The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [97]
This time I groan aloud. My eyes feel like pickled onions and it takes a real effort to force them open. More facts flood in as my brain reboots. I’m lying on my back, fully dressed, on something like a padded bench or sofa. The voice I recognize: it’s McMurray. The room’s well lit, and I notice that the padded surface beneath me is covered in beautifully finished fabric. The lights are tasteful and indirect, and the curving walls are paneled in old mahogany: the local police cells, it ain’t. “Give me a second,” I mumble.
“Sit up.” He doesn’t sound impatient; just sure of himself.
I force arms and legs that are heavy and warm from too-recent sleep to respond, swinging my legs round and sitting up at the same time. A wave of dizziness nearly pushes me right back down, but I get over it and rub my eyes, blinking. “What is this place?” I ask shakily. And where’s Ramona? Still trapped?
McMurray sits down on the bench opposite me. Actually, it’s a continuation of the one I was lying on—it snakes around the exterior of the trapezoid room, past out-tilting walls and a doorway in the middle of the only rectilinear wall in the cabin. It’s a nice room, except that the doorway is blocked by a gorilla in a uniform-like black jumpsuit and beret, plus mirrorshades. (Which is more than somewhat incongruous, in view of it being well past midnight.) The windows are small and oval with neatly decorated but very functional-looking metal covers hinged back from them, and there are drawers set in the base of the padded bench—obviously storage of some kind. The throbbing isn’t in my head; it’s coming from under the floor. Which can only mean one thing.
“Welcome aboard the Mabuse,” he says, then shrugs apologetically. “I’m sorry about the way you were handed your boarding pass: Johanna isn’t exactly Little Miss Subtlety, and I told her to make sure you didn’t abscond. That would totally ruin the plot.”
I rub my head and groan. “Did you have to—no, don’t answer that, let me guess: it’s a tradition or an old charter, something like that.” I continue to rub my head. “Is there any chance of a glass of water? And a bathroom?” It’s not just a barbiturate hangover—the martinis are extracting a vicious revenge. “If you’re going to take me to see the big cheese shouldn’t I freshen up a bit first?” Please say yes, I pray to whatever god of whimsy has got me in his grip; being hungover is bad enough without a beating on top of it.
For a moment I wonder if I’ve gone too far, but he gestures at the gorilla, who turns and opens the door and retreats down the narrow corridor a couple of paces. “The head’s next door. You have five minutes.”
He watches as I stumble to my feet. He nods, affably enough, and gestures at another door set next to the rec room or wherever the hell it is they’d put me in to sleep things off. I open the door and indeed find a washroom of sorts, barely bigger than an airliner’s toilet but beautifully finished. I take a leak, gulp down half a pint or so of water using the plastic cup so helpfully provided, then spend about a minute sitting down and trying not to throw up. ★★Ramona, are you there?★★ If she is, I can’t hear her. I take stock: my phone’s missing, as is my neck-chain ward, my wristwatch, and my shoulder holster. The bow tie is dangling from my collar, but they weren’t considerate enough to remove my uncomfortable toe-pinching shoes. I raise an eyebrow at the guy in the mirror and he pulls a mournful face and shrugs: no help there. So I wash my face, try to comb my hair with my fingertips, and go back outside to face the music.
The gorilla is waiting for me outside. McMurray stands in front of the closed door to the rec room. The gorilla beckons to me then turns and marches down the corridor, so I play nice and tag along, with McMurray taking up the rear. The corridor is punctuated by frequent watertight bulkheads with annoying lintels to step over, and there’s a shortage of portholes to show where we are: someone’s obviously done a first-rate coach-building job, but this ship wasn’t built as a yacht and its new owner