“Yo, LaisTree! Wake up and pass that tanker!”
“He’s gone south. I got it—”
Tree caught his half-full mug with a reflexive grab as the pitcher of kelp beer skreeked past him along the table full of off-duty Blues. He stood up, staring across the sea of shadowy figures in the dimly lit club, his gaze like a compass needle drawn to magnetic north.
“Hey, ’Nion, what hit your partner? His brains are hangin’ below his belt.”
“He’s lost in thought.” Staun shrugged.
“Uh-oh. Unfamiliar territory.…” Laughter.
“It’s the shapeshifter,” Staun said finally, when Tree didn’t rise to the bait but just went on staring, transfixed, at a point across the room. “She’s why he wanted to come here.”
“So that’s why we’re not still at RedFutter’s?”
“Forget it, loverboy. You don’t make enough in a year—”
“Hey, screw you. It’s his nameday! Go for it, partner.” Staun gave Tree a push, staggering him slightly. “Put that Motherlover’s-courage you’ve been swilling to some use.”
“Yeah,” somebody yelled, “flash your badge and tell her it’s your nameday. Maybe she’ll give you a freebie—”
“Get stuffed.” Tree drained his mug and set it down.
“… More than you’ll get!”
Tree flipped him an obscene gesture, grinning as he started away from the table.
Staun reached up to catch his arm as he passed. “Just remember, we’ve got plans later … when the call comes, we’re on it. We need you to be there.”
Tree looked back at him, meeting his eyes, and nodded once.
Hoots of encouragement propelled him out into the open room like a physical shove. People were actually dancing; sitting with the others, he hadn’t even been aware of music. He concentrated on walking a straight line through the random motion on the dance floor, not doubting his sense of balance as much as he doubted his resolve.
The woman watched him from the booth where she was sitting, alone for the first time all night. She wore an enigmatic smile that suited her face, her body … everything about her, because none of it was real. During the course of the evening, he’d watched her talking, eating, and drinking with an ever-changing series of companions; watched her fey features become darker, fairer, older, younger … changing like a dream, but never anything less than beautiful.
He’d seen a lot in the eight years he’d been a Blue, most of it in the five that he’d been stationed here in Carbuncle. But he’d never seen a woman in a full-body sensenet playing with her skin.
He saw her begin to change again as he approached—the tone of her skin shading toward the color of his, her eyes becoming brown, upslanting, her shining black hair shot through now with deep glints of auburn—until by the time he reached her table, she had become his own secret fantasy of the perfect woman.
He came to a dead stop two meters short of her private booth; stood paralyzed by indecision, while his body reminded him with painful hunger of how long it had been since he’d seen a woman who looked anything like that … since he’d spoken more than a dozen words in a row to any woman at all from his homeworld.
Ever since SudHalek’s nameday, when he’d watched the shapeshifter walk away down Blue Alley, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. For the last three months, he’d found himself looking for her as they patrolled the streets, daydreaming about her when he was alone, dreaming about her at night.
He had no idea if this was even the same woman, beneath the sensenet’s veil of illusion, although she could be, since there were probably only a dozen ’shifters in all of Carbuncle.
Not that it really mattered, because it was all make-believe anyway. And this was his nameday, Saint Ambiko’s Day—the one day he could let himself believe that entire worlds lay in the depths of her eyes, and that a single word from her could transform his whole world, making it infinite with possibilities.
It struck him suddenly that he could be facing a moment of humiliation so total that he would never live it down, in front of a dozen witnesses who would never, ever, let him forget it. And all because somewhere in a dream, her changeling smile had whispered to him that all lies must come true somewhere, if only for a moment … daring him to redefine the limits of his life, to admit that one step beyond the boundaries of his very ordinary days there lay something more, something extraordinary.
“What do you want … officer?” The woman rested her chin on her palm; her smile turned amused as she gazed back at him.
Officer. His mouth quirked. He wondered if she’d heard them, clear across the room. All he could hear now was the blood singing in his ears.
“What would you Blue boys like to know: ‘How do I do that?’ ‘Does it feel as real as it looks?’ Or how much it would cost you to find out?”
He glanced away over his shoulder, back again, helplessly. “Do you … like to dance?”
He saw her hesitate, as if he’d actually surprised her. And then her face changed again; her smile became radiant. “Well … I thought you’d never ask.” She rose from her seat in the booth to join him; her acceptance seemed to defy gravity as well as logic. A single piece of scarlet cloth wrapped her body in flame. He offered his hand; her touch felt warm and real as she clasped it.
As they reached the dance floor her arms circled his waist, tendrilling up his back like vines on a trellis. She closed the space between them, the slight but sensual pressure of her body inviting him to make himself equally familiar with her own. The club’s music was fluid and slow, almost subliminal. He wasn’t much of a dancer, but then the handful of other couples on the floor were barely moving, anyway. Lost in their own pocket worlds, they were fused against each other as if dancing was what came after foreplay.
He looked toward the table where his friends were sitting. He knew they were watching him, probably even yelling encouragement, considering how much they’d drunk. But his brain seemed to have shifted nexus points: their faces had become formless ovals of light; their voices dissolved into the ambient music. The distance he had walked across the room to reach her seemed measurable in light-years. Somehow, she was in his arms instead, and he was in hers, and her hair smelled of blooming sillipha, like a warm summer night on Newhaven. “What’s your name?” he murmured, breathing the past in her perfume.
“Whatever you want it to be,” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear.
“No.…” He drew back, breaking the hypnotic contact of their bodies. “What’s your name?”
She bent her head at him. “I don’t kiss and tell … and that would be telling. But I can tell you your name, Officer Nyx Ambiko LaisTree. And that you were born twenty-six years ago, in Miertoles lo Faux on Newhaven, and you have—”
“My friends call me Tree.”
“Tree.…” She smiled, and he smiled, letting her draw him back into the motion of the music that still moved her body. “Is that what you want—to be my friend?”
“It’s all I can afford,” he said, “on a Blue’s pay.”
“Then you must be an honest one.”
He glanced away at the others, looked down.
As he raised his head again her smiled softened, as if she’d thought he was only being modest. He could feel the heat radiating from her … or maybe the body heat was his alone.
“I’ve never danced with a Blue before,” she said, almost to herself; as if accepting his invitation had been as unexpected for her as offering it had been for him. “Behind Closed Doors isn’t exactly a Police bar. What brought you here tonight, and off duty?”
He shrugged, smiled. “I just felt like we should … broaden our interests.”
“This is certainly the place for that.” Her hair flowed across her shoulder as she nodded toward the shadowed walls. “But you seem to be the only one brave enough to try something new—?”
“Yeah, well, it’s my nameday. Ambiko’s supposed to be the patron saint of change.” He laughed. ?
??And the others know what they like, I guess.”
“Happy nameday, then,” she said, smiling. “And a long life, filled with many more.”
He blinked as he realized suddenly that she had spoken to him in Klostan—as if she really were Newhavenese. He glanced away and back again, letting himself slide deeper into her uncanny dimension. “So,” he murmured, racking his brain for another topic of conversation, “what else do people do in a place like this?”
“Get to know each other better.…” Her shoulders moved in an insinuating shrug. “They make connections.”
“And you … work here?”
“Not exactly.” She shook her head. “I come here to meet the kind of people who … want to know me better. I’ve met people from all over the Hegemony. There are a lot of lonely people in Carbuncle.” She looked up into his eyes again; her body closed the fractional space between them.
Over her shoulder he saw what the couple behind them were doing. He exhaled in disbelief and took a long, slow breath. “So,” he said again, inanely, “I guess your sensenet’s got, what … an ID scanner, and datanet access built in?” Gods, he sounded like an idiot … worse, like a Kharemoughi. But it was better than the multiplication tables. “And … some kind of galvanic response reader? Lets you know when the solidographic imager’s getting it right for your client?” His hand moved down, coming to rest in the hollow of her back; but it was his skin that got gooseflesh.
She raised her eyebrows. “Yes. Yes. And yes.…” She smiled, but her smile wasn’t about what he’d said. “I take it you have experience with sensenets?”
“No—” He shook his head; the heat rose into his face again. “Uh, no, not really, just studied the specs. It’s part of what we do. That’s about all we ever do, here in Carbungle.” He gave it the name the street Blues used, when the brass weren’t listening. “Look, but don’t touch.” He resettled his hand higher on her back, looking away across the room again.
“That must get frustrating, when you care about your job.”
“Yeah. It does.” He tried to guess from her expression whether she meant that, or was just humoring him. Maybe it didn’t matter, anyway. It was his problem, not hers, and he’d be dealing with it, later tonight.…
He blinked as his memory downloaded a final piece of data. “The sensenet’s wired directly into your nervous system, isn’t it? And it would be EM pulse-sensitive?”
“Yes.” She drew back. “Why?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“That’s not a casual question, Tree. Are we dancing, or are we—?”
“Dancing,” he whispered, and pulled her closer, until her mouth was almost on his, and the music they moved to became the song of his yearning: a plangent prayer of love and loss that soared and fell in a language he had never heard before, yet somehow understood, instinctively, completely.
Hardly believing his courage, he leaned in and kissed her. He felt her begin to kiss him back, feeding his hunger.
“Excuse me.…” A stranger’s voice, speaking Tiamatan without an accent.
“No,” he murmured, eyes closed. “She doesn’t want to dance with you.” He felt her smile.
A hand fell on his shoulder. “Excuse me—”
He shrugged it off as he slid his ID from his pocket. He flashed the badge, barely glancing up at the pale-eyed, pale-haired stranger. “Hegemonic Police, Motherlover. Get lost, or I’ll run you in for assaulting an officer.”
“Officer LaisTree—” the voice dripped acid. “Point one: I own this club. Point two: I am a Tiamatan citizen, and not under your jurisdiction. Point three … your friends are leaving. Your partner wants you to leave with them. And so do I.”
Tree looked directly into the club owner’s glacial eyes. “In a minute.” He held the man’s gaze until finally the Tiamatan turned and walked away. Tree turned back to … who? She’d never given him her name … any name at all.
But her cinnamon-skinned arms still circled his waist; her smile, her expectant eyes evaporated his will like fog … and he wondered whether he was stupid, or crazy, to be taking them at face value. He looked toward the club’s exit. The others were already heading for it. Somebody gestured impatiently at him.
“Damn it,” he muttered, to no one in particular. He looked back at her and shrugged in resignation. “Thanks, for the dance—” he said, his voice husky. He reached up, gently touching her face. “I … listen, where do you live? You live around here?”
“I live uptown, near the palace.” Her arms released him, reluctantly, but not her eyes. “Why?”
“Shit.…” He broke her gaze, frowning. Trust your gut, Staun always said. Raising his head again, he murmured, “You should go home now. Go straight home.” He let her go, and turned away.
“Why?” She blocked his path to the exit, her changeling hands planted solidly on his chest. Her entire body seemed to exert a sourceless pressure on him, even though they were barely touching now.
“Tree!” Across the room, Staun had stopped by the door as the others went out one by one.
“Something’s happening tonight.” Tree pushed his hair back from his eyes, glancing down. “Maybe it could affect you … your sensenet. So just go home. You’ll be safe there.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He looked up, and was surprised by the expression on her face. Her hands gripped his shoulders; she kissed him lingeringly on the mouth. “And will you come by later … to see if I am?”
For a moment, he couldn’t answer. “Yes,” he murmured, hearing his own disbelief, “I will … later.” He watched her fade out of reach as she let him go. Then he headed toward the door, and the waiting night.
* * *
“Hey, partner, thought we lost ya.” Staun slung his jacket at him, propelling him outside into the alley.
“Tree, you fuckin’ pullover—!” The others’ envious laughter dragged him the rest of the way back into reality.
“Eat your heart out, MarDesta.” He squinted as the inescapable glare of Carbuncle’s artificial day dazzled his eyes after the darkness of the club. Staun claimed the word “Carbuncle” meant both “jewel” and “festering sore.” Tree felt as if that ambiguity had never suited the city better than it did tonight. He’d just held one of its jewels … and now, with the others, he was about to cut out some of the rot.
Pulling on his jacket, he looked back down the alley toward the club, beyond it at the night sky visible through the storm wall at the alley’s end. Even outside Carbuncle’s artificial environment, night on this world was too bright—a glowing pyre of stars, the heart of a stellar cluster into which Tiamat’s binary sun system had wandered eons ago. The magnificence of that sky always took his breath away, even as it reminded him of how very far from home he really was.…
“Come on, Nyx,” Staun said. “Get your brain back in your pants. We all need you to be a hundred percent on this.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, shaking himself out. “I’m back. I’m ready.” He checked the time, saw that it was midway through graveyard watch. He glanced at the others, noticed that MarDesta and SudHalek were having serious trouble walking. He wondered if they were really sober enough to be going anywhere, except home to sleep it off.
But hell, it wasn’t like they were going into a high-risk situation—it was just another midnight hit-and-run, like last time, like the half dozen other raids they’d been on over the past year or so. He reached into his jacket pocket for his work gloves, put them on and pulled up his collar against the deepening chill.
At the alley’s mouth they turned into the Street, heading downhill. The Closed Doors club lay on the perimeter of the Maze; now they were entering the Lower City, which housed most of the poorer and more provincial Tiamatans—the dockhands, fisher-folk, and laborers—as well as providing storage for all kinds of goods, both licit and illicit.
Under Hegemonic law, the Tiamatans’ access to basic technology the rest of the Eight Worlds took for granted was
strictly and severely limited, for reasons he had never particularly understood, or concerned himself about. It wasn’t his world, the restrictions didn’t affect him personally, and the people here in the city seemed content enough with what they were given.
But Arienrhod, Tiamat’s ruler, wasn’t content … and so she did everything in her power to get her hands on all the contraband that techrunners could smuggle in, while also doing her best to hamstring the Hegemonic Police stationed here to protect her people from the predators among their own. While the Snow Queen ruled, this bizarre relic of a city on a marginally habitable world became a haven for illegal activity on a scale that would be notable anywhere else in the Hegemony.
Technically, the Tiamatan government was autonomous, like the other world-governing bodies of the Hedge. Any Tiamatans caught breaking the Hegemony’s laws had to be turned over to the local constabulary, who generally released them the minute the arresting officers turned their backs. The Hegemonic Police were not even allowed to enter Tiamatanowned property to search for suspects or illegal goods.
And so the Blues wasted their time putting away brawling burnouts and petty thieves, while some of the worst criminals in the Eight Worlds operated unmolested, abetted by the Queen and the locals she hired to front for them. And there was nothing the Police could do about it … at least not legally.
Staun turned in at the mouth of the next alley; the sign high on a wall read Sienna. Almost no one was awake in the Lower City at this time of night. It felt even colder down here, where the biting wind of Tiamat’s interminable winter found its way inside from the sea. Shadows were deeper and more pernicious than in the Maze, with its gaudy festoons of colored lights; tonight darkness seemed to seep out of the walls like ink.
“We’re there.” Staun knocked on an unmarked warehouse door—a coded series of raps, muted but still loud enough to make the others flinch. The door opened a crack, then wider; a shadow gestured them inside. Tree entered, aware that he was sweating in the cold.
“Happy nameday, LaisTree.” Dal KipuTytto, the sergeant who had set up tonight’s action, grinned at him as they moved past. Tree counted nine Blues altogether in the cramped space of the receiving office, all dressed like he was in dark, nondescript clothing. KipuTytto’s crew murmured greetings, their voices hushed but eager.