A Game of Battleships (24 page)

‘Ladies, gentlemen and sentient creatures, we are proud to present the mad maestro of 
Manchester, here to put a smile on your face and some swing in your heart. We give you Maurice E.

Smith and his Good Time Big Band!’

Maurice E. Smith ran onto the stage, a freeze-dried daffodil in his lapel. ‘This is called
You’re the
One for Me, Harriet
,’ the bandleader intoned. The stage lit up, rows of musicians stood ready and the big drums thundered.

Carveth ran onto the floor in her blue dress, dragging Dreckitt after her. Smith watched, feeling 
envy for both of them at once and neither in particular. Still, Rhianna was on the way; a ten-foot newt 
had seen it in the future and now a pathologically gloomy spy had confirmed it. How could it not be true?

At the far end of the room, a small group of fleet personnel arrived, presaged by a laugh that he briefly mistook for a trumpet solo. Captain Felicity Fitzroy strode to the bar, accompanied by Chumble and 
Shuttles, the fighter ace. Smith, realising he could not flee, held his ground.

‘Two pints of Stalwart and a lager top, barbot,’ Captain Fitzroy barked. ‘What’s your poison, 
Smitty?’

Smith ordered a pint of Excalibeer, the self-proclaimed Lager of Kings. It certainly tasted 
medieval.

‘That’s the ticket,’ Captain Fitzroy said, taking a deep swig. On stage, the lead trumpeter inflated 
his throat sacs and blasted a wave of sound down the hall. The dance floor was beginning to fill up. ‘I say, that fellow’s getting a bit familiar with your little lady. My God, it’s that private eye fellow again! He’s trying to touch down on your planetoid.’

‘Dreckitt?’ Smith looked into his pint, unsure whether lager was meant to be so cloudy. ‘He just t
akes care of her.’

‘Looks like he’s taking good care of her tonsils,’ she replied. ‘You want me to nip over and have 
some words? Pop him one on the noggin?’

‘Um, no thanks. We have a – well, it’s complicated, you see. .’

‘You sly old dog!’ She laughed at the roof, as if to stun a passing gull. ‘Well, if he keeps ‘er 
indoors off your back – or your front – while you play a blinder up the left wing, nice work. I’ve got a little arrangement of my own,’ she added, nodding towards Shuttles and his group of pilots. Smith 
wondered which and how many of them she meant. Almost to his surprise, he felt quite impressed.

Pint in hand, Fitzroy gave Smith an odd little bow, wished him a good evening and strode away.

A new song began and a Yothian slid its cone-shaped body onto the dance-floor and began to 
spin slowly, making a low droning sound. Dreckitt left Carveth, approached the bar and asked for a large white wine and two fingers' of rye. Susan of the Deepspace Operations Group led Wainscott onto the 
floor, probably to assist in surveying the guests. Wainscott looked rather subdued after his earlier outburst and was wearing trousers now. Smith sipped his pint and felt lonely.

Suruk waited by the wall, a cup of flat beer in his hand, watching the room like a Roman emperor 
overlooking the arena. Carveth stood beside him. Smith waved at them and approached.

‘Funny, isn’t it,’ he yelled over the band, ‘that thirty years ago I’d have been trying to shoot half 
of these alien chaps, and now they’re our friends. How times change!’

‘You must have been a bloody tough ten-year-old,’ Carveth called back.

Suruk leaned over. ‘Thirty years ago, I would have been trying to kill you. And now we have. .
dancing
. And they call it progress.’

‘What’s wrong with dancing?’ Carveth demanded.

Suruk frowned. ‘We have discussed this before,’ he replied, his deep voice raised against the 
band, ‘and the answer remains no. I do not dance.’

‘But why not?’ Carveth demanded. ‘Look, Wainscott and Susan are dancing.’ In the past Smith 
had tried not to wonder what the Deepspace Operations Group did when they were not blowing things 
up; surprisingly, the answer seemed to include swing dance.

‘It is not befitting a warrior.’

‘What about the Gilled Helmsman, then? He's having a lovely time.’ She pointed to the massive 
tank at the edge of the hall. Water slopped against the side, sending its occupant rocking and bobbing.

‘That is not dancing. He has just turned the wave machine on.’

‘Look, it's easy. First, you've got to keep time with the music. Put your hand out… like this.’

Warily, Suruk extended his hand. ‘Now, when the beat comes, click your fingers. See what I’m doing?’

Watching her closely, as if expecting an attack, Suruk did the same. Dreckitt, returning from the 
bar with a double whisky, watched them clicking their fingers. ‘That’s right, Lurch,’ he said.

‘Now,’ Carveth continued, ‘we take to the floor. Here.’

She approached and took Suruk’s hand. ‘Up like this,’ Carveth said, and Suruk, who believed that 
physical contact was better done with spears, went along with her. Tentatively, Carveth steered him onto the dancefloor. Smith watched Carveth and Suruk make their hesitant way across the floor like an Aresian fighting machine with a damaged gyroscope.

Their dancing, however inept, filled him with sudden, almost ferocious pride. They were bloody 
good sorts, cowardice and homicidal mania aside, and he was damned proud to have them as a crew.

Who else could have brought back that mirror from the heart of New Eden?

But more troubling images floated into view. There was no point in hoping that 462 had been 
killed in the pirate uprising: maybe he would have gained a new scar, or acquired a dented bottom, but the Ghast was like Michelangelo’s David: he might not look like much of a tough guy, but you’d need heavy 
weapons to do anything more than chip little pieces off the bugger. Smith might be in the company of 
friends but he still wasn’t safe – not by a very long way.

W and Governor Barton sat at the edge of the room, drinking pints. Barton’s spaniel sat on his 
lap. The governor looked slightly furtive, as if expecting to be ambushed by a horde of potential dance-partners. Smith strolled over and took a seat on the far side of the table.

Smith beckoned to W and the spy leaned across. ‘Sir,’ Smith said, ‘I want to move the mirror 
away from here.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘It’s too dangerous. If what you said about this Dodgson fellow is true, a portal to another 
dimension and Suruk’s killer frogs could be an incredibly dangerous combination. We need to get the 
mirror away from here.’

‘Well, we can’t just dump it in space. It needs to be securely locked away.’

‘You’re right.’ The band stopped, leaving them sitting awkwardly until the music began again. ‘I 
suggest we put it in a box, and
then
dump it in space.’ Seeing that W looked unconvinced, he added, ‘It won’t drift away. There’s no current to move it. My pilot’s got a book about astrophysics,’ he finished, not mentioning that the book in question had come free with breakfast cereal.

‘Let me think about it,’ W said. ‘We’re going to look a bit bloody silly if we lose a portal to 
another dimension.’ The spy stared across the room and Smith followed his gaze. One of the operational controllers, a simulant named Dawn, was approaching rapidly. Behind her came a slim man in a dark 
jacket and roll-neck jumper, a low-level European access pass pinned to his lapel. Smith felt strangely sure he had seen the fellow somewhere before.

‘Could you give me a minute, Smith?’ W asked.

‘Righto.’ Smith leaned back, listened to the band and wondered how much he had drunk: surely 
only three or four pints. Perhaps it was time he switched to fruit juice, or at least drinks with a bit of lime on the top. Carveth and Dreckitt swept past on the dance floor, surprisingly elegant given what Carveth was trying to do to him. Suruk lounged against the bar, looking glad to have escaped. His top hat, dark clothing and mandibles made him strangely like Abraham Lincoln in profile.

The doors at the far end of the hall rolled apart and a woman stood in the aperture. Smith stared, 
unsure. Surely not. There were hundreds of women in the delegations of the Earth, many of them very 
attractive. But none would be quite so beautiful, or so tie-dyed, and certainly none would be smoking a jazz cigarette.

Rhianna stood at the edge of the lift as if unsure whether to continue. It struck Smith as odd that, 
after years of trying to get the peoples of the galaxy to gather in harmony, she seemed so flummoxed by the sight of it. Nobody appeared to have noticed her – no, he realised, the gilled helmsman had turned in his tank and was beckoning her forward. Smith waved, to no avail.

Rhianna closed her eyes and did that annoyed-by-constipation expression that meant she was 
attempting to wield her psychic abilities. Suddenly she stopped and looked straight at Smith. Her face broke into a broad, foolish grin, an expression he'd not seen on her before, and as he got up she strode through the half-chatting, half-dancing crowd in a swirling mass of artificial silk.

On stage, Maurice E. Smith pulled the microphone close. ‘
There's a picnic on the streets of London
,’ he crooned, ‘
and Heaven knows I'm cheerful now
.’

Rhianna came close, her smile reflecting Smith’s, and kissed him.

‘I wasn't expecting you,’ he said. ‘Not to begin with, anyway.’

‘I'm sorry I didn't explain. But I couldn't. It was top secret.’

‘Not at all. You did the right thing. Where're the Vorl?’

‘They got kinda delayed. You know how they don't have a fixed corporeal form?’

‘Made of smoke, you mean.’

‘Right. Well, one of them was standing next to the air vent and somebody must've turned the air 
conditioning up.. Anyway, they've found him now. He materialised in the kitchens, on top of a plate 
of finger food. I think it freaked out some of the guys working down there. It's lucky nobody hurt 
themselves, all those cocktail sticks lying around.. Did you get my message?’ Rhianna asked.

‘Your psychic message?’

‘Yes. So it worked, then?’

‘Jolly well thanks. It gave me a – I mean, I got it loud and clear.’

A spotlight came on above Rhianna, turning her dress bright red. At the back of the room, doors 
slammed. ‘This reminds me of my high school prom,’ she said. ‘Shall we dance?’

Smith, who had seen Rhianna dancing before, said, ‘Why don't you dance and I'll sit down and 
watch?’

‘Uh-uh.’ She took his hand and, with unexpected formality, began to waltz to the strains of
Thank 
the DJ
. Smith let himself be swept along. He wondered if she was wearing any shoes, since it would have been difficult to do the backward steps in flip-flops.

Looking around the room, he spotted the Khlangari delegation wobbling about happily at the far 
end of the room. He reflected that perhaps the peoples of the galaxy were ultimately alike, and that even on Khlangar the males were feebly hooting their objection as the females hauled them up to pootle about awkwardly on the dance floor. His happiness at seeing Rhianna blotted out his apprehension that booze 
and ineptitude would tip him onto his face and together they half waltzed, half-wandered across the floor.

*

‘If you think that Indian TV is all musical numbers and dancing about,’ said Space Captain Singh, 
‘you should see our DIY programmes. You can’t swing a chainsaw and sing at the same time, I can tell 
you.’

‘Actually, you can,’ Suruk replied. ‘But only with joy. More tea?’

‘Thank you. Now, as I was saying…’

‘Nothing to make a song and dance of, huh?’ Dreckitt had slid down in his chair, a glass of 
artificial whisky in one hand. Carveth picked the drooping cigarette neatly from of the corner of his 
mouth before it had the chance to fall into his drink and create a fireball. ‘Damn,’ Dreckitt muttered, ‘this hooch kicks harder than the chorus-line at Madame Fifi’s. They ought to spray it when there’s a riot on.’

‘Myself,’ said Raumskapitan Schmidt, ‘I prefer schnapps.
Prost!
’

‘Anything but tea,’ Space Captain Schwartz drawled. ‘Bourbon, Mr Dreckitt?’

The various space captains sat around a table at the rear of the hall. The dancing continued, but 
Smith had decided to sit down before he fell off the dance floor and onto some visiting dignitary. Besides, he needed to be able to get back to his room – or more importantly, Rhianna’s – and do something other than immediately pass out. He looked at her across the table and smiled. She looked alarmed. Smith 
wondered what the problem was until a finger tapped him hard on the shoulder.

Wainscott stood behind him. ‘Problem, Smith,’ the major said.

‘Has something exploded?’

‘We need to talk. Come on.’

Smith clambered upright and followed Wainscott out of the room. In the foyer, the music 
sounded distant and muffled, as though underwater. The room felt impossibly airy and empty.

W, Barton, Susan and Captain Fitzroy sat on heavy red armchairs, as if they had retired for a glass 
of port and a manly chat. With them was the man in the roll-neck jumper Smith had seen earlier. As he 
approached, the man raised his hands and shrugged, and with a jolt of surprise Smith realised who he 
was: Le Fantome.

‘What’s going on?’ Smith demanded.

W gestured to Le Fantome. The Frenchman stood up and put his hands behind his back. ‘
Mes 
amis
, I have gathered you all here to announce that in our midst is what is known in France as
un probleme
.