The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [89]
Even in buildings deserted during the Crash I’d almost never seen rivets or screwheads. Rivets and screwheads were pre-Gantz, and pre-Gantz was practically pre-civilization. It wouldn’t have been quite as strange if they’d been rusted, but they weren’t. They looked new. Maybe not brand new, but new enough.
I finally managed to turn the stream of my curses into a coherent sentence, which was: “Have you any idea how much this hurts, you stupid bitch?” The pronunciation came out all wrong, because my nose was flooded by the blood that I was still spilling, but the meaning seemed to get across.
Solantha Handsel shook her head ever so slightly, to signal that she hadn’t a clue, even though her own hand was throbbing. I hoped that she’d broken the knuckle, but the perfunctory way she was shaking it suggested that she hadn’t.
The bodyguard should have been the one to check the damage she’d inflicted, but when my head sagged back on the floor the face that came into view, upside down, was Niamh Horne’s. It was she who finally managed to get the protective hands away from my nose so that she could inspect the damage.
“Do you want me to try to straighten it?” she asked.
Like an idiot, I must have mouthed “yes.”
The cyborganizer reached out to press the broken cartilage back into position, and I found out what real pain was like.
I fainted.
Twenty-Two
Injury Time
By the time I came round someone had put a pillow under my head and draped a cold damp cloth over my nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but I didn’t dare move in case it started again. My vision was blurred, but I could see that at least half a dozen standing figures were gathered about my supine form. They were arguing.
“How was I supposed to know who it was?” Solantha Handsel was complaining. “It was dark. How was I supposed to guess that his IT had been stripped? I hadn’t even registered the fact that my IT had been stripped. It wasn’t my fault.”
I took some small comfort from the fact that nobody seemed to be in agreement with this judgment — not even Michael Lowenthal.
I counted, and decided that there were five standing figures. Then a sixth hove into view, and finally a seventh.
There was little comfort to be gained from the fact that they all looked frightened, with the possible exception of Christine Caine. Adam Zimmerman looked very frightened indeed. He hadn’t had any time at all to adjust to the world into which he had been reborn before it turned bad, and he had to be figuring that he was now even further removed from his objective than he had been on the day he stole the world for the Hardinist Cabal. Davida Berenike Columella seemed more terrified than her emortal companions, but that may have been an illusion fostered by the fact that she was so tiny and so seemingly immature.
Of the party that had been on the guided tour of Niamh Horne’s ship only the two other cyborgs were missing. Suddenly, the assumption that Niamh Horne had been behind our kidnapping, if we had indeed been kidnapped — and it certainly looked that way at present — didn’t seem quite so natural. It wasn’t just the fact that she was here with us that made it seem less likely — it was the fact that we’d all been deprived of our smartsuits, the most vital components of our internal technical support, and our dignity. That, and the gravity. Wherever Niamh Horne would have taken people she’d kidnapped, it wouldn’t be Earth, or anywhere that simulated Earth gravity.
On the other hand, I thought — still trying hard to demonstrate my presence of mind — Niamh Horne was the only one among us to have retained a considerable fraction of her intimate technology. Her intimate technology had included a great deal that was far too intimate to be removed without leaving great gaping holes in her head and body. She still looked whole, if not quite human.
I made no attempt to get up, but I muttered and stirred, expecting that somebody