After the dinner, he decided against taking a cab back to his hotel, although they had the reputation for being cheap. New Belleville definitely was a city for walking.
The dinner had been alright—the food was excellent, and so was the wine. Bien sûr. And the company had been—interesting. Besides Henri, there had been a New Moscow woman with a bad hairdo and purple nails, a New Babylon retired professor with glasses so thick his eyes looked like tiny blue emojis and a Viborg City young man who sounded so dumb and naive that Terrence still wondered if it had been an act.
The discussion had revolved around the Black Shield, that mysterious object that was supposed to orbit around the Earth. As Terrence Kovacs, Counter-Intel officer, he knew it didn’t exist and was only a dead Eastern Confederation satellite wreckage from the ’60s, but as John Tammen he engaged the conversation and came up with his favorite theory—the one he was famous for—which was that the Black Shield was an alien spaceship from another dimension, sucked into ours by secret military experiments gone terribly wrong. What he didn’t know was if there were still aliens inside, or if they were all dead.
“I think they’re still alive” Vera, the Moscow woman had said. “I’ve got secret contacts who told me so. They even have a recording . . .”
The conversations kept on this track and similar ones until the end of the meal. Terrence shrugged in the mild spring evening. Business as usual. He would have to check these people out on Intel back at the hotel.