The Nano Flower

CHAPTER FIVE

Jason Whitehurst was right, she should have paid more attention to his data profile. He did have a yacht, of sorts, the Colonel Maitland; it was an old passenger airship he had bought and converted into an airborne gin palace.

After the Newfields ball, Whitehurst's limousine had driven the three of them halfway around the Monaco dome's perimeter road before turning off. A covered bridge linked the dome to the city-state's airport, a circular concrete island fifteen hundred metres east of the Prince Albert marina. They'd driven past the terminal building and across the apron to a Gulfstream-XX executive hypersonic. The plane was a small white arrowhead shape, with a central bulge running its whole length, twin fins at the back. With its streamline profile, embodying power and speed, it would have been easy to believe it was some kind of organic construct.

Charlotte ducked under the wing's sharp leading edge and climbed the aluminum stairs through the belly hatch. The cabin was windowless, a door leading forwards into the cockpit, another at the aft bulkhead for the toilet, there were ten seats. A smiling steward in a dark purple blazer showed her how to fasten the belt. Jason sat at the front; and Fabian sat opposite her, his greedy smile blinking on and off.

And that was it. There was no passport and immigration control, no customs, no security search. Jason Whitehurst's money simply overrode the mundane protocols of everyday existence, an intangible bow wave force clearing all before his path. Even so, she thought there should've been some kind of formality. But at least she didn't see the creep with the cool eyes this time.

Charlotte had actually dozed on the short flight. She woke as the steward touched her shoulder. The back of Fabian's head was descending through the hatch.

She glanced about in confusion as she came down the hypersonic plane's stairs. The Gulfstream had landed on a circular VTOL pad. A stiff chilly breeze plucked at her gown. They were definitely out at sea, she could taste the freshness of the air. But all she could see past the lights ringing the pad was a band of night sky, stars twinkling with unusual clarity, there was no sign of the sea, no sound of water. A bright orange strobe light was flashing two hundred metres ahead of the Gulfstream's nose, seemingly suspended in space. That was when she started to realize where they were.

"Welcome to my yacht, my dear," Jason Whitehurst said with a touch of irony.

Charlotte lifted her mouth in a smile. "Thank you, sir."

He wagged a finger.

"Jason," she corrected.

"Good girl."

We must be right on top of the airship, she thought. But it's so stable, even in the breeze, it must be massive.

Fabian had disappeared through a door at the rear of the pad. Jason guided her courteously towards it.

Charlotte yawned widely, covering her mouth quickly. "Excuse me," she apologized.

"Tired, my dear? You were out like a light on the plane."

"I'm sorry, you must think me dreadfully rude. I've been on my feet for thirty-six hours. I've only just returned from my holiday. It's been planes and airport lounges all day, I'm afraid."

They went through the door into a well-lit corridor. Fabian was waiting by a lift.

"That sounds most interesting," Jason Whitehurst said. "I shall enjoy hearing all about your travels tomorrow over lunch."

Charlotte's heart sank.

The lift door hummed open. Everything was made out of composite, she noted—walls, floor, ceiling.

"Fabian, I think you had better see your lady guest to one of the spare cabins for tonight," Jason Whitehurst said. "Dear Charlotte is terribly tired. I think she needs a night's rest. She can move into your room tomorrow."

And that cleared up any possible ambiguities about the situation, Charlotte thought. Clever of him, reassuring his son in front of her.

Fabian's face fell. "Yes, Father."

She shared the lift with Fabian. He kept giving her fast glances, suddenly nervous again. She thought she'd succeeded in putting him at ease while they were dancing. "How old are you?" he asked quickly. "I mean… you don't have to say. Not if you don't want to."

"I'm twenty-one, Fabian."

"Oh." He stared at the stainless-steel control panel beside the door. "I was fifteen a few months back, actually. Well more like nine months, really."

According to the data profile Baronski had squirted over to her, Fabian had celebrated his fifteenth birthday barely a fortnight ago. "That's nice."

Fabian blushed. "Why?"

"Because people will still treat you like a kid. But you're not. It means you can get away with murder."

His jaw worked silently for a moment. "Ah, yes, right."

The lift doors opened on the gondola's upper deck. He showed her down a long corridor to her cabin. She began to wonder again about the size of the Colonel Maitland.

"Thank you, Fabian," she said when the cabin door slid open.

"Sleep as long as you want. There's nothing rigid about meals on board. The cooks will always get you something to eat whenever you ask them. That's what they're here for." He flipped the hair from his eyes. "Would you like to come swimming with me tomorrow?"

"Swimming? In an airship? What do you do, jump into the sea?"

Just for a moment a genuine fifteen-year-old's grin flashed over his face. "No, nothing like that. I'll show you."

"Sounds fun. That's a date, then."

She woke to the faintest of buzzing sounds, having to concentrate hard to be certain she wasn't imagining it. It seemed to rise and fall in some strange cycle of its own. There was no accompanying vibration. She thought it might be the propellers.

Her cabin was stylish and luxuriant, vaguely reminiscent of a nineteenth-century steamship. Wooden dresser and chests, mossy sapphire carpet, biolum globes like giant opals, pictures of pre-Warming landscapes on the walls. Three sets of mulberry curtains along one wall emitted a dull glow. A remote unit was sitting on the bedside cabinet.

She found the button for the curtains, and rolled off the bed as they drew apart, revealing long rectangular windows with brass frames.

Colonel Maitland was cruising three or four kilometres above the Mediterranean. The water below shone with a rich clear blue hue, while wave-tops shimmered brightly creating a silver glare. She had never flown over the Mediterranean like this before. Hypersonics flew so high and fast that details blurred to non-existence, seas were reduced to a formless blue plane. But this view was hypnotic. She could see ships down there, trailing long V-shaped wakes; bulk cargo carriers, rusty splinters no bigger than her thumb nail.

There was a light tapping on the door. Charlotte looked round the cabin, and saw a towelling robe on the foot of the bed. She slipped into it.

"Come in."

It was a maid, a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a plain black knee-length tunic, her mouse-brown hair wound into a neat bun. She curtsied. And she got it right, too, Charlotte noticed.

"Did madam have a pleasant rest?" The maid's English was slightly accented. Slavonic?

"There's no need for that nonsense in private," Charlotte said.

"Madam?"

That hurt. Formality was the way a patron's household staff told her they thought she was on a social stratum way below them, about equal to the family pets. Dumb, pampered, and good at tricks. "I had a very pleasant rest. Is the rest of the ship up and about?"

"It is nearly eleven o'clock, madam."

Charlotte blinked in surprise. When she looked out of the windows again she saw the sun was well up in the sky.

She cocked her head at it, finding something vaguely disconcerting about its appearance. Whatever the anomaly was, she couldn't quantify it.

"Mr. Whitehurst is expecting me for lunch," Charlotte said. "What time is that?"

"Twelve fifty, madam."

Charlotte ran her hands through her hair. "I'll take a shower first. Where are my clothes?" The gown she'd worn to the Newfields ball was draped over a chair. She'd been so tired last night she couldn't be bothered even to find a hanger for it. Now the material was probably creased beyond rescue.

The maid opened a drawer. Charlotte recognized some of her clothes folded neatly. When had that been done?

"Would madam like me to assist in the bathroom? I am a trained manicurist."

"You know how to do hair as well?"

A slight bow.

"Good, in that case you can give me a hand." And get that nice clean tunic all wet and soapy as well.

The maid slid open a varnished pine door to reveal a bathroom. It was all marbled surfaces and extravagant potted ferns.

The marble must be fake, Charlotte decided. They couldn't possibly afford the weight, not even in this airship. Jason Whitehurst giving his guests fake marble. She grinned.

"Mr. Jason said to be sure your choice of day attire was a suitable one for a companion of Master Fabian's," the maid said. Her face was beautifully composed. "I took the liberty of laying out one or two of the briefer items from madam's wardrobe. I hope they meet with your approval, there were so many to select from."

"Why, thank you, I'm sure your knowledge in that area is unmatched." Charlotte swept regally into the bathroom. One all. But it was shaping up like a long dirty war.

Lunch was difficult. They ate in the aft dining-room on the gondola's upper deck; looking out at the stern of the airship. Charlotte discovered she had been quite right about the Colonel Maitland, it was vast; seven hundred metres long, a hundred and twenty in diameter. Its fuselage was made up from sheets of solar cells, a glossy black envelope reflecting narrow ripples of sunlight in mimicry of the sea below.

Jason Whitehurst sat at the head of the table, with his back to the curving band of windows. Charlotte and Fabian sat on either side of him, facing each other. Fabian was doing his best not to stare. But once or twice she thought she caught that glint of anticipation on his face again.

As she worked her spoon into the avocado starter Charlotte watched the translucent blur of the contra-rotating fans at the stern. The Colonel Maitland was making a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. She hadn't known airships could travel so fast, her mind classing them as lumbering dinosaurs.

"Oh no, not at all," Jason Whitehurst said when she mentioned it. "Even the previous generation of rigid airships in the nineteen-thirties were reaching speeds around a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. Flat out, the Colonel Maitland can make a hundred and eighty. It used to cruise at about a hundred and fifty when it was on the trans-Pacific passenger run."

"This was a passenger ship?" she asked.

"Yes. Airships came into their own after the Warming and the Energy Crunch. Damnable era, that one, the whole world went positively insane for over a decade. Still, I expect that was before your time, my dear. And very fortunate you were too, missing it. But after the jet fleets were grounded by impossibly expensive fuel, beauties like the old Colonel were all we had until Event Horizon cracked the giga-conductor's molecular structure. After that, of course, everybody went bloody speed mad. Hypersonics, spaceplanes; nothing but rush and bustle. One shouldn't complain, one supposes; the world is a better place now, so everyone says. But airships have such class. That's why I couldn't resist buying this old chap when it came on the market."

Charlotte took a sip of her white wine. This assignment was turning into a complete waste of time. Jason Whitehurst spent most of his time on board the Colond Maitland, so he said, only touching the ground for parties like the Newfields ball and other social events, the occasional business meeting. His trading empire was mostly handled by his cargo agents, and ninety per cent of his financial business conducted via private satellite relays. That didn't bode well at all. A large part of her arrangement with Baronski was listening to table talk. It was amazing what premier-grade kombinate executives and company chairmen would say when they were relaxed in a convivial atmosphere, safe amongst their own. Of course, they didn't expect her to follow a word of what they were saying. Youth, a pretty face, and a perfect figure equals no brain at all. So the next day she would call up Baronski, and he played the bytes of insider knowledge on the stock markets. Charlotte only got two per cent on that deal, but it would often come to more than the price her patron's gifts brought in.

Except now there were no guests on board, nor any prospect of them before they reached Odessa. And Fabian was supposed to be her patron; the only gifts she was likely to get from him would be rock concert tickets and a Playboy channel subscription.

One of the waiters brought her a chicken salad. Charlotte waited until Jason Whitehurst started eating, then tucked in. Her usual patrons, with their overhanging bellies and multiplying chins, tended to become irritable when they saw her nibbling at her food while they chomped their way through five-course meals, it showed them up. So she had had her digestive enzymes alerted with biochemicals to reduce her digestion rate; now it didn't matter how much she ate, she didn't put on weight. With slenderness guaranteed, a simple regimen of light exercise was all she needed to keep her ballerina muscle tone.

"So where did you take this holiday of yours?" Jason Whitehurst asked.

"New London."

"No, really?" Fabian stopped eating, his fork halfway to his mouth. "You mean the asteroid?"

"Yes."

The boy's eyes shone. "What's it like?"

Charlotte moistened her lips with the wine again. "Formidable. The flight out leaves you with a most peculiar impression; it's both big and small at the same time. On the approach you see this huge mountain of rock adrift in space halfway out to the moon. Then, inside, it's a tiny little world-let, the centre hollowed out and planted with trees and grass and crops. Yet even that is big, because you can see it all, and know how small you are by comparison."

"Crikey. I'd like to get up there myself sometime."

"When you're older," Jason Whitehurst said.

"Yes, Father."

Jason Whitehurst reached over, and ruffled the boy's hair. "Ah, impatience of youth. Just wait a few more years, Fabian, you can do what you like after that. Tell your poor old father to get stuffed then."

Fabian did a half-squirm below his father's hand, glancing anxiously at Charlotte, so obviously fearful of how she would interpret the gesture. Daddy's little boy.

"I imagine there can't be very much to do up there," Jason Whitehurst said.

"Oh no, there's much more to it than the microgee industries and Event Horizon's mineral mining operation," Charlotte said. "They're trying to develop it as a finance and tourist centre."

"Good heavens, a sort of Disneyland in orbit, that kind of thing?"

"Not quite, it's rather more exclusive than that. They have casinos, nightclubs, if anything it's rather like a giant cabana club."

"Sounds ghastly," Jason Whitehurst muttered.

"And there's zero gee, as well," Charlotte said.

"From what I've been given to understand, it makes people sick."

"Not much nowadays, the medical people have got the anti-nausea drugs worked out fairly well. They had to. Sports form a big part of the attraction. There are a lot of games that you can play in the various low gee terraces. Tennis, badminton, squash, handball; they're all a lot of fun up there. The ball travels completely differently, you have to develop a whole new set of reflexes to cope. And then there's the fall surfing, that's worth the price of the ticket alone. You must have seen it on the channels."

Jason Whitehurst dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin. "Yes. Well that settles it, I certainly won't be going. I'm far too old to learn anything new."

"Oh, come on, Father. It sounds terrific."

"Maybe for your sixteenth birthday."

"Great!"

"I said maybe." Jason sat back as the waiter removed his plate. "You obviously enjoyed yourself up there, my dear?"

"Yes. I'd like to go back."

Jason Whitehurst pulled thoughtfully at his beard as he looked at her. "How long were you up there for?"

"Ten days."

"I see. And then straight from the spaceport to the Newfields ball. You were in a bit of a rush, weren't you?"

Charlotte didn't like the way he was asking her questions, it wasn't polite conversation-making any more. "I support the Newfields charity, it means a lot to me."

"Dead boring, though," Fabian said. "Except when we were dancing," he added hurriedly.

"Thank you," Charlotte smiled at him.

"Do you still want to come swimming?"

It was the third time he'd asked. Charlotte had finally twigged why he was so persistent: swimming meant bikinis. Devious old Fabian. "I certainly do, yes."

"Not until you've digested your lunch," Jason Whitehurst said. "Why don't you show Charlotte round the old Colonel first."

The gondola was a hundred metres long, thirty wide, with two decks containing all the cabins, lounges, and staff quarters. Fabian led her down the central corridors, opening various doors. The flight centre was at the front of the lower deck, a big room with panoramic windows; three bored officers monitored the airship's systems on five horseshoe-consoles. Fabian introduced her to them, then they went up into the main hull.

"This is where it gets interesting," Fabian said as they climbed a short flight of stairs at the rear of the gondola, right above the dining-room they'd had lunch in.

The stairs came out on to a narrow composite walkway with a rail at waist height, illuminated by a row of biolum strips. Charlotte was standing in a three-metre gap between a spherical helium balloon and the solar cell envelope. Long girders made from improbably thin monolattice carbon struts curved away on both sides, disappearing into darkness. The walkway was a narrow thread of light which stretched out into infinity fore and aft.

She shivered from the cool air. The gap seemed to suck sound away.

Fabian started walking towards the stern. "There are nine of these big spherical gasbags," he said, pointing up, "and two smaller ones in the conical sections at both ends."

Charlotte pressed her hand against the blue-grey roof of plastic. It felt tacky, slightly cooler than the surrounding air.

"Then there's these ten doughnut-shaped ones spaced between the spheres, so we don't waste any volume," Fabian continued. They were underneath a deep curving valley where the spherical gasbag pressed up against a doughnut, taut wires securing both of them to the monolattice spars.

Charlotte let him guide her, not really listening to the details of what she was seeing. Fabian found a walkway leading off at right angles to the main one. It began to curve upwards. She was soon climbing a ladder to another walkway halfway up the side of the fuselage.

"I'm sorry about the way the staff treated you," Fabian said. "It was jolly rude."

Charlotte watched him flip the hair out of his eyes. She hadn't realized he'd noticed the chill of the waiters as they served her at lunch, not many did. "They don't count," she said.

He considered this. "Oh. Does it happen to you a lot?"

"Sometimes."

There were more turns, another flight of stairs. They arrived at a doorway. Charlotte didn't have a clue where they were any more, except the unending buzz of the fans was slightly louder.

"Here we are," Fabian said happily, and showed his card to the lock.

Charlotte looked round as biolum strips covered in protective grilles came on. The room had an industrial feel to it; a gloomy high ceiling, the walls covered in big thermal insulation panels. It had housed some heavy machinery in the past; the mountings were still there, jutting out of the walls, two rows of thick pipes rose out of the floor like stumpy chimneys, capped by metal plates, a spiderweb of empty cable ducts arched around the door. But it was a teenager's den now. A rich teenager. There were flatscreens screwed to the walls, several hardware terminals and display cubes on old tables, piles of cushions, a music deck, a couple of electric guitars, large speakers, clothes scattered round, empty boxes, and ten large tanks full of tropical fish.

"This chamber used to hold the MHD units," Fabian said. "When it was an ordinary passenger ship on the Pacific run the Colonel Maitland burnt hydrogen for power. The solar cell envelope doesn't catch enough energy to power the fans, you see. But when Father had it refitted, we switched to gigaconductor cells. Saves an awful lot of weight."

"So where does the power come from now?" she asked.

Fabian fell back into one of the beanbags, hands behind his head, beaming. "The Gulfstream has extra cells fitted, they charge up from the industrial grid every time it lands, then it transfers the electricity when it gets back."

"So this is where you hang out, is it?" She peered at one of the fish tanks, admiring the vivid rainbow patterns on the guppies, suspecting genetic engineering featured prominently in their heritage.

"Yep."

"Doing what, exactly?"

"I'll show you." Fabian jumped up, limbs jerking erratically, as though he was operated by wires. He tugged his T-shirt off. "This is really the most scorching game on the market. I love this. I'm good at it, too. Really good."

She frowned, slightly bemused as he started to delve through a pile of junk. He pulled on a sleeveless shirt that was stained and torn, then started to clip on what looked like body armour. A metal breastplate painted in jungle camouflage; it had a small spotlight that stood above his left shoulder on a stalk.

"That screen," Fabian told her, urgently. "Watch that one." He was typing quickly on a complicated-looking terminal. "Please, Charlotte."

"Sure." Your daddy's paying for it, after all. She saw he had acquired a GI helmet with a small radio mike hanging down. He picked up a bulky gun, some sort of cross between a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle, and stood in the centre of a circular black mat.

There was something weirdly familiar about the costume. Then the theatre-sized flatscreen on the rear wall lit up.

A cramped room illuminated by dull red lighting, metal lockers forming walls and narrow aisles. Figures frozen in an alert pose, all of them holding the same kind of rifle as Fabian, all looking up at the ceiling with expressions of worry and concern. Charlotte recognized the woman in the centre: Sigourney Weaver. "I know this," she said. "It's from Aliens."

Fabian laughed. He was abruptly engulfed by a two-metre bubble of holographic light, a shadowless pearl haze. Faint coloured lines flickered around him, an exoskeleton drawn in blue, as though he had been cocooned by a computer graphics display.

The scene on the flatscreen came alive. And there was Fabian, one of the space marines, firing his gun wildly as the aliens crashed down through the command centre's roof. He had obviously perfected his chosen role, screaming obscenities, blasting the creatures apart in eruptions of green and yellow gore, covering the retreat back to the medical centre. Then one of the aliens punched up through the floor at his feet, and he went down firing defiantly until a black skeletal hand clamped over his face, dragging him to oblivion. A last terrified scream and he was gone.

Charlotte laughed delightedly, clapping and whistling. "Encore!" She didn't have to fake it. Almost all of her patrons tried to impress her, showing off their sophisticated art collections or delicate antiques, lecturing her extensively on every piece, demonstrating how cultured and refined they were, always hoping for an admiration which wasn't entirely bought. No one had ever tried to woo her with anything remotely like this before, not simple enjoyment. It was all so gloriously childish. She couldn't help wondering how she would look up there on the big screen.

Fabian clambered back to his feet, and slung the chunky rifle over his shoulder. His face split with a rich happy smile. "See, told you I was good. You can pick whatever character you like. I love playing Hudson; he's a real fighter. He's scared the whole time, but he's tough too when it counts. I know his dialogue off by heart."

"You were brilliant." She went over to the terminal he had activated, there were three times the usual number of keys. "What is this?"

"Videoke. All the companies and kombinates say it's going to be their supernova sales item this Christmas. Father got me this deck in advance; he's trying to buy a big consignment of them for Central America. The software houses have only remastered fifty movies for interactivity so far. I've got them loaded in the deck's AV memox; all the real classics since cinema started, even some black and white ones."

"It's wonderful, Fabian."

"Do you want to try it?" he asked generously. "You could be Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, or Laura Dern in Jurassic Park, you're easily beautiful enough."

"Thank you, flatterer. I will some time, once I've learned the lines. If I'm going to do it, I want to do it properly, like you. I'll have to find the right clothes, too."

"I could do the Humphrey Bogart part with you."

"Yes." She read the list of films the videoke deck's flatscreen was displaying. Snow White in the Disney cartoon would certainly be a challenge. And which dwarf could Fabian be? She chuckled quietly to herself.

Fabian slowly took his helmet off. His hair was all sweaty, clinging to his scalp. "Charlotte."

She looked round at him, surprised by his serious tone.

"I meant it when I said you were beautiful."

"Thank you, Fabian."

"I couldn't believe it the first time I saw you." His pose of assured confidence crumpled, shoulders slumping inside the green armour. "I thought I was dreaming. I knew you'd be pretty, but—"

"Give you a tip, never oversell."

His head came up, lips pressed together defiantly. "Are you laughing at me?"

"No, Fabian. I'm not laughing at you. Life is cruel enough without people deliberately adding to it."

"Oh. You're nothing like… I don't mind what you do, you know."

"What do I do?"

Fabian blushed, the invisible wires tugged his shoulders into a lopsided shrug. "You know. The others, before me. Hiring yourself out."

"Cars and flats are hired out, Fabian. They're objects."

"You mean you want to?"

"I mean there are limits. I have a choice."

His youthful uncertainty had returned. He looked almost fragile, she thought.

"So you only came on board the Colonel because you wanted to?" he asked.

"More or less, yes."

"With me?" his voice was disbelieving.

Charlotte was strongly tempted. Revenge for all the shit she'd been made to eat over the years. She could hit him now, beat him with words, sarcasm and derision, cripple him up inside. He was one of them, the indifferent rich, floating effortlessly through life. Never caring, that was their real crime.

His face hovered halfway between pride and trepidation. The kind of innocence she'd never had.

She couldn't do it.

It wasn't often like this. She was supposed to be a passing fancy, an interesting diversion. Not someone who could leave a lasting impression. But with Fabian, she knew she'd be a wonderful memory for the rest of his life. The greatest present a fifteen-year-old could ever be given—judged from a fifteen-year-old's viewpoint. And who knows, I might even alter his perspective on life.

Charlotte twitched her lips sensually. "You won't like this."

"What?"

"When I saw you back at the Newfields ball. I thought you were kind of cute."

"Cute?" he blurted in dismay.

"Told you."

"Oh." Fabian dropped the rifle back on the junk pile and scratched his neck. "Really?"

"Yes."

"So you must like me a bit."

"I suppose so."

He seemed to inflate with purpose. "All right! Can we go swimming now?"

There really was a swimming-pool on board. A surprisingly large one, fifteen metres long, six wide. The room had a small bar at one end, and solaris spots shining out of a hologram sky. Sun loungers were set out along one side of the pool, the other side was flush with the wall, the windows ten centimetres above the water.

Charlotte tested the water with one foot, then shrugged out of her towelling robe. She was wearing a bright scarlet crossover-back swimsuit underneath. Fabian watched her with a bold face and timid eyes as she dived cleanly into the pool.

She swam over to the windows, and looked out at the Mediterranean below. Floating in water that was floating through air. How strange. And there was that feeling of something being out of kilter again. It was mid-afternoon, with the sun sinking towards the horizon ahead of the Colonel Maitland. She decided that when she got to Odessa she'd call Baronski and tell him to find her another patron. Fabian could nearly be classified as sweet, he was certainly gullible, and easily controlled. But there was no way she was going to spend the next month cooped up in an airship with no one else to talk to.

"Do you want the wave generator on?" he asked.

"Maybe later. I'm still getting used to the idea of a pool in the air. Waves would be pushing it."

He turned onto his back, and drifted away. "The pool makes a lot of sense, you know. It weighs less than the hydrogen the ship used to store; and water is the best kind of ballast, quick to dump."

"Are you telling me that if there's an emergency we're going to go down the plug hole?"

Fabian laughed. "No, course not, stupid. There's a grille over the drain."

Charlotte pushed off from the windows. "Fabian, where do you go to school?"

"Here, I use flexible rate learning programs on my terminal. But I'm going away to university. Father said I am. Cambridge, I hope. That's where he went. I want to do economics so I can take over the trading company from him."

"So when do you get out?"

"Out?"

"Of the Colonel Maitland."

"Oh, when we reach a port where Father has some business. Or if we go to a party."

"So how do you make friends?"

Fabian's good humour faded. He stood up in the middle of the pool. "There are the other kids on the party circuit. And I talk to people on the phone chatlink."

She swam over to him, and stood up, the water coming up to her elbows. His head tilted up to look at her.

"That's nice," she said. "You must meet a lot of varied people."

Fabian nodded. His gaze dropped to the scoop of her swimsuit and stayed there. She eased her chest forward a fraction. Regretting it almost immediately as Fabian became very still; teasing him was such a delicate business. He was on the verge of panic.

"Yes?" she said gently.

"Charlotte…" He visibly gathered courage. "Charlotte, can I kiss you now? You don't have to say yes."

She took a slow step forwards, amused by his suddenly startled expression. Her hands held his shoulders, and she gave him a long kiss, finishing by sucking his lower lip as they parted.

If anything Fabian looked even more confused and lost than usual.

"Didn't you like that?" she asked.

"Crikey, yes! It's just—"

She gave him a fast impersonal kiss on the tip of his nose. "Don't feel guilty, Fabian. Never that. I'm here for you."

"I didn't ask for you to be brought on board," he said defensively.

"I know. So, friends?"

"Yes." He gave an anxious nod, then experimented with a grin.

"Good."

"Why did you want to know about my friends?" he asked.

"Just curious."

"Where do you live?"

"I have a flat in the Prezda, that's an Austrian arcology."

"But you can't live there much."

"No. I don't suppose I do. But it's nice to have somewhere to call home. Somewhere you can always return to and shut the door on the rest of the world. Everybody needs that."

"If you don't live there much, then you can't have many real friends either. Not steady ones."

Charlotte couldn't manage to summon up her usual smile. "Fabian, have you got a bioware processor implant?"

His satisfied expression dissolved into perplexity. "No. Of course not. Why?"

"Because you're a very bright boy, that's why."

His grin reappeared. "Really? You really think so?"

"Yes."

"I didn't want to be rude," he said contritely. "I thought—"

"Go on, I don't bite."

"Well, I thought that might be why you decided to come with me, because we were both the same. Neither of us has anybody really close."

She let the water flow back over her, twisting idly.

"Could be."

Charlotte waited for an hour after dinner before she tapped on Fabian's door. The meal had been another exercise in high discomfort; the three of them sitting in the aft dining-room as the twilight faded into night. Jason Whitehurst had asked about New London again. Where she stayed, who she'd met, actually wanting to know which flights she'd used, for Heaven's sake. Even Fabian had begun to shift uncomfortably in his seat.

"Busy?" Charlotte asked.

Fabian shook his head, and backed away from the door. The flatscreen on the wall was showing a Western. His cabin's layout was similar to hers, but personalized, with clothes scattered about, real books piled on the dresser, shoes underfoot. Biolum panels glowed dully, reddish pink embers.

Charlotte closed the door. Fabian gave the impression of wanting to jump on her, and flee at the same time. He stared miserably at his bare feet.

"I wasn't sure if you'd really turn up," he said in a thick voice. "I still think you might be a dream."

Charlotte turned the flatscreen off, deepening the shadows. "Fabian?"

"Yes?"

"Am I really so hard to look at?"

When he lifted his head she gently pushed the lock of hair from his forehead, then put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. His skin was singularly smooth under her fingers.

She let go, slightly disturbed by the amount of adoration in his gaze. "Before we go any further, I just wanted to thank you."

"Me? What for?"

"For not trying to order me about."

"I wouldn't do that. Honestly."

"Yes. I know." Charlotte showed him a slow enticing smile.

"And now you don't have to." She slipped the straps off her shoulders in an easy motion and let the gown slide to the carpet with a silky rustle. Her self-control nearly cracked at the sight of the outright astonishment on his face as he stared at her breasts. Baronski had said they were big enough not to need enlarging, but she'd taken a hormone course to strengthen the Cooper's ligaments which supported the ductal lobes, keeping them high and firm.

Fabian flipped his hair aside, and scrambled for his shirt buttons, his eyes never leaving her.

"No," she said, and the huskiness of her tone surprised even her. "I'll do that."

She started at his collar, kissing his skin as it was exposed, moving down his chest on to his belly. There were no blemishes, nor spots, it was baby-flesh. She reached his shorts, and pulled them down along with his pants.

Fabian was biting his lower lip, drawing breath in judders when she rose to stand in front of him. She slithered quickly out of her panties.

"Bed," she said, and took him by the hand.

He lay down on the rumpled sheets, an almost fearful expression on his face. Charlotte sat across his hips, her gaze holding his eyes for a long moment, then slowly leant forwards.

It was a strange sensation, to be in bed with someone so inexperienced, having to guide and whisper encouragement. But she discovered a secret miscreant pleasure in being dominant for once, bigger and stronger. It was exciting listening to him whimper as her fingers dug into his hard buttocks, tongue making love to his erection. She let him play with her breasts for a long time.

Then finally he was up between her legs, pumping wildly. It was over quickly, Fabian crying out as he fell on top of her.

She held him until his shaking passed. Kissing his brow as she gently stroked his spine.

"I got it all wrong, didn't I?" he said wretchedly.

"No, not at all. I've known of some people who get so wound up the first time that they just freeze. That hardly happened to you, now did it? You'll learn how to make it good for both of us."

"So it wasn't good for you, then?"

She sighed. Even now his mind functioned like a 'ware chip. "This was your night, Fabian."

"But you let me do anything I wanted to you. Anything. You never stopped me."

"Was that so terrible? Didn't you like it?"

"God yes, you're so beautiful. It's brilliant enough just being able to look at you and touch you, but sex with you is like going to heaven."

She had to strain hard not to laugh. He really was cute.

"Sex is whatever you enjoy, providing it doesn't hurt your partner."

He raised himself on his elbows, looking down on her body with a sheepish awe. "Please, Charlotte, show me how to make you enjoy it. I want to thrill you, I want to make you as excited as I am, I want to be the greatest lover you've ever had. Please. Just show me how. Please, Charlotte."

Now how long had it been since she'd had a request like that? If ever. She grinned lazily, and stretched her arms above her head, arching her back. "Do you know what an erogenous zone is?"

"Course I know!"

She giggled. "Ah, but where are they?"

His indignation faltered.

Charlotte caught one of his hands; she gently kissed the tip of each finger, licking with feline provocation, then guided him across her abdomen.