Reality Dysfunction - Expansion

The trouble with looking so elegant, Joshua thought, was that part of him just wanted to stare at her, while the other part wanted to rip the dress to shreds so he could get at the body beneath. She really did look gorgeous.

He ran a finger round the collar on his own black di

“Leave it alone,” Ione said sternly.

“But—”

“Leave it. It’s fine.”

He dropped his hand and glowered at the lift’s door. Two Tranquillity serjeants were in with them, making it seem crowded. The door opened on the twenty-fifth floor of the StOuen starscraper, revealing a much smaller lobby than usual. Parris Vasilkovsky’s apartment took up half of the floor, his offices and staff quarters took up the other half.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Joshua said as they stood in front of the apartment door. He could feel the nerves building in the base of his stomach. This was the real big time he was bidding for now. And Ione on his arm ought to impress Parris Vasilkovsky. Precious little else would.

“I want to be with you,” Ione murmured.

He leant forward to kiss her.

The muscle membrane opened, and Dominique was standing behind it. She had chosen a sleeveless black gown with a long skirt and a deep, highly revealing V-neck. Her thick honey-blonde hair had been given a slight wave, curling around her shoulders. Broad scarlet lips lifted in appreciation as she caught the embrace.

Joshua straightened up guiltily, though his errant eyes remained fixed on Dominique’s cleavage. A host of memories started to replay through his mind without any assistance from his neural nanonics. He’d forgotten how impressive she was.

“Don’t mind me,” Dominique said huskily. “I adore young love.”

Ione giggled. “Evening, Dominique.”

The two girls kissed briefly. Then it was Joshua’s turn.

“Put him down,” Ione said in amusement. “You might catch something. Heaven only knows what he got up to on Norfolk.”

Dominique gri

“He’s Joshua; I know he’s been bad.”

“Hey!” Joshua complained. “That trip was strictly business.”

Both girls laughed. Dominique led the way into the apartment. Joshua saw her skirt was made up from long panels, split right up to the top of her hips. The fabric swayed apart as she walked, giving Joshua brief glimpses of her legs, and a pair of very tight white shorts.

He held back on a groan. It was going to be hard to concentrate tonight without that kind of distraction.

The dining-room had two oval windows to show Mirchusko’s dusky crescent—south of the equator two huge white cyclone swirls were crashing, in a drama which had been ru

There were six people at the di

Joshua and Dominique sat together on one side of the table. And Dominique’s long legs had been riding up and down his trousers all through the meal. He had done his best to ignore it, but his twitching mouth had given him away to Ione, and, he suspected, Symone as well.

Opposite them were Ione and Clement, Parris’s son. He was eighteen, lacking his big sister’s miscreant force, but quietly cheerful. And handsome, Ione thought, though not in the mould of Joshua’s wolfish ruggedness; his younger face was softer, framed with fair curly hair that was recognizably Parris’s. He had just returned from his first year at university on Kulu.

“I haven’t been to Kulu yet,” Joshua said as the white-jacketed waiter cleared the dessert dishes away, assisted by a couple of housechimps.

“Wouldn’t they let you in?” Dominique asked with honeyed malice.

“The Kulu merchants form a tight cartel, they’re hard to crack.”

“Tell me about it,” Parris said gruffly. “It took me eight years before I broke in with fabrics from Oshanko, until then my ships were going there empty to pick up their nanonics. That costs.”

“I’ll wait until I get a charter,” Joshua said. “I’m not going to try head-butting that kind of organization. But I’d like to play tourist sometime.”

“You did all right penetrating Norfolk,” Dominique said, eyes wide and apparently i

“Hey, neat intro,” he said enthusiastically. “We just slid into that subject, didn’t we? I never noticed.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“You got off lightly, Joshua,” Parris said. “Me, I get lumbered with her subtlety all day every day.”

“I would have thought she was old enough to have left home by now,” he said.

“Who’d have her?”

“Good point.”

Dominique lobbed a small cluster of grapes at her father.

Parris caught them awkwardly, laughing. One went bouncing off across the moss carpet. “Make me an offer for her, Joshua, anything up to ten fuseodollars considered.”

He saw the warning gleam in Dominique’s eye. “I think I’ll decline, thanks.”

“Coward.” Dominique pouted.

Parris dropped the grapes onto a side plate, and wiped his hand with a napkin. “So how did you do it, Joshua? My captains don’t get three thousand cases, and the Vasilkovsky line has been making the Norfolk run for fifty years.”

Joshua activated a neural nanonics memory cell. “Confidentiality coverage. Agreed?” His gaze went round the table, recording everyone saying yes. They were legally bound not to repeat what they heard now. Although quite what he could do about Ione was an interesting point, since her thought processes were Tranquillity’s legal system. “I traded something they needed: wood.” He explained about the mayope.

“Very clever,” Dominique drawled when he finished, though there was a note of respect in amongst the affected languor. “Brains as well as balls.”

“I like it,” Parris said. He studied his cut-crystal glass. “Why tell us?”

“Supply and demand,” Joshua said. “I’ve found a valuable hole in the market, and I want to fill it.”

“But the Lady Macbeth hasn’t got the capacity to do it by herself,” Clement said. “Right?”

Joshua had wondered how smart the lad was. Now he knew. A real chip off the Vasilkovsky block. “That’s right. I need a partner, a big partner.”

“Why not go to a bank?” Dominique asked. “Charter some ships for yourself.”

“There’s a loose end which needs tying up.”

“Ah,” Parris, showing some real interest at last, leant forward in his seat. “Go on.”

“The power mayope has over Norfolk lies in keeping it a monopoly, that way we can keep the price high. I have a provisional arrangement with a distributor on Norfolk who’s agreed to take as much as we can ship in. What we need to do next is pin down the supply to a single source, one that only we can obtain. That is going to take upfront money, the kind which can’t be explained away to bank auditors.”