Ben got her to Paris as quickly as he could.\u00a0 A mid-morning shuttle from Heathrow landed them at Charles de Gaulle before he could finish the piccolo of Heidsieck that the EuroAir cabin attendant had proffered in recognition of their premium fares.\u00a0 In the moulded seat beside him, Dela feigned sleep, while the headset streamed some nameless neo-classical soporific into her indifferent ears.\u00a0 Ben cycled through the inflight programming, resisting the urge to disturb her.\u00a0 When he did look over, he saw only the distorted geometry of the shuttle cabin reflected in the opaque, impenetrable surface of her faceshade.
\nHe had booked them into a small four star hotel on the Left Bank, a safe distance from the soaring mega-boards of the Champs Arcade and the Secured Retail Zone of Faubourg-St. Honor\u00e9, where her images would be everywhere.\u00a0 Here, in the uncurious m\u00e9l\u00e9e of the Latin Quarter, they could keep a lower profile; even Dela’s extravagant beauty and extraordinary fashions would excite little comment.\u00a0 They checked in, and walked to a caf\u00e9 for lunch.\u00a0 At his urging, they sat outdoors, where the tables clustered on the narrow sidewalk, uncomfortably close to the thronging pedestrian traffic.
\nDela watched the swarming parade as it passed their tiny table, silently envying the effortless chic with which the Parisiens moved through the layered textures of their city, perfectly costumed extras against a set of crumbling, corrugated grey.\u00a0 Slowly, she removed her faceshade, peeled off her bellcap, and faced Paris as she was.
\nReleased, her blended hair billowed with a life of its own, then settled to a kind of fragile repose.\u00a0 The tresses flexed gently in time to her pulse, as if stirred by a slight wind, creating a subtle, moving chiaroscuro of spun blonde and copper.\u00a0 The eyes that scanned the bustling streetscape were like diamonds, brilliant lies of colour that refracted any light, slivered any movement into a dazzling promise of mystery.\u00a0 Retinal faceting was still an experimental and risky procedure;\u00a0 Dela’s results had, fortunately, been spectacular.
\nHer jawlines had been shaved by laser-surgery to near perfect symmetry (to frustrate counterfeiting of her priceless image, a nanometric error had been programmed.)\u00a0 Her brows arched ferally with recent transplants of Alaskan lynx.\u00a0 The teeth were almost natural, perfectly white, and regressed just a little, to restore a fine sawtooth of mammalons to the edges.\u00a0 (She had resisted the canine implant fad, and wore caps when the shoot demanded a sabretooth look.)
\nHer body was a fitting pedestal for the sublime artwork that was Dela’s face.\u00a0 There had been no need for any skeletal retro-fitting; the bones were all her own, and she had built the rest herself.\u00a0 The muscles were authentic, produced with a minimum of steroid and amino-protoid supplements, and maintained with a strict daily regimen in the air-gym.\u00a0 In such effort, she took pride.\u00a0 It was only when she couldn’t build it herself that she looked for professional assistance.\u00a0 Or when she had an impossible deadline.\u00a0 Or was asked to go where nature could not take her.\u00a0 And sometimes, even then, there were limits.
\n“So remind me.\u00a0 Why are we here?”\u00a0 It was the first complete sentence she’d spoken since leaving London, and Ben was jarred from his brief reverie of adoration.\u00a0 The rare sight of her face exposed in raw daylight had awakened his basic photographer’s instincts;\u00a0 he revelled in her image.\u00a0 He wondered how anyone could ask for more.
\nA tongue-fork, for Christ’s sake.
\nHe was hardly surprised when she blew up at the agency meeting.
\nHe leaned forward over the marbelite tabletop, smirking.\u00a0 “Hiding out from the legals at SS-Comm?”
\nShe looked at him, then smiled, sadly.\u00a0 “I’m sorry, Ben, that was a big one to throw.”
\n“We have lots of other big ones.”\u00a0 His tone was suddenly serious, but there was no regret in it.
\n“Why do they do that?\u00a0 Why hire the most expensive face on the planet, then ask for . . . ”
\nBen shrugged vaguely.\u00a0 His fingers stacked little parcels of cubed sugar on the tabletop.
\n“They want that shit, let them construct.” The defiance in her voice waned.\u00a0 “I’m done, Ben.\u00a0 I’ve had enough.\u00a0 No more alters.”
\n“Dela, listen to me.” She looked up, and those eyes began to work with emotion.\u00a0 He looked past them, and spoke.\u00a0 “You did right.\u00a0 It wasn’t your look.”\u00a0 He paused, giving her time to register what he said.\u00a0 “Now put it away.\u00a0 Okay?”
\nShe searched his eyes for a moment, then nodded.\u00a0 She slouched back in the chair, her haughty power returning like a transfusion.\u00a0 “So, what’s next?”
\n“Monday?”
\n“Today, Benjamin.” She toppled his tiny sugar castle with a flick of an onyx fingernail, grinning. “You bring me to Paris for the weekend and you’d better do more than a fucking salade campagne on Boulevard Saint Michel.”
\nHe smiled, relieved to see her humour.\u00a0 “Your agenda, babe.\u00a0 I got nothing planned.”
\n“When since I’ve known you did you have nothing planned?”\u00a0 It was a jab, and not entirely in jest.
\n“Just a weekend away, Dela.\u00a0 Clear space.\u00a0 That’s all.\u00a0 You call it.”\u00a0 There was a trace of something in his voice, something she couldn’t quite fix.\u00a0 She pushed it away.
\n“I don’t care, just so long as there isn’t a call sheet or a holocam anywhere near it.\u00a0 And keep that bloody thing closed, too.”\u00a0 A perfect finger pointed emphatically at the port-pack that nestled beside him on the caf\u00e9 chair.\u00a0 Ben put a protective hand over the skin-covered tablet, and smiled.\u00a0 After a moment, she said, “I mean it Ben.\u00a0 Take me right away from my life.\u00a0 Lose me in Paris.”
\nHe made a deliberate show of weighing the options, considering her request.\u00a0 A baker’s boy went past on a rattling moped, his panniers filled with great bouquets of fresh baguettes.\u00a0 The delicate fragrance of his cargo reached them for a moment as the bread bounced on its way through the churning grime of the street air.\u00a0 He looked back to Dela, and her eyebrows arched with feline eloquence.
\n“How do you feel about art?” he said.
\nHe led her through the Metro tunnels and onto a whispering, well-populated train.\u00a0 They disembarked at the Louvre station and he guided her up onto the streets, around the side of the vast palace to the old, exterior entrance: a cracked, fogged glass pyramid set incongruously into the stately expanse of the Cour Napoleon, framed on three sides by the sprawling wings of the palace.\u00a0 They entered the pyramid, and wound down the curling, floating staircase to the security gate.\u00a0 They cleared it with a scan of their Connext cards, and were instantly rewarded with small passcards which bore on their obverse an English language map of the museum layout, printed seconds earlier.
\nThe Louvre offered every kind of tour and information service imaginable, from polylingual human guides for the very rich, to socket rods for the very modern, and everything in between.\u00a0 Ben guided Dela past the booths, and up to the Greek and Roman exhibits in the Sully Wing.\u00a0 There, they walked in patient, unhurried silence through room after room of statuary, passing silent gauntlets of proud perfect forms.\u00a0 There were athletes and animals, gods and goddesses, beasts and demons, the meanest life size, the largest gigantic, an entire populace of silent, stained marble.
\nDela’s eyes devoured the luxuriant abundance of stone flesh.\u00a0 They had a substance, a solidity that no hologram could reproduce.\u00a0 As she ambled amongst them, she was barely conscious of the twitch of her hands, of the urge to touch, as if her caress could awaken the dead stone, suffuse the frozen muscles with vitality, bring alive the sensual promise that rippled through the silent, stone skins, bring light to the empty marble orbs that were their eyes.\u00a0 Ben followed her slowly, watching her eyes, watching her.
\nSuddenly she stopped, halting him.\u00a0 She spoke distractedly into the air.\u00a0 “I know her.\u00a0 I know this one.”
\n“You ought to,” he said.\u00a0 She stopped at a small rope enclosure, and gazed up at the statue which stood atop a marble pedestal, elevated higher than other nearby exhibits, and separated by a generous space.\u00a0 A woman, captured in marble, caged in a web of invisible photosensitive beams, lit with soft autumn daylight from generous windows on both sides.\u00a0 Her marble figure glowed in the natural light, the stone flesh soft against the austere dark grey walls that surrounded her.\u00a0 “That,” said Ben, “Is the Venus de Milo.\u00a0 She’s very famous.”
\nDela circled the stone woman slowly, her eye following the exquisite curves of the ancient flesh, the soft waves of her drapery, the perfect grace of her pose. “She’s divine,” she pronounced, at last.\u00a0 Ben stood, his hands in his pockets.
\n“Of course she is.\u00a0 She’s a goddess.”
\n“She doesn’t have much to work with, but what she does with it…”\u00a0 She stopped, and gazed into statue’s empty eyes.\u00a0 There was, in the frozen face, a palpable sense of peace, a cool, ageless serenity.\u00a0 “Know what I’d like?”\u00a0 Dela’s words came from deep inside her, far away, measured out phrase by phrase. “I’d like you to do me like that.\u00a0 Stripped down to nothing.\u00a0 No props.\u00a0 No ‘tronics.\u00a0 Just me.\u00a0 Bit of drape.\u00a0 Decent light.\u00a0 But just me.\u00a0 Can we do that, Ben?”
\nHe looked at her, but she was fixated by the statue.\u00a0 The light frosted her profile, and shivered in her eyes.\u00a0 His heart beat was suddenly erratic, and his mouth dry. “We could try.\u00a0 Who’d buy it, I have no idea.\u00a0 Revlon?\u00a0 Eterna?\u00a0 It’s a bit dated, even for Plus Moda.\u00a0 But we could try.”
\nShe moved suddenly close to him, as if needing to share a secret.\u00a0 She squeezed his arm, with some urgency.\u00a0 “Not for them, not for a client.\u00a0 Just for me.\u00a0 For myself.\u00a0 For us.”\u00a0 Her voice was drifting further away with every word. “Get us back to something simple, Ben.”\u00a0 Her head settled against his shoulder, and skeins of her hair snaked around the back of his neck.\u00a0 “Let’s do that, Ben.\u00a0 When we get home. I’ll get a drape and you can dust off the Arriflex and you and me can get back to some basics.\u00a0 A shitty studio with bad London light and my gorgeous body.\u00a0 Maybe, yeah?”\u00a0 Her voice was distant, and full of echoed sadness.\u00a0 Her retooled eyes had no capacity for tears, and so none came.\u00a0 Instead, they dulled like gemstones dipped in wax.
\n“We’ll do that, Dela.\u00a0 Maybe we’ll do just that.”\u00a0 He looked at the statue.\u00a0 “I’ve got a book somewhere with a picture.\u00a0 We’ll do it just right.”\u00a0 He got a hold of her elbow, and began to walk her away from the exhibit, but she pulled away.
\n“I want to stay for awhile, okay?\u00a0 Look around some more.”
\n“Sure, I’ll wait.”
\n“No, you go.\u00a0 I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
\n“You’re okay?”
\n“Absolutely.\u00a0 I’ll be back for dinner.”
\nHe paused, considered, then nodded.\u00a0 “Alright. Got your hotel card?”
\nShe slapped the pouch under her jacket.\u00a0 The strength in her voice was returning; her smile was easy and full.\u00a0 “Right next to my Connext.”
\n“Remember the Metro?”
\n“Maubert-Mutualit\u00e9,” she pronounced, with elaborate care. “Relax.\u00a0 Just go.\u00a0 See you in a couple of hours.”\u00a0 She kissed his cheek, flared her hair affectionately, and gave him a gentle push.\u00a0 He smiled, over his shoulder, before turning and walking away.\u00a0 She watched him go, his retreating form mingling with the shifting tableau of the bustling tourists and the pale, silent presences of the statues.\u00a0 She turned back, and faced the Venus, her diamond eyes probing the goddess’ marble face, searching for their secret.\u00a0 She did not see Ben stop at the distant door, and turn to look at her.
\nBen slid the lens from his port-pack and slipped it over his right eye.\u00a0 In ten seconds he had notched a dozen stills.\u00a0 Enough.\u00a0 With a practised wink, he popped the lens from his face into his waiting hand.\u00a0 The cable recoiled into its socket and the lens disappeared into the pack.\u00a0 Ben stepped back, still watching.\u00a0 Dela had not noticed him.\u00a0 If she had, she would have been disturbed by the hungriness in his eyes.\u00a0 He blended away into the depths of the Sully Wing, his right hand punching commands into the pack’s board.
\nBen made his way quickly out of the museum, and up to a quiet caf\u00e9 off Rue de Rivoli.\u00a0 He ordered a vodka with pernod ice, sipped at it, then set his port-pack onto the table.\u00a0 He called up the prints and studied them carefully on the monitor.\u00a0 They were low-res, poorly composed, but adequate.\u00a0 There were some full figure two shots, torsos, heads, singles.\u00a0 A couple of infrareds of Dela’s body print.\u00a0 A drapery sample from the statue.\u00a0 A choker close-up of Dela, in that light.\u00a0 He lingered over this image longer than he had to.\u00a0 It was habit, and pleasurable.\u00a0 She still astonished him.
\nA small wave of traffic noise broke through the narrow street, jarring him back to the caf\u00e9, the time.\u00a0 He filed the images with a stroke, and secured the file with a print scan.\u00a0 He pulled a headset from the pack, plugged in, and dialled London.\u00a0 The call routed to the seaside resort of Bognor Regis, to a residence listed as The Cottage.\u00a0 A domestic of some kind answered the phone manually – Ben was impressed but not surprised – and advised him that Kyle was unavailable.\u00a0 “Is there a message?”
\n“No.\u00a0 Just, have him call.\u00a0 I am out of town, but he has the routing codes.”\u00a0 He disengaged, then retrieved the files, and flipped through the images like a croupier lazily dealing cards.\u00a0 He laid up opposing profiles, Dela facing Venus, eye to eye, diamond to marble.\u00a0 He stared at the image, sipping at the vodka.
\nIs there a message?
\nYes – tell Kyle we’re warm.<\/p>\n
The English channel on the Speaking Map was broken;\u00a0 the system defaulted to formal Euroic, and displayed an animated loop of a flat graphic subway carriage arriving, departing, and arriving again at the station.\u00a0 Dela punched in her destination again, and again, the map flashed elaborate displays of routes, changes, stops and directions accompanied by the indecipherable, synthetic voice.\u00a0 She glanced around for assistance, and saw only the milling faces of Metro passengers, surging like a tide up and down the tunnel.\u00a0 Wherever she was going was, she knew, not far.\u00a0 She strode to the nearest “Sortie”, up a short escalator, and into the failing sunlight of the afternoon.
\nThe surface brought no escape from the crowds, but added a suffocating dimension of thickly layered noise.\u00a0 In the near distance to her left, the twin towers of Notre Dame loomed, promising sanctuary.\u00a0 Closer, Pont Neuf beckoned, a bridge to a calmer place.\u00a0 From its stone rails, she could see a tongue of parkland pointing out into the river like the prow of a ship emerging from under the bridge.\u00a0 She went down to it, and was enveloped with a fragile quiet.\u00a0 The roar of traffic on the bridge above, on the streets that rimmed the river, in the skies above, all seemed suddenly muted and distant down on the island.\u00a0 Dela walked to the tapered tip where the weary grass gave way to stone walls which sloped down to the water.\u00a0 A few couples meandered among the scattered trees, or huddled on benches.\u00a0 She sat, grateful for the comparative solitude of the place.\u00a0 Across the sunflecked surface of the Seine, past the arcade of trees along the river’s far quay, she could see the Louvre.
\nIt pulled.
\nDela reached into her pouch, removed a slim alloy wallet, and flipped through it to her hotel card.\u00a0 The plastic wafer was imprinted with the hotel’s name, address, telephone number, and a tiny map showing its proximity to the nearest Metro station.\u00a0 It bore an antique magnetic ribbon which was encoded to unlock her room door.\u00a0 As she studied the map, her eyes strayed to the Connext card lodged next to it.\u00a0 Her face stared back at her from the holographic portrait embedded in a small transparent window in the card.\u00a0 It pre-dated the hair and eyebrow work, but was still recognizable.\u00a0 In the layers of lucite, the Connext slogan rippled with promise: Anything, Anytime, Anywhere.
\nA Sur\u00e9t\u00e9 hover shot past the island, its whining fans ruffling the surface of the Seine.\u00a0 She watched as it disappeared around a distant curve of the river.\u00a0 She thought of Ben, remembered his pride when he presented her with the exalted 5000 Class card.\u00a0 What she now held, however, was not the Corporate Connext that Ben had obtained for her, but her own.\u00a0 What she did with it would never show up on company accounts.\u00a0 Her fingers stroked the edges of the card, as if testing its limits, its potential.\u00a0 The daylight began to wane, and the river ran with darker shades.\u00a0 Still, her eyes bored into the museum’s distant walls.
\nAt 10:15 the port piped, waking him.\u00a0 Ben surfaced slowly, lost, out of place.\u00a0 The only familiar element was the port-pack screen facing him.\u00a0 He squinted at the display, a graphic of opposing profiles, overlaid with a blank Connex’Trace record.\u00a0 A flashing light.\u00a0 The synthetic trill of the incoming call.\u00a0 The details of the darkened hotel room eased into focus around the screen, dragging recollection into his unwilling consciousness.
\nParis
\nDela
\nHis mind jumped for her with sudden hope, and he reached for the set, reflexively keying up the call profile.\u00a0 It flickered onscreen, identifying the source of the call, and he froze.\u00a0 Bognor.\u00a0 Ben engaged slowly, breathing deeply.
\n“Benjamin, good morning.\u00a0 How’s the weather in Paris?”\u00a0 Kyle’s voice came heartily over the line.\u00a0 From the background sound, Ben could tell he was outside, near water, with children playing nearby.\u00a0 He closed his eyes, and could see English sunshine.
\n“It’s fine, Kyle.\u00a0 Bit cloudy.”\u00a0 His head swam with bad memories of the night before, the long vigil fuelled with coffee and cognac, and a steadily mounting anxiety.\u00a0 Sometime around eleven, he had punched into Connex’Trace, but it showed no record of her card being used since they’d entered the Louvre.\u00a0 He kept the ‘Trace active; it never changed.
\n“You had called.”
\n“Just wanted to run over the agenda for tomorrow.” Ben was concious of a near stammer in his voice.\u00a0 He fought it down.\u00a0 The waiters had ushered him onto the street at four o’clock.\u00a0 He’d staggered up and down the short length of street in front of the hotel, bumping into the small knots of leather-black night-people, searching helplessly.\u00a0 He considered approaching the concierge, the Sur\u00e9t\u00e9, Europol, but what would he have said?\u00a0 Cherchez la femme?
\n“Pretty simple agenda, Ben.”
\n“Yes, I know.\u00a0 Just, well, Dela’s working with your boards right now, warming up nicely, actually.”
\n“Last I heard Dela was tongue lashing SS-Comm for tampering with her humanity.”
\nBen laughed, inexpertly. He swallowed quickly, dryly.\u00a0 “They had some rather extreme ideas.\u00a0 The woman has an image, Kyle.\u00a0 There are limits.”
\n“There usually are.\u00a0 So what is it, Benjamin?\u00a0 Nothing amiss, is there?”
\nThe beat of silence was enough to confirm it.\u00a0 Ben scrambled to recover.\u00a0 “I just need to . . . reassure my client.”
\nThe velvet fullness of Kyle’s voice rolled over, exposing a naked, dangerous edge.\u00a0 “As to what?”
\n“What you’ve storyboarded, that’s locked, right?\u00a0 No surprises?”\u00a0 He could feel panic rising like hot mercury through his mind, shearing through the thick, woolen residuum of his sleep-patch.\u00a0 He began to sweat.
\n“No ‘tronics?\u00a0 No grafts?\u00a0 No, Ben.\u00a0 This is Plus-Moda.\u00a0 You can assure her that what we’ve boarded is what we want.”
\n“You know she’ll give you everything she’s got.”
\n“Just make sure she gives us everything we’ve contracted.” A flurry of indistinct voices crowded Kyle’s end of the line, then receded.\u00a0 “I’d love to chat, but I have guests.\u00a0 Whatever the problem is, I’d appreciate knowing it’s solved before we convene tomorrow.\u00a0 Let me know, won’t you?”\u00a0 He terminated the call without waiting for a response.
\nBen sat with the unit pressed to his ear, and distantly heard the automatic teller break into the line, announce the charges and account allocation, deliver a brief international long distance advertising message, and vacate the circuit.\u00a0 The cell spewed empty static into his ear.\u00a0 Absently, he took the headset off and wiped the sweat from his hands on the edge of the bed.\u00a0 His stomach was churning, and he could feel the enclosed universe of his room slowly rotating.\u00a0 He grasped for an anchor, and fixed his attention to the image on the monitor.\u00a0 The opposing profiles stared mutely into each other’s eyes, different than he remembered. Different, because now they were the same.\u00a0 The two faces were identical.\u00a0 And into the perfect goblet-shaped space between them, came her voice, muffled but real, not chipped.
\n“Benjamin?”\u00a0 His head turned to the door that joined their rooms.\u00a0 “Ben, you’re awake, I heard you.”
\n“Dela?”\u00a0 Relief rushed through him like a drug, and he bounded to the door.
\n“Ben, I’m fine, I’m perfectly alright.”\u00a0 She sounded safe, familiar, close.\u00a0 Excited.\u00a0 His hands stroked the melamine door panel as if it were her skin.
\n“Where’ve you been, babe?” he probed, gently.\u00a0 She did not respond, that he could hear.\u00a0 He pressed his forehead to the door.\u00a0 “Can I come in?”
\n“Ben, before you – I should, well,” her voice bubbled with confusion, like a child unsure whether to share a secret.
\nHe felt his nerves sharpening.\u00a0 “What is it, babe?\u00a0 This is Ben, tell me.”
\n“Ben, I can’t, I just – well, this is something …”\u00a0 Her voice trailed away into a fog of emotion.\u00a0 He heard her draw a deep breath.\u00a0 “Just come see, okay?”
\nHe fumbled into a kimono, slipped the doorlock with his card, and stepped into her room.\u00a0 The lights were off and window shields closed, but the darkness was richer, deeper than in his room.\u00a0 Full of her.\u00a0 He scanned the room, but could see no movement.\u00a0 His eyes lingered on a still form in the centre of the room.\u00a0 As he stared at it, the shape sharpened to a familiar contour. Hesitantly, he reached toward the lightpad.\u00a0 Dela’s voice came from the darkness.
\n“No – use daylight.\u00a0 Only daylight.”
\nHe moved like a somnambulist through the dark, his eyes now locked on the looming, immobile form.\u00a0 He reached the window, and eased a slat of the shield open.\u00a0 The light entered the room like a scythe, and revealed her.
\nThe hair was gone, cut into a soft coif of natural fibre.\u00a0 Lifeless, it lay against her head, perfectly framing the newly classical contour of her face.\u00a0 The lips were trimmed, the brows smoothed away.\u00a0 The swath of silk rustled across the wider, whiter hips.\u00a0 His eyes travelled up, over the moulded poetry of the torso, and saw, at last, the finished piece in its entirety.
\n“Perfect, aren’t they?” she whispered.
\nThey were.\u00a0 The left, severed vertically at the shoulder.\u00a0 The right, sixteen centimetres longer.\u00a0 The stumps were as clean as sawn marble.
\nWith a slow, controlled movement, she raised her head to speak.\u00a0 The rest of her body remained perfectly immobile.\u00a0 Her voice was plaintive.\u00a0 “Tell me they’re perfect, Ben.”
\nHe gazed at the empty space at her sides, speechless.\u00a0 He saw her whole, and felt as if he were hallucinating, such was the surreal perfection of what she had made.\u00a0 He forced his eyes away, and saw, dimly, a pair of generic cyprosthetics tangled on the bed.
\n“They’ve got mine on ice,” she continued, “In the clinic.”
\n“Amsterdam,” he murmured, his voice dull with shock.
\nShe nodded.\u00a0 “I can get them back anytime.\u00a0 Couple of hours and I’m whole.\u00a0 Ben, what do you think?”
\n“Dela, it’s … it’s exquisite.\u00a0 But such a price.”
\n“I used my personal account,” she said, misunderstanding, “They won’t charge the company.”\u00a0 She suddenly came fully alive, and spun through the room, her stumped arms trailing a shadowed whirlwind of flesh and silk.\u00a0 She moved, with perfect professional timing, from pose to pose, freezing in classic postures, and the disfigurement vanished into a mist of ancient familiarity.\u00a0 She was Mother of the Earth, Woman of the Ages, Goddess of the Gods.\u00a0 She melted back into the attitude of the de Milo, then snapped her head to fix him with the look.\u00a0 “We could do some serious work with this, Ben, don’t you think?”\u00a0 Dumbly, he nodded.\u00a0 His eyes still refused to accept how naturally she moved, the ease with which she filled the space with, without – without them.\u00a0 He could never have imagined –\u00a0\u00a0 Her voice broke through, suddenly tender.\u00a0 “I mean it Ben.\u00a0 This one’s for us.\u00a0 We call the shots.\u00a0 We’ll get home, find some space, even pirate some real film, if we can.\u00a0 Make it immortal.\u00a0 Can we try that?\u00a0 Can you still get real film, Ben?”
\n“Probably in Amsterdam, I could.\u00a0 You can get anything in Amsterdam, I hear.”
\nAnything, anywhere, anytime.
\nShe strode over, the easy grace and power of her stride contradicting the crippled, helpless shoulders, and kissed him.\u00a0 “What a team.”\u00a0 The eyes sparkled, familiar suns in the new landscape of her face.
\n“Home tomorrow,” he said, with no emotion. “Session.” It was almost a question. “I better call?”
\nShe straightened, her armless torso rising like the hood of a cobra.\u00a0 “You’ll handle it, Ben.\u00a0 If they know what’s good for them…”\u00a0 She smiled. He managed a weak smile in response, nodded vaguely.\u00a0 He turned, and walked for the door.\u00a0 He stopped, looked back at her, still fighting to grasp it.\u00a0 “You are the best.\u00a0 No-one can touch you.”\u00a0 His voice sounded strangely grateful.
\nBen returned to his room, and sat for a long time, alone.\u00a0 In the corners of his eyes, pale blue images of her seemed to hang in the dusty light, evaporating as he glanced to confront them.\u00a0 The air seemed chilled with the memory of her severed arms, fresh but bloodless wounds, dead flesh cooling slowly, crowned with diamond eyes.
\nHe pushed away the morbid whispers, remembered instead her majesty, her magnificence.\u00a0 He had never dared imagine … He was trembling, physically, with some strange hybrid of elation and fear.
\nBen pulled a miniature bottle of coca-water from the bedstand bar, emptied it into a tumbler, and drank a swallow, then waited for his breathing to slow.\u00a0 He gazed for a moment at the display on the monitor, then deleted the image, and engaged a call-port.\u00a0 He pulled the headset on and heard distant connections clicking into place.\u00a0 Finally, a recorder answered.\u00a0 “Kyle,” Ben said, his chest inexplicably tight, “It’s Benjamin.\u00a0 Everything’s fine.\u00a0 Everything’s on.
\nIs there a message?
\nYes.\u00a0 We have her.\u00a0 We have our Venus.
\n“See you tomorrow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben got her to Paris as quickly as he could.\u00a0 A mid-morning shuttle from Heathrow landed them at Charles de Gaulle before he could finish the piccolo of Heidsieck that the EuroAir cabin attendant had proffered in recognition of their premium fares.\u00a0 In the moulded seat beside him, Dela feigned sleep, while the headset streamed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesays.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}