Jasken nodded, went to the back of the sun-bed, gripped its lower frame and, only slightly hindered by the fake cast on his arm, swiftly hoisted the rear of the sun-bed up to head height, tipping the girl into the pool with a splash and a spluttering scream. Veppers was still laughing and fending off Pleur’s flapping blows, while pulling her robe off, when Jasken frowned, put one finger to his ear, then got down on both knees at the pool side and started waving urgently.
“What?” Veppers shouted at Jasken, exasperated. A near miss from one of Pleur’s hands skiffed one cheek and splashed water into his eyes. “Not on the nose, you dumb bitch!”
“It’s Sulbazghi,” Jasken told him. “Highest urgency.”
Veppers was much bigger and stronger than Pleur. He gripped her, turned her round and held her tightly while she cursed at both him and Jasken, coughing and spitting water all the while. “What? Something happening in Ubruater?” Veppers asked.
“No, he’s in a flier, on his way here. Four minutes out. Won’t say what, but insists it’s highest urgency. Shall I tell Bousser to summit the landing platform?”
Veppers sighed. “I suppose.” He got Pleur’s robe off at last. She had mostly stopped struggling and coughing. “Go and meet them,” he told Jasken, who nodded once and walked off.
Veppers pushed the naked girl towards the side of the pool. “As for you, young lady,” he said, biting her neck hard enough to produce a yelp, “you’ve been terribly ill-mannered.”
“I have, haven’t I?” Pleur agreed. She knew just what Veppers liked to hear. “I need to be taught a lesson, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes I would. Assume the position.” He shoved the floating weight of the robe out of the way as Pleur braced herself against the edge of the pool with both hands. “Won’t be long!” he called after Jasken’s retreating back.
Still a little breathless, still with the pleasant glow of satiation about him and still dripping from inside his fluffy robe, Veppers sat forward and looked at the thing lying in Dr. Sulbazghi’s broad, pale yellow palm. He, Sulbazghi — still wearing his lab coat, which was an unusual sight — Jasken and Astil, Veppers’ butler, were the only people in the lavishly furnished lounge. Outside, beyond plump brocade bolsters, waggling tassels, gently clinking chandeliers and trembling gold-thread window fringes, the view was of the slowly clearing mists before and behind the Wheel as it continued on its journey through the spreading pastel light of dawn.
“Thank you, Astil,” Veppers said, accepting a cup of chilled infusion from his butler. “That’s all.”
“Sir,” Astil said, bowing and exiting.
Veppers waited until he
Whatever it was, it looked like a small bunch of very fine wires, their colour a sort of dull matt silver with a hint of blue. Scrunch it up, he thought, and you’d have something like a pebble; something so small you could probably swallow it.
Sulbazghi looked tired, frazzled, almost ill. “It was found in the furnace,” he told Veppers, and ran a hand through his thin, unkempt hair.
“What furnace?” he asked. He’d come into this thinking it was going to prove to be one of those matters that seemed terribly important and momentous to those around him but which he could, having cast his eye over it, happily leave for them to worry about and sort out if possible. That was, after all, what he paid them for. Now, just from the feel in the room, he was starting to think there might be a real problem here.
“There shouldn’t have been anything left,” Jasken said. “What temperature—?”
“The furnace in the Veppers Memorial Hospital,” Sulbazghi said, rubbing his face with his hands, not looking Veppers in the eye. “Our little friend, from the other night.”
Great God, the girl, Veppers realised, with a disturbing feeling in his belly. Now what? Was the fractious bitch to pursue him from beyond the grave? “Okay,” he said slowly. “And all very unfortunate, I’m sure we can agree. But what has…?” He waved at the silvery-blue wires still displayed in Sulbazghi’s hand. “What has whatever this is got to do with that?”
“It’s what was left of her body,” Sulbazghi said.
“There shouldn’t have been anything left,” Jasken said. “Not if the furnace was—”
“The fucking furnace was at the right fucking temperature!” Sulbazghi shouted shrilly.
Jasken whipped off his Oculenses, his expression furious. He looked ready to start a fight.
“Gentlemen, please,” Veppers said calmly, before Jasken could reply. He looked at the doctor. “As simply as you can, Sulbazghi, for the non-technically minded; what the hell is this thing?”
“It’s a neural lace,” the doctor said, sounding exhausted.
“A neural lace,” Veppers repeated.
He’d heard of these things. They were the sort of device that highly advanced aliens who’d started out squidgy and biochemical — as squidgy and biochemical as Sichultians, for example — and who had not wanted to upload themselves into nirvana or oblivion or wherever, used when they wanted to interface with machine minds or record their thoughts, or even when they wanted to save their souls, their mind-states.
Veppers looked at Sulbazghi. “Are you saying,” he said slowly, “that the girl had a neural lace in her head?”
That shouldn’t be possible. Neural laces were illegal for Sichultians. Great God, fucking drug glands were illegal for Sichultians.
“Kind of looks like it,” Sulbazghi said.
“And it never showed up?” Veppers asked. He stared at the doctor. “Sulbazghi, you must have scanned that girl a hundred times.”
“They don’t show up using the equipment we’ve got to look with,” Sulbazghi said. He stared down at the thing in his hand, gave a tiny, despairing laugh. “Minor miracle we can see it with the naked eye.”
“Who put it in her?” Veppers asked. “The clinicians?”
Sulbazghi shook his head. “Impossible.”
“Then who?”
“I’ve done a quick bit of investigating since the doctor told me about this,” Jasken said. “We need help here, sir: somebody who properly knows about this sort of thing—”
“Xingre,” Sulbazghi said. “He’ll know, or know better how to find out.”
“Xingre?” Veppers said, frowning. The Jhlupian trader and honorary consul was his principal contact with the alien civilisation the Enablement was closest to. Jasken had a sour look on his face that Veppers recognised; it meant he was having to agree with Sulbazghi. Both men knew this had to be kept as quiet as possible. Why were they suggesting bringing the alien into this?
“He, she or it might know,” Jasken said. “The point is it’ll be able to find out if this thing really is what it looks like.”
“And what the fuck does it look like?” Veppers asked.
Jasken took a deep breath. “Well, like a… a neural lace device, the sort of thing the so-called ‘Culture’ uses.” He grimaced. Veppers saw the man grind his teeth for a moment. “It’s hard to tell; it could be a fake. With our technology—”
“Why would anyone go to this trouble to fake it?” Sulbazghi said angrily. Veppers held up one hand to quiet him.