The Annihilation Score Read Free Page B

look, and I stifle the urge to swear and dump the dregs of my glass over her perfect décolletage.
    â€œNone. Of. Your. Business,” I say through gritted teeth.
    â€œI’m sorry.” She looks genuinely chastened. Worse, my ward tells me that she
is
genuinely sorry. It can detect intentional lies as well as actual threats, and it’s been inert throughout our conversation. I feel as if I’ve just kicked a puppy. All right: an extremely fishy benthic puppy
who did
not
have sex with my husband
seven years ago when they were destiny-entangled and sent on an insane mission to the Caribbean to smoke out a mad billionaire who was trying to take over the world on behalf of his fluffy white cat. “It’s just, he was so happy to be with you, you know?”
    â€œWe are
so
not going to fail the Bechdel test in public at a diplomatic reception, dear,” I tell her. “That would be embarrassing.” I take her elbow: “I think both our glasses are defective. Must be leaking, or their contents are evaporating or something.” She lets me steer her towards one of the ubiquitous silent waiters, who tops us off. Her gait is unsteady, mincing. Almost as if she’s hobbled or her legs are partially fused all the way down to her ankles. She’s transitioning, slowly, into the obligate aquatic stage of her kind’s life cycle. I feel a pang of misplaced pity for her: needing an ever-increasingly powerful glamour to pass for human, losing the ability to walk, internal organs rearranging themselves into new and unfamiliar structures. Why did I feelthreatened by her?
Oh yes, that.
Spending a week destiny-entangled with someone—in and out of their head telepathically, among other things—is supposed to be like spending a year married to them. And Ramona
was
thoroughly entangled with Bob for a while. But that was most of a decade ago, and people change, and it’s all water that flowed under the bridge before I married him, and I don’t like to think of myself as an obsessive/intransigent bitch, and Mermaid Ramona probably isn’t even anatomically
stop thinking about that
compatible anymore. “Let’s go and find a tub you can curl up in while we swap war stories.”
    â€œYes, let’s,” she agrees, and leans on my arm for balance. “You can tell me all about the bright lights in the big city—I haven’t been further inland than Aberdeen harbor in years—and I can fill you in on what the fishwraps have been pushing. The vigilantes would be funny if they weren’t so sad . . .”
    *   *   *
    The accommodation on this former oil rig has, as I’ve mentioned, been heavily tailored towards its new function. Ramona and I make our way out through a couple of utilitarian-looking steel bulkhead doors, onto the walkway that surrounds the upper level of the reception area like a horseshoe-shaped verandah. The ubiquitous “they” have drilled holes in the deck and installed generously proportioned whirlpool spa tubs, with adjacent dry seating and poolside tables for those of us with an aversion to horrifying dry cleaning bills. And there’s a transparent perspex screen to protect us from the worst of the wind.
    I help Ramona into one of the tubs—her dress is, unsurprisingly, water-resistant—then collapse upon a strategically positioned chaise alongside. It’s a near-cloudless spring evening on the North Sea and we’re fifty meters above the wave crests: the view of the sunset is amazing, astonishing, adjectivally exhausting. I run out of superlatives halfway through my second glass. Ramona, it turns out, is a well-informed meteorology nerd. She points out cloud structures to me and explains about the North Atlantic thermohaline circulationand frontal weather systems. We get quietly, pleasantly drunk together, and by the end of the third drink a number of hatchets have been picked up,