Couldn’t Leliefeld have ordered me to have an extra day of bed rest? she thought wistfully. As she sulked and ate her stupid kiwifruit parfait, the door opened and Leliefeld walked in.
“Hello,” said the Grafter cautiously.
“Hi,” said Felicity. “It would have killed you to botch the surgery just a little?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” she said grimly. “Thanks for the parfait. And, you know, the gift of sight.”
“My pleasure,” said Leliefeld. “In truth, keeping Alessio off the parfait was the harder task. So, you’re settled back in?”
“I am on the couch with the shattered remnants of a dessert,” said Felicity. “What more could I ask for? I haven’t even looked in my room.” She narrowed her eyes. “No one went in my room, right?”
“No. We were allowed back in the hotel only after two nights of sleeping on cots in a warehouse.”
“I expect it’s one of our backup business-continuity facilities,” said Felicity. “There are a few dotted around the country. In case of disaster, they can transfer us there to keep doing our work. At least they didn’t put you in the abandoned mine in Cornwall.”
“Yes, I count myself very lucky, but the place we stayed was also a warehouse for tractor parts. The first morning, I almost got run over by a forklift while standing in the queue for the breakfast buffet.”
“Our accountants would never let a warehouse lie fallow,” said Felicity sagely. “Budgets are tight, and they can’t really offer voluntary redundancies to Checquy operatives. You can’t just tell someone whose shadow is a portal to Spain that there’s no room in the budget for him and he’ll need to move into the private sector.”
“It’s nice to know I won’t have to worry about job security, then,” said Leliefeld.
“So, you’ve spent the past couple of days hanging out in a warehouse?”
“No, we’ve just been sleeping in the warehouse. Grootvader Ernst volunteered Marcel’s and my services to assist with the fog fallout. After I operated on your eyes, I was asked to help analyze the traces of chemicals they’ve recovered from other victims.”
“And?”
“And I have earned an undeserved reputation for genius. Well, slightly undeserved.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Felicity.
“I was able to give a lot of useful insights,” said Leliefeld. “The Checquy scientists thought it was because I have astounding expertise. Which I do. But it was because I’ve seen this stuff before.”
“Well, it’s Grafter-made,” Felicity said, shrugging.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t let anyone know that. Anyway, the toxin’s not pleasant. It normally has to be processed inside a living creature before it’s released.”
“That’s... disgusting.”
“It’s science,” said Leliefeld. “Everything’s disgusting. But I’ll admit, this is kind of especially disgusting. The host has to be substantially adapted and needs to be swimming with antirejection products and antibodies. We’ve always used swine or sheep, but I think that homeless-looking guy Simon was with must have been the delivery system. I have no idea how they managed to get him ready in such a short time, though. It takes months to reach the appropriate levels of chemicals and hormones, and as far as I know, you can’t just pump them into the host.”
“He was the recipient of an organ transplant,” said Felicity. “All the abductees were.”
The Grafter’s jaw dropped. “That’s brilliant,” she said. “You find very few animals who are given new organs, but people? That’s very clever.”
“Yes, very smart,” said Felicity.
“So, after that, Marcel and I were in surgery working on people’s eyes. Apparently, a small percentage of the populace suffered a horrendous allergic reaction to the fog. We got flown to a few different cities with various large guards escorting us.”
“They assigned you new bodyguards?” said Felicity, feeling an unexpected jolt of jealousy. Leliefeld was her charge.
“I don’t know that bodyguards is the right word,” said Leliefeld. “We were performing the operations with guns pointed at us.”
“Oh. Well, did they go all right?”
“I think so,” said Leliefeld. “We had to fly in several punnets of eyes from Bruges and Seville.”
“I don’t know why I ask you questions when I know the answers will inevitably make me feel nauseous,” remarked Felicity.
“It wasn’t that bad,” said Leliefeld. “I mean, installing the new eyes was long and tedious, but it took almost as much time to make sure that the colors matched their previous eyes.”
“Is it such a big deal if there’s a little discrepancy?” asked Felicity. “People aren’t as observant as you think. I know of at least one situation where the Checquy successfully replaced someone’s station wagon without his noticing after the original was turned into a column of chutney during a manifestation.”
“Well, cars are one thing,” said Leliefeld, “but people tend to pay a lot more attention to themselves. It’s going to be awkward enough that they’ll no longer need glasses without their eyes suddenly going from blue to brown.”
“How many people were you able to help?”
“Quite a few,” said Leliefeld. “There are going to be a lot of feel-good miracle stories in the press. Anyway, rest assured, no one went in your room, although seriously, I was very tempted.”
“Why?” asked Felicity warily. All the classified documents and files she’d been given were locked in the room safe, but she still didn’t like the idea of anyone sifting through her stuff.
“Because I wanted to see the dress they got you for the reception tonight!” Felicity stared at her blankly. This sentiment was even more alien than the idea of carrying scalpels around in one’s thigh. “Aren’t you even mildly curious about it?”
Be diplomatic, thought Felicity, and she managed to pull her upper lip back from her teeth in a sort of approximation of enthusiasm. “Do you want to go take a look?” she said finally.
*
They regarded the dress in respectful silence. It was the kind of respectful silence heard at ceremonies held to commemorate disasters.
“I’m no expert in dresses,” said Felicity finally, “but that... that’s not a good dress, is it?”
“I know what I want to say,” said Leliefeld, “but I am mindful of my role as a diplomatic envoy here to make peace between our peoples.”
“Just say it.”
“Look, I’m a trained surgeon.”
“Yeah?” said Felicity.
“And as someone who has seen living forms changed and twisted beyond recognition...” She trailed off awkwardly.
“Yeah?”
“I hate to say it, but this dress is the worst crime against nature I have ever seen in my life.”
Felicity cringed a little. The dress lay on the bed, malignant and resentful, like an angry jellyfish. It was technically an evening gown, in the same way that dirt is technically edible. The benighted designer was apparently committed to the principle of “accentuate the negative” and had made the assumption that whoever wore it would have cubical breasts. There were folds and pleats where God had decreed that no folds or pleats ought ever to be, and some sort of structure had been built into the back, giving the impression of a prolapsed bustle. The color could perhaps have been described as sky blue, but it was the blue of a sky that would drive even the cheeriest and most tuneful of novice nuns to slash her wrists. It was a blue that had given up.
“Did you offend someone in the quartermaster’s office?” asked Leliefeld carefully.
“I don’t know,” said Felicity. “I think maybe it’s intended to establish that I’m there in a functionary capacity.”
“It certainly does that,” said Leliefeld. “It practically screams ‘duenna-slash-janitor.’”
“Perhaps they were worried I would overshadow the higher-ranking guests,” suggested Felicity.
“Well, no fear of that,” said Leliefeld. “Although they may try to deposit their rubbish in your cleavage.”
“The quartermaster’s office is more used to sourcing armor and weaponry,” said Felicity, spurred by a feeling of defensive loyalty. “I don’t think they’ve had to do much with evening wear.”