The Snow Queen Part 17

"Inspector Mana""

"a"tagnes," she echoed him. "Well, he sent you to the wrong place. Go back to the front desk and tell the duty officer to find out."

"But he saida""

"Don't take no for an answer this time!" She waved him toward the door, already looking down at the half-read report still waiting her acknowledgment on the screen, reaching for the intercom b.u.t.ton. "Sergeant, wake up your brain and screen these idiots! What do you think you're out there for?"

"h.e.l.l of a way to run a world, d.a.m.na"" The invective was lost as the door shut behind the shop man "Sorry, Commander," the sergeant said, sullenly disembodied. "Shall I sent in the next one?"

"Yes." No. No, no more. "And get me Mantag-No, cancel that." She let up on the speaker b.u.t.ton. She could bust Mantagnes right off the force for his hara.s.sment ... but if she did shed have open mutiny on her hands, instead of just open resentment. In the years since she had become Commander her position with the force had gone from bad to worse. And he knows it. He knows, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d... She stared at the report printout blindly. Their main computer had crashed monumentally a" months ago a" and thrown their entire records system into chaos. Even now it barely functioned at half normal efficiency; even Kharemoughi expertise hadn't been able to put things right, because somehow they were missing the critical components. She had been trying to get their records back in order for months; trying to get through this one report for an hour, half a minute at a time, getting nowhere. She punched APPROVED, and let it pa.s.s unread. Getting nowhere. Sliding backwards, being buried alive-She rummaged among the crumpled, empty packets in her desk drawer for one with any iesta pods left in it. d.a.m.n, almost gone a" how will I ever make it through the day?

The door opened, not answering her question, and Captain a" oh, G.o.ds, what's his name? a" entered and saluted. "Captain KerlaTinde reporting, Commander," as if he hadn't expected her to remember. She was used to the coldness, and the insolent tone, by now. The force hated her guts, almost every single man of them, and it was close to mutual by now. Discipline had gone to h.e.l.l, but she couldn't demote everybody on the force a" and she had tried everything else. They would not obey her: because she was a woman, yes (and d.a.m.n the day she had decided to be anything more) ... but also because she had taken the place that rightfully belonged to Man tagnes. And because it had been the Queen's idea. They believed she was the Queen's puppet; and how could she prove they were wrong, when Arienrhod's strings had trapped her like spiderweb, held her suspended here between heaven and h.e.l.l, draining away her will to continue?

"What is it, KerlaTinde?" unable to keep the sharpness out of her own voice.

"The other officers have asked me to speak for them, ma'am." The word was heavy with incongruity. "We want an end to enforced patrol duty by officers here in the city. We feel that the duty belongs to the patrolmen; it's damaging to the prestige of an officer to be forced to hara.s.s citizens in the street."

"You'd rather let the citizens hara.s.s each other?" She frowned, too easily, leaning forward. "What important duty do you feel you should be attending to instead?"

"Attending to our designated duties! We don't have time enough to get through all the file work as it is, without patrolling as well." His broad face matched her, frown for frown. He looked pointedly at the stacks of tape containers on her desk.

"I know, KerlaTinde," following his gaze. "I've cut out every piece of red tape I can." And you should see the scars Hovanesse put on me for it. "I know the computer c.r.a.pping out made it all ten times worse; but d.a.m.n it, our main job here is still protecting the Hedge's citizens, and it has to be done."

"Then give us something worth doing for once!" KerlaTinde swept his hand across the nonexistent view from her window. "Not picking up drunks out of the gutter. Let us go after the big-time criminals, get some convictions that would mean something."

"You'll never get those convictions. It's a waste of time." G.o.ds, am I really saying that? Am I really the one, the same one, who stood there where he's standing and said what he's saying to me? She wadded an empty iesta packet into a painful ball below the desk edge. No ... I'm not the same one. But it was true, what she had just said to him...

As soon as she became Commander, she had tried to crack down on the big operators she knew were controlling networks of interplanetary vice from right here in Carbuncle. But they had slipped through her fingers like water. Any illegal activity that they might conceivably be caught in here on Tiamat turned out to be technically under the control of a citizen of this world. And the Winters were under the Queen's law; she couldn't touch them without the Queen's permission.

"Commander LiouxSked didn't think that way."

The h.e.l.l he didn't. But there was no point in saying it. Had LiouxSked faced the same infuriating impa.s.se a" or had Arienrhod restructured Carbuncle society just for her? She couldn't explain it to KerlaTinde, or any of the rest, anyway; they already knew she was in the Queen's pocket, and nothing she could say would ever make any difference. "You're patrolling the Street for a good reason, KerlaTinde; you know crimes of violence have soared" a" she saw Arienrhod's hand behind that, too; saw herself taking the blame for it in KerlaTinde's eyes a" "as we near the final departure. And we won't be getting any more replacements. So you'll go on patrolling the Street until I tell you to stop; until the last s.h.i.+p is ready to lift off this planet."

"Chief Inspector Mantagnes isn'ta""

"Mantagnes isn't Commander, d.a.m.n it! I am!" her voice slipped away from her. "And my orders stand. Now get out of my office, Captain, before I make it Lieutenant."

KerlaTinde retreated, his olive skin darkening with indignation. The door shut her off from one more unresolved confrontation, one more stupid mistake.

No wonder they hate me. Hating herself, she stared at the opacity of the polarized windows, her only s.h.i.+eld against the radiation of hostility from the station beyond. The windows reflected her own image faintly, like a hologrammic transmission ghost, a flawed recreation of a false reality. There was no Jerusha, no woman, no solid human flesh, any more: only a nerve-racked, knife-tongued harridan with paranoid delusions. Who the h.e.l.l was she kidding? It was her own fault, she couldn't handle the job, she was a failure ... an inferior being, weak, overemotional, female. She leaned back in her chair, looking down along her body, knowing the truth that even the heavy uniform could never fully conceal. And she didn't even have the guts to admit that it was her own fault, not some wild plot of the Queen's. No wonder she was a laughingstock.

And yet a" she had seen the Queen's face on a Summer girl. She had seen the Queen's fury at the girl's loss. And she had seen LiouxSked crawling in his own filth a" for no conceivable reason, if not for Arienrhod's revenge. She wasn't losing her mind! The Queen was systematically taking it away from her.

But there was nothing she could do about it; nothing. She had tried everything, but there was no escape a" only the awareness that her career, her future, her faith in her own ability were inexorably bleeding away. Her career was being ruined, the record of her command would be one long list of failures and complaints. The end of their stay on Tiamat would mark the end of everything she had worked toward or ever wanted. Arienrhod was destroying her, too, not swiftly, not like LiouxSked a" but in a way that would let her perceive every agonizing nuance of her own destruction.

And best of all, Arienrhod must have realized that she would stay on, keep defying her own destiny a" as she had always done, all her life. Because to quit now and leave Tiamat, give up her position, would be to admit that it had all been futile. It would all be futile yet, when they finished with this world; but in the meantime even this h.e.l.lish charade of her dream was better than a life with no dream at all.

She couldn't strike back at the Queen, hadn't been able to cause her even the smallest inconvenience in return. Accidentally she had foiled one plot by Arienrhod to keep Winter in power. But it hadn't given her even a moment's satisfaction, the G.o.ds knew a" and since then she had turned up no clue about what new webs the Queen might be weaving. There was no doubt in her mind that there would be another plan ... but more than enough doubt that this time the Hegemony, in the person of herself, would be able to stop it. And that failure would be the crowning act in her own rum.

But there was still time. The contest wasn't over yet, she had to turn herself around... "Are you listening, b.i.t.c.h? I'll get you yet by the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Boatman, I swear it! I won't break, you can't destroy me before Ia""

The door opened again, batting the words back at her; a patrolman entered, realizing with one swift look around that she was alone. He set another stack of ca.s.settes on her desk with a sidelong glance.

"Well, what are you staring at?"

He saluted and left.

With another choice one for the wardroom gossips. Her resolution crumbled. How do you really know; how can you tell if you've really lost your mind ... ? She reached past the terminal toward the new pile of records, but her hand closed over a solitary printed sheet lying half-pinned beneath them. She pulled it free, read one line: LIST OF GRIEVANCES. She crushed the paper between her hands. Who put it there? Who?

The intercom began to chime; she hit the go-ahead mutely, not trusting her voice.

"Radiophone call from the outback, Commander. Somebody named Kennet or something. Should I put it through?"

Ngenet? G.o.ds, she couldn't talk to him now, not like this. Why the h.e.l.l does he pick the worst times, why does he even bother any more?

"And Inspector Mantagnes is here to see you."

"Put the call on my line." But what will I say? What? "And tell Mantagnes toa"" She clenched her teeth. "Tell him to wait."

She heard storm static crackle from the speaker, and the familiar distortion of a familiar voice. "h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo, Jerushaa""

"Yes, Miroe!" Remembering with a sudden rush of pleasure what it was like to hear a human being speak to her willingly, gladly ... realizing suddenly how much more than simple humanity his friends.h.i.+p gave her. "G.o.ds, it's good to hear from you again." She was smiling, actually smiling.

"Can't hear you ... reception's lousy! How'd you ... come out to the plantation again ... day or so? ... of a long time since we've had a visit!"

"I can't, Miroe." How long had it been? Months, since she had accepted an invitation, even spoken to him a" months since she had spent a day or an hour selfishly on something that made her smile. She couldn't, she couldn't afford to.

"What?"

"I said, I a" I ..." She saw herself reflected in the wall, the face of a jailer, the face of a prisoner in a cell. Panic touched her with a dun ringer. "Yes! Yes, I'll come. I'll come tonight."

Chapter 22.

"All right, suckers. You're on your own again." Tor moved back, hoping for sinuous grace, hoping against hope. Inadvertently revealing more flesh than she had intended to, she bowed her way out of the eerily glowing obstacle course. Hologrammic coin s.h.i.+ps and a meteor swarm tangled intangibly in the golden crocheted cap that held her midnight wig under control. The drapery of her silken overalls flashed the blue flame-color of a welding torch; the expanses of skin they left uncovered were a deathly lavender against the darkness.

Whistles and protests followed her in a crowd; she had been gambling with the patrons, as ordered, losing just enough, winning back just enough more to convince them that the games were honestly run. Suckers. The games were honestly run, for the most part-much to her surprise. They were simply so complicated that the ordinary human being couldn't hope to outwit them. When she thought about the hours and the money she had thrown away, as wantonly and stupidly as any of these drugged-up b.o.o.bs, she shook her ebony-frizzed head in disgust. Still, it wasn't so bad now; now that she knew the codes that let her secretly control the outcome of the plays.

No, it wasn't so bad at all, not any of it: running a casino, taking care of business as the front woman for the Source's own on-planet interests. She was the Hostess, the t.i.tular owner, of Persipone's h.e.l.l, unquestionably the finest gambling h.e.l.l in Carbuncle. And on the side she tended to whatever other discreet dealings the Source a" the head man of the off world criminal subculture on Tiamat a" told her to tend to. It was a part of the Queen's policy to provide capable Winters to act as a screen for off worlder illegalities, so the vice lords themselves could operate with virtual impunity, free of hara.s.sment by the Hedge's police. She had been picked up four times by the Blues as she was working her way into the Source's favor; but they had had to turn her over to the Queen's guard, who had simply let her go.

"Heya"" She squinted through the dance of s.h.i.+fting bodies, saw more clearly the off worlder who had just come through the curtain of tiny, s.h.i.+mmering mirrors with a zombie in tow. "Pollux!" She pressed the caller on her bracelet as a secondary summons as she shouted into the throbbing music around her. Pollux appeared at her shoulder with the rea.s.suring solidness of steel. "That pervert who just came in the door; show him out again. We don't need his business." She pointed, trying not to see whether the zombie was male or female, or any detail of its form. The very sight sickened her, and the sight of a man or woman who enjoyed using a living body that way.

"Whatever you say, Tor." Pollux moved away with single-minded inevitability. He made a better bouncer than any of the humans who worked in this place; she had bought out his rental contract for the duration.

It had all worked out so perfectly ... funny how it had. Even Herne ... She turned back, leaning an elbow on one end of the coal-black, curving bar. The strange light-absorbing material sucked the warmth out through her skin; she s.h.i.+vered and straightened up. Farther down the way Herne sat in command of the banks of automated drink and drug dispensers, an outrageously popular anachronism. Putting him in charge of the bar, where customers gathered to lose their inhibitions along with their good credit, had been her most inspired move. They spilled their guts to each other, and better yet to him; and she fed what he learned to Dawntreader, who still lapped it up like an addict after all these years.

Who would ever have dreamed, that day in Fate's alley when Dawntreader had nearly strangled her, that his bad temper would lead her to this? But between Herne's savvy and Dawntreader's contacts with somebody up the line, she had risen higher and faster than she had ever dreamed of doing.

"Hey, Persipone, baby, the Source wants you." Oyarzabal, one of the Source's lieutenants, was abruptly behind her. His hands settled on her waist, got dangerously personal under the bib of her sensuous evening suit.

She controlled the unsubtle urge to dig an elbow into his ribs. She had learned tact and sophistication of a sort, painfully, since leaving the loading docks; getting mauled came with the territory. "Careful. You'll set off my burglar alarm." She pushed his hands away, but not too far. Oyarzabal was a jerk, proven by the fact that he seemed to prefer her to his choice of the easy, chic women who flowed through this place; but she didn't work too hard at discouraging him. He was a onetime farmboy from somewhere on Big Blue, and attractive in a loutish, overgrown sort of way. She had gone to bed with him a few times, and hadn't been too disappointed. She'd even toyed with the idea of getting him to marry her before the final departure, and getting off Tiamat for good.

"Hey, sweeting, how about later on you and mea""

"Tonight's taken." She started away before he could get his hands on her again; glanced back, relenting a little, enough for a smile. "Ask me tomorrow."

He grinned. His teeth were inlaid with rhinestones. She turned away again, shaking her head.

She made her way through the crowd, through the forbidden door that led her to the Source's private suite of offices and guarded meeting rooms a" guarded not only by hidden human eyes, but also by the most elaborate anti snoop devices money could buy. When she had learned that Herne was a Kharemoughi, she had asked him about the possibility of using his legendary technical prowess to let her eavesdrop on the Source's private dealings. But he was no match for the electronic guards, and she had finally realized that all Kharemoughis weren't born knowing how a turn ore into computer terminals. So she had had to be content with noticing who called on the Source, and when, and only suspecting why.

She didn't much like being the caller herself. The door to his office opened as she reached it, with the prescience she had learned to expect, and let her in to her audience. She blinked compulsively and slowed as she entered; the room was dark to the point of blindness for her, as it always was. Incense clogged the air with an overwhelming sweetness. She lifted a hand to rub her eyes, stopped it just short of ruining the perfect flowers painted over her lids. She let her hand drop again, resigned, as a dark form began to coalesce against a dimly reddening background: the Source, in silhouette, the only way she had ever seen him.

She had been told by Oyarzabal that the Source had some disease that made his eyes unable to stand the light. She didn't know whether to believe it, or just to figure that he liked to keep his face hidden. Sometimes, as she adjusted slowly to the dull wash of red from the wall behind him, she thought there might be a distortion about his face. But she could never be sure.

"Persipone." His voice was a rasping whisper, and again she didn't know whether it was the real one. He spoke with an accent she couldn't identify.

"Here, master." His chosen form of address took on new and sinister meanings here in the blackness. She pushed uneasily at her wig, her scalp itching with sudden tension. He saw perfectly well in the darkness, she knew, and at each visit she was forced to endure his scrutiny.

"Turn around."

She circled on the deep carpet pile, wondering pointlessly what color it really was, or whether it was simply black.

"Better ... yes, I like it better. You'll never be beautiful, you know; but you're learning to disguise the fact. You've come a long way. I didn't think you would come such a long way."

"Yes, master. Thank you, master." You're telling me. She didn't tell him that she had begun to let Pollux pick her clothes for her. His totally impartial judgment topped her own uncertain taste in choosing the styles that made the most of her flawed body; with the wig and the paint she could, as the Source said, disguise her unrelenting plainness.

"But then, how could anyone be compared to the ideal, and not suffer by the comparison ... ?" His voice sighed away, he was silent again through seconds that hung on like hours. Once, when she had been allowed a small red-tipped pencil of light to read a list of directions, she had glimpsed a picture-square on the desk, a woman's face. A woman of striking off world beauty, with a fog of ebony hair netted in gold. And she had understood with abrupt discomfort why she was wearing the same hair, and why her predecessors had worn it too; and why this place was Persipones, and why they all were, too. It had surprised her that a man like the Source might have loved or even hated one woman enough to be obsessed by her; and it gave her the creeps to be window dressing to the obsession. But the rewards had been enough to keep her from saying so.

"How is business tonight?"

"Real good, master. It's payday over at the star port we've got a big crowd."

"Was the latest deal successful? Have you got sufficient a" variety on hand to satisfy certain private customers?"

"Yeah, c.o.o.nabarabran was right where you said he'd be, and everything on him. We can handle any pleasure tonight." She was sure he already knew the answer to the questions, and so she always answered honestly. He did not ask her to handle all his requests a" she didn't mind fronting on drug transactions, because she could keep herself mentally clear of the consequences. The Source oversaw, and dabbled in, numerous other illegal transactions, and there were some she couldn't stomach. But there was always someone else around who could.

"Good ... I'm expecting a particularly important visitor tonight. Make certain the inner meeting room is secure, and prepared appropriately. She will be at the side entrance at midnight. See that she isn't kept waiting."

"Yes, master." She? There were not too many women in the underworld society who rated such solicitude in an audience with the Source.

"That's all, Persipone. Go back to your guests."

"Thank you, master," meekly. The door opened and she escaped, blinking again, into the white glare of the hall beyond. She sighed as the door clicked securely behind her; not offended, as she walked away, that he found her unattractive a" only relieved. He was completely off her scale of ambition, and in her private heart she was very much afraid of him, for all the rational reasons a" and for all the reasons a child fears the dark.

Arienrhod followed the lurid figure of Persipone through the private pa.s.sageways to the Source's inner meeting room. The sounds of the casino reached her distantly through the barrier of separating walls, a deep throbbing that was more vibration than true sound, that reached into her chest like death's hand. It was more than appropriate she thought, that the heartless merriment of the gaming crowds should show its real nature here in the shadowy halls of the Source's hidden power. Persipone stopped ahead of her, before a sealed doorway that looked like any other they had pa.s.sed, and beckoned to her. She moved forward, and Persipone pressed her hand against a panel in the door a" the arrival signal, as though they were not already being observed. She nodded to Arienrhod with self-conscious deference, and went away down the hall. Arienrhod was certain that the woman recognized her; wondered what she would think if she realized that Tor Starhiker/Persipone was equally well-known to her Queen as Sparks Dawntreader's p.a.w.n.

But the door was opening before her, opening on darkness, and she put all other thoughts out of her mind. She pushed back the hood of her shadow-colored cloak and walked boldly forward, without waiting to be summoned. But as she crossed over the threshold the door sealed again behind her, sealing her into utter lightlessness. Panic seized her with heavy hands, as it always did. Suddenly it was hard not to believe that she had stepped into another plane, into the merciless unknown of an interstellar vice network a" out of the world she knew and controlled. That she was lost... Her mechanical spies peered into every corner of this city, but they could not penetrate this place: It was guarded by even more powerful and sophisticated technology ... this all-pervasive darkness that tried to smother her will and swallow her self-control. She stood rigidly still, until the moment pa.s.sed and she recaptured her perspective. Darkness it's a d.a.m.n good trick. I wish I'd thought of it.

"Your Majesty. You honor my humble establishment." The Source's ruined voice (like the voice of a corpse; or was that just an effect, too?) hissed the welcome, oddly accented. "Please take a seat, make yourself comfortable. I would hate to keep the Lady standing."

Arienrhod noted the intentional play on words, the reference to her barbarian heritage. She made no response, but moved forward confidently to take the deeply cus.h.i.+oned seat across the empty table from him. Ever since their first meeting, where she had been forced to grope humiliatingly through the dark, she had been certain to wear light-enhancing contact lenses when she came to call on him. As her visual purple built up she could actually make out the general form of the room's contents, and the uncertain outline of the Source himself. Try as she would, she could not fill in the features of his face.

"What is your pleasure, Your Majesty? I have a full store of sensory delights, if you care to indulge." A broad hand gestured, vaguely misshapen.

"Not tonight." She gave him no t.i.tle, refusing to acknowledge the one he demanded of his other clients. "I never combine business with pleasure, unless it's absolutely necessary." She felt the heightened intensity of her other senses in the darkened room, and how her crippled sight still struggled to dominate them.

A hoa.r.s.e chuckle. "Such a pity. Such a waste ... don't you ever wonder what you may be missing?"

"On the contrary," refusing to be condescended to. "I miss nothing. That's why I'm the Queen of this world. And that's why I'm here. I intend to stay Queen of Tiamat after you and the rest of the off world parasites abandon it again. But in order to do that, I'll need to employ your questionable services on a much bigger scale than I've done in the past."

"You put things so delicately. How could a man refuse you anything?" iron on cement. "What did you have in mind, Your Majesty?"

She rested an elbow on the sense-absorbing chair-arm. Like flesh. It feels like flesh. "I want something to happen during the Festival, something that will create chaos a" at the expense of the Summers."

"You had in mind, perhaps, the sort of accident that befell the former Police Commander? But on a much larger scale, of course." His voice betrayed no surprise at all; something she found both rea.s.suring and disturbing. "Drugs in the water supply, perhaps."

But why should it disturb me? It was my idea. "No drugs. That would affect my people too, and I don't want that. We have to remain in control. I had in mind an epidemic, something most of Winter has been vaccinated against. The Summers would have no protection."

"I see," a dim nod. "Yes. It can be arranged. Although I would be betraying the Hegemony in a great way, if I gave you the means of retaining power. It's very much in our interest to leave the savages hi control when we depart."

"The Hegemony's best interests are hardly yours. You're no more a loyalist than I am." The smell of incense in the air was too strong, as though it were hiding something.

"Our interests coincide in the matter of the water of life." She heard his smile.

"Name your price, then. I don't have time to wade in the shallows." Sharpening her own voice, she jabbed at his smug formless ness "I want the take from three Hunts. All of it."

"Three!" She laughed once, not admitting that it was no more than shed expected him to ask for.

"What is the price of a queen's ransom, Your Majesty?" The darkness around them settled into his voice almost tangibly; she was aware again of how much more she heard, trying to compensate for not seeing his face. "I'm sure the police would be more than interested to learn what you have in mind for this world. Genocide is a serious charge a" and against your own people. But that's what comes of letting a woman rule... Women don't rule the Hegemony, you know. There are many places, on many worlds, where even your arrogance could be broken, Arienrhod."

Arienrhod's hands tightened at the unexpected eagerness of his hatred, a terrifying crack of white-hot d.a.m.nation between the s.h.i.+elding curtains of the darkness. She became aware of a peculiar odor underlying the perfume of incense in the air ... an odor of disease, or decay. But he doesn't dare! "Don't threaten me, Thanin Jaakola. You may have been a slave master on Big Blue, and you may be responsible for the majority of the misery on seven different worlds," letting his comprehension of her own private knowledge harden. "But until the Change this is my world, Jaakola, and you exist here only because I permit you to. Whatever becomes of me becomes of you, because if anything happens to me you lose your protection from the law. I'm sure there are many places that you would find a humbling experience yourself." And I'm sure you never forget that For a moment. "What I'm asking of you is risky, yes, but simple. I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle easily, given your resources. I'll give you the entire take of Starbuck's final Hunt ... and that is worth a Queen's ransom, to you or anyone."

The darkness magnified his separate breaths, and his silence.

Arienrhod held her own. At last she detected the faint inclination of his head, and he said, "Yes. I'll handle the matter, for the agreed payment. I'll enjoy thinking of you ruling Tiamat after we're gone, without the water of life to keep you young. Ruling in Carbuncle after we're gone ... it won't be the same place without us, you know. It really won't be the same." His laughter tore like rubber.

Arienrhod stood up without further comment, and only after her back was to him and she was crossing the room to the door did she allow herself to frown.

"Where the h.e.l.l are you going?"

Tor started guility as the voice caught her from behind in the corridor a" Herne's voice; she was just past the room she had arranged for him to use here in the casino. Most of the other rooms along this corridor were used by prost.i.tutes and their clients. But a new day was dawning somewhere in the outer world, and the hall was empty; the casino was closed for a brief span of rest and recovery.

Tor turned back with deliberate slowness to study Herne. He leaned heavily against the door frame, his useless legs wrapped in the clumsy, powered exoskeleton that let him get around on his own after a fas.h.i.+on. A short, slashed robe thrown on carelessly over his head left him just short of indecent. She frowned. "I've got a heavy date. What's it to you, grandmother?"