Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [8]
If Baron Wu had leased his block to the university to stop alien infiltration, thought Simon, he must be regretting it now.
Gaston and Oniki were already in the thick of it when he arrived, right next to the drink dispenser. Gaston looked a bit waxy, blitzed already or vomit drunk. Gaston had good reason to get either. He’d just found he’d lost his exemption from military service. Which was a bad break for anyone but doubleplusbad for Gaston because his liege lord was Baron Skoda, notorious for being deficient in the training and logistics departments.
Gaston’s family were too poor to purchase a substitute.
Privately, Oniki said that if he had been serious about keeping his exemption, he should have majored in something other than comparative ethics. Oniki was reading weaponry physics and was unlikely to get drafted unless she failed. Simon had an exemption because of his father.
‘Yo,’ called Oniki ‘ Mon bon homme. I wasn’t sure you were coming.’
Gaston lurched round to greet Simon. ‘Too far down for him,’
he said, slurring his words. ‘Slumming.’
‘Hey,’ said Oniki. ‘He shared an apt with you – after that the undertown counts as upward mobility.’
Simon touched his ID to the dispenser and bought a round.
26
While he waited for the drinks to shunt in from storage he glanced around the party. The nanites had been uneven in their effects, leaving random portions of some of the dividing walls intact. It gave the deck the impression of being an enclosed ruin with an oppressively low ceiling. Simon could almost feel the 1,200 decks pressing down on top.
As if that hadn’t been bad enough, the students had used an antique resin moulding, called Xenomorph, to cover many of the exposed surfaces. It was a design left over from the time of the condirotores – knobbly, black, unpleasantly organic shapes and orifices that appeared to have been extruded over the remaining walls and ceilings. All so very ugly and retro. And not helped by the sound-sensitive glow sticks that were jammed into every available orifice, flicking on and off to the beat of ‘Mucus On My Mind’.
He picked Sibongile out of the crowd. She was standing close by, next to one of the legendary nanite holes in the floor. Easy to spot in that rhino-skin jacket of hers. Real, real rhino as opposed to real synthetic.
The drink dispenser pinged and told him how much of Father’s money he’d just spent. He passed out the poisons to Gaston and Oniki.
‘You seen her yet?’ asked Oniki.
‘Over there,’ said Simon and pointed. ‘Talking politics.’
‘Tonight’s your last chance,’ slurred Gaston. ‘If you don’t shampoo tonight it’s two hundred schillings to me and ma bonne femme.’ He slapped an arm around Oniki’s shoulders, more to steady himself than anything else.
Simon sighed. It was a stupid bet, made during a particularly slow recstop in the SP20U cafeteria when he and Oniki had been trying to cheer Gaston up. They’d seen Sibongile for the first time, trademark jacket over a sulphur-coloured University of Io bra top, strolling past all unhurried with a rolled-up poster under her arm.
Now that had cheered Gaston up all right. ‘Now,’ he’d said.
‘Wouldn’t you like to get those wrapped around your personal pronoun.’
27
Oniki had laughed. ‘Not your type, mes bons hommes. That one got herself expelled from Malik Io-Tech, strictly lowborn but head full of brains. Political.’ She said the last word as four syllables – po-lit-ee-kal.
Simon had been staring, watching Sibongile’s bhunti going tight as she reached up and slapped the poster on the wall.
Watched it going side to side out the cafeteria door and only when she was out of sight did he scope the poster.
IMC WANTS YOU TO DIE FOR ITS PROFIT MARGIN
‘Like I said,’ said Oniki, ‘not your type.’
‘Want to bet on that,’ he’d said.
Which was stupid. Not that he didn’t