Yeah, there was something else. What do we do when we get there?'
New Gevae was a cluster of monolithic hive pyramids covering the delta of the Sanas river. We could see its twinkling lights in the distance over an hour before we arrived. The Trans-Atenate Express rattled and hissed into the main terminal at two minutes to midnight. I got out ahead of the crowds and strode across the wide concourse under the arched glass roof to the Astropathic Guild's office near the freight cargo pens.
I accessed the Aegis account and read the reply from Nayl. He agreed that it was like the trouble on Eechan, and cursed Sadia's name. He said the Caucus was ready to ship out, and that he would be at a bar called Entipaul's Lounge at noon the next day. The bar was in hive four, level sixty.
I looked at the communique sadly and then glanced at the waiting adept. 'Two word reply. "Rosethorn attends". Send it.'
I walked into Entipaul's Lounge the next day at a minute before noon. It was a cage of aluminium tubes and spray-painted flakboard panels artfully wired up so that the ropes of lights pulsed in time to the pound music the place pumped through the caster system. The place wanted to seem tough and underhive and dangerous, but it was all for show. This was a lunchtime and after-work watering hole for mid-hive clerks and Adminis-tratum graders, a place for assignations with winsome girls from the logosticator pool, the celebrations that accompanied promotions or retirements, or rowdy birthday drinks. I'd been into real twist bars and heard genuine pound. This place was just sham, theatre.
I was shrouded in Aemos's over-robe, the hood pulled up, wearing a rebreather mask I'd borrowed from the express. I wanted to look like some tech-adept on his lunch break, or a warewright stealing off for a tryst with his girl.
The place was largely empty. A bored-looking steward polished glasses behind the narrow sweep of the bar, and two uniformed waitresses chatted in the rear doorway, holding their glass trays like riot shields. Half a dozen men sat in the booths that radiated off the bar's central hub, and a hooded figure was sitting, drinking alone, with its back to the door.
I sat at one of the hub tables. One of the waitresses approached. She smelled of obscura and her pencilled eyebrows framed wildly dilated eyes.
'Choice?'
Tunderey clear-grain, double, in a chill-sleeve.'
'Dokey-doke/ she returned as she stalked away.
The music continued to blast. She returned with a single shot glass on her suspensor tray. The glass was actually a cup of pressure-moulded ice. She tonged it onto my table and caught the coin I flipped at her.