Surface Detail

“Bigger is better,” confirmed Kallier-Falpise. The silvery dot and the whole great sweep of stars moved faster and faster across the screen, apparent motion accelerating as the Fast Picket wheeled about, heading three-quarters of the way back in the direction the GSV had come from.

“Let me show you to your cabin,” the ship’s drone said.

They set course for Sichult. The journey was due to take about ninety days.

Lededje’s cabin, taking up the space of four of the originals, was spacious and beautiful, if somewhat minimalist compared to what she was used to back home. Veppers didn’t believe in minimalism; he thought it smacked of a lack of imagination or money, or both. The bathroom was similar in size to the cabin and had a transparent spherical bath for which she suspected she was going to need instructions.

Kallier-Falpise followed her and the ship’s drone around, floating a metre or so to her side, just visible at the corner of her eye as she inspected the cabin. She turned and faced it once the ship’s own drone had left.

“I think I’ll get some more sleep,” she told the slap-drone.

“Allow me,” the cream-coloured machine said, and the bed – another of the scoop-plus-intelligent-snowflake-feathers design she was becoming used to – fluffed up, like a curiously localised snowstorm in one corner of the cabin. They were called billow beds, apparently.

“Thank you,” she said. “You don’t need to stay.”

“Are you sure?” the little machine asked. “I mean, obviously while we’re aboard ship, that’s fine, but once we arrive anywhere else I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t remain where I might be of most immediate protective use, especially while you’re asleep. It might be best for us both to get used to that arrangement, don’t you think?”

“No,” she said. “I prefer my privacy.”

“I see.” The machine bobbed in the air, its aura field going grey-blue. “Well, as I say, while we’re aboard ship… Excuse me.”

The door shushed closed behind it.

“‘Ahem’, is the accepted interrupter, I believe. So: ah-fucking-hem.”

She opened her eyes to find herself looking sideways at a man sitting cross-legged on the floor about two metres away, near the centre of the cabin. He was dressed in the same dark clothes Demeisen had worn, and – as she blinked, trying to confirm to herself that she was really seeing what she appeared to be seeing- she realised that he looked like a healthier, filled-out version of the gaunt figure who’d bade her farewell only a few hours earlier.

She sat up, aware of the bed feathers swirling neatly about her, tidying themselves out of the way. She was glad she had worn pyjamas, less glad now that she had got rid of the slap-drone.

Demeisen raised one long finger. “Wait a mo; you might need this.”

The word SIMULATION glowed in red letters – in Marian, this time – at the lower limit of her field of vision.

“What the hell is going on?” she said. She pulled her knees up to her chin. For a dizzying instant she was back in her bedroom in the town house in Ubruater, a decade earlier.

“I’m not really here,” Demeisen said, winking at her. “You haven’t seen me, right?” He laughed, spread his arms, looked about the cabin. “Do you have any idea how highly fucking irregular this is?” He put his elbows on his knees, rested his chin on his tented fingers. Too long, too multiply jointed, they looked like a cage. “This poor old stager thinks it’s still some sort of hot-shot fucking warship with a few of its systems removed and most of the others improved. No more chance of somebody having a private chat with a passenger than… I don’t know; it hitting a space reef or something.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. She looked around the cabin. The word SIMULATION followed her gaze like a subtitle.

Demeisen’s face sort of scrunched up. “Not that there’s any such thing. Running aground on an asteroid maybe; whatever. Anyway,” he said, “Hello again. Bet you didn’t expect to see me again so soon.”

“Or ever.”

“Well quite. Also bet you’re wondering why I’m here.”

She waggled a finger towards her lower face as she looked at him. “Can you get rid of…”

He snapped his fingers. It was an unsettlingly sharp, loud sound. She almost jumped.

“There,” he said. The word SIMULATION vanished.

“Thank you. Why are you here, if only apparently?”

“To make you an offer.”

“What? To be your next abused avatar?”

He grimaced again. “Oh, that was all just to upset Jolicci. You saw the guy I was… inhabiting; I released him in front of you. He was fine. I’d even fixed his fingers and everything. Didn’t you notice, this morning?”

She hadn’t.

“And anyway he did agree to everything. Not that I really abused him in the first place. Did he say anything? When I released him; did he? I didn’t bother to send any surveillance back-up and I haven’t asked the SAMWAF, so I honestly don’t know what happened after I pulled out. Did he? Make any allegations?”