THE DANGEROUS DROP
CLUB
I spent the evening
at the Dangerous Drop Club, tackling a rather different variety of
dangerous drop from the one I’d be confronting on the morrow. I
knew perfectly well at the time that this was stupid (not to
mention rash to the point of inviting the attention of the Dread
Aunts, those intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic), but I
confess I was so rattled by the combination of Laura’s departure,
my new butler’s arrival, and the presence of the horrible beast
that for the life of me I simply couldn’t bring myself to engage in
any activity more constructive than killing my own brain
cells.
Boris Kaminski was
present, of course, boasting in a low-key manner about how he was
going to win the race and buying everyone who mattered—the other
competitors, in other words—as many drinks as they would accept.
That was his prerogative, for as the ancients would put it, there’s
no prize for second place; he wasn’t the only one attempting to
seduce his comrades into suicidal self-indulgence. “We fly
tomorrow, chaps, and some of us might not be coming back! Crack
open the vaults and sample the finest vintages. Otherwise, you may
never know . . .” Boris always gets a bit like that before a drop,
morbidly maudlin in a gloating kind of way. Besides, it’s a good
excuse for draining the cellars, and Boris’s credit is good for
it—“Kaminski” is not his real name but the name he uses when he
wants to be a fabulously rich playboy with none of the headaches
and anxieties that go with his rank. This evening he was attired in
an outrageous outfit modeled on something Tsar Putin the First
might have worn when presiding over an acid rave in the barbaric
dark ages before the reenlightenment. He probably found it in the
back of his big brother’s wardrobe.
“We know you only
want to get us drunk so you can take unfair advantage of us,”
joshed Tolly Forsyth, raising his glass of Chateau !Kung, “but I
say let’s drink a toast to you! Feet cold and bottoms
down.”
“Glug glug,” buzzed
Toadsworth, raising a glass with his telescoping sink-plunger
thingie. Glasses were ceremoniously drained. (At least, that’s what
I think he said—his English is rather sadly deficient, and one of
the rules of the club is: no neural prostheses past the door. Which
makes it a bit dashed hard when you’re dealing with fellows who
can’t tell a fuck from a frappé I can tell you, like some
high-bandwidth-clankie heirs, but that’s what you get for missing
out on a proper classical education, undead languages and all, say
I.) Goblets were ceremonially drained in a libation to the
forthcoming toast race.
“It’s perfectly
alright to get me drunk,” said
Marmaduke Bott, his monocle flashing with the ruby fire of antique
stock-market ticker displays. “I’m sure I won’t win, anyway! I’m
sitting this one out in the bleachers.”
“Drink is good,”
agreed Edgestar Wolf black, injecting some kind of hideously
fulminating fluorocarbon lubricant into one of his six knees. Most
of us in the club are squishies, but Toadsworth and Edgestar are
both clankies. However, while the Toadster’s knobbly conical
exterior conceals what’s left of his old squisher body, tucked
decently away inside his eye-turret, Edgestar has gone the whole
hog and uploaded himself into a ceramic exoskeleton with eight or
nine highly specialized limbs. He looks like the bastard offspring
of a multitool and a mangabot. “Carbon is the new”—his massively
armored eyebrows furrowed—“black?” He’s a nice enough chappie, and
he went to the right school, but he was definitely at the back of
the queue the day they were handing out the cortical
upgrades.
“Another wee dram for
me,” I requested, holding out my snifter for a passing bee-bot to
vomit the nectar into. “I got a new butler today,” I confided.
“Nearly blew it, though. Sis dumped her pet mammoth on me again,
and the butler had to clean up before I’d even had time to fool her
into swearing the oath of allegiance.”
“How totally horrible!” Abdul said in a tone that
prompted me to glance at him sharply. He smirked. “And how is dear
Fiona doing this week? It’s ages since
she last came to visit.”
“She said something
about the Olympic cross-country season, I think. And then she’s got
a few ships to launch. Nothing very important aside from that, just
the après-ski salon circuit.” I yawned, trying desperately to look
unimpressed. Abdul is the only member of the club who genuinely
outranks Boris. Boris is constrained to use a nom de guerre because
of his position as heir to the throne of all the Russias—at least,
all the Russias that lie between Mars and Jupiter—but Abdul doesn’t
even bother trying to disguise himself. He’s the younger brother of
His Excellency the Most Spectacularly Important Emir of Mars, and
when you’ve got that much clout, you get to do whatever you want.
Especially if it involves trying to modify the landscape at Mach 20
rather than assassinating your elder siblings, the traditional
sport of kings. Abdul is quite possibly cer tifiably insane, having
graduated to freestyle orbital-reentry surfing by way of technical
diving on Europa and naturist glacier climbing on Pluto—and he
doesn’t even have my unfortunate neuroendo crine disorder as an
excuse—but he’s a fundamentally sound chap at heart.
“Hah. Well, we’ll
just have to invite her along to the party afterward, won’t we?” He
chuckled.
“Par-ty?” Toadsworth
beeped up.
“Of course. It’ll be
my hundredth drop, and I’m having a party.” Abdul smirked some
more—he had a very knowing smirk—and sipped his eighty-year
Inverteuchtie. “Everyone who survives is invited! Bottoms up,
chaps?”
“Bottoms up,” I
echoed, raising my glass. “Tally ho!”