He grinned.
‘That’s better. PERSPECTIVE IS STRENGTH. I admit I resent being a little lower than his angel.’
‘Surgeons can’t be senior to dentists. Be the tail wagging the dog.’
‘You’ll be glad to hear that our Führers haven’t entirely suspended common sense. I still run the senior department. But he has final say on strategy. For now.’
‘Shit.’ He banged the chair, intensely sorry for her.
‘Dear heart, if you were funding EXIT, who’d you rather back? A sanitary, humourless, gloom-ridden, virtuous threepenny-bus young man? Or an ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical, sluttish, satirical dyke?’ She guffawed. In her youth, she’d been an acclaimed Gilbert and Sullivan actress. He could see her as Buttercup or Lady Jane. ‘Name your poison. Hooch or hemlock?’
‘I’m trying to give them up.’
‘Stuffed if I am.’ She got up, found a bottle of Glenfiddich, searched her desk for a second glass, gurgling with monstrous primness, ‘And I refuse to drink alone.’
He chuckled. ‘That’ll be the day.’
She returned with two glasses a third full of straight whisky. ‘Alcohol. The only thing God got right.’ As she handed over his drink she feigned shock. ‘Oh-my-gosh. A dirty glass. What will you think of me?’
‘I prefer your dirt to Vanqua’s hygiene.’
‘Remember Lenin’s comment about sex? I consider him Vanqua’s soulmate. The allusion escapes you?’
‘You mean about not drinking from a dirty glass?’
‘Bravo.’ She scratched her rump. ‘Without dirt, no immune response. As for this glass,’ she did a dainty shuffle with her hippo body and assumed a little girl’s voice, ‘I can wipe it with my filthy hanky if you like and smear the yuk further round the rim?’
‘Too kind. It’s fine.’
She sat again and raised her drink. ‘To all sobriety-deprived persons.’
He drank with her and felt the relief it gave his body. ‘Hits the spot.’ On the wall behind her, he noticed an infrasound panel. Any unauthorised snooper here would activate a low-frequency pulse that liquefied his bowels into a quivering diarrhoeic mess. When EXIT security went critical it took more than body bags. It took mops.
She was gazing at him fondly. ‘You’re a very fine fellow, sir.’ She’d become the Fairy Queen in Iolanthe.
He remembered the reply. ‘I am generally admired.’
‘And you are, you rotten chick-magnet. I should retro-fit you with a bimbo barrier.’
He fought his tiredness, yawned. ‘I still want to know how Vanqua justified this tub?’
‘It’s what he calls a branch office, may it wither on the vine. Oh, his reasoning’s plausible enough.’ She sat bolt upright, parodied Vanqua’s clipped accent and expression. ‘”Who can find it in a ship that big far out to sea? And a carrier is a fort.”’ She was a hilarious mimic. ‘”It’s guarded by a battle group and layered air defences — a shifting location no civilian or insurgent can approach.”’
‘So what?’
‘My argument precisely. Unheeded. The bugger doesn’t like me.’ She trilled, ‘And I can’t — tell — why.’ She reverted to speech. ‘Where are my rotten fags?’
He still didn’t understand. ‘How could they sanction something that contravenes our charter? We’ve managed perfectly well for decades with bases in non-participating countries.’
‘A comedy for those who think.’
‘You’re making smoke.’
‘Wish I was.’ She brushed papers off her desk, looking for cigarettes.
He stared at her keenly. ‘They’ve got to you, haven’t they?’
‘A bit, silly sausage that I am. Please, dear, don’t… resuscitate my drowning sorrows.’ She gulped scotch. ‘Remember when we were cadets? That law of Manu? How did it go?’
He dredged his fuzzy mind for the passage. ‘A kingdom peopled mostly by Sudras… filled with… godless men and deprived of twice-born inhabitants…’
She joined in: ‘… will soon wholly perish, stricken by hunger and disease. I’m glad you haven’t forgotten.’ She drained her glass. ‘And a place devoid of balance and humour loses perspective. When people get over serious, stock up on tinned food, candles and pray. Take a man with a severed jocular vein, mix him with despots, senators, pooh-bahs, simmer for some months, and…’
‘Why didn’t you cream the bugger?’
‘Can one, by impatience, force tight buds to open?’ A wicked glance.
‘Do I detect a fiendish plan?’
‘I’m a serviceable fiend. But quick moves won’t work. Despite my grande aptitude à la patience it’s been like watching paint dry.’
‘As long as you haven’t conceded.’
‘Thought you knew me.’
‘I do. So you’re pretending to roll over. And then you’ll attack from the flank.’
‘Perceptive. Now let’s talk about you. This is currently a conference venue and you’re press-ganged as a keynote speaker. Fifty cadets are dying to meet you. I want you to lecture them, Ray.’
‘My God.’ He was almost out of it. ‘Want a fill-in on the Chartres debacle?’
‘You’re tired now. Can do that later. I just need you to know that…’ She lit her fag, locked eyes with him, her playful side gone.
‘What is it?’
She flicked her hands. ‘Sabotage.’
His amazed look. ‘Internal?’
A nod.
He could imagine nothing more dangerous. ‘Christ.’
‘And it takes a peculiar form. No projects damaged. Only people. As if they’re feeling their way.’
‘Doesn’t make sense. If they’re inside they can bring down everything. So why haven’t they exposed us?’
‘Exactly.’
‘The Chartres thing. Would it…?’
‘Not sure. Leave that out for now.’ Suddenly she was diamond-hard. ‘But in the gross and scope of my opinion, this bodes some strange eruption to our state.’
Did she intend him to make the connection? Something rotten in… ‘The Great Dane?’
‘I’m being carefully unspecific. It may not be him, but it’s one of us. So I may need you to fabricate a ghost.’
‘In here?’
She nodded. ‘Full alert. Be ready to take someone out.’
7
NUDE WITH MIRROR
The cramped cabin they gave him had a fold-down desk, wardrobe and bunk. On the bunk was a towel. He needed a shower, then sleep.
The washroom, four cabins down, vibrated with the ship. When he entered, a naked black woman was facing the mirrored wall, foot on a bench, paring her nails. The mirror reflected her small, high breasts. She looked around and smiled.
It had been a while since he’d been in an EXIT bathroom. In the interests of emancipation, they had been unisex since Wolf’s time. Wolf himself had appeared naked among his lowliest cadets and his successor, Rhonda, followed his example — risking comments about her weight and inclinations with majestic unconcern. Vanqua, the closet narcissist, welcomed self-display. His ripped muscles were the talk of the base. But for cadets schooled in traditional cultures, the policy was disconcerting.
Cain smiled back. After spending years in a country where even a bared ankle on a billboard was considered outrageous, he found female flesh refreshing.
He said, ‘Hi.’
‘Wish I was.’
He slid the towel from his waist, stepped into a booth, ran the shower. The next shower was occupied. Below the half-partition he saw a scrawny female foot.
Its owner must have seen his foot as well, and known about the missing toes. Then she was in beside him — lank bleached hair, gaunt body, drooping shoulders, sagging breasts, and the slim hips he knew well. Her hips and butt were her glory. ‘Ray,’ she shrieked. ‘When did you blow in?’