Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [38]
Urgency sent Trin banging on the door. How foolish to come in unexpectedly at night: even with his fellalo sealed he could perish out here in this hotwind. Will the Palazzo Cavaliere help me? What had Franco instructed them to do? Surely he did not wish his son dead?
A shadowy movement inside caught his eye. Was someone in there? He banged again, calling out, but the movement was not repeated. It was as if he had imagined it.
In the clutch of panic, Trin retraced his steps to the AiV and set the cabin temperature to its coolest. He would be comfortable, and he would not give the Palazzo Cavaliere the satisfaction of asking for their help.
He lit the last of his hemp and inhaled with deliberate determination. When the smoke had calmed his fears he laid back the seat and slept.
* * * *
‘Pellegrini?’ A bull-necked Carabinere in an immaculate white-dress fellalo roused Trin from a cramped slumber. Light had barely reached far enough to lend colour to the day but already Trin could feel the rise in the air temperature. He shifted and unwound his legs, realising that the grinding sound in his dreams was the straining AiV engine. The air blowing on his face now was barely cool.
‘Pellegrini?’ The Carabinere’s voice again—muffled through the cabinplex.
Trin slipped back his hood and swept the pile of hemp ash from his clothes, embarrassed at the state of his dress. He squeezed the ‘kill’ command on the exhausted engine and opened the cabin.
‘Don Pellegrini,’ Trin replied.
‘I am Capitano Christian Montforte.’ The man’s voice was clipped with disapproval and he didn’t extend his hand. He waved his pouchfilm before Trin’s face. ‘Jus Malocchi says you are to be kept occupied but are unused to work. How in Crux will that be of use to me here?’
Trin glanced towards the building. ‘Do you not keep your station manned, Capitano? I could not raise a soul last evening.’
‘It is manned, Don Pellegrini. But only for those with real emergencies.’
Trin swallowed down a quick rise of anger. ‘My reticule is in the back,’ he said.
‘Then I suggest you bring it with you.’ Montforte turned on his heel and walked away.
Trin wavered between belligerence and the knowledge that it would gain him nothing. The heat was already suffocating and he badly needed to bathe, so he dragged his reticule from behind the pilot seat and followed Montforte inside to a catoplasma-grey room that was—by the look of the dusty floor and the red trails of excreta—only rarely cleaned.
They both unsealed their hoods.
The Capitano wore his hair short and his face clean. His cheeks were full-fleshed like those of a man who enjoyed his food. ‘We have no Galiottos here. Our cleaning nanos are replaced once a year and when they fail we must wait for the next batch,’ he said.
Trin lifted his gaze to the walls and ceiling and the cracks in the internal joins. The quality catoplasma, he supposed, had probably gone to the local Duca and his chambers.
‘This is your office. I am in there.’ Montforte pointed to a door on the other side of the room. Then he slid aside a partition next to the shortcast unit. Behind it was a tiny space with a bed and pinched-out shelves set into a rounded alcove. A small cooking unit stood tucked into another corner, and the smell of engine oils drifted through the air vents from the services yard behind. ‘You will live here.’
Trin hid his shock. How could he live in such a place? ‘What is my occupation?’
Christian smiled in a way that made his face puff out. ‘You are my aide. This can be interpreted in any way I choose.’
Trin’s stomach began to ache, whether from hunger or displeasure he could not tell. ‘When will they bring my food? I have had no breakfast.