The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [123]
Shit. I glance at Ramona. She stares at me, wide-eyed. “I understand,” Billington says affably, “but as it will take less than twenty-four hours to accomplish the retrieval, I fail to see what the objection is?” He thinks for a moment then comes to a decision. “Drop the suppressor field now. When Ms. Random returns, you will immediately end their state of entanglement, as we discussed earlier.” He turns to me, and gestures at the dentist’s chair arrangement: “Please take a seat, Mr. Howard.”
I stare at him. “What is that thing?”
Billington’s pupils narrow, lizardlike: “It’s a comfy chair, Mr. Howard. Don’t make me ask twice.”
“Uh-huh.” Behind me I sense more than see McMurray adjust some sort of compact ward he keeps strapped to his left wrist: the fuzzy fogbank in my head fades away and I can feel Ramona’s unease, the cold, hard deck beneath her feet, and the churning emptiness in her stomach.
★★Bob, do as he says!★★ Ramona’s sense of urgency carries over, leaving a nasty metallic taste in my mouth. I edge towards the chair nervously.
“What are the straps for?” I ask.
“They’re just in case of convulsions,” Billington says soothingly, “nothing you need to worry about.”
★★It’s a high-bandwidth sympathetic resonator,★★ Ramona tells me. Snowflakes of half-remembered knowledge slide into place in my head. Control cables suffer weird anomalies when you stick them under kilometers of water; Billington wants a better way of tracking his submersible grab, of staying in control over the retrieval process. Unlike its seventies predecessor, the new grab that Billington’s had built is designed to be manually operated by one of Ramona’s people, the Deep One/human hybrids. And it doesn’t use fiber optics or electrical cables for monitoring the process via TV—it uses two entangled occult operatives. This chair will plug me right into Eileen’s surveillance grid, far more efficiently than a swipe of mascara across the eyelashes. ★★Look, if you don’t do it, we’re screwed so hard it’s not funny.★★
I weigh my chances, then swallow. “The straps go,” I say. Then I sit down tensely before I can change my mind.
“Jolly good.” Billington smiles. “Pat, if you’d be so good as to escort Ms. Random to the pool, I believe her watery chariot is ready to depart.”
That’s about the last thing I hear, because as my butt hits the padding on the chair I almost black out. I’ve been strongly aware of Ramona’s presence ever since McMurray dropped his blocking ward, like having a mild case of double vision. But that was before I plugged myself into the chair. It’s an amplifier. I’m not sure how they’ve managed to make it work, but Ramona’s perceptions almost overwhelm my awareness of my own body. She’s got a sharper sense of smell than me, and I can appreciate her mild disgust with Billington’s aftershave—there’s a bilious undernote of ketosis to it, as if it’s covering up something rotten—and the tang of ozone and leaking hydraulic fluid as she moves towards the doorway. Her dislike and fear of McMurray is gnawing away in the background, and there’s her concern for—I shy away. It takes a real effort of will to move my arms, even to realize that they’re still there; I manage to lie down, or rather to flop bonelessly, then close my eyes.
★★Ramona?★★ I ask.
★★Bob?★★ She’s curious, worried, and anxious.
★★This chair, it’s an amplifier—★★
★★You really didn’t know? You weren’t being sarcastic? ★★ She pauses with her hand on the doorknob. McMurray looks round.
★★No shit, what am I meant to do here? What’s it for?★★
★★If you’re asking, they haven’t switched it on yet.★★ She looks round and now I can see myself lying in the chair, with a couple black berets leaning over me—
★★Hey! What are they doing—★★
★★Relax, it’s in case you start convulsing.★★ McMurray starts to say something, and Ramona speaks aloud: “It’s Bob. You didn’t tell him what to expect.”
“I see,” says McMurray. “Ramona, channel. Bob, can you hear me?”
I swallow