs, then trying to reach the avatar’s face with her fingers, to tear his eyes out or scratch him or do anything at all to hurt him.

“Spirited little thing, isn’t she?” Veppers said calmly, waving Jasken away as the other man tried to fuss over him.

“Behave,” Demeisen said quietly, levelly to Lededje.

“I’ll f…!” she spat, heaving herself towards him. She got her back about a centimetre away from the couch before she was thrown against it again.

“Led,” the avatar said, a small smile on his face, “you were never going to get a clear shot at him. Now sit still and behave yourself or I will have to stun you again, and more than just your legs this time.” He loosened his grip on her a little, tentatively.

She sat still, looked at him with an expression of cold loathing. “You unmitigated piece of ordure in human shape,” she said, very quietly. “Why did you lead me on? Why did you give me any hope at all?”

“Things change, Lededje,” the avatar told her, sounding reasonable. He withdrew the arm and leg that had been restraining her. “Circumstances, and likely consequences. That’s just the way it is.”

Lededje glanced at Huen and her child. “Go and stuprate your-self,” she whispered to the avatar. He shook his head, made a tsk sound again.

Veppers looked at Huen. “Why is this psychotically rude man trying to convince me that this even more berserk young woman is the late, lamented Ms. Y’breq, and why are they even here?”

“He may believe that she is Ms. Y’breq,” Huen told him. She turned to the drone, handing the child up to it. “Olf, please take Liss to the playroom. This was a mistake. I’m an idiot.”

“Gasslikunt!” Liss repeated, cradled in ruby-red fields as the drone took the child and swept away towards the doors.

Huen smiled as she gazed after the boy, waving.

When the doors closed she turned back to Veppers. “I am not entirely sure why Av Demeisen thought to bring this young lady with him, but I wanted him here because he represents the most powerful vessel in the vicinity, with the power to overturn any agreement we might make if he doesn’t concur. We need him on-side, Joiler.”

Veppers had a sort of calculating look about him, Demeisen thought. He was also — going on heart-rate, capillary contraction and skin moisture readings — profoundly rattled, though hiding it extremely well. The man’s gaze shifted, eyes hooded a little, from the ambassador to Lededje. “But I’m still being asked to believe that this person is some sort of reincarnated version of Ms. Y’breq,” he said, as his gaze alighted on Demeisen, “and this… offensively rude, lying young man, allegedly representing a powerful Culture spacecraft, is allowed to make outrageous and obscene accusations without, I presume, being subject to any of the legal sanctions I would seek to impose on anybody else saying anything so utterly mendacious and, potentially — if anybody else was sufficiently demented to take his ravings seriously — so horrendously damaging to my reputation, is that right?”

“About the size of it,” Demeisen agreed cheerily, clearing up some of the mess Lededje’s lunge across the table had caused. Jasken, still with one wary eye on the girl, was sorting some of the debris on his side.

“You like to take your women from behind,” Lededje said quietly, staring at Veppers. “Usually while facing a mirror. Sometimes, especially when you are drunk, you like to lean forward and bite the right shoulder blade of the woman you are fucking. Always the right, never the left. I have no idea why. You mutter, ‘Ah, yesss, fucking take it,’ sometimes, when you orgasm. You have a small black mole just under the fold of your right armpit, which is the only blemish you have allowed to remain on your body, purely for the purposes of identification. You scratch the right corner of your mouth when you are worried and trying to decide what course of action to take. You secretly despise Peschl, your lawyer, because he is gay, but keep him on because he is very good at his job and it is important to you to make people think that you are not homophobic. I think you may have had some sort of homosexual experience at school with your friend Sapultride. You think the screen director Kostrle is ‘grotesquely over-rated’, though you fund his works and advance him at every opportunity because he seems fashionable and you desire his—”

“Yes yes yes,” Veppers said. “You’ve done your research; well done. Clever girl.” (Still, Demeisen noticed, Veppers’ involuntary stress signs had peaked again, and Jasken was suddenly trying hard not to stare at either his master or Lededje.) Veppers turned to Huen. “Madam. Can we get to the point of things here?”

Demeisen turned quickly to Lededje. “Are you mad?” he asked her quietly.

“Burning my boats, you treacherous fuck,” she said, her voice sounding quiet and hollow. “If I can’t kill the bastard maybe I can unsettle him a little. It’s all you’ve left me.” She barely looked at the avatar as she said this.

“Av Demeisen,” the ambassador said, sitting up straight and brushing some crumbs from her fingers, “you need to listen to this.” She nodded to Veppers.

Veppers looked at the avatar. He took in a breath, then expelled it, glanced at Huen. “This… person really does represent a Culture ship? You’re sure?”

“Yes,” the ambassador said, watching Demeisen rather than looking at Veppers as she addressed him. “Get on with it.”

Veppers shook his head. “Oh well.” He smiled insincerely at the avatar, who smiled just as insincerely back. “The smatter is a diversion,” Veppers told him. “I made one agreement with the Flekke and NR, to stay out of any conflict regarding the Hells. Smokescreen. I never intended to keep it. I made another agreement with the GFCF to provide them with targets for a fleet of ships they would build in the Tsungarial Disk while the Culture and anybody else who might have interfered was tied up with the smatter outbreak. That is the agreement that I intend to keep, so long as nothing untoward befalls me. Those targets are the Hells — well, the substrates running them; the vast majority of them at any rate. All the important ones.”

“And they are here,” Huen said. “On Sichult, is that right?”

Veppers smiled at her. “Here or hereabouts.”

Huen nodded slowly. “The latest reports I have indicate that a substantial number of the Disk-built ships have, surprisingly, escaped the confines of the Tsung system, possibly powered by unexpected amounts of power no one thought they might possess, and are headed this way,” she said, glancing at Demeisen. “To Sichult.”

“Sudden rush of anti-matter to the engines,” the avatar said, nodding vigorously. “I’ve an element or two running them down, but a number will likely get through.”

“Their targets are in or around Sichult,” Veppers said. “I’ll call in the exact locations when they’re closer.”

Demeisen’s eyes narrowed. “Really? That’s cutting it awfully fine, isn’t it?”

“Timing is everything,” Veppers said, smiling. “The point is,” he said, sitting forward on his couch, towards Demeisen — who sensed Lededje tensing, and, without looking, put one arm out and behind him, across her chest, preventing her from moving — “that I’m on your side, sailor boy.” Veppers directed another perfectly insincere smile at the avatar, who this time did not reciprocate. “On my say-so,” Veppers continued, “if I’m around to give it, and enough ships get through to deliver the killer blows, all those nasty, horrible Hells will get wasted and all the poor tortured souls will be released from their torment.” Veppers tipped his head to one side, interrogatively. “So what we need from you is some sort of guarantee that you won’t interfere with any of this. Maybe you’ll even help the ships get through, or at least stop anybody else — the NR, say — from interfering with them.” Veppers glanced at Lededje before looking back to the avatar. “Deal?”

“Good grief, yes!” Demeisen said, reaching across the table to the Sichultian. “Deal!” He nodded vigorously. “Sorry for any earlier remarks! Nothing personal!” He kept his hand stuck out, and nodded at it. Veppers looked at Demeisen’s open, waiting hand.

“You’ll forgive me,” he told the avatar. “I prefer not to shake hands. One never knows where other people’s have been.”

“Totally understand,” Demeisen said, withdrawing his hand without any apparent self-consciousness.

“I have your word?” Veppers said, looking from Huen to Demeisen. “Both of you; I have your word, your personal and representational guarantee that I’ll come to no harm, yes?”

“Absolutely,” ambassador Huen said. “Given.”

“A deal is a fucking deal!” Demeisen agreed. “You’ll suffer no harm from me, I swear.” The avatar looked round at Lededje, sitting simmering on the couch behind him. “Or my little pal here!” He took her by the shoulders with one arm, shook her.

She looked into his eyes. “Liar,” she said softly.

Demeisen appeared not to hear. He sat back, grinning.

Veppers found some un-spilled infusion in an insulated pot, poured a little into his cup and sat back sipping it, gazing levelly at Lededje. He smiled at her, shrugged.

“Oh, come on, whoever you are. This is just how things are done. Those of us with advantage will always seek to increase it, and those wishing to make deals will always find somebody like me on the other side of the table. Who else would you expect?” Veppers gave a small, nasal laugh like a single half-snorted breath through his healing nose. “Life, frankly, is mostly meetings, young lady,” he told her. He favoured her with a more relaxed smile. “Lededje, I should say, if that really is you.” He frowned, looked at Huen. “Of course, if she really is who she says she is, she does rather belong to me.”

Huen shook her head. “No, she doesn’t,” she said.

Veppers blew unnecessarily on his infusion. “Really, my dear ambassador? That may have to be settled through the courts, I’m afraid.”

“No, it won’t,” Demeisen told him, grinning.

Veppers looked at Lededje. Before he could say whatever it was he had been going to say, Lededje said, “Your last words to me were, ‘I was supposed to appear in public this evening.’ Remember?”

Veppers’ smile faltered only briefly. “Were they now?” He glanced at Jasken, who quickly looked down. “How amazing.” He pulled an old-fashioned watch from one pocket. “Heavens, is that the time?”

“Those ships are just about upon us,” Huen said.

“I know,” Veppers said brightly. “And where better to be when they arrive than with the Culture ambassador, under the protection of a Culture warship?” He gestured from Huen to Demeisen, who nodded.

“Few hundred got through,” Demeisen said. “Inner System and Outer Planetary defences somewhat struggling to cope. Modicum of panic amongst the clued-up societal strata, thinking this might be The End. Masses happily ignorant. Danger will have passed by the time they find out about it.” Demeisen nodded, seemingly with approval. “Well,” he said, “apart from that second wave of ships, obviously. That might cause some excitement later.”

“Isn’t it about time you told them where their targets are?” Huen said.

Veppers appeared to consider this. “There are two waves,” he said.

“Sensing some rather premature glitterage from the city, there,” Demeisen muttered, waving towards the buildings across the park. The wall screen was cycling through some blank, hazed, static-filled channels now. The rest were still concentrating on graphics and talking heads.

Displays of sparks like daylight fireworks, and some thin beams of light directed straight up, seemed to be issuing from the summits of some of the higher skyscrapers in Ubruater’s Central Business District.

Huen looked sceptically at Demeisen. “‘Glitterage’?” she asked.

The avatar shrugged.

Veppers looked at his antique watch again, then at Jasken, who nodded briefly. Veppers stood. “Well; things to do, time to go,” he announced. “Madam,” he said, nodding at the ambassador. “Fascinating to meet you,” he said to Demeisen. He looked at Lededje. “I wish you… peace, young lady.” He smiled broadly. “At any rate; a pleasure.”

He and Jasken, who nodded a trio of his own goodbyes, made their way to towards the doors. The drone Olfes-Hresh floated nearby, having reappeared earlier without anybody noticing. “Thing,” Veppers said to it as he passed.

The two men passed beyond the doors.

Moments later sudden bursts of light stuttered in the evening sky beyond the city. The wall screen flickered, hazed, then went to stand-by.

“Hmm,” Demeisen said. “His own estate.” He looked at Huen. “Surprise to you too?”

“Profoundly,” she said.

Demeisen glanced at Lededje. He flicked her nearest knee with one finger. “Snap out of it, babe. It’s not about your little revenge trip; we’re getting Hells destroyed. For free! Not even on our conscience! Seriously: who do you really think matters most, here? You, or a trillion people suffering? Fucking get grown-up about it, won’t you? Your man Veppers skipping off with a jaunty smile on his admittedly eminently punchable face is a small price to pay.”

A roar from overhead announced Veppers’ flier departing. Demeisen looked round at Lededje.

“You lying, inconstant, philandering fuck,” she told him.

The avatar shook his head, looked at the ambassador. “Kids, eh?”