*
Titov steered the Zopez into dock with an assured hand and Mas was ready, leaping over the side-railing and into an easy walk without missing a stride. Over her body suit she wore loose fitting cream shirt and trousers with deep pockets that hid her weapons well, particularly the laser-acid gun she was gripping down at her thigh. She ignored the lingering looks coming her way from the unsavoury looking men loitering about the docks and the adjoining streets. They could look but not touch. And if a man broke that one simple rule, she would hurt him without compunction. She was not one to flirt with.
She reached the nondescript concrete building with the Desear Restaurant on the ninth floor and, as the entrance door slid open for her, she stepped into the scanning room. A blue X-ray beam swirled around in a whirlpool of colour and a small slot opened in one of the metal walls. There came a voice command in the kind of Spanish referred to as Spangish, which Mas did not understand except for amla which meant weapon. She dropped her laser-acid gun, stick bombs and knives into it and a large door at the back of the room opened. She moved through the doorway into a lavish foyer of royal blue carpet and strikingly provocative abstract portraitures on the walls.
‘Good evening, madam,’ said the maître de, stepping forward to greet her. He was immaculately dressed in a black silk suit and his hair was oiled even blacker. His skin had the hard marble look of laser skin treatment done too cheap.
‘I am a guest of Gustavo Fall,’ said Mas.
The sly sneer she received in return was familiar enough. All towns like San Paul had at least one such restaurant, a place where most things to be purchased did not appear on a menu. And it appeared the maître de had already been paid.
‘Come this way, madam.’
Mas was led into an elevator that stunk of tobacco smoke and perspiration. It was a quick trip to the ninth floor. The restaurant that emerged from the elevator doors was breathtakingly beautiful with luscious green carpet and tables draped in rich Persian silk table cloths upon which the silverware gleamed. The few diners already in the restaurant were contributing to the spectacle with seemingly every earlobe, neck and wrist, of both males and females, taken up with diamonds, gems and gold - this was a detail Mas was lacking, but she was not the type to worry about things that glittered, for to her way of thinking they were just more examples of things taken from nature and tamed.
The maître de led her to a table near one of the large plasma-windows, which was currently showing a superbly colourful tropical beach at sunset, the colours exceptionally vivid - and they could be enhanced still further for anyone able to afford the optical implants. The maître de seated Mas and was promptly replaced by the waiter. Mas ordered Russian vodka with Canadian ice. She found it amusing: two of the biggest rivals in the First Artic War now coalescing perfectly within her crystal glass. Mas closed her eyes to sip the drink and savour it. And she kept her eyes closed a while longer, for her memory was more vivid than any plasma-window, taking her back to the jungles of her youth with the sounds ranging from the lonely cries of solitary apes to the mad laughter of hyenas. For Mas, they were the sounds of home.
Footsteps approaching the table encroached upon the moment, compelling Mas’s eyes open again. It was the waiter, bringing on his silver tray an oversized floral porcelain bowl.
‘Gustavo Fall has been briefly detained,’ he explained, ‘and he humbly requests you to start the entre without him.’ He rested the tray on the table and slid the bowl across to Mas. ‘Soup of the Day is seafood. Enjoy.’
Mas gazed down at the soup curiously. The thick brown liquid did not look particularly inviting. And Mas couldn’t quite place the smell. Something vaguely fishy. Probably the day’s catch brought in on the back of an oil slick. Mas eyed her spoon with a kind of revulsion. She was a poacher. She liked hunting big animals and throwing them on the fire and eating them with her fingers. Anything else was too convoluted for her liking. She was still gazing at the soup when she noticed a series of bubbles moving along its surface. It seemed peculiar. Was the soup still boiling? She cautiously touched the side of the bowl to test its temperature - it was dead cold. Mas’s eyes widened as she sensed danger. She started to pull back from the bowl just as the tiny scorpion lobster sprung out of the soup. Its legs attached onto her neck and the spike on the tip of its tail plunged into the skin. Mas grabbed it and ripped it away, but she knew it was too late: the poison would be in her system and it was fast acting. Her blood was already turning noxious, a foul taste in her mouth and she could feel her heart pressing up against her tongue. Her attempts to get up off the chair were doomed from the start. The poison was washing through her muscles, leaving her with nothing. Her eyes rolled into unconsciousness and she collapsed onto the table, her face landing flush in the soup.
The waiter was back at the table: he stroked her hair a moment before using a clump to pull her head out of the soup. He looked around at the other diners in the restaurant, daring them to look up from their own plates. But no one took up the challenge. A nervous hush had fallen over the tables.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the waiter in a dull, flat voice, ‘it seems our soup has quite a bite to it today.’
Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats Page 3