Gerald fidgeted with his fingers. “But how do I get on board? We’d never make it into the spaceport, never mind a starship. Maybe if we just asked Ombey’s government if we can go to Valisk. They’ll know we’re telling the truth about wanting to help Marie. And that information about zero-tau would be useful. They’d be grateful.”
“Bloody hell.” Loren regarded the pathetically hopeful smile on his face more with astonishment than contempt. He had always been the forceful one, the go-getter. “Oh, Gerald, what have they done to you?”
“Remember.” He hung his head, probing at his temples in a vain attempt to alleviate some of the sparkling pain inside. “They made me remember. I don’t want that. I don’t want to remember, I just want to forget it all.”
She came over and sat beside him, her arm going around his shoulder the way she used to do with her daughters when they were younger. “Once we free Marie, all this will be over. You can think of other things again, new things.”
“Yes.” He nodded vigorously, speaking with the slow surety of the newly converted. “Yes, you’re right. That’s what Dr Dobbs told me, too; I have to formulate relevant goals for my new circumstances, and concentrate on achieving them. I must eject myself from the failings of the past.”
“Good philosophy.” Her eyebrows rose in bemusement. “Firstly we have to buy you passage on the Quadin. The captain has supplied Pou Mok with various fringe-legal fleks before, which can be used to lever him into taking you. If you’re firm enough with him, Gerald. Are you going to manage that?”
“Yes. I can do that.” He grasped his hands together, squeezing. “I can tell him anything if it will help Marie.”
“Just don’t be too aggressive. Stay polite and calmly determined.”
“I will.”
“Fine. Now money isn’t a problem, obviously, I can give you a Jovian Bank credit disk with about half a million fuseodollars loaded in. Pou Mok also has half a dozen blank passport fleks. Our real problem is going to be your appearance, every sensor in the asteroid is going to be programmed for your features now. I can change the way you look, but only while I’m near you, which is no use at all. They can detect me easily in public places, especially if I’m using my energistic ability. So we’re going to have to give you a permanent alteration.”
“Permanent?” he asked uneasily.
“Pou Mok has a set of cosmetic adaptation packages. She used to keep changing her own face in case the asteroid police became too familiar with it—she’s not even a natural redhead. I think I know enough to program the control processor manually. If I don’t get too close, the packages should be able to give you a basic makeover. It ought to be enough.”
Loren took him through into one of the apartment’s bedrooms and told him to lie down. The cosmetic adaptation packages were similar to nanonic medical packages but with warty bubbles on the outside, holding reserves of collagen ready to be implanted, firming up new contours. Gerald felt the furry inner surface knitting to his skin, then his nerves went dead.
It took a lot of effort on Gerald’s part not to shy away from the ceiling-mounted sensors in the public hall. He still wasn’t convinced about the face which appeared each time he looked in the mirror. Ten years younger, but with puffy cheeks and drooping laughter lines, skin a shade darker with an underlying red flush; a face which conveyed his internal worry perfectly. His hair had been trimmed to a centimetre fuzz and coloured a light chestnut—at least there were no silver strands any more.
He walked into the Bar Vips and ordered a mineral water, asking the barman where he could find Captain McRobert.
McRobert had brought two of his crew with him, one of whom was a cosmonik with a body resembling a mannequin: jet-black with no features at all, not even on the head; he was an impressive two hundred and ten centimetres tall.
Gerald tried to retain an impassive expression as he sat at their table, but it wasn’t easy. Their steely presence was conjuring up memories of the squad which had captured Kingsford Garrigan in Lalonde’s jungle. “I’m Niall Lyshol; Pou Mok sent me,” he stuttered.
“If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here,” McRobert said curtly. “As it is . . .” He gave the cosmonik a brief signal.
Gerald was offered a processor block.
“Take it,” McRobert instructed.
He tried, but the huge black hand wouldn’t let go.
“No static charge,” the cosmonik said. “No glitches.” The block was withdrawn.
“All right, Niall Lyshol,” McRobert said. “You’re not a possessed, so what the fuck are you?”
“Someone who wants a flight out of here.” Gerald exhaled softly, reminding himself of the relaxation exercises Dr Dobbs urged him to employ: cycle down the body and the brain waves will follow. “As someone else who deals with Pou Mok, Captain, you should appreciate the need to keep moving on before people start to take an interest in you.”
“Don’t pull that bullshit pressure routine on me, boy. I’m not taking anyone who’s hot, not with the way things are right now. I don’t even know if we’re going to leave Guyana, the code two defence alert still hasn’t been lifted. Traffic control is hardly going to clear anyone for flight while one of those bastards is running loose up here.”
“I’m not hot. Check the bulletins.”
“I have.”
“So you’ll take me when the code two is lifted?”
“You’re a complication, Lyshol. I can’t take passengers because of the quarantine, which means you’d have to be listed as crew. You haven’t got neural nanonics, which means the line company would start asking me questions. I don’t like that.”
“I can pay.”
“Be assured: you will.”
“And you’ll have Pou Mok’s gratitude. For what it’s worth.”
“Less than she likes to think. What are you running from?”
“People. Not the authorities. There’s no official trouble.”
“One hundred thousand fuseodollars, and you spend the whole voyage in zero-tau. I’m not having you throwing up all over the life-support capsule.”
“Agreed.”
“Too quickly. A hundred thousand is an awful lot of money.”
Gerald wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up; slow thoughts echoed in his skull, telling him that the sanatorium had been a much kinder environment than this. If I went back, Dr Dobbs would understand, he’d make sure the police didn’t punish me. If it wasn’t for Marie . . . “You can’t have it both ways. If I stay here then a lot of secrets are going to get spilt. You probably wouldn’t be able to fly to any of the Kingdom systems again. I think that would bother the line company more than taking on a crewman without neural nanonics; not that they’ll know I don’t have neural nanonics unless you tell them.”
“I don’t like being threatened, Lyshol.”
“I’m not threatening you. I’m asking for help. I need your help. Please.”
McRobert glanced at his companions. “All right. The Quadin is docked at bay 901-C, we’re scheduled to depart in three hours. Like I said, I can’t guarantee that time with the code two, but if you’re not there I’m not waiting.”
“I’m ready now.”
“No baggage? You surprise me. Very well, you can pay me when we get on board. And, Lyshol, don't expect any crew salary.”
When the four of them came out of Bar Vips, Gerald gave what he believed to be a surreptitious glance along the public hall. There weren't many people about, the code two alert had hauled in all the asteroid’s off-duty military and civil service personnel.
Loren watched him go, hunched up and tragic between his three escorts. They stepped into a lift, and the door closed behind them. She walked the other way down the public hall, a smile playing over her illusory lips.
After seven and a half hours with over a hundred false alerts and not one genuine sighting, Admiral Farquar was considering running a suppressor program through his neural nanonics. He hated the artificial calm the software brought, but the tension and depression were getting to him. The hunt for the possessed woman was being run from the Royal Navy tactical operations centre. It wasn’t quite the operation envisaged while it was being built, but its communications were easily reconfigured to probe the asteroid’s net, and its AI had been loaded with the tracker programs developed by Diana Tiernan to hunt possessed across Xingu. Given the size of Guyana, and the density of electronic systems spread throughout the interior, they should have had a result within minutes.