me a while, maybe I’ll manage it.” He’s got a nasty case of the pasties and he guzzles a cup of lukewarm milky tea, swirling it around his starchy tongue. “Of course, if you’re really curious, you could always join up.”
Bonnie looks away and Adrian huffs a snort. “I’ll do it someday,” she says. “Just want to know what I’m getting into.”
“I understand,” he says. “Don’t worry, I still think you’re an anti-human race-traitor, girlie. You don’t need to prove anything to me.”
“Fucking right I don’t!” Bonnie says. She’s blushing rather fetchingly.
“Right,” Huw says.
“Right.”
Huw begins to hum a little, experimenting with his new transhuman peripheral. The drone is quite nice: it reminds him vaguely of a digeridoo. Or bagpipes. He sings a little of the song from the courthouse, in two-part discord. Bonnie’s flush deepens and she rubs her palms against her thighs, hissing like a teakettle.
Huw cocks his head at her and leans forward a bit, and she grabs his ears and drags him down on top of her.
Adrian taps him on the shoulder a moment later. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says, “but Judge Rosa’s bound to come looking for you eventually. We’d best get you out of Libya sharpish.”
Huw ignores him, concentrating on the marimba sensation of Bonnie’s rib cage grinding over his chest.
Adrian rolls his eyes. “I’ll just go steal a blimp or something, then, shall I?”
Bonnie breaks off worrying Huw’s ear with her tongue and teeth and says, “Fuck off awhile, will you, Adrian?”
Adrian contemplates the two of them for a moment, trying to decide whether they need a good kick round the kidneys, then turns on his heel and goes off to find Maisie, or perhaps Becky, and sort out an escape.
The entity Huw has mistaken for the whole of the cloud whirls in its orbit, tasting the meat with its mutifarious sensory apparat, thinking its in-fucking-effable thoughts, muttering in RF and gravity and eigenstate. The ambassador hibernates on the safe house’s floor, prized loose from under Huw’s tailbone, where it had been digging rather uncomfortably, quite spoiling Huw’s concentration, and tossed idly into a corner. The cloud thing’s done with it for now, but its duty-cycle is hardly exhausted, and it wonders what its next use will be.
Huw moans an eerie buzz that sets Bonnie’s gut aquiver in sympathy, which is not nearly so unpleasant as it sounds.
In fact, Bonnie thinks she could rather get used to it.
----
Appeals Court
What finally wakes Huw is the pain in his bladder. His head is throbbing, but his bladder has gone weak on him lately—he’s been shirking having a replacement fitted—and if he doesn’t get up and find the john soon, he’s going to piss himself. So he struggles up from a sump hole of somnolence.
He opens his eyes and realizes disappointedly that he’s not back home in his own bed: he’s lying facedown in a hammock.
Damn, it’s not just a bad dream.
The hammock sways gently from side to side in the hot stuffy air. Light streams across him in a warm flood from one side of the room; the floor below the string mesh is gray and scuffed, and something tells him he isn’t on land anymore.
Shit,
he thinks, pushing stiffly against the edge and trying not to fall as the hammock slides treacherously out from under him.
Why
am
I
so
tired?
His bare feet touch the ground before he realizes he’s bare-ass naked. He rubs his scalp and yawns. His veins feel as if all the blood has been replaced by something warm and syrupy and full of sleep.
Drugs?
he thinks, blinking. The walls—
Three of them are bland, gray sheets of structural plastic with doors in them. The fourth is an outward-leaning pane of plexiglas or diamond or something. A very, very long way below him he can see wave crests.
Huw gulps, his pulse speeding. Something strange is lodged in the back of his throat. He stifles a panicky whistle. There in a corner lie his battered kit bag
Bonnie looks away and Adrian huffs a snort. “I’ll do it someday,” she says. “Just want to know what I’m getting into.”
“I understand,” he says. “Don’t worry, I still think you’re an anti-human race-traitor, girlie. You don’t need to prove anything to me.”
“Fucking right I don’t!” Bonnie says. She’s blushing rather fetchingly.
“Right,” Huw says.
“Right.”
Huw begins to hum a little, experimenting with his new transhuman peripheral. The drone is quite nice: it reminds him vaguely of a digeridoo. Or bagpipes. He sings a little of the song from the courthouse, in two-part discord. Bonnie’s flush deepens and she rubs her palms against her thighs, hissing like a teakettle.
Huw cocks his head at her and leans forward a bit, and she grabs his ears and drags him down on top of her.
Adrian taps him on the shoulder a moment later. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says, “but Judge Rosa’s bound to come looking for you eventually. We’d best get you out of Libya sharpish.”
Huw ignores him, concentrating on the marimba sensation of Bonnie’s rib cage grinding over his chest.
Adrian rolls his eyes. “I’ll just go steal a blimp or something, then, shall I?”
Bonnie breaks off worrying Huw’s ear with her tongue and teeth and says, “Fuck off awhile, will you, Adrian?”
Adrian contemplates the two of them for a moment, trying to decide whether they need a good kick round the kidneys, then turns on his heel and goes off to find Maisie, or perhaps Becky, and sort out an escape.
The entity Huw has mistaken for the whole of the cloud whirls in its orbit, tasting the meat with its mutifarious sensory apparat, thinking its in-fucking-effable thoughts, muttering in RF and gravity and eigenstate. The ambassador hibernates on the safe house’s floor, prized loose from under Huw’s tailbone, where it had been digging rather uncomfortably, quite spoiling Huw’s concentration, and tossed idly into a corner. The cloud thing’s done with it for now, but its duty-cycle is hardly exhausted, and it wonders what its next use will be.
Huw moans an eerie buzz that sets Bonnie’s gut aquiver in sympathy, which is not nearly so unpleasant as it sounds.
In fact, Bonnie thinks she could rather get used to it.
----
Appeals Court
What finally wakes Huw is the pain in his bladder. His head is throbbing, but his bladder has gone weak on him lately—he’s been shirking having a replacement fitted—and if he doesn’t get up and find the john soon, he’s going to piss himself. So he struggles up from a sump hole of somnolence.
He opens his eyes and realizes disappointedly that he’s not back home in his own bed: he’s lying facedown in a hammock.
Damn, it’s not just a bad dream.
The hammock sways gently from side to side in the hot stuffy air. Light streams across him in a warm flood from one side of the room; the floor below the string mesh is gray and scuffed, and something tells him he isn’t on land anymore.
Shit,
he thinks, pushing stiffly against the edge and trying not to fall as the hammock slides treacherously out from under him.
Why
am
I
so
tired?
His bare feet touch the ground before he realizes he’s bare-ass naked. He rubs his scalp and yawns. His veins feel as if all the blood has been replaced by something warm and syrupy and full of sleep.
Drugs?
he thinks, blinking. The walls—
Three of them are bland, gray sheets of structural plastic with doors in them. The fourth is an outward-leaning pane of plexiglas or diamond or something. A very, very long way below him he can see wave crests.
Huw gulps, his pulse speeding. Something strange is lodged in the back of his throat. He stifles a panicky whistle. There in a corner lie his battered kit bag
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