“Dangerous enough,” Miss Pretoria said, with a smile that might almost have been flirting, before she beckoned them on.
Somewhere between shaking Miss Pretoria’s hand and being shown to their quarters so they could get ready for dinner, Vincent started to wonder if he was ever going to hit his stride. Normally, he would have felt it happen, felt it fall into place with an almost audible click. Still, he had some advantages. Pretoria didn’t know how to respond to his relentless good humor. He didn’t rise to her provocation, and it set her back on her heels. Which was all to the good, because he needed her off‑balance and questioning her assumptions. If nothing else, it would make it easier to keep up appearances for Michelangelo, who needed to see Vincent doing what they had come here to do: thejob. The damned job, so important it took a definite article.
Angelo was restless again, fidgeting as he pretended to examine documents in the hours they were given to themselves. Vincent pretended to nap, his eyes closed, and listened first to the silence of heavy heat and then to the patter of rain on the sill of the windowless frame that looked out over Penthesilea.
For a moment, Vincent felt a pang at the necessity of that deceit. And then he remembered the Kaiwo Maru,the transparency of Michelangelo’s desire to bloody him. I took the therapy.
It explained, at least, why Michelangelo had never tried to contact him, even through their private channels. They were spies, for the Christ’s sake. They’d kept their affair secret for thirty years; Michelangelo could have passed a note without getting caught. If he’d wanted to. If the job and the goddamned Coalition hadn’t been more important than Vincent. Probably the job, frankly. Michelangelo had never cared for politics, for all he’d been willing to sacrifice just about anything to them.
That was fine. There were things that were more important to Vincent than the Coalition, too.
Such as bringing it down.
He sat up, rolled off the bed, and–without looking at Angelo–began to putter around their quarters. The suite was halfway up one of the asymmetrical towers. A single bedroom, with a bed big enough for four; a recreation area; and a fresher so primitive it used running water. Vincent had never actually seenone, apart from in antique records. The walls had the same simulated transparency as the “lobby” of the building, although now they showed the dark jungle and the phosphorescent sea. Overhead, blurred stars glowing through the dying nebula. Vincent paused for a moment to wonder at that–how the city itself vanished, except the bit he could see through the open window frame, and was replaced by the sensation of being alone in a reaching space.
The New Amazonians must have adapted, but he found it disconcerting. It wasn’t something a human architect would design for a living space. There was no coziness here, no safety of walls and den. This was a lair for a beast with wings, whose domain and comfort were the open sky.
Vincent grinned at Michelangelo, and nodded to the bed. “Do you want a nap before dinner?”
Michelangelo tapped his watch. “I’m on chemistry. And three months of cryo. I’ll be fine.” As if cryo were rest.
“Do you suppose the mattress squeaks?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” The smoke in Angelo’s voice was enough to curl Vincent’s toes. All lies. “Besides, I need to do my forms. Do you want first turn in the fresher?”
Vincent knew when he was beaten. He shrugged and switched his wardrobe off, pretending he didn’t notice Michelangelo’s lingering, to‑all‑appearances‑appreciative glance as the foglets swarmed into atmospheric suspension, misty streaks across his body before they left him naked. “If I can figure out how to work it,” he said, and walked through the arch into the antechamber, Michelangelo’s eyes on every step.
The fresher was primitive but the controls were obvious, the combined bath and shower a deep tub with dials on the wall, handles marked blue and red, a nozzle overhead. A washbasin and a commode completed the accommodations, and Vincent had the technology worked out in three ticks.
He stepped down into the tub–there were stairs, very convenient–and set the dial for hot.
Lesa didn’t have time to go home and change before dinner. Fortunately, the government center was all smart suites, and she’d had the foresight to stash a change of clothes in her office. She wouldn’t even have to commandeer one of the rooms for visiting dignitaries.
She ordered the door locked and stripped out of her suit, leaving it tossed across the back of her chair. She placed her honor on the edge of the desk, avoiding the blotter so she wouldn’t trigger her system, and turned to face the wall. “House, I need a shower, please.”
There had been no trace of a doorway in the transparent wall before her, but an aperture appeared as she spoke and irised wide. She passed through it, petting the city’s soap‑textured wall as she went by. It shivered acknowledgment and she smiled. Lights brightened as she entered, soothing shades of blue and white, and one wall smoothed to a mirror gloss.
House was still constructing the shower. She inspected her hair for split ends and her nose for black‑heads as she waited, but it didn’t take long. The floor underfoot roughened. The archway closed behind her and warm rain coursed from overhead. Lesa sighed and closed her eyes, turning her face into the spray. Her shoulders and back ached; she arched, spread her arms, lifted them overhead and stretched into a bow, then bent double and let her arms hang, pressing her face against her knees, waiting for the discomfort to ease.
The water smelled of seaweed and sweet flowers; it lathered when she rubbed her hands against her skin. She could have stayed in there all night, but she had things to do. “Conditioner and rinse, please,” she said, and House poured first oily and then clean hot water on her, leaving behind only a faint, lingering scent as it drained into the floor.
Her comb and toiletries were in her desk. She dried herself on a fluffy towel–which House provided in a cubbyhole, and which she gave back when she was done–and sat naked at her desk, wrinkling the dirty suit on her chair, to comb through her tangles and spy on her guests while she planned her attack.
“Show me the Colonial diplomats.” There was always a twinge of guilt involved in this, but it washer job, and she was good at it. Her blotter cleared, revealing the guest suite.
Miss Kusanagi‑Jones stood in the center of the floor, balanced and grounded on resilient carpetplant, his feet widely spaced in some martial‑arts stance. Eyes closed, his hands and feet moved in time with his breath as he slid sideways and Lesa leaned forward, fascinated. She’d suspected he was a fighter. He held himself right, collected, confident, but without the swaggering she was used to seeing on successful males. As if he didn’t feel the need to constantly claim his space and assert his presence.
She wondered if this was what combat training looked like on a gentle male, one whose strength wasn’t bent on reproduction and dominance. It suited him, she thought, watching his stocky, barrel‑chested body glide from form to form without rising or falling from a level line. He finished as she watched, then paused, a sheen of sweat making his dark skin seem to glow in comparison with his loose white trousers. Then he bowed formally and dropped into slow‑motion push‑ups, alternating arms.
Male arm strength. Which made it no less impressive.
Katherinessen came from the shower a moment later, naked and dripping slightly. Wisps of mist hung around him, and green, gold, and blue lights glowed through the tawny skin in the hollow of his left wrist. He touched them; the mist drifted in spirals about his body, and his hair and skin were dry. Even the water droplets on the leaves of the carpetplant ended abruptly, five steps from the shower door.