The centipede—she has christened it Richard—is fifteen whole inches long and thick like a blood sausage. Revoltingly, it is also the approximate colour of blood sausage (pre-cooking). Bleugh. Everyone in Addeh Sikkim kills these things on sight because, revoltingly, they bite. Edie would very much like to smash Richard flat, but she can’t take the risk that the corpse might fall on a patrol, alert them to her presence, and cause what Songbird would call a “total goat-fucking.” Thus her bleugh is internal, and she observes Richard with watchful loathing. Bonk bonk bonk bonk BONK… BONKBONKBONKyoulittlebastard.
Richard is the second thing to have designs on her inside leg tonight, the first having been a mostly naked waitress with a plateful of baked cat. The Opium Khan likes to mix his pleasures; the feather-clad bimbos of his personal brothel went into rhapsodies and paroxysms of joy when he removed his jacket and revealed arms bare to the shoulder and beautifully tanned. Edie wasn’t entirely unmoved herself, the fire pears bubbling away in her gut like an erotic combustion engine, and when he began to dance a tango with one of the girls—a slow, lingering statement of absolute sexual abandon, ya ta TA TA TA, ya ta-ta taaaaah TA!—she began to sweat a little. Part of that was a concern that she might be required likewise to disrobe; by this time Shem Shem Tsien was entirely bare-chested (hence her concern; her own chest would have been cause for non-trivial comment and discussion) and giving off a scent like a mating fox. Then the whole thing became rather more immediate, as a young woman who refused to be known by any name other than “At Your Service” sat in Edie’s lap and insisted on feeding James Banister slices of swan and bits of veg doused liberally in precious metals.
Between mouthfuls, At Your Service allowed her hands to stray sharply downwards (and thank God, Edie thinks, that the Opium Khan’s houri has no interest in foreplay) and stroke at what she imagined was the Commander’s suitably heroic male organ through his uniform trousers. Indeed, on discovering the impressive proportions of the object in her grip, she became vehement and just a little demanding, pressing and cajoling and revealing by way of encouragement parts of herself not normally seen during the middle stages of a meal.
At Your Service would likely have been somewhat piqued to discover that she was practising her seductive arts on a large green banana which Edie had taken the precaution of stowing in the relevant area after Dotty Catty’s timely warning. But Edie was unable to be smug about this because the dratted thing was pressing directly against her skin in a most lewd way, fitted tight to the curve of her body and pressing with a pliant, rubbery accuracy against her most sensitive parts. While At Your Service’s ministrations were not directly effective, therefore, simple mechanics and the relative stiffness of the banana entailed a degree of… there was no other word for it… stimulation.
When At Your Service sat down on top of her and wriggled a slow, eager figure of eight, Edie bit down on a piece of Red Sikkim Tiger and managed not to make a noise like a woman being driven to the brink of sexual ecstasy by an intimately concealed Asian plantain. She was only marginally successful. Fortunately, the Opium Khan was otherwise engaged.
In the warm darkness, she peers at Richard the centipede. There is a distinct resemblance to a young Guards officer she met in Pimlico about the mouthparts. Right, that’s it. You’re definitely for it, laddie-buck. And bleugh again… The original Richard was clean-shaven, and proud of his monumental chin. This one has fine hairs on the lower half of its mouth. Possibly a sort of Puritan beard. Son-of-Richard. Edie shifts her weight slightly, and unsheaths the kukri. Son-of-Richard edges closer, as if finding something terribly interesting off to Edie’s immediate left. From the clock tower above, there comes a loud, convenient bonging. Edie brings her arm down hard in time with the next bell, and Son-of-Richard is pinned to the branch with a soft slee-utch.
Hah.
A moment later, the patrol has gone and Edie continues her climb. One foot up, and here’s a convenient ledge… she reels in the rope. Off to meet a fair lady, tra la la. Yes, indeed: Dotty Catty, not dotty at all but sharp as a tack. In Edie’s pocket, the note telling her where to go and how to get there, and when. Other foot, up. She stops, listening for the sound of a karabiner tinkling against a stone wall, giving her away. No. It’s fine. Someone moving glassware on the second floor. Up, up.
Sweat rolls down her back, between her shoulder blades, and her legs tremble. It’s a long way down. She grins to herself, and starts the traverse. Girls wishing to serve their country, indeed.
Ten minutes later, she hauls herself up through a narrow window, and finds herself looking into the saddest, most beautiful, most aged face she has ever seen.
Dotty Catty is waiting for her.
VIII
Unwanted;
the type to give a girl trouble;
on the river.
Mercer puts down the phone and glances at Polly, the Bold Receptionist, who shrugs. Mercer frowns.
“No arrest warrants,” he says moodily.
Joe Spork contemplates the changes in his life over the last twenty-four hours which make not being under warrant of arrest a piece of active good news, and tries to imagine a further twist in the world where it is for some reason worse rather than better.
“Does that mean I can go home?”
“It does not. Bees have been seen in the sky over Paris. And Berlin. An unseasonal swarm which baffles apiarists. There’s a quirky story about a mechanical hive in Florence, too. ‘An ornamental sculpture at Palazzo Lucrezia near Fiesole, believed to be a timepiece, has resumed its function after nearly thirty years…’ And a rumour from Mumbai. Apparently there’s been a distressing lapse in normal diplomatic practice. A deniable operation through Jammu into Gilgit-Baltistan to stir up trouble—which is normal, only this time everyone seems to know about it. Karachi isn’t taking it well at all. And remember, Joe, please, these are nuclear states. All right?
“This is still going on. In fact, it’s getting bigger.” Mercer shakes his head plaintively. “Who makes mechanical bees, for God’s sake? Who creates a superweapon or a superwhatever-it-is and makes it so bloody whimsical?”
When Joe makes no answer, Mercer picks up his cup and starts to wander. It is his habit, when he is thinking very hard, to pace and talk and sip at something which ought to be hot and is now cold. Occasionally he complains about it, as if someone should have done something. Then he fights off any attempt to remove it, and carries on. At least two of his assistants have quit after being growled at for cup theft when they were under orders to bring fresh beverages.
Joe waits for Mercer to explain. He doesn’t. He just wanders jaggedly, eyes fixed now on the middle distance, now on the surface of his gelid coffee.
“I need to go and see Joyce,” Joe says finally. “She needs to hear it from someone she knows. They won’t call her because she’s not officially family.”
Mercer sighs. “I will talk to Joyce.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
“Even so. No, Joe,” Mercer adds sharply. “I said there were no arrest warrants. That does not mean that there is nothing fishy going on. It means only that the fishiness is fishier than that.”