Surface Detail

“He couldn’t remember anything at all. He wasn’t even sure he’d been an avatar; he thought maybe it was about to happen.”

Demeisen waved his arms. “Well, there you are!”

“There you are what? That proves nothing.”

“Yes it does; if I’d really been sneaky I’d have left the dumb fuck with a batch of implanted false memories full of whatever Contact-wank fantasies he’d been imagining before he took the gig in the first place.” He waved one hand in a blur of too-long fingers. “Anyway, we’re getting off the point here. You need to hear my offer.”

She raised one brow. “Do I?”

He smiled. It was the first time he’d smiled, she thought, when it actually looked like he meant it. “Fine attempt at dismissive insouciance,” he told her. “But yes, you do.”

“All right. What is it?”

“Come with me. Not right now necessarily, but come with me.”

“Where?”

“To Sichult. Back to your home.”

“I’m already going there.”

“Yes, but very slowly, and with a slap-drone in tow. Plus, they’re going to try to distract you.”

“How are they going to distract me?”

“By telling you they’ve found the ship with your full body image, the Me, I’m Counting. Which they sort of have, so it’s not a lie, but they’re hoping you’ll want to detour to get your old body back or have the tattoo stuff copied onto your present body or some such nonsense. Which will mean a serious delay, especially travelling in this antique.”

“Perhaps I’ll want to do that anyway,” she said. She felt a pang of something like loss and hope together. Wouldn’t it be good to see her old, true self? Even if she wouldn’t want to regain her Mark – maybe ever, but certainly not until she’d returned and got as close to Veppers as she could and done her damnedest to kill him.

“Makes no difference,” Demeisen said, scything one hand through the air. “I’ll fucking take you there if you insist on going; still be quicker. Point is: stay on this thing and you’ll get home in not less than ninety days, and with a slap-drone dogging your every step.”

“Whereas?”

He rocked forward on his crossed legs, looked suddenly serious and said, “Whereas come with me and I’ll get you there in twenty-nine days with no fun-spoiling chaperone to hobble you.”

“No slap-drone?”

“None.”

“And no mistreatment? Of me, I mean, the way you mistreated that poor man? Including mistreatment I forget about?”

He frowned. “You still on about that? Of course no mistreatment. I swear.”

She thought. After a moment she said, “Would you help me kill Veppers?”

He put his head back and laughed, loudly. The simulation did a convincing job of making his laughter echo round the generously proportioned cabin. “Ah, if only,” he said, shaking his head. “You can cause your own major assassinatory incident, sweetheart, without making it a diplomatic one involving the Culture.”

“You can’t offer me any help at all?”

“I’m offering to get you there, quicker, and without the fucking slap-drone.”

“But no help in doing what I want to do when I get there.”

He slapped himself on the forehead. “Fuck me! What more do you want?”

She shrugged. “Help with killing him.”

He put one long-fingered hand over his eyes for a moment. “Well,” he said on an inward breath, taking his hand away and looking at her, “that is the only catch. Much as I’d like to offer you one of my own drones, or a knife missile or some magic force-field buttons for your cardigan or an enchanted gusset or what-ever the fuck, for protection if nothing else… I can’t, because in the unlikely event you do waste this fucker, or try to but fail – a much more plausible scenario, if we’re being honest here – and they find any Culture tech on you, suddenly we look like the bad guys, and – hilarious though that would be in so many ways, obviously – even I draw the line at that sort of shit. Unless I’m requested to by a properly constituted committee of my strategically informed intellectual superiors, naturally. That would be entirely different.”

“So why offer to help me at all?”

He grinned. “For my own amusement. To see what you get up to, to annoy the SAMWAF and Jolicci and all the other constipated smug-meisters of Contact and also because I’m heading in that direction anyway.” He lifted both eyebrow creases. “Don’t ask why.”

“And how do you know all this?”

“You told me quite a lot of it last night, babe. The rest…” He spread his arms again. “I’m just well connected. I know Minds that know stuff. Specifically, exactly this sort of stuff.”

“You’re part of Special Circumstances.”