Surface Detail(31)

“I just thought of something.”

She had met him – met it, as it turned out – at a reception on the Third Equatower, in the space station port of one of Sichult’s five equatorial space elevators. A Jhlupian cultural and trade mission ship had recently docked, disgorging various notables of the Jhlupe, a high-level civilisation with which Veppers had commercial links. The carousel space where the reception was held was one of a number of giant sliding tori for ever revolving underneath the rotund bulk of the station’s docks, canted windows providing an ever-changing view of the planet beneath.

The Jhlupe, she recalled thinking, gave the impression that they were all elbows. Or maybe knees; they were awkward-looking twelve-limbed creatures like giant soft-shelled land crabs, their skin or carapace a bright, lustrous green. A trio of eyes on short stalks protruded from their main bodies, which were a little larger than a human who had rolled themselves into a ball. Rather than use their many spindly legs, they floated on what looked like metallic cushions. Their translated voices issued from the same source.

This had happened ten years ago. Lededje had been sixteen at the time, just coming to terms with the fact she was a woman and that her now almost fully matured intagliation would make her an object of fascination wherever she went – indeed that this was the whole of her purpose in life, as far as Veppers and the rest of the world were concerned.

She had just started being brought along to events like this, expected to accompany Veppers as part of his retinue. It was, in its full pomp, a sizeable retinue, too. As well as his assorted bag-carriers and various bodyguards – Jasken being the last line of defence – Veppers was the sort of oligarch who seemed to feel slightly naked without his Media Relations Advisor and his Loyaltician around.

She still wasn’t entirely sure what a Loyaltician actually did, but at least they had some sort of purpose and utility. She, she had come to realise, was no more than an ornament; something to be admired, to be stared at and cooed over, an object of fascin ation and astonishment, her duty being to exemplify and magnify the magnificence and sheer wealth of Mr. Joiler Veppers, President and Prime Executive Officer of the Veprine Corporation; the richest man in the world, in the whole Enablement, in charge of the most powerful and profitable company that had ever existed.

The man looking at her appeared terribly old. He was either a much-altered Sichultian or a pan-human alien; the human type had proved to be one of the galaxy’s more repetitively common life-forms. Probably an alien; making yourself look as skeletally, creakingly old as that would just be perverse, weird and creepy. Nowadays even poor people could afford the sort of treatment that let you stay young-looking pretty much until you died. It kind of meant you rotted from the inside, she’d heard, but that was a small price to pay for not having to look decrepit until right at the end. And there wouldn’t be any poor people up here anyway; this was an exclusive little party, for all that there were a couple of hundred people present.

There were only ten of the Jhlupe in attendance; the rest were Sichultian business chiefs, politicians, bureaucrats and media people, plus their various servants, aides and hangers-on. She supposed she counted as a hanger-on.

She was generally expected to hang around near Veppers, impressing all with the fabulousness of the human exotica he could afford, but he and his inner negotiating circle had peeled off to talk with two of the giant crab people in a sort of bay window section of the reception room, perimeter guarded by three of the Zei – Veppers’ massive, highly enhanced clone bodyguards. Lededje had come to understand that often the principal part of her worth lay in providing a distraction; a chattel to be wielded when Veppers required, dazzling and beguiling those he wished dazzled and beguiled, often so that he could slip something past them or just get them in a generally agreeable frame of mind. The Jhlupe might be able to appreciate that she looked significantly different to everybody else around her – darker, and extravagantly tattooed – but the Sichultians were so alien to them anyway it made little extra difference, which meant she was not required to be present when Veppers was talking with them on matters of any great seriousness.

She had hardly been abandoned though, being minded by one of the other Zei and in the company of Dr. Sulbazghi.

“That man is looking at you,” Sulbazghi said, nodding towards the slightly stooped, extremely bald human a few metres away. The man looked wrong: too thin and – even stooped – too tall to be normal. His face and head appeared vaguely cadaverous. Even his clothes were strange: too tight, plain and dull to be remotely fashionable.