“It’s a giveaway,” said Pyrrha.
“Goddamn it,” said We Suffer. She waved her hand again; Two-Thigh-Machetes slowly lowered the gun. She said, “Yes. We are not on our A-game today. Let us move on from playing games with how clever and how old you are. I am not impressed, and they annoy my colleague.”
Camilla popped the nib on the pen and said, “Who armed the dockworkers who busted through Port Authority yesterday?”
Two-Thigh-Machetes said, “Here we go.” This became HERE WE ZZZT GO.
We Suffer steepled her fingers together and said, “We have a great deal to discuss and that is not really relevant,” and Camilla said— “Let me make it more relevant. Did you know about the Port Authority assault beforehand, or didn’t you?”
Before We Suffer could answer this question, their bodyguard said intensely: “Did you have an objection?” （ZZT?）
Camilla said, “Twenty-two people were shot,” and the bodyguard said, “No. Nineteen people were shot, and three zombie loyalists got put down. Get your maths right. Do you care about the nineteen? Or the three?”
Because of the mask it came out very flat, like DO YOU CARE ZZT ABOUT THE NINETEEN ZZT?, which didn’t work at all. Nona longed to point this out, but Crown got in first— “If you question Troia cell’s loyalty you’re questioning my loyalty, agent. Are you? Because Blood of Eden states I’ve got right of recourse, and I can take that recourse right here, right now. How about it? Bet you’ve never been challenged before. How does it feel?”
Even through a plastic mask and some goggles and a hood We Suffer was starting to look distinctly pained, and when the bodyguard intoned, “JUST GREAT. LET’S GO ZZZT,” We Suffer said: “That is much more than enough. You are trained soldiers, not dockside rabble two beers down. There is no right of recourse here. I would rate you both, except that we have no time for that whatsoever.”
The bodyguard and Crown fell silent. Crown’s eyes were hot and angry, and her lips were pressed together: as per usual she looked great. When Nona was very angry her cheeks went red and her voice got squeaky; she felt deeply envious.
We Suffer said, “Please listen calmly to what I have to tell you, Hect. The negotiator is in orbit.”
Camilla stood up.
Pyrrha said gently, “We were expecting this. Get the intel,” and Camilla sat down. From the side Nona could see her eyes were angry in a different and less magnificent way than Crown’s. They were blank, as though everything Camilla in them had been erased: perfectly grey and glassy and still.
Pyrrha said, “You could have saved yourself half an hour and us a round trip by telling us this back at our digs, Commander.”
“What I do is watched very carefully, Ms. Dve,” said We Suffer. “So I am being very casual … very by the book … so that I can get a chance to talk with my Troia cell, in the normal way, quietly. The negotiator arriving throws us all into disarray. Many factions did not expect them to dare to come, not with the blue madness.”
“How’s consensus?” asked Pyrrha.
“Currently there is an emergency meeting I am not attending about whether to blow the negotiator out of the sky. The numbers are now not so in favour of that that I am especially worried,” said We Suffer. “They are the anarchists who propose this in any case, not the hardcore. They would blow most of the planet up as a middle finger, but they do not have the support. Officially I am willing to be led. Unofficially I am wildly delighted by this. As time goes by … as we dither and panic here and lose more and more on Antioch … the antinegotiation sect loses momentum. And this is a huge boon in many ways as far as we are concerned. The picture, please.”
This was said to Two-Thigh-Machetes, who crossed to the left side of the table and vented their feelings on a cord dangling from the ceiling, making a length of white sheeting come tumbling down the wall. Then they returned to the other side of the room behind We Suffer and started to fiddle with the projector box embedded in the table, mumbling darkly all the while, which sounded through the air circulator a lot like they were fizzing.
Nona grew vaguely excited, because she did like seeing projector box displays. With Blood of Eden all you normally got to see were maps, or numbers, or pictures of dead bodies dumped on one another, but you took what you could get.
“Thank you. Let us get this thing loading,” said We Suffer.
Crown said slowly, “You didn’t show me a picture, Commander.”