Chapter 17

Brian gave me the co-ordinates and I dropped into the nearest telebooth, I waved my Bank of Uranus card and he presto with the magic of the MWD Corporation I was standing in a small white room with a nurse behind the desk, all starch and efficiency. I was clutching a big bunch of orchids, obviously a visitor. Was Veronica really called Veronica Lake. Now was the time to find out, but before I could open my mouth the nurse got up and asked me to follow her. We stepped into a Perspex elevator which rose forever up to God knows where. Infinity perhaps.

 The inner doors closed and we were sucked up the tube at nose bleed speed. On the floor marked Z203 we stepped out, into a sunlight filled room that smelled of spring. Sitting up on a sun lounger was Veronica.

‘Miss Lake, your guest’, said the nurse, and stepped back into the tube.

‘Pull up a chair honey don’t be shy’. She was wearing a lime green silk robe with a dark green dragon embroidered down the side, loose and all encompassing. Hiding her wounds no doubt.

‘Orchids, how bourgoise.’

She looked paler if that was possible. She had no face paint or lipstick on to hide the pallor. A marble figure in a green robe.

I pulled up a lounger and sat astride it facing her.

‘Your stare Honey, it’s enough to break my resistance.’ She laughed and winced in pain.  ‘Back off Joe I’m convalescing.’

‘It was all planned wasn’t it. The para’s were there almost before the shots were fired’.

‘They were around as a precaution. I wasn’t supposed to take 3 shots to the chest. Also as a precaution I put some blood in my bank’.

‘Why are you in pain, is there a stop on pain killers.’

‘My choice, when I need them I can get them’

‘Is you’re name really Veronica Lake?’ I seems such a coincidence to be the spit of her too. Too much of a coincidence in my book.  And the albinoism, is that fake?

‘Hold on Honey, who gave you liberties.’

‘I need some answers Veronica. I may be the next to get holed. I don’t trust Doil and especially that alien Smith. I regret signing up for The IGBI, and that is from the heart.’

Veronica pursed her lips and gave a low whistle.

‘I’ll look after you piano man. I like you.’ She shuffled over to me and took my hand.

‘Such nice hands. Gentle with a firm touch. I have a gift for reading people from their hands. And I get a warm glow from yours.’

A fucking witch too, I think. Oh what the hell.  Live and do nothing is a life of regret, as my old guru used to say.

‘Lets not talk about any of this just now, I just need some company other than doctors and IGBI agents. I’ll get a piano set up in here you can play for me.’

She leans over and kisses me on the lips. I still don’t feel reassured. Aroused maybe, reassured, no.

‘You can do that?’

‘I just have to snap my fingers and ask. I am too valuable to upset. The IGBI have invested too much time and credits on me just to let me fade away. I have been enhanced to within an inch of my being. Every circuit in my brain is in use. Not one connection or pathway is under used. I can calculate Pi to infinity, every prime number is on instant recall. What the IGBI didn’t know when they were messing with my brain was that I am a walking enclyclo. of all their misdeeds. Sure they could bump me off, but I have a guardian in a high place who put all this into motion when he discovered me at the age of 6 months doing calculus.  I am superwoman.’

‘Why the albino gene, surely it could be modified?’

‘My choice Honey, now lets get down to some serious R&R. Do you want to see my scars?’