TideBreakers: Death On Foils
Page 4
signal?"
Matilda turned back to the sub and sashayed back down the pontoon. "Good, great, excellent," she said, by way of an explanation. "They all mean the same thing. You're still young aren't you? You should know this all."
"I know." Neil was only really talking to himself. "But 'noisy', 'bellow' – that's hatch talk…"
Dinah's voice came from close behind him. "And tags say 'green signal' and 'bold', yeah." She spoke reassuringly. "Don't worry – she doesn't care which teenager slang she misuses." They started to follow the rep round the pontoon.
Matilda called over her shoulder. "Dinah, that wrench. I need you to go and fetch it, you scream?"
"The one you just dropped in the water?" Dinah spoke as if this request wasn't unusual. "I can't, Matilda. It's probably about five fathoms down now."
Matilda was genuinely confused by the answer. "But I need it."
Dinah went to say something but Matilda jumped back into talking to Neil.
"So, Nadir," she said. "I must admit it took you red time to work out where we were. How did you first discover about my… misdemeanor? Where will it be published?" She clutched her hands to her chest excitedly. "Who will know about me?!"
"It's Neil," he said dryly, looking to Dinah for some help. She was making her way round to the Rapide's port wing, surveying what Matilda had done to the aileron. "And I'm here for the – "
Matilda steam-rolled on. "Well I guess you'll want to know from the beginning, won't you?" She flapped her hands quite expressively as she talked, darting them about in a way that made Neil recoil for his own safety on occasion.
"I must say I'm surprised," she said tangentially. "You're the only one to come down to me today what with all that bone-silent noise up top."
"'Silent noise'?" Neil repeated back.
"Anyway." Matilda ignored him. "I was a high-achieving racer in the Wednesday league back in Forty-Ninth Levee."
Neil tried again. "I don't think you quite – "
"Those were noisy days, Nikolai, and I was the true plat' there, everyone knew it."
Neil's EmoteLive beeped. "Do you think we could – "
Matilda leapt to his side and, standing on her toes, slipped one arm over his shoulder. She pulled him down so their faces were squashed together. "Then!" She scanned the horizon with her free arm, a dramatic flourish to set a scene. "Someone from Lockman-Bracker found me. It was a green-signal day."
"Look," Neil tried again, squirming. "I'm just here to review the – "
"He took me and he said – "
"Matilda." Dinah was back next to her. "A word. Now."
The rep released Neil again and he stood back up, rubbing his neck. Matilda looked at Dinah in wide-eyed offense at the interruption, but was mercifully silent for a moment.
"Please," Dinah said to Neil as she led Matilda a little way down the jetty. "Start to take a look over the Rapide."
"Sure." He continued on round the pontoon to the Rapide's wing-tip, but kept an eye on the two women. Setting his handphone to its camera, he moved around the sub, playing at framing up pictures of it whilst keeping an ear on the hushed conversation.
"He's here," Dinah was saying firmly, "to review the Rapide. Remember?"
"But I want to talk about me." Matilda spoke with full conviction.
"He's not here for that."
Neil moved round snug to the Rapide's fuselage and was just taking a low picture over the wingroot fillet, when he spied something unusual just back from the wing's leading edge. It was what seemed to be a long handle.
"But we could have a much louder conversation," Matilda was saying. "If we talked about – "
"Matilda, he's not here for that. You can't talk about that."
Neil stood on his toes to look over the Rapide's fuselage and check the other wing; there was a handle in the same place there, too.
Meanwhile, Matilda was speaking hotly. "This is bone! What are we meant to talk about?!"
"The sub, Matilda! He's here to review the Rapide!"
Neil's handphone chimed as another message was delivered. Unsurprisingly it was from Rebecca.