Free White Queen by Gwyneth Jones

sensitive concept right now that he would tolerate almost anything in this hour, in this contained space. A bunch of naked feminists could come in and spray graffiti over the walls, over himself and the colonel too: in fact, they’d done it. At this incredibly delicate juncture…. He told himself the kid could do no harm, no chance of him starting World War Three. The Big Machines could look after themselves. They had to, no one else in charge!
    The others stood around. They didn’t speak, but their faces kept twitching. It was a little eerie: they seemed evidently insane. But there were no pre-violence indicators. The child accessed a gift catalogue, the commander’s morning paper, and the LANDSAT gazetteer. When he’d finished with LANDSAT he stood, swallowing a split-lipped grin as if he thought it might give offense. He shrugged his narrow shoulders.
    “Thank you very much,” he said, in the flat adenoidal English.
    Parker smiled warmly.” Glad to oblige, kid. What were you looking for, by the way?”
    
    The six noseless visitors joined hands, and began to dance.
    Louis Parker stared. Belief came over him in a rush, irrational but complete. The dance over, they calmly turned to leave.
    “Wait!” yelled Parker, “Wait a moment. Can one of you kindly tell me in plain English—just what is going on!”
    The one in the sealskin tunic was, by all non-verbals, their leader. He raised his eyebrows.
    
    They walked out.
    On one of the small screens a disconcerting image flickered. Commander Everard and the chief alien arranged armchair to armchair against a blue curtained backdrop. A ruddy aging blond, with the eyes of a worn-out peasant farmer, faced an olive, noseless savage. Some Public Domain trawler company had scooped, and was pasting up a news item. It whisked away.
    Colonel Everard was shaking all over. He looked sick as a dog, as if the room had been pumped full of nerve gas.
    “Got to get them back,” Parker told himself, subvocal. “The girl, the one like a pretty girl with the clamshells in her hair. She’s their weak link, sexual favors bimbo. We could turn her.”
    It was the way he had been taught to assess terrorists.
    “Oh, Lou,” gasped Everard, sweat standing on his pasty face. “Oh, Lou… The aliens have landed!”
    There was a knock on the door, a startlingly immediate and physical sound. Parker hesitated a split second: slapped the pad. The visitor with the clamshells marched in and stood, fists balled at her sides, within a foot of him.
    
    A small red object, a little bug, crept out from under her hair. She put up one hand and absently tucked it into her mouth. The distraction seemed to calm her.
    
    She turned about, she marched out. She had not spoken a word. Parker saw that from Everard’s face, and knew what had happened to him.
    “What?” he yelled. He recoiled from the closed door. “What!”
    Outside, through the screen, the checkered spaceplane quietly took to the air.
    Parker recovered, dizzy and stressed but in control again. The systems failure, the odd aircraft, would be explained somehow. He knew about the noseless people. It was a Francistown cult, an algal bloom of the hopeless ocean, few months old. People had their noses cut off, ate no solid food, and became spiritually pure, or whatever. Maybe it was a feminist thing, nose equals penis. Which made you wonder about the noseless men.
    Colonel Everard was looking dog-eyes at his PR; a scared hound to his master. Parker laughed shortly. “No such luck, Heb. No demigods are going to come and haul us out of the shit. It’s a hoax. Listen to me. We’re going to rub the