None of the handful of ships she’d wanted to talk to had been immediately available. She’d found out how to leave messages with them, and had done so.
“Over there, to your left. Further left. Straight on for about five metres,” said a neutral voice rapidly coming closer to where she stood with Admile and the fat little avatar. “That’s her, talking to the rotund gentleman.”
Lededje turned and saw a cross-looking lady walking smartly towards her, holding something small and silver in her fingers. She marched up to Lededje. “This thing,” she said, brandishing the ring in Lededje’s face, “will not shut up. Even in a sound field.”
“That’s her,” the ring said primly.
Admile waved some drug fumes out of the way and peered at the ring before turning to Lededje. “Want me to throw it away again? Further?”
“No, thank you,” Lededje said, taking the ring from the woman. “
Thank—” she began, but the woman was already walking away. Lededje held the ring in her hand.
“Hello again,” the ship’s neutral voice said.
“Hello.”
“I was thinking of going body surfing,” Jolicci announced. “Anybody want to go body surfing?”
Admile shook his head.
“Good,” Lededje said, slipping the ring onto one of his fingers. “Perhaps I’ll see you later.”
Body surfing meant taking off most of your clothes and throwing yourself down a great curved slope of upward-charging water, either on your back, front, behind or, if you were especially skilled, feet. This all happened in a great half-dark hall full of whoops and happy screams, overlooked by bars and party spaces. Some people did it naked, others donned swimwear. Jolicci, fitted with what looked like a pair of eye-wateringly tight trunks, was spectacularly bad at it. He found it hard to exercise any control even when he was flat on his back with all four limbs extended.
Lededje discovered she was quite good as long as she didn’t try to stand up. She was coasting on her behind in a tidy spray of water, holding on to Jolicci’s left ankle with her right hand to stop him spinning out of control and keep them within talking distance of each other.
“So you want to go somewhere you won’t reveal for reasons you want to keep secret but you don’t want to take the ship the GSV’s suggested.”
“That’s broadly it,” she agreed. “Also, I would like to talk to the ships aboard here which have or had links to Special Circumstances.”
“Really?” Jolicci wobbled, spraying his face with water. “Are you sure?” He wiped his face with one hand, oscillating to and fro until he placed the hand back on the watery slide. “I mean, really sure?”
“Yes,” she told him. “You’re not the avatar of one of them, are you?” He’d said he was the avatar of the Armchair Traveller; that hadn’t been a name she’d recognised, but for all she knew these ships changed their names, or had several different names they used as it suited them.
“No,” he said. “Humble General Contact Unit, me, going about standard Contact business, honest. Nothing to do with SC.” He squinted at her (she thought – it might just have been the water).
“You sure you want to talk to SC?”
“Yes.”
They pirouetted slowly, caught by a localised rush of uphill-headed water. Jolicci looked thoughtful. He nodded to the side. “It seems I have no skill in this. Enough. Let’s try another sort of surfing.”
“What is this?” Lededje asked. They were standing in a short, broad, carpeted corridor one wall of which was punctuated by five sets of plain double doors. Jolicci, back in his colourful dressing gown, had pulled the central set of double doors apart with some effort and was stopping them from sliding back by wedging the left one with his slipper-shod foot. Lededje was looking through the opened doors into a dark, echoing space laced with vertical cables and cross-beamed with girders. She heard rumbling noises, sensed movement, felt a draught on her face. The air smelled oily, half familiar.
She and the fat little avatar had been whisked here by the usual slick process of traveltube with only minute-long walks at either end. What she was looking at here felt somehow much older, much cruder.
“Re-creation of a tall building elevator shaft,” he told her. “Don’t you have these?”
“We have skyscrapers,” she said, holding on to the right-hand door as she leant in. “And elevators.’ There was the rather grimy-looking top of an elevator car reassuringly close beneath, only a metre or so down. Looking up she saw the shafts and cables climbing into the darkness. “I’ve just never seen inside a lift shaft before. Except in a screen, I suppose. Then there’s always just the one, you know, shaft.”