Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors Original (pdf) (novels to read in english .TXT) 📖

see me looking—just half-glimpse a pretty uniform with a sunburst on the crotch, slipping between Medication and Washroom. These two have both seen me. The black sniffs very

slightly, irritated, draws back one corner of his mouth. T hat’s louder

than shouting ‘Get Lost!’ at a Geishaboy. We always understand, and

we always head out fast; the smallest hesitation can call up embarrassment or aggression. I don’t even slow a single tiptoe. It can be savage if you don’t pay attention, total attention, down here.

Funny thing is, the other one (the one who shouldn’t be called

Slatecoat, though there’s a lot of spaceman’s grey in his face) just

laughs. Then he takes the black punch’s shoulder and whispers — there

are a hundred ways of whispering too, and this one is close . . . Then

they both look back at me, and the black nods and the cork speaks.

Damnedest thing! I can’t tell which one he is, Slatecoat or non-

Slatecoat, even watching the lips! That is literally impossible. I should

be able to tell any two voices apart, and yet — and these two come from

94

Norman Talbot

the biggest maintained-distinction races we’ve got. And black-cork

distinctions are about as easy as anything outside Japanese.

All he says is, A room, Geisha. No, not with you, just the room. A

good private room. You know how it is.’ Then they laugh, the black

just a little bark and the other more. And I still don’t know which is

Slatecoat. The one who uses black syntax a bit is Slatecoat, of course,

but that doesn’t mean the black body, not necessarily. A lot of punches,

especially naive-looking shy ones like these, are corky and speak black,

and a few the other way. With Judies, even more the other way. Let’s

say they’ve been on Far-Out service a long circuit, together all the

while. Yes, they’ve got to know each other so well they echo each other,

pitch and pace and the works. Neat little explanation for a nanosecond

of thought.

But it doesn’t need their laughter to tell me they haven’t ‘gone

together’ that way, or not much and not recently. Why do they want

me to think they’re flittermice?

‘I am most happy for you, gentlemen.’ Note the courteous, non-

prurient style that any good Geishaboy uses. Customers don’t deserve

it, but they get it anyway. The Force sets high standards too: no matter

what they give us, we hand back courtesy. ‘The Filigree Room is free

at the moment, and the Bridal Suite.’

‘Now I think the Filigree Room sounds really absolutely darling!’

The cork puts on a lousy imitation of oldfashioned queen-talk that

went with cabinboys. ‘Don’t you, darling?’

The maybe-Slatecoat glares at him, and he whispers again. Now

any Geishaboy can lipread from ten miles out on the darkside, so I

know what he says, but I don’t understand it. ‘You wanted it private.

If the cops can’t keep it that way, who can?’

Irony. Crims? Not exactly. And how did he pick me? Not all

Geishaboys are straight, and very few are cops. He says no when I ask

if they want any equipment, yes to refreshment. It’s the black punch

pays. All the time I’m making their bed, setting up the bug system, I

keep thinking about their identical voices. I also keep thinking about

that name. Slatecoat. Slate-coat . . . And while I show them in and

close their door and tune in to listen to them taking out all my bugs —

good thing they’re waterproof. And while I tune in to the bed-frame.

The one receiver too big to notice.

I give up, and I’ve even started to phone Vera, in the Rose Room,

when finally the name hooks itself to the Beowulf Expedition. So I

phone Vera anyway: looks like I might need some help from a sex-judy

officer. These punches aren’t really onto homo-san, that’s for sure.

After the B eow ulf expedition

95

II

Vera does most of the bulletin recall: I’ve got to keep my mind on the

mattress-talk between Commodore Slatecoat and X.

PANMARINE NEWSFLASH 19, for 12.22.36at 11.30 hours: the body

of Admiral Use Beowulf much-decorated leader of the so-called Beoivulf

Expedition, has been found in the Leprosarium of the vast American Express

Hospitalfor Incurables in Greater Dacca. Admiral Beowulf has been missing

from her Palm Beach villa since May, and an extensive search had provedfruitless. It now appears she had been working undetected among the nuns of the Hospital for some months under the name of Sister Least. Cause of death,

pulmonary infection.

Right. Salutary shock for the fashionable silvertails. And all that stuff

about ‘twin sons to oppose will,’ and so on; she probably left her money

to the hospital. They’re bubbling the kif.

‘God! Your idiom wearies me!’

‘You don’t like the way I talk. O.K., I’m not crazy about your idiom

either. Things I could really do without, starred item.’

Wish they’d use each other’s names every so often, the way

Australians do.

‘How’s it been?’

‘How is it with you?’

‘C ’mon, Slatecoat, don’t stall.’

Slatecoat. . . Got it. PANMARINE NEWSFLASH 11, for 22.28.36, at

07.20 hours. Commodore Theodore Slatecoat is instructed to report immediately to Flagship Windi-Woppa, Port Stephens Basin, in connection with the Taafa Omi Enquiry. Any other member of the 24-HAR-370 Expedition

(commonly known as the Beowulf Expedition) who can help the Enquiry in

any way