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Chapter 8 - Gifts
Paysha
Lewey always insisted his ‘office’ was relinquished voluntarily, but numerous ceiling holes, an ominous crack in a window and a charred wall hint at a more persuasive effort. The Spire’s former observation deck is a sizeable space, its longest sides spanning ten metres. It tapers towards a dizzying glass-floored overhang, projecting high over the Stink. Large windows on all but the elevator wall rise from the tiled floor to a high panelled ceiling. I’d long ceased gawping like a yesteryear tourist at the panoramic view.
For today’s tête-à-tête, a ragbag selection of patterned drapes cover most of the windows, pitching the room into semi-darkness. The arrangement makes me uncomfortable as there’s nothing to hide from up here. Like most throne rooms, this one sits a safe distance from the peasants it profits from. Shafts of light pierce the gaps, one slicing across the floor to illuminate the elevator doors, catering to Lewey’s paranoia. Another casts the spindly shadow of a large tripod-mounted telescope across the polished floor. Its lens is angled towards the sea instead of the sky — the easier to watch truant Stinkers.
As I squint into the glare, a familiar drawl echoes from the shadowy corner to my right: “Ah, my neoprene’d neophyte is here. How good of you to visit, Mz Anoman.” The orange glow of a vapestick betrays his position. He’s sat at his costly scavenged desk. The tip rises, brightens, then bobs lower. A slice of sunlight dissects the billowing cloud of vapour into oily, two-dimensional eddies.
I’m in no mood to curtsey, even if his pleasantries hint I’m his current dish of the day. “A pity you didn’t give me more notice, your royalness,” I call out. “I’d have changed into something more suitable for this unexpected summons.” My impatient partner sticks her finger down our throat at my supplicatory tone, but Lewey is a man convinced he’s in charge of his truculent little empire. Any perceived loss of control could rapidly escalate to a random pathological outburst. Better the placatory touch than an enraged lunatic in charge of the asylum. Ask any Stinker floating around these parts who’d failed to measure his mood.
Lewey loved alliteration, even if trotting out avuncular adjectives rarely signalled happiness.
“Don’t fret, my slippery seal. As always, you cut a divine diving figure”—he sniffs loudly—“despite being freshly fished from the Stink.” Lewey loved alliteration, even if trotting out avuncular adjectives rarely signalled happiness. But his accent’s deliberate modulation still doesn’t match the Stink’s fast-evolving patois. There remains obvious signatures of an education which used expensive human teachers. Anyone remarking on this had enjoyed a one-way trip from Spire tip to Stink drink. My eyes are still adjusting to the gloom as Hicks walks over to Lewey and dumps my bag on his desk. “Ahh. You’ve brought me a little present, Paysha,” he crows. “How very kind of you.” His ripe smugness is nauseating, but he can’t possibly know its contents.
As Lewey stands to open the bag, a bank of old monitors set near his desk casts a sickly reptilian glow over his slight frame, one at odds with his over-sized ambitions. He extracts the artefact with exaggerated care, hefting its ovoid form with both hands. It’s the first – and maybe the last – time I’ve seen it out of water. Even in this darkened room, it’s somehow blacker than its surroundings. There’s no gloss or reflection, nor visible marks. As it had inside the Aleutia, its obsidian surface absorbs all incident energy, no matter if it’s sunlight, torchlight or my melon’s ultrasound.
Lewey emerges from the shadows to stand near a gap in the window drapes. He rotates the artefact in the sunlight like a woodcutter examining his latest lathed creation. Impossibly, its surface adopts a darker contrast, its shape now visible only as an elliptical vacuum; any perception of absent depth a brain-contrived illusion. Unlike Lewey.
The sunlight exposes more of his progress since we last met. He must have reached the gene interference stage. His wide, white and exultant grin is set in a mosaic of pigmented skin; the hair is longer and thicker; his former blue irises are now fully transformed – almost too dark, all but unreadable. He had a dream and it’s being realised, base pair-by-pair. If it didn’t involve extorting Stinkers like myself to achieve his all-consuming ambition, I might almost be impressed. Becoming something your recent ancestors never were was the biggest commitment in cash, cultural change and long-term consequence a person could make. And Lewey has gone all in. But promoted cultural appropriation isn’t the only side-effect to what Lewey’s injecting. His body’s induced mutations are also mangling his brain. His mind is drifting into a certifiable insanity zone.
The prospective curator completes his examination of my hard-won haul. “Quite remarkable,” he purrs. “I don’t think you can ever be black enough. Wouldn’t you agree, my curvaceous cetacean?”
I want the teasing, tortuous witticisms to end so I can escape this madness alive, even if it means leaving my precious find behind. But between myself and the exit, Lewey is sowing a verbal minefield along our conversational path. One misstep and my departure will be an unwholesome, gravity-laden affair. Genes don’t care about organs – or feelings. So I aim for studied neutrality, pleading with my erratic inner partner to be mercifully mute, despite the glaring temptation. “All our skins are capable of showing courtesy,” I venture, each syllable a potential deadly spark, “no matter their colour.”
I hold my breath as he freezes for a second, then inhales deeply, the vape’s tip illuminating a pair of flared nostrils. “How touching, my piscatorial pudendum,” he says, sprinkling the smut-laden epithet over my indiscretion with the dry chuckle of a dark-eyed seducer. I don’t meet his gaze, focusing instead on silently releasing the air from my own lungs.
After returning the artefact to my bag with exaggerated care, Lewey turns to me with a crocodile’s smile. “It would be intolerably amiss of me for this to be a one-sided exchange, Mz Anoman. So I’ve dredged up a little something I’m sure you care for, if not already.”
His perplexing words only hint at another landmine and Hick’s sudden prod to my back confirms my host’s false courtesies. I stagger forward as Bosun strides to the darkest corner and kicks something into the middle of the room. It’s an old-fashioned office chair. As it rolls to a halt, the seat rotates a half-turn. A slumped figure is bound to it with a thin nylon cord. The head lifts, offering a half-shadowed profile in a bright square of light. I recognise the swollen, battered face: it’s Markus.
I recoil with a gasp, the bloody sight ripping apart memories of bathroom toiletries and shallow, alcohol-fuelled comforts. Instead of an avoidable landmine, Lewey has lobbed a grenade into my guts. It explodes within me, ripping all logical thought from my mental grasp.
“I believe you’re already acquainted,” Lewey croons, cool and in control, savouring my fall from grace. He steps nearer, wielding the pulled pin of his figurative grenade, mottled cheeks concave as the vape tip turns cherry red. I shut my eyes and bow my head, trying to sweep the pain and hopelessness from my skull. The sickly sweet vapour of a dragon’s breath envelops me as I resist crumpling to the floor as its latest broken victim. I shouldn’t have pushed my banshee back into her mental recess. Please come out, my dear.
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Now there's a convincing bad guy. What a nasty man.