Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [77]
‘I’m not Carabinere—you have your tradition and your training. But I know where I would lead you.’
Gennaro nodded slowly. ‘Let us see how things are first.’
* * * *
TEKTON
Miranda turned out to be the most irritating of travelling companions. Not only was the cabin not lavish enough, according to her, but she bitched long and loud about the appalling state of the ship’s cuisine while stuffing copious amounts of it into her mouth. It seemed almost as if her chins acted as repositories for the food, freeing her tongue to do what it did best—complain. Tekton spent the journey to Scolar in a state of deep regret, at the same time experiencing mounting trepidation about his impending tryst with Doris. What would she make of Miranda?
But in the tradition of the countless generations of males who had gone before him, Tekton had got it wrong. From the moment Miranda and Doris laid eyes on each other under the Kant chandelier in the lobby of The Sternberg, it was lust at first sight.
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but what fabulous chins!’ gurgled Doris. ‘You must sing divine opera?’
‘Oh . . . well, not really . . . but, well, it has been said . ..’ Miranda dissembled. ‘And your bosoms are outstanding. Le Feuvre corsetry?’
‘What an exceptional eye you have!’ Doris cooed. ‘Tekton would never have noticed it. You must see where I bought it. Divine little boutique on the corner of Chomsky and Heidegger.’
The pair departed The Sternberg without further ado, leaving Tekton to find his way to the suite alone. His ménage fantasies dissolved along with the epithelium he desquamated in his lotion bath and he consoled himself with the knowledge that he would have plenty of time to find the planet he sought.
After a fine meal of bison pate and plum quosh he strolled the cherry-blossomed Boulevard Voltaire to the Orion Institute. Ensconcing himself in a vreal booth, he lost a good part of the day and night on a faux tour of the sector on Jo-Jo Rasterovich’s recording—all to no avail. There was no sentient settlement of any note on record.
If that drug-fuddled lout has cheated me. . .
Weary and more than a little bad-tempered Tekton returned to The Sternberg to find Miranda quaffing champagne and eating oysters out of parts of Doris that not even he had visited.
‘Tekton, good fellow,’ trilled Miranda in operatic tones. ‘Come and join us.’
Tekton’s rush of akula was akin to a lava eruption on Mount Frenzy. He plunged after the oysters with a true connoisseur’s enthusiasm and worked off his frustrations.
Later, in the serenity of post-coitus, enduring Doris’s snores, a thought occurred to him. Where on Scolar had Miranda got to? The woman had been there for his performance—he was sure.
Throwing on a cloak, Tekton hastened back to the Institute. ‘A woman with many chins,’ he told the auto-librarian.
It droned back at him with an infuriating privacy disclaimer, which made Tekton feel like sticking his well-moisturised finger up its authentication mortise. Instead, he caught the elevator to Floor 202 and lurked around the vreal cubicles listening for a clue as to tricky Miranda’s whereabouts.
Vanity was her downfall—Die Walküre, to be precise. He heard her warbling her way through the third act.
‘Aha,’ accused Tekton, sweeping back the curtain. ‘I thought so.’
Caught in the act of reviewing his search route, Miranda didn’t bother to deny it. ‘It’s that cousin of yours,’ she declared. ‘He promised me things to spy on you. Did you know that he can see microwaves? Do you know what surgery I could perform with that ability? Bloodless, that’s what. Magical.’ A single tear collected in a corner of her eye and she lifted her skirt to display the full undulation of her thighs. ‘Don’t be cross, Tekton. I have not the faintest idea what you were searching for in such an uninspiring slice of the galaxy—nothing there but rock and gas. And I should know. My grandmama three times removed—the famous actress Shelba Lanzano—ran away to Latino Crux to marry a prince.