Absolutely. Thank you so much for your help.
Resisting the temptation to go and have a bath, preferably in a mild solution of disinfectant, Lucy lifted the phone one more time and told Reception to hold all her calls for an hour. A dead-end, she told herself. It can’t be aposiderium eating my brain, because there was no way in hell anybody could get hold of the stuff; not unless they shredded a huge load of banknotes just to get the security strips, and that’d be— Suddenly the room was very quiet and her eyes were very wide.
9
New York
The entity designated Mark Twain sat on a straight-backed tubular-steel chair in a bleak room on the seventh floor of the Credit Mayonnais building. He wasn’t alone. Next to him sat a young Dirter male in a dark blue suit; he had his hands folded, and was staring at the opposite wall, his lips moving silently. Prayer? The Ostar were aware that at various stages of its history Dirt had hosted a number of religions, and according to archive information, the devotees of several of these prayed by folding their hands and mumbling quietly. It was possible, therefore, that the young Dirter was calling on his gods for their help in the forthcoming job interview. Mark Twain ran a quick surreptitious scan, but no gods showed up on his fingernail-sized screen, cunningly disguised as the display panel of his portable temporal correlation device, known colloquially as a watch, which he carried Dirter-style, strapped to his left wrist with animal hide.
Next to the male was a slightly older female. A puzzle. His scans had shown that Dirters had a rudimentary form of optical correction surgery, and had definitely progressed past the point where they needed to wear corrective lenses held on with thin metal bars. The female Dirter, however, had just such a set of lenses. His interest piqued, Twain zoomed in on the lenses for an analysis of their optical strength. They turned out to be plain glass.
The female wasn’t praying. She was sitting perfectly still, frowning (a gesture signifying either disapproval or uncertainty; presumably, in this context, the latter, unless she objected to the male’s religious observances). She had brought with her a sturdy container: a box with a folding-back lid made of synthetic animal skin stretched over a plastic frame. The container, when scanned, turned out to be crammed with documents relating to the female’s education and previous employment. The male Dirter had nothing of the sort, so he wasn’t expecting to be called on to prove his assertions about his qualifications and experience.
The third Dirter, another male, had a broadcast receiver stuffed in his left ear and was listening to some form of music. It was nothing like the music that had wrought so much damage on the homeworld, but Twain had to make a conscious effort not to let it seep into his brain and flood it. Instead, he addressed himself to one of the many disturbing anomalies he’d encountered since his arrival on the surface.
He’d made planetfall just outside a Dirt city by the name of New York. Everything in the Ostar records suggested that New York was the epicentre of every aspect of Dirter society. Naturally, he’d taken comprehensive scans as soon as he’d landed, and the results had been surprising, to say the least. If New York was the best place on Dirt, as the archive material maintained, he couldn’t help wondering what the rest of the planet was like.
He’d run further scans, and a picture began to emerge. Fairly soon he had enough data to enable him to form a rough working hypothesis which, if correct, would explain quite a lot.
Consider the evidence. The planet was way too hot, and the air was filthy. Infra-red imaging and back-track residual heat mapping showed that, at some point in the last fifty years, the surface temperature of the planet had suddenly soared, partially melting the ice-caps, changing the very climate. Atmospheric sampling showed an
Resisting the temptation to go and have a bath, preferably in a mild solution of disinfectant, Lucy lifted the phone one more time and told Reception to hold all her calls for an hour. A dead-end, she told herself. It can’t be aposiderium eating my brain, because there was no way in hell anybody could get hold of the stuff; not unless they shredded a huge load of banknotes just to get the security strips, and that’d be— Suddenly the room was very quiet and her eyes were very wide.
9
New York
The entity designated Mark Twain sat on a straight-backed tubular-steel chair in a bleak room on the seventh floor of the Credit Mayonnais building. He wasn’t alone. Next to him sat a young Dirter male in a dark blue suit; he had his hands folded, and was staring at the opposite wall, his lips moving silently. Prayer? The Ostar were aware that at various stages of its history Dirt had hosted a number of religions, and according to archive information, the devotees of several of these prayed by folding their hands and mumbling quietly. It was possible, therefore, that the young Dirter was calling on his gods for their help in the forthcoming job interview. Mark Twain ran a quick surreptitious scan, but no gods showed up on his fingernail-sized screen, cunningly disguised as the display panel of his portable temporal correlation device, known colloquially as a watch, which he carried Dirter-style, strapped to his left wrist with animal hide.
Next to the male was a slightly older female. A puzzle. His scans had shown that Dirters had a rudimentary form of optical correction surgery, and had definitely progressed past the point where they needed to wear corrective lenses held on with thin metal bars. The female Dirter, however, had just such a set of lenses. His interest piqued, Twain zoomed in on the lenses for an analysis of their optical strength. They turned out to be plain glass.
The female wasn’t praying. She was sitting perfectly still, frowning (a gesture signifying either disapproval or uncertainty; presumably, in this context, the latter, unless she objected to the male’s religious observances). She had brought with her a sturdy container: a box with a folding-back lid made of synthetic animal skin stretched over a plastic frame. The container, when scanned, turned out to be crammed with documents relating to the female’s education and previous employment. The male Dirter had nothing of the sort, so he wasn’t expecting to be called on to prove his assertions about his qualifications and experience.
The third Dirter, another male, had a broadcast receiver stuffed in his left ear and was listening to some form of music. It was nothing like the music that had wrought so much damage on the homeworld, but Twain had to make a conscious effort not to let it seep into his brain and flood it. Instead, he addressed himself to one of the many disturbing anomalies he’d encountered since his arrival on the surface.
He’d made planetfall just outside a Dirt city by the name of New York. Everything in the Ostar records suggested that New York was the epicentre of every aspect of Dirter society. Naturally, he’d taken comprehensive scans as soon as he’d landed, and the results had been surprising, to say the least. If New York was the best place on Dirt, as the archive material maintained, he couldn’t help wondering what the rest of the planet was like.
He’d run further scans, and a picture began to emerge. Fairly soon he had enough data to enable him to form a rough working hypothesis which, if correct, would explain quite a lot.
Consider the evidence. The planet was way too hot, and the air was filthy. Infra-red imaging and back-track residual heat mapping showed that, at some point in the last fifty years, the surface temperature of the planet had suddenly soared, partially melting the ice-caps, changing the very climate. Atmospheric sampling showed an
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