“Good morning,” the man said cheerfully, holding out his hand. Odette shook it cautiously. “You are the first ones?”
“We’re the first ones to arrive,” said Odette. “We’re not, like, ranked first or anything.”
“That’s fine,” said the man. “I am Dr. Francesco Hethrington-Ffoulkes, and I’ll be overseeing the preparations for you.” Odette introduced herself and her brother while Pawn Bannister tapped away on his phone in the background.
“Now, as you are formally guests of the Checquy here in the United Kingdom, and because several of your party do not legally exist, we are taking responsibility for your well-being and security. Accordingly, we will need to build a profile of your identifying characteristics. I’m afraid that it may seem a little intrusive,” he said apologetically.
“We will be taking fingerprints, palmprints, toeprints, voiceprints, and impressions of your teeth, tongue, and ears. We will collect fingernail clippings, toenail clippings, strands of your hair, swabs from the inside of your mouth, and samples of urine and blood. Not to fret, young fellow,” he said reassuringly to Alessio, “it will be just a few drops, and we’ll be as gentle as possible.” Alessio, who had been responsible for harvesting his own blood and bone marrow since he was nine, regarded him stonily.
“And that’s it?” said Odette before she could stop herself. Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes looked at her, startled. “I’m sorry, but you’re not even putting us through an MRI, or an x-ray, or, or one of those airport scanners...”
“Millimeter wave,” said Alessio helpfully.
“Yes, that. Don’t you want to run a Geiger counter over us? Or at least check my handbag?”
“Well, I suppose we could, if you like,” said the Checquy doctor. “But it’s not really necessary. You see, detailed descriptions of your, uh, enhancements were provided to us ahead of time. Although I would like a few drops of both the venoms that you carry in your system, Miss Leliefeld,” he added hopefully, “if you wouldn’t mind. I have to admit, though, that’s just for my own personal research. I’m a bit of a toxicology buff.”
“You know?” squeaked Odette.
“We exchanged dossiers weeks ago,” said Bannister airily. “As a sign of goodwill. So, everyone knows who you are. At least, everyone who works in the Diplomatic section. We’ve got details of your education, your rank within the Broederschap, your surgeries. I do hope everything’s healing all right, by the way. And don’t worry, we’ve made sure to have lots of cold, noncaffeinated beverages available so your throat shouldn’t be aggravated at all.”
Oh God, thought Odette. So the entire diplomatic corps knows everything about me. They know about my spurs, they know I’ve got a sore throat. Hell, they’ve probably got a report on that time I wet my pants at the museum when I was six years old. Despite her best efforts, she was blushing furiously.
“You’re our guests,” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes in a reasonable tone. “It’s important that we begin from a situation of mutual trust and security. And also that we verify everyone’s identity.”
“All right,” said Odette. “That makes sense.”
“Very good,” said the doctor. “I’ll be taking care of you, Miss Leliefeld. Pawn Winger will escort Mr. Leliefeld.” Pawn Winger was a pretty doctor with red hair, and Alessio was so entranced by her that he didn’t even seem to mind that she was a Pawn. Or that she looked absolutely petrified by him. She led him over to a machine on the other side of the room.
“We’ll start with the fingers and toes, shall we?” said Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes.
“Certainly,” said Odette.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to remove your tights,” said the doctor.
“Oh, okay,” said Odette.
“There’s a lavatory through that door, just over there.”
The bathroom seemed to date back to the Victorian period, and unfortunately it did not appear to have been cleaned since it was built. There were all sorts of pipes that might once have been gleaming brass but now looked as if they were supporting several ecosystems. Odette felt distinctly unglamorous and unbusinesslike as she hopped about taking off her stockings while trying not to put a bare foot on the slick floor. So this is the world of high-stakes supernatural diplomacy, she thought grimly. She teetered on one high-heel-shod foot and fell against the sink. Great, just great. By the time she emerged from the bathroom, she was red-faced and her hair was somewhat less professional-looking than it had been. Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes escorted her to a corner of the room and helped her into a dentist’s chair. “Comfortable?”
“A little ill at ease,” admitted Odette as the chair rose up smoothly, presumably bringing her to a more convenient working level. The doctor smiled without looking at her. He was peering at her feet carefully. I wish I’d gotten a pedicure, she thought. But who knew? She realized, to her intense mortification, that there was a bit of dried slime from the bathtub under the nail of one of her big toes.
“There isn’t going to be any problem with me taking a clipping of your toenails, is there?” he asked, looking up at her. “They can be cut, right?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. She flinched a little when he touched her foot — his hands were much cooler than she had expected — and his assistant flinched in response, which made Odette flinch again. Whereupon the assistant flinched even more violently, and it took a real effort for Odette not to continue the cycle lest they both end up convulsing on the floor.
The assistant handed Hethrington-Ffoulkes a tablet computer, and he consulted it briefly before pressing it against Odette’s left foot. “Now, if you could just flatten your foot as much as you can, please. We want as complete a scan as possible. Good.” The doctor looked at the result and nodded. “Nice, clear images of the toes,” he said approvingly. He tapped away at the screen, and a frown grew on his face. “Oh, dear,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”
“What?” asked Odette nervously. “Is there a problem?”
“Not with your foot,” he said absently. “I’m just checking the cricket scores, and the West Indies are thrashing us.” He shook his head at the computer before pressing it against her other foot. Meanwhile, his assistant was gingerly using another tablet to take prints of her hands. Odette smiled and the woman looked away. “Now we just need to get some ink-based prints as backup, and then we’ll move on to the casts,” he said.
For the next half hour, the doctor and his jumpy assistant did their thing, scanning and copying and taking samples. Whenever new members of the delegation filtered in, there would be a pause in the proceedings as Dr. Hethrington-Ffoulkes stopped what he was doing and went over to introduce himself, leaving Odette gagging on a mouthful of dental putty or reciting the first stanza of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” into a microphone. At one point, she had to suffer the indignity of reentering the unpleasant bathroom and peeing into a container while a wide-eyed nurse watched to make sure she didn’t substitute someone else’s urine or give birth to some stoats or something.
Of course, the Grafter envoys submitted to the examinations without any complaint. They were accustomed to taking business calls even while undergoing thoracic surgery, so a few scrapings and clippings couldn’t throw them off their stride. The Checquy doctors and nurses were careful in their work, although they seemed aghast at the fact that they were working on actual Grafters. There was a slight commotion when Grootvader Ernst’s fingerprints insisted on changing even as they were scanned, and the nurses were somewhat at a loss when one of the visiting dignitaries turned out not to have fingernails or toenails, but apart from these setbacks, the proceedings proceeded without incident.