The girl shook her head, muttered, “Excuse me,” and went back to looking out of the window.
“Are we clear, Olf?” Huen asked the drone.
“We are, ma’am,” the machine told her.
“Ms. Nsokyi, Av Himerance,” the ambassador said. “To what do we owe the honour?”
“I have been sent by Quietus to check on Ms. Y’breq, as she is a recent reventee,” Yime Nsokyi said.
“And I promised to bring Ms. Nsokyi here,” Himerance said. “Though I also thought it would be pleasant to pay my respects to Ms. Y’breq.”
There was an anguished noise from near the window, where Lededje was staring at her reflection, her nose almost pressing against the glass, while the fingers of her right hand stabbed at the skin on the inside of her left wrist. They all looked.
She whirled round. “Now the fucking tat’s stopped working!” She looked round all of them, meeting mostly blank looks.
Huen sighed, looked at the drone. “Olfes, would you?”
“Calling.”
Demeisen’s image appeared, translucent, on the polished wooden floor, just bright enough to throw a reflection.
“Now what?” the image said, waving its arms, gaze directed at Lededje. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get rid of me?”
“What’s happened to my tat?” she demanded.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s stopped working!”
The image appeared to squint, staring at her. “Hmm,” it said. “See what you mean. Looks like it’s frozen. Well, that will happen. Probably from when I had to half-stun you to stop you ripping Veppers’ throat out; collateral damage. Sorry. My apologies.”
“Well, fix it!”
“Can’t. Heading fast for Tsung. Have to Displace you and the tat and I’m already too far away and getting further away too quickly. Ask the drone.”
“Beyond my ken,” Olfes-Hresh said. “I’ve had a quick look. I can’t even see how it works.”
“Come back!” Lededje wailed. “Fix it! It’s stuck the way it was!”
The image nodded. “Okay. Will do. Not right now though. Day or two. Later.”
The image had disappeared by the time the word “later” reached Lededje’s ears. She buried her face in her hands and roared.
Huen looked at the drone, which made a shaking motion. “Not picking up,” it said quietly.
“Is there anything I can do… we can do?” Yime said.
Lededje collapsed onto her haunches, face still hidden in her hands.
Huen looked thoughtfully at her, then raised her gaze to the Quietus agent and the avatar. “Perhaps,” she said, “there is. Let me explain the situation.”
“Before you do that,” Demeisen’s voice said from Huen’s desk. “May I add something?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lededje breathed, taking her hands away from her face and rolling backwards to lie on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “Is there no getting away from this fucking machine?”
Huen was frowning at the drone. “I thought we were clear?” she said.
“As did I,” the machine said, aura field purple-grey with embarrassment.
“Well, couldn’t help overhearing,” Demeisen’s voice said.
“Liar,” Huen muttered.
“And I thought you might like to hear this. Just dropped into my in-box, at it were. Theoretically anonymous, but it definitely came from my new best chum, the bright and breezy NR Bismuth category ship 8401.00 Partial Photic Boundary. Slightly lo-fi after a lot of processing de-manglement, but I think you’ll forgive it that. It’s from about three hours ago, between Mr. V and Legislator-Admiral Bettlescroy-Bisspe-Blispin III, the bod in charge of the GFCF forces here in the Enablement. Here we go:”
“Anyway,” Veppers’ voice said, also coming from whatever comms gear was hidden in Huen’s desk, “to reiterate: every trackway is underlain by what to the untutored eye looks like some sort of giant fungal structure. It isn’t. It’s substrate. Low-power, bio-based, not ultra-fast running, but high-efficiency, highly damage-resistant substrate; anything from ten to thirty metres thick under and amongst the roots, but adding up to over half a cubic kilometre of processing power spread throughout the estate. All the comms traffic to and from is channelled through the phased array satellite links dotted round the mansion house itself.
“That’s what you have to hit, Bettlescroy. The under-trackway substrates contain over seventy per cent of the Hells in the entire galaxy. Of those we know of, anyway. Used to be slightly more, but very recently I sub-contracted the NR Hell, just to be on the safe side. I’ve been buying Hells up for over a century, Legislator-Admiral, taking the processing requirements and legal and jurisdictional implications off other peoples’ hands for most of my business life. The majority of the Hells are right here, in system, on planet. That is why I have always felt able to be so relaxed regarding the targeting details. Think you can get enough ships to Sichult to lay waste to my estate?”
“Truly?” another voice said. “The targets are on your own estates? Why would you do that?”
“Deniability, Bettlescroy. You’ll have to raze the trackways, wreck my lands, blast the satellite links and damage the house itself; maybe even destroy it. That house has been in my family for centuries; it and the estate are inestimably precious to me. Or at least so everybody assumes. Who’s going to believe I brought all that destruction on myself?”
“And so on,” Demeisen’s voice told them. “Then there’s this really good bit:”
“And the people?”
“What people?”
“The people on the estate when it is laid waste.”
“Oh. Yes. I assume I have a few hours before any attack takes place.”
“There’s a bit of blah-blah-blah here from our boy Bettlescroy,” Demeisen’s voice said, “then:”
“So, bottom line,” they heard Veppers say, “I’d have time to get a few people out. Not too many, of course; it still has to look convincing. But I can always hire more people, Bettlescroy. Never a shortage of those, ever.”
“… Fascinating, what?” Demeisen’s voice said from Huen’s desk. “Specially the bit about handing the NR’s theme-park of woe over to somebody else before all the other Hells got wasted. Bet he thought that was being clever, getting the NR off his back. Just like the GFCF thought they were being clever swiping all that NR comms knowledge, back in the whenever-when, never thinking it might come with trap-doors the NR could tap into and copy their comms any time they wanted. Don’t you think it’s hilarious when people think they’re being terribly clever? I know I do. Just as well some of us genuinely fucking are or we’d be in a hell of a fucking state. Well, my work here is done. Mostly, anyway; still more smatter-ships to smashify. Be seeing you!”
There was silence in the room for a while.
The drone Olfes-Hresh made a shaking motion. “Well,” it said to Huen, “again, I think we’re clear, and it’s gone, but then I thought that the last time.”
On the floor, lying loosely spread, shaking her head, Lededje sighed.
Huen looked up from her to Yime and Himerance.
“Obviously,” she said, “there are things we ought not to be doing or taking part in here, either for first-principle moral reasons, or due to the regrettable exigencies of realpolitik.” She paused. “However.”
Twenty-nine