**At least they'll all have beautiful complexions.** She pauses. **So what does he want with us? Why are we still alive?**
**You're alive because he wants you to do a job. Me ...
probably because he needs someone to monologue at. He said something about a geas, but I'm not sure what he meant.
And we're still entangled, so I guess ...** I stop. While I was wibbling, Ramona realized something.
**You're right, it is the geas,** she says sharply.
**Which means nothing's going to happen until we arrive.
So go to sleep, Bob. You're going to need all the sleep you can get before tomorrow.**
**Lights out.** And with that, she pushes me out of her head, blocking me off from that sudden flash of understanding.
12: POWER BREAKFAST
I AWAKEN IN A STRANGE BED THAT FEELS AS IF it's vibrating slightly, with a head like thunder, and muscles I didn't know I had aching in my arms and legs. The thin light of dawn is pouring in through a porthole. Sleep held me down and tried to drown me, but waking comes as fast as a bucket of seawater in the face: I'm on Billington's yacht!
I roll out of bed and use the bathroom. My eyes are blood-shot and I could strip paint with my chin, but I'm not even remotely sleepy. I'm out of touch with Control! That fact is sitting on my shoulder, screaming in my ear with a megaphone; forget little organizational tics like Griffin, I need to talk to Angleton and I need to talk to him right now, if not about six hours ago, and especially before the upcoming power breakfast.
Last night's sense of apathetic passivity is a million miles away, so alien that I frown at myself in the mirror: How the fuck could I do that? It's not like me at all!
It's got to be something to do with this geas that Billington's running on me, the one Ramona refuses to explain in words of one syllable. I can't trust my own reflexes.
Which sucks mightily. Billington is racing headlong towards a full-scale sanity excursion, he's penetrated the Black Chamber, the auction for JENNIFER MORGUE is a decoy, and I'm in the shit just about up to my eyebrows — and not a snorkel in sight.
"Right," I mutter to myself. I look at my clothes from last night in distaste. "Let's see." I pull on my trousers and shirt, then pause. Gadgets. Pinky was talking about... toys. I snort.
I pick up the bow tie, meaning to flick it across the room, then notice something lumpy in either end. That'd be the USB drives with the dog-fucker kit, right? "Ludicrous," I mutter, and roll the thing up. It'd be bloody handy if they'd locked me in a cell with a computer plugged into Billington's shipboard network, but they're not that stupid.
I stare longingly at the bare chunk of space on the desktop.
There may be a keyboard stitched into the lining of my cummerbund, but without a machine to plug it into it's about as much use as a chocolate hacksaw.
With nothing to do but wait for breakfast, I sit down next to the flat-screen TV and glance through the titles on the shelf. There's a bunch of paperback thrillers with titles familiar from the movie series: Thunderball. On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Next to them, a bunch of DVDs. It's all the same goddamn series about the most famous non-existent spy in history. Whoever furnished this room had a James Bond fixation.
I sigh, and pick up the remote, thinking maybe I can watch a mindless movie for a while. Then the screen comes on, showing a familiar menu on a blue background and I stare at it, transfixed, like a yokel who's never seen a television before.
Because it's not a TV. It's a flat-screen PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition.
They can't be that dumb. It's got to be a trap, I gibber to myself. Not even the clueless cannon-fodder-in-jumpsuits who staff any one of the movies on the shelf would be that dumb!
Or would they? I mean, they've got me locked in a broom closet on the bastard's yacht and everything else is conforming to cliche, so why the hell not?
I randomly pull one of the DVDs down from the shelf — it's Thunderball, which seems appropriate although this yacht makes the Disco Volante look like a bath toy — and use it as an excuse to run my fingers around the rim of the TV. There's a slot for discs, and then, just below it, the giveaway: two small notches for USB plugs.
Bingo. Okay, they weren't totally stupid. They took the keyboard and mouse and locked the PC down in kiosk mode with nothing but a TV remote for access. With no administrator password and no keyboard and probably no network connection they figured it was safe. You figured wrong, I admonish them. I push the disc eject button and a tray pops out, and I stick the movie in. Returning to my chair I pick up the cummerbund and bow tie and drop them on the desk in front of the TV. What else? Oh ... I pull on my jacket, frown, then casually take the pen from my inside pocket and toss it on the desk. Finally I sit down and spend the next five minutes doing the obvious thing in the most obvious way imaginable, just in case they're watching.
I'm about ten minutes into the "Making of ..." documentary feature when suddenly the door opens. "Mr.
Howard? You're wanted upstairs for a breakfast meeting." I turn round then stand up slowly. The guard stares at me impassively from behind his mirrored aviator shades. The uniform hereabouts tends towards black — black beret, black tunic, black boots — and so do the guns: he's not actually pointing his Glock at me right now but he could bring it up and nail me to the bulkhead faster than I could cover the distance between us.
"Okay," I say, and pause, staring at the weapon. "Are you sure that's entirely safe"
He doesn't smile: "Don't push your luck."
I slowly move towards him and he steps back smartly into the corridor before gesturing me to walk ahead of him. He's not alone, and his partner's carrying a cut-down Steyr submachine gun with so many weird sensors bolted to the barrel that it looks like a portable spy satellite.
"How much is he paying you?" I ask casually, as we reach a staircase leading back up to owner territory.
Beret Number One grunts. "We got a really good benefits package." Pause. "Better than the Marine Corps."
"And stock options," adds the other joker. "Don't forget the stock options. How many other dot-coms offer stock options for gun-toting minions"
"You can't afford us," his partner says casually. "Not after the IPO, anyway." — I can tell when they're trying to fuck with my head; I shut up. At the top of the stairs I glance over my shoulder. "Door on the left," says Beret Number One. "Go on, he won't bite your head off."
"Unless you make him eat his hash browns cold," adds Beret Number Two.
I open the door. On the other side of it is a large, exquisitely panelled dining room. The table in the middle of the room is currently set for breakfast and I can smell frying bacon and eggs and toast and fresh coffee. My stomach tries to climb my throat and chow down on my sinuses: I am hungry. Which would be great except I'm simultaneously exposed to an appetite-suppressing sight: two stewards, the Billingtons, and their special breakfast guest, Ramona.
"Ah, Mr. Howard. Would you care for a seat?" Ellis smiles broadly. Today he's wearing one of those odd collarless Nehru suits that seem to be de rigueur for villains in bad technothrillers — but at least he hasn't shaved his head and acquired a monocle or a dueling scar. Eileen Billington is a violent contrast in her cerise business suit with shoulder pads sized for an American football quarterback. She grimaces at me like I'm something her cat's dragged in, then goes back to nibbling at her butter croissant as if she's had her stomach stapled.
I glance at Ramona as I step towards the table, and we make eye contact briefly. Someone's raided her hotel room for her luggage — she's swapped last night's gown for casuals and a freshly scrubbed girl-next-door look. "Is that coffee?" I ask, nodding towards the pot.