Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [7]
The attraction grew stronger when he heard that his cousin Ra had already been selected for this great honour.
Although Ra was behind Tekton in seniority at the Tadao Ando Studium, the younger man’s aesthetic brilliance had made him Lostol’s first candidate.
Tekton hid his outrage at being overlooked and set about seeking justice by wooing the Chancellor of Tadao Ando’s unappealing daughter.
Carnal pleasures still amused Tekton where most of his colleagues appeared to have long forsaken physical intimacy for other things. Tekton believed that physicality gave a temporal aspect to his designs that the pure aesthetes like Ra had discarded. In fact, Tekton’s students copied his style and had dubbed it ‘Mortalis’. They carried on an unhealthy rivalry with Ra’s aesthetes.
After some excruciatingly unpleasant lovemaking sessions with Doris Mulek, the Chancellor’s puffy offspring, Tekton garnered her support for his petition. He was duly summoned before an OLOSS committee for an interview and examined to see if his body was healthy enough to withstand the mind-reconfiguration process.
Within a week of the interviews he was on his way to Belle-Monde.
And now he was there.
Carrying only a small holdall of skin lotions, Tekton transferred into one of the fat little transport ticks sucking the side of the sub-light vessel. The sturdy craft were the favoured method to courier passengers and cargo from ship to world.
In a matter of tumbling minutes after boarding the tick he was disembarking through a tube into the dismal welcome station.
Couldn’t Sole have chosen a more hospitable sector of the galaxy in which to reside? he wondered.
The livery, a basic modifiable, approached with Tekton’s face on its display. When Tekton touched it for confirmation, it bowed deeply.
‘Welcome back to Belle-a, Belle-a—’
Tekton had a surprising urge to slap its malfunctioning resonator. Instead he followed it to the taxi. Physical force was not something that Tekton had ever considered using before.
At least—not his own.
After instructing Tekton to take a seat and wait, the livery attached itself to the outside of the taxi. Tekton sat primly in the swaying dark and opened himself to the fleeting impressions as artificial lights and sentient heat flashed by.
An appreciable time later the taxi stopped. The livery disengaged itself and held the doors aside. ‘Please follow me, candidate Godhead.’
Tekton’s bags were already waiting in his new rooms.
Though well enough ventilated they smelled of cleaning fluids and the soft-edged furniture suggested that an uuli had once occupied them. One wall in the living room showcased a rather kitsch 3D of a gigantic Selenat waterfall, while another displayed an illuminated map of Belle-Monde that doubled as the taxi phone.
‘Is Godhead Ra in similar quarters?’ he asked.
‘I believe so, Godhead Tekton.’
‘Good.’ Tekton walked slowly through to the Studium node and sleeping room and back again. He examined every surface for emission: uuli excreta would not be acceptable.
Not at all.
* * * *
TRIN
‘Trin darling, could you not spend tonight at home?’ the Principessa pleaded.
She leaned against the mock-ornate dressing-room door, drunk and weepy, her formal fellala crumpled and stained. Her thinning dark hair was captured into lank strands and had been wound through a royally jewelled hairpiece.
Franco hadn’t slept at home for a week. He had a new young mistress, or so the servants said.
‘And do what, mother? Pour your drinks? You have an entire family of Galiotto slaves for that,’ Trinder said coldly.
‘Servants are not company.’ The Principessa smoothed the fellala with a vein-knotted hand, choosing her next words with care. ‘I hoped we could celebrate your graduation. I w-would enjoy your company. You go out so often.’
The Principessa Jilda Pellegrini had a talent for eliciting guilt, just as she was gifted with many faces. For Trinder