Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [78]
A delay again. ‘You were involved in a Hera contract with this ‘esque.’
Jo-Jo took a breath, sensing Beth’s curious glance at him. Lamins made it their business to know everything. ‘Yes.’
But to his surprise the Lamin pursued it no further. Instead it asked them to follow. With the soldiers bringing up the rear it led them through a labyrinth of corridors. Each one was made of a different kind of material: foul-smelling singed plastics, extruded metal, synthetic tissue and wood. All were patterned by spreading fungi.
Jo-Jo realised after a while that the constant change was due to the nature of the building. The rooms along the corridors were actually giant packing crates cobbled together to simulate one mass.
The Lamin opened a hatch on a seemingly random crate and pointed inside with its long fingernails. ‘Sit and wait,’ it said.
It disappeared, leaving the soldiers guarding the door.
Jo-Jo crossed the interior of the bare crate and sat on a low shelf. Glancing upward he noticed that the light was coming in from under the unattached roof. Then the wall moved under his back, sending him straight to his feet again.
Beth came over and prodded it. ‘Cartilage. It was a popular building material for a while but was prone to bacterial infections. Modelled on the biozoon idea. People started to get sick from it, though. It was banned on OLOSS planets.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Jo-Jo between gritted teeth. The place had him on edge. He was already hungry and he needed to pee. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where you could do either of those things without a map and a day’s food supply, so he dug his hands into the pockets of his poker-won Savvy jacket and fell to thinking about recent events.
Their escape from Dowl still made him want to crap all the time; the closest he’d ever been to death and his bowels wouldn’t let him forget it. The terror of drifting in the black and the thoughts he’d had . . . they were with him still in the moments—like this one -when he let himself remember.
He looked across at Beth. She’d hauled him in on that tether, kept on talking to him, urging him to stay alive.
Did that make her a friend? Did he want her to be?
He wasn’t sure. He’d always thought himself perfectly happy without close company but she had put a tiny nick on the hard edge of his beliefs and now the whole damn thing had begun to tear. Nothing seemed as solid as it had.
The door opened again and the soldiers beckoned them back into the corridor. They were forced to walk between them this time, twisting and turning down the makeshift corridors again until they stopped in front of another crate. The walls on this one looked organic as well—but catoplasma this time, grown and modified.
Inside the crate/room a group of ‘esques sat around a low table. The ‘esque at the table end was flanked by more soldiers. Jo-Jo thought him unremarkable at first—an older man despite obvious rejuve, with cropped silver hair and a lean body.
Then he got close enough to see the man’s eyes. They were overly large for his face, and grey: dispassionate, intelligent eyes.
‘Beth?’ said the man softly. He did not stand or make any other change in his casual posture.
Beth blushed but met his gaze.
‘Lasper,’ she said.
Jo-Jo identified two of the other four people at the table as mercenaries. That left a soft-faced pretty young man who plucked at his sleeve with nervous fingers, and, lastly, a young woman. She was a small slender type like Bethany but dark-haired and fine-featured with vibrant crimson skin. She sat stiffly in a formal robe.
‘Are you going to introduce your friend, Beth?’ asked the grey-eyed man.
Jo-Jo didn’t much like his attitude. ‘Josef Rasterovich.’
‘I know who you are, God-Discoverer, but I don’t tolerate poor manners. My sister seems to have forgotten that.’