Surface Detail(222)

She heard a brief, deep humming noise and experienced a sort of coldness wash over her, making her skin crawl, then – her hand still clutching at Veppers’ throat as he thudded back into the back of the couch – she felt herself being grabbed round the waist. She tried to kick, but her legs seemed to have lost contact with her brain; she felt hopelessly, childishly dizzy, her hand was forced back, and she was pulled away across the low table in a further scatter of food, crockery and cutlery to be plonked down on the couch, not where she had been but with Demeisen between her and Veppers, who was sitting back up now and rubbing his throat.

Demeisen had an arm across Lededje’s upper chest, pinning her against some flattened cushions. One of his legs was trapping both her legs under the couch.

“Gasslikunt!” said a small voice.

Kreit Huen glared at the avatar. “See what you’ve done?” she muttered. She cuddled the boy to her, patting the nape of his neck and back of his head with her hand.

“Motherf—!” Lededje began, struggling mightily to get out from under Demeisen’s limbs, then trying to reach the avatar’s face with her fingers, to tear his eyes out or scratch him or do anything at all to hurt him.

“Spirited little thing, isn’t she?” Veppers said calmly, waving Jasken away as the other man tried to fuss over him.

“Behave,” Demeisen said quietly, levelly to Lededje.

“I’ll f … !” she spat, heaving herself towards him. She got her back about a centimetre away from the couch before she was thrown against it again.

“Led,” the avatar said, a small smile on his face, “you were never going to get a clear shot at him. Now sit still and behave yourself or I will have to stun you again, and more than just your legs this time.” He loosened his grip on her a little, tentatively.

She sat still, looked at him with an expression of cold loathing. “You unmitigated piece of ordure in human shape,” she said, very quietly. “Why did you lead me on? Why did you give me any hope at all?”

“Things change, Lededje,” the avatar told her, sounding reasonable. He withdrew the arm and leg that had been restraining her. “Circumstances, and likely consequences. That’s just the way it is.”

Lededje glanced at Huen and her child. “Go and stuprate your-self,” she whispered to the avatar. He shook his head, made a tsk sound again.

Veppers looked at Huen. “Why is this psychotically rude man trying to convince me that this even more berserk young woman is the late, lamented Ms. Y’breq, and why are they even here?”

“He may believe that she is Ms. Y’breq,” Huen told him. She turned to the drone, handing the child up to it. “Olf, please take Liss to the playroom. This was a mistake. I’m an idiot.”

“Gasslikunt!” Liss repeated, cradled in ruby-red fields as the drone took the child and swept away towards the doors.

Huen smiled as she gazed after the boy, waving.

When the doors closed she turned back to Veppers. “I am not entirely sure why Av Demeisen thought to bring this young lady with him, but I wanted him here because he represents the most powerful vessel in the vicinity, with the power to overturn any agreement we might make if he doesn’t concur. We need him on-side, Joiler.”

Veppers had a sort of calculating look about him, Demeisen thought. He was also – going on heart-rate, capillary contraction and skin moisture readings – profoundly rattled, though hiding it extremely well. The man’s gaze shifted, eyes hooded a little, from the ambassador to Lededje. “But I’m still being asked to believe that this person is some sort of reincarnated version of Ms. Y’breq,” he said, as his gaze alighted on Demeisen, “and this … offensively rude, lying young man, allegedly representing a powerful Culture spacecraft, is allowed to make outrageous and obscene accusations without, I presume, being subject to any of the legal sanctions I would seek to impose on anybody else saying anything so utterly mendacious and, potentially – if anybody else was sufficiently demented to take his ravings seriously – so horrendously damaging to my reputation, is that right?”

“About the size of it,” Demeisen agreed cheerily, clearing up some of the mess Lededje’s lunge across the table had caused. Jasken, still with one wary eye on the girl, was sorting some of the debris on his side.

“You like to take your women from behind,” Lededje said quietly, staring at Veppers. “Usually while facing a mirror. Sometimes, especially when you are drunk, you like to lean forward and bite the right shoulder blade of the woman you are fucking. Always the right, never the left. I have no idea why. You mutter, ‘Ah, yesss, fucking take it,’ sometimes, when you orgasm. You have a small black mole just under the fold of your right armpit, which is the only blemish you have allowed to remain on your body, purely for the purposes of identification. You scratch the right corner of your mouth when you are worried and trying to decide what course of action to take. You secretly despise Peschl, your lawyer, because he is gay, but keep him on because he is very good at his job and it is important to you to make people think that you are not homophobic. I think you may have had some sort of homosexual experience at school with your friend Sapultride. You think the screen director Kostrle is ‘grotesquely over-rated’, though you fund his works and advance him at every opportunity because he seems fashionable and you desire his—”