Death and Diplomacy (Dave Stone) by Death & Diplomacy (by Dave Stone) (html)

Author:Death & Diplomacy (by Dave Stone) (html)
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Seventeen

Benny Surprise Summerfield woke in a bedroom of a Makrath boarding warren with a head like an inviable biological experiment and a sense of impending doom. Not quite in the sense that something horrible is going to happen – because a nasty little voice inside you is saying that it already has happened. It’s just that you’re going to remember it in a moment.

She half slid, half fell, from the bed and stumbled over to the wash‐stand – she had given up trying to see her environment in qualified terms, a quasi‐this, an analogue of that. True, the bed consisted of swirls of what appeared to be chiffon and felt like silk suspended by some form of static, springy anti‐gravity field rather than a mattress; true the basin appeared to be semi‐organic and evolved rather than manufactured. But given a carbon‐based, bipedal, broadly humanoid lifeform there are certain basic constants the universe over, and a bed was something you slept in and a wash‐stand was something that you washed in, like as not with plumbing.

The plumbing gurgled and glopped as she ran water over her wrists from the tubular and slightly dubious‐looking spigot; the sound reverberated through her head as though in an echo chamber via ears stuffed with cotton wadding soaked with ether. An idea was forming in her head and Benny put it together piece by laborious piece. Something to do with the night before.

Ah, yes. That was it.

A bed was something you slept in, and a wash‐stand was something you washed in, and drinks were something you got pissed out of your head on and then did something incredibly stupid that you regretted for the rest of your pitiful, sad and extraordinarily miserable life.

Several star systems from Jaris, one of the two functioning engines had given out, and they had been forced to set down on their last remaining, on the desert planet of Makrath.

The spaceport mechanic, a fluorescent yellow humanoid with displaced ears and in cloth‐of‐chromium overalls, had looked the dysfunctional engine up and down and said something that Benny didn’t need to know the language to recognize as the local equivalent of, ‘Oh dear me, squire, this is going to cost you.’

To Benny’s surprise Jason had expansively appeared to agree.

‘I thought you didn’t have any cash,’ she said as they went through the tunnels that led to the subterranean settlement.

‘We don’t.’ Jason shouldered his holdall, in which he had packed several useful pieces of equipment. ‘We can get some now, though. The action on Jaris was just your basic agricultural stuff. Makrath on the other hand, is one of the gaming centres of the known Cluster.’

They walked out of the tunnel and into the flashing lights and crowds and music of a Las Vegas with a lid on.

Outside an edifice that looked like an animated cybernetic octopus with fifteen arms and a severe case of rhinestone boils, Jason unclasped the fastenings on his holdall. He strapped a little hotwired electronic unit to his forearm and connected it via cabling to an electrostatic band on his wrist.

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