Besides, when they'd finally released him from the chair he'd been secured to while he'd been unconscious, the drone had shown him an old but shinily mean-looking knife missile it contained within its casing and given him a brief but nasty stinging sensation in his left little finger that it assured him was about a thousandth of the pain its effector was capable of inflicting on him if he tried anything silly. He had assured the machine that he was no warrior and that any martial skills he might have been born with had entirely atrophied at the expense of an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation.
So he was content to let them get on with it when they communicated silently. Made a welcome change, in fact. Anyway, whatever it was they had discovered through all this communicating, they didn't seem terribly happy with it. The girl in particular seemed upset. He got the impression she felt cheated, that she'd discovered she'd been lied to. Perhaps because of that she was telling him things she wouldn't have told him otherwise. He tried to put together what she'd just said about Special Circumstances with what she'd already let him know.
His head ached briefly with the effort. He'd hit it when he'd fallen out of the trap, in Night City. He was still trying to work out what happened there.
"But I thought you said you were with SC?" he said. He couldn't help it; he knew it would just annoy her again, but he was still confused.
"I said," she hissed, through gritted teeth, "that I thought I was working for SC." She looked to one side and sighed heavily, then turned back to him. "Maybe I am, maybe I was, maybe there's different bits of SC, maybe something else entirely, I just don't know, don't you understand?"
"So who sent you?" he asked, crossing his arms. The ownskin jacket slid round his torso; the module's bio unit was cleaning his shirt. The suit still looked pretty good, he thought. The girl hadn't changed out of her jewelled space suit (though she had used the module's toilet, rather than whatever built-in units the suit had). She looked less and less like Dajeil Gelian every hour, he thought, her face becoming younger and finer and more beautiful all the time. It was a fascinating transformation to watch and if the circumstances had been different he'd have been aching at least to test the waters with her to see if there was any sort of mutuality of attraction here… but the circumstances were as they were, and right now the last thing he wanted to do was give her any impression he was ogling her.
"I told you who sent me," she said, her voice cold. "A Mind. With the help… well, it looks more like collusion now, actually," she said with an insincere smile, "of my home world's Mind." She took a deep breath, then set her lips in as tight a line as their fullness would permit. "I had my own warship for grief's sake," she said bitterly, addressing the stars on the screen ahead of them. "Is it any wonder I thought it was all SC-arranged?"
She glanced back at the silent drone, then looked at him again.
"Now we're told our ship's fucked off and we've to keep quiet about where we are. And the sort of trouble we had getting you off Tier…" She shook her head. "Looked like SC to me… not that I know that much, but the machine thinks so too," she said, jerking her head to indicate the drone again. She looked him down and up. "Wish we'd left you there now."
"Well, so do I," he said, trying to sound reasonable.
She'd got to Tier a few days before him, sent to look for him, in effect given a blank cheque and yet not able to find out where he was the easy way, through just asking; hence the business with the pondrosaur. Which made sense if it wasn't Special Circumstances which had sent her, because it was SC who had been looking after him on Tier, and why would they be trying to kidnap him from themselves? And yet she'd had her own warship, apparently, and been given the intelligence that had led her to Tier to intercept him in the first place; information SC would naturally restrict to a small number of trusted Minds. Mystifying.
"So," she said. "What exactly were you supposed to be doing after you left Tier, or was this rather pathetic attempt to reclaim your lost youth by trying to seduce women who looked like an old flame the totality of your mission?"
He smiled as tolerantly as he could. "Sorry," he said. "I can't tell you."
Her eyes narrowed further. "You know," she said, "they might just ask us to throw you outboard."
He allowed himself to sit back, looking surprised and hurt. A little shiver of real fear did make itself felt in his guts. "You wouldn't, would you?" he asked.
She looked forward at the stars again, eyebrows gathered, mouth set in a down-turned line. "No," she admitted, "but I'd enjoy thinking about it."
There was silence for a while. He was conscious of her breathing, though he looked in vain at the attractively sculpted chest of her suit for any sign of movement. Suddenly, her foot clunked down on the carpet beneath her jewel-encrusted boot. "What were you supposed to be doing?" she demanded angrily, turning to face him. "Why did they want you? Fuck it, I've told you why I was there. Come on; tell me."
"I'm sorry," he sighed. She was already starting to blush with anger. Oh no, here we go, he thought. Tantrum time again.
Then the drone jerked up into the air behind them and something flashed round the edges of the module's screen.
"Hello in there," said a large, deep voice, all around them.
VII
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.883.4700]
xGSV Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The
oLSV Serious Callers Only
I regret to inform you that I have changed my position concerning the so-called conspiracy concerning the Esperi Excession and the Affront. It is now my judgement that while there may have been certain irregularities of jurisdiction and of operational ethics involved, these were of an opportunistic rather than a conspiratorial nature. Further, I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.
There are inevitably occasions when such — if I may characterise them so — civilian considerations must be set aside (and indeed, is this not what the very phrase and title Special Circumstances implies?) the better to facilitate actions which, while distasteful and regrettable perhaps in themselves, might reasonably be seen as reliably leading to some strategically desirable state or outcome no rational person would argue against.
It is my profoundly held conviction that the situation regarding the Affront is of this highly specialised and rare nature and therefore merits the measures and policy currently being employed by the Minds you and I had previously suspected of indulging in some sort of grand conspiracy.
I call upon you to talk with our fellows in the Interesting Times Gang whom you have — unjustly, I now believe — distrusted, with a view to facilitating an accord which will allow all parties to work together towards a satisfactory outcome both to this regrettable and unnecessary misunderstanding and, perhaps, to the conflict that has now been initiated by the Affront.
For myself, I intend to go into a retreat for some time, starting immediately from the end of this signal. I shall no longer be in a position to correspond; however, messages may be left for me with the Independent Retreats Council (ex-Culture section) and will be reviewed every hundred days (or thereabouts).