"Jamaican Blue Mountain." Billington smiles thinly.
"And yes, you may have some. I prefer not to conduct interviews while the subjects are comatose."
The steward pours me a cup of coffee as I sit down, and I try hard not to be obvious about how desperate I am for the stuff. (Another couple of hours without it and the merciless headache would be setting in, visited on me by my caffiend in retaliation for withdrawal of his drug.) As I take the first mouthful something brushes up against my ankle. I manage to control my knee-jerk reflex; it must be the cat, right?" The coffee is as good as you'd expect from a billionaire's buffet. "I needed that," I admit. "But I'm still somewhat perplexed as to why you want me here at all." (Although it beats the hell out of the alternatives, I don't say.) "I'd have thought that was perfectly obvious." Billington grins, with the boyish charm of a boardroom bandit whose charisma is his most potent weapon. "You're here because you're both young, intelligent, active professionals with good prospects. It's so hard to get the help these days — " he nods at Eileen, who is sitting at the opposite end of the table, ignoring us by staring into inner space " — and I've found that interviewing candidates in person is a remarkably good way of avoiding subsequent disappointments. Human resources will only get you so far, after all."
I notice that Ramona is watching Eileen. "What's up with her?" I ask.
"Oh, her mind wanders." Billington picks up his knife and fork and slices into a sausage. "Mostly all over her manufacturing sites; remote viewing is a marvelous management tool, don't you think?" The sausage bleeds juice across his plate. I suddenly realize there are no hash browns or tomatoes or mushrooms or anything like that in front of him — it's wall-to-wall dead animal flesh. "You should try it sometime."
Ramona looks me in the eye. "He told me what he wants me to do, Bob."
I raise an eyebrow. "What, ride the grab down to the abyssal plain ..."
"With you providing a running commentary," Billington slides in unctuously. "After all, your current unfortunate state has certain transient advantages, does it not?" He smiles.
"He also told me what he was offering." She looks away, distraught. "I'm sorry, Bob. You were right."
"You — " I stop. **You're going to trust him?** I ask via our private channel.
**It's not just the, the binding to my aspect,** she says, tongue-tied as she hunts for words. **If I do this for him, he makes McMurray set me free. What alternative do I have?** Billington's been watching us in silence for the past short while. Now he interrupts, in my direction: "If I may explain?" He nods at Ramona. "You have a simple choice.
Cooperate and I will have one of my associates perform the rite of disentanglement. You two will be free of each other forever if you so choose, and free of Ms Random's daemon.
You'll both live happily ever after, aside for a period of a few weeks during which you will be guests with limited freedom of movement, while I complete my current project. After it is finished, I can promise you there will be no reprisals from your employers. Nothing can possibly go wrong. You see, I don't need to be nasty: it's a win-win situation ail round."
I lick my dry lips. "What if I don't want to cooperate"
Billington shrugs. "Then you don't run my errand, and I don't pay you for it." He spears a strip of bacon, saws it in half, and raises it to his teeth. "Business is business, Mr.
Howard."
I flinch as if someone's walked over my grave. He's making me an offer I can't refuse, disguising a threat of lethal violence as passive inaction. All he has to do to threaten us is let the nature of our entanglement take its course. I flash back to the yawning horror hiding behind Ramona's soul, the dead weight of Marc's body lying on top of her, suffocating and squeezing the breath from her body. Lock her up in her cabin for a few days and what will she eat? The thing inside her needs to feed. I have a sudden, disquieting vision: Ramona and myself, blurring at the edges, one confused mind in two bodies locked in separate cells, stalked by the dark side of our hybrid soul as the Other works itself up into an orgiastic fever that can only be satisfied by swallowing our minds — **I'm not giving up,** I tell her silently, then nod at Billington. "I get the picture. Business is business; I'll cooperate."
"Excellent. Or jolly good, as I believe you English would say." He smiles in evident delight as he spears the other half of the strip of bacon and dangles it at knee level. A white streak blurs out of the shadows under the table and snaps the bacon right off his fork.
"Ah, Fluffy. There you are!" Billington reaches down and picks up the large, white cat, who turns his head and stares at me with sky-blue eyes that are disturbingly human. "I believe it's about time you were introduced. Say hello to Mr.
Howard, Fluffy."
Fluffy stares at me like I'm an oversized mouse, then hisses charmlessly.
Billington grins at me from behind six kilos of annoyed cat. "Fluffy is what this is really about Mr. Howard. I'm only doing this to keep him in kitty kibble, after ail."
"Kitty kibble?" I shake my head. Fluffy is wearing a diamond collar that belongs in the Tower of London with a platoon of Beefeaters standing guard over it. "I for one welcome our new feline overlords." I tip the cat an ironic nod.
"I thought you could cover the cat-food bill out of the petty cash?" asks Ramona.
"Fluffy has very expensive tastes." Billington dotes on the wretched animal, which has calmed down slightly and is permitting him to scratch it behind the ears.
Eileen chooses this particularly surreal moment to quiver as if electrocuted, then she shakes her head, yawns, and looks about. "Have I missed anything?" she asks querulously.
"Not a lot, dear." Her husband regards her fondly.
Breakfast with the Hitlers, I think, glancing between them.
"Any news"
"Ach." Eileen hunches like a vulture when she's aware.
"Everything is in order, the central business groups advance on all fronts, nothing to report today." She glances at me sharply, then at Ramona. "I think we ought to continue this in the office, though. Flapping ears and all that."
Billington glances down at the table spread before him. I hastily refill my coffee cup before he looks up. "All right."
He nods, then stands up abruptly — still holding Fluffy — and nods at me, then at Ramona. "Feel free to finish up," he says curtly. "Then you may return to your quarters. It won't be long now."
He and Eileen stalk out of the dining room via a door at the back, leaving me alone with Ramona, the remains of breakfast, and the disturbing sense that I've somehow strayed onto loose gravel at the edge of a precipice, and it may be too late to turn back and reach safe ground. In the end, pragmatism wins: when you're being held prisoner you never know where the next power breakfast is coming from, so I grab some slices of toast and a plate full of other munchies. Ramona sits hunched in her chair, looking out the porthole above the sideboard. Misery and depression is coming off her in black, stultifying waves. **We've not failed yet,*** I tell her silently, my mouth full of hash browns. **As long as we can reestablish communications with Control we can get back on top of the situation.**
**You think?** She holds out her coffee cup and the steward, who's still waiting on us, fills it up. **What do you think they'll do if we tell them what's really going on? Give us time to get off the ship before they start shooting?** She takes a mouthful of coffee and puts her cup down. I can feel it scalding her tongue, too hot to swallow: nevertheless, she gulps it down. I wince at the sudden paralyzing heartburn.