"You could never have bought Launde," Uri and Cecil chorused, laughing.
"Little buggers!" Kitchener grunted. He glanced down at the plate Isabel put in front of him, and started to poke around distrustfully with a fork. "And don't giggle, lad," he said without looking up, "only bloody women giggle."
Nicholas clamped his mouth shut, and concentrated on his plate. From the corner of' his eye he could see Isabel laughing silently.
"I was watching the newscasts this afternoon," Kitchener said. "It looks like the Scottish PSP is about to fall."
"It's always on the verge of collapse," Cecil protested loudly. "They said it wouldn't last six months after our lot got kicked out."
"Yes, but Zurich has cut off their credit now."
"About time," Liz muttered.
Nicholas knew she had lost her mother when the PSP was in power in England. She always blamed the People's Constables, but thankfully never went into details. His own memories of President Armstrong's brutish regime were more or less limited to the constant struggle to survive on too little food. The PSP never had much authority in rural areas, they had had enough trouble maintaining control in the urban districts.
"I hope they don't want to link up with us again," Cecil said.
"Why ever not?" Rosette asked. "I think it would be nice being the United Kingdom again, although having the Irish back would be pushing the point."
"We can't afford it," Cecil said. "Christ, we're only just getting back on our own feet."
"A bigger country means greater security in the long run, darling."
"You might as well try Eurofederalism again."
"We'll have to help them," Isabel said. "They're desperately short of food."
"Let them grow their own," Cecil said. "They're not short of land, and they've got all those fishing rights."
"How can you say that? There are children suffering."
"I think Isabel's right," Nicholas said boldly. "Some sort of aid's in order, even if we can't afford a Marshall plan."
"Now that will make a nice little complication for the New Conservatives during the election," Kitchener said gleefully. "Trapped whichever way they turn. Serves 'em right. Always good fun watching politicians squirming."
Conversation meandered, as it always did, from politics to art, from music to England's current surge of industrial redevelopment, from channel-star gossip (which Kitchener always pretended not to follow) to the latest crop of scientific papers. Cecil walked round the table, pouring the wine for everyone.
Isabel mentioned the increasing number of people using bioware processor implants, the fact that the New Conservatives had finally legalized them in England, and Kitchener declared: 'Sheer folly."
"I thought you would have approved," she said. "You're always on about enhancing cerebral capacity."
"Rubbish, girl, having processors in your head doesn't make you any brighter. Intellect is half instinct. Always has been. I haven't got one, and I've managed pretty well."
"But you might have achieved more with one," Uri said.
"That's the kind of bloody stupid comment I'd expect from you. Totally devoid of logic. Wishful thinking is sloppy thinking."
Uri gave Kitchener a cool stare. "You have few qualms about using other enhancements to get results."
Nicholas didn't like the tone, it was far too polite. He shifted about in the chair, bleakly waiting for the explosion. No one was eating, Cecil had stopped filling Rosette's glass.
But Kitchener's voice was surprisingly mild when he answered. "I'll use whatever I need to expand my perception, thank you, lad. I've been a consenting adult since before you were shitting in your nappies. Being able to discern the whole universe is the key to understanding it. If neurohormones help me in that, then that makes them no different to a particle accelerator, or any other form of research tool, in my book."
"Neat answer. Pity you don't stick to neurohormones, pity you have to expand your consciousness with shit."
"Nothing I take affects my intellect. Only a fool would think otherwise; Expanded consciousness is total crap, there's no such thing, only recreational intoxication, it's a diversion, stepping outside your problems for a few hours."
"Well, it's certainly helped you overcome a few problems, hasn't it?" Uri's face was blank civility.
"I always thought bioware nodes would be terrifically useful if you want to access data quickly," Rosette said brightly.
Cecil's hand came down on Uri's shoulder, squeezing softly. He started pouring some wine into Uri's glass.
Kitchener turned to Rosette. "Use a bloody terminal, girl, don't be so damn lazy. That's all implants are, convenience laziness. It's precisely the kind of attitude which got us into our present state. People never listen to common sense. We shouted about the greenhouse gases till we were blue in the face. Bloody hopeless. They just went on burning petrol and coal."
"What kind of car did you use?" Liz asked slyly.
"There weren't any electric cars then. I had to use petrol."
"Or a bicycle," Rosette said.
"A horse," Nicholas suggested.
"A rickshaw," Isabel giggled.
"Perhaps you could even have walked," Cecil chipped in.
"Leave off, you little buggers," Kitchener grunted. "No bloody respect. Cecil, at least fill my glass, lad, it's wine not perfume, you don't spray it on."
Nicholas managed to catch Isabel's eye, and he smiled. "The salad's lovely."
"Thank you," she said.
Rosette held her cut-crystal wineglass up to the light, turning it slowly. Fragments of refracted light drifted across her face, stipples of gold and violet. "You never compliment Mrs Mayberry when she cooks supper, why is that, Nicky, darling?"
"You never complimented Mrs Mayberry or Isabel," he answered. "I was just being polite, it was considered important where I was brought up."
Rosette wrinkled her nose up at him, and sipped some wine.
"Well done, lad," Kitchener called out. "You stick up for yourself, don't let the little vixen get on top of you."
Nicholas and Isabel exchanged a furtive grin. He was elated, actually answering back to Rosette, and having Isabel approve.
Rosette gave Kitchener a roguish glance. "You've never complained before," she murmured in a husky tone.
Kitchener laughed wickedly. "What's for dessert, Isabel?" he asked.
The storm began to abate after midnight. Nicholas was back in his room watching a vermiform pattern of sparkling blue stars dance through his terminal's cube like a demented will-o'-the-wisp. The program was trying to detect the distinctive interference pattern caused by large dark-mass concentrations; if there was one directly between the emission point and Earth (a remote chance, but possible), the gamma rays should bend around it. Kitchener was always interested in the kind of localized spatial distortions such objects generated. His program was using up a good third of the Abbey's lightware cruncher capacity. The kind of interference he was looking for was incredibly hard to identify.
He had thought about making a start on the magnetosphere induction problem, but the dark mass project was much more interesting. It was worth enduring another of Kitchener's tongue-lashings to be able to see the results as they came in from orbit. Dark-mass detection was well down the priority list of CNES's in-house astronomers, it was exciting to think he might actually be ahead of them, up there at the cutting edge. Nicholas Beswick, science pioneer.