Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [37]
Restating gave him comfort.
He also liked to hear things out loud. Somehow it made the whole process of mind-talk with an unfathomable energy entity less wholly bizarre.
The audible came through precisely 1.263 seconds after he heard it in his head, causing a slight echo effect. Jo-Jo eyeballed the ship’s filmdisplay as if he could look at the Entity.
‘You just don’t get the “person” thing, do you? I have a name. J-0 J-O RAS-TER-O-VI-CH.’
Jo-Jo spent a moment recalling the ménage lounge. His flawless mind-catalogue of bars and clubs was a source of some pride to him. Uncomfortable chairs, gaudy urinal. Distinguishing features: uuli hum and exclusive academic clientele. ‘But I have business on one of the teranu worlds,’ he protested. Actually he planned to attend a symposium on how to enlarge the pleasure centre in the humanesque male cerebrum—but he didn’t think he needed to be precise. Although he wasn’t entirely sure that Sole couldn’t read his mind as well as talk in it. ‘Er . . . no,’ he said out loud and with feeling. ‘Fuck off.’ The long silence that followed suggested that Sole had taken his advice and Jo-Jo climbed into his bridge hammock with a self-satisfied grin. ‘That showed it,’ said the master of restatement. Not long after, however, a peculiar sensation began to seep through him. It started in his toes and fingers and crept upwards along his body until it converged in his head. His mind fell into thin slivers as though someone had carved through his skull with a large egg slicer. Only, in Jo-Jo’s case, the egg was soft and made a God-awful mess. * * * * Sole little creatures/cross’m void void cleave’m/thoughts thoughts commune’m/change change Expand’m/way way Find’m secrets * * * * TRIN He flew at a reckless speed, wishing only to put distance between himself, his familia and the Palazzo Cavaliere who shadowed him. You are having me watched now, papa? What is next? Imprisonment? Luck favoured Trin’s carelessness and the air traffic was scant as he left the Dockside environs and swept onward into the mining belt. Below him the rainbow of mine lights streamed and flickered in erratic patterns across the ground. He fixed the nav-set, then switched to Autopilot and slumped against the window. Marchella’s words disturbed him still. If her visit had been designed to draw attention to the plight of the mining towns then she had uncanny timing. Trin had cared little for the poor conditions in the belt previously, yet now he had been banished to one without the immunity or privilege of name. The irony irritated him. He drifted into gloomy thoughts and, eventually, sleep. Some time later Autopilot woke him from his wine-drowse, bleating for landing instructions. Ignoring all normal air protocols Trin sent the AiV into a spiralling descent into the darkened, narrow viuzza in front of the local Carabinere building. His escort landed in a more orderly fashion in the well-lit AiV bay at the side. The dust-dimmed solar ground lights revealed a building similar to the flat-roofed elliptical familia offices in Dockside. It was surrounded by equally plain villettes of the Nobile, and beyond them Trin caught a glimpse of the simple mud-and-cellulose casas of the non-familia and ginko workers. In the short walk up the path to the Carabinere
manifestspace
Trin flew straight to Loisa after dinner. He didn’t speak again to Franco or Jilda and took only a small reticule of clothes, the remains of a canister of bravura, his bora—a pouch containing his hereditary seals—and the lucre he’d found in Jilda’s bureau when he’d been looking for calmatives.