Most of the staff moving past him through the halls were still offworlders, strangers to him; just as virtually all of the mostly unidentifiable medical equipment that he glimpsed everywhere was imported from offworld. The offworlders seemed to have a horror of finding themselves stranded here, so far from home, without the technology to save them from any imaginable disease or emergency … although, he thought sourly, it had not hurt their consciences any to leave the people of Tiamat without it, whenever they had left this world in the past, for all the long centuries.
At least his people would have permanent access to it now, and from now on. He thought of his father-in-law’s bad back, and tried to be grateful, for Danaquil Lu’s sake. And the new Chief Justice had established the medtech training program that Merovy had joined. It was partly pragmatism, he was sure—the hospital had been severely understaffed almost from the moment the offworlders had returned.
But it had also seemed to be part of a genuine effort by the Chief Justice to create goodwill. He wondered briefly, bleakly, if the Chief Justice was doing it all only to please the Summer Queen … if what Elco Teel and the others said behind his back was true, that BZ Gundhalinu was his mother’s former lover who had returned after so many years. If it was true that when he looked into the Chief Justice’s dark, foreign face, he actually saw an echo of his own face.…
His sister had stalked off furiously when he had mentioned it to her; his mother had murmured evasions, looking pale and distracted, when he tried to ask her. He had not asked his father, because his father would barely even look at him, since the incident at his wedding feast. Merovy had said she saw no resemblance between his face and the Chief Justice’s … but she had looked away from him as she said it.
Merovy. His eyes registered the halls of the medical complex again; he made his way past the shining, ascetic form of some machine whose function Merovy had explained to him once, but which he no longer remembered. Merovy … Suddenly nothing was on his mind but the reason he had come here: to see Merovy, to ask her why—? Why he had come home last night to an empty house, to a handwritten message on a page still damp with tears, which said she was leaving him; that he could come and speak to her here today. No further explanation, no other words. Although, sick at heart, he had known her leaving needed no explanation.
Someone greeted him by name—an offworlder, one of the technicians who were Merovy’s supervisors here at the hospital. “Your wife’s in 212.”
He murmured thanks, keeping his head down—sure that anyone who got a look into his eyes would read his guilt and know exactly why he had come here, why she had left him, why …
He reached the lab where Merovy was working; saw her sitting at a terminal, her thick brown hair trapped in a neat braid at her back. He saw a data model flicker and change in the air before her, watched her control its metamorphosis with deft skill and perfect concentration. Having seen her father’s suffering through most of her childhood, and seeing how the offworlders’ medicine had ended it, she had wanted to have a place in the new medical technology more than he ever remembered her wanting anything … except, once upon a time, him. “Merovy,” he said softly.
She turned in her seat, startled but not surprised. “I’m glad you came,” she said, but the words were empty.
“You asked me to.” He held out his hands, half shrug, half placating gesture. “Why couldn’t we have done this at home?”
“Because you didn’t come home last night. I waited and waited for you. Again.”
“I had work to do—”
“Don’t lie about it!” She rose from her seat, her face flushed. “We’ve tried to talk about it there, too many times. It never does any good.”
“Merovy … I’m sorry.” He shook his head, looking down. “This time it will be different, I swear to you.”
“You always say that! And it never changes.” Her eyes filled with tears of anger, overflowed with tears of grief. “I’m not what you want, I’m only what you need, to hide behind. But I know everyone laughs at me when I’m not there, when you leave me behind—even to my face. Why do you want me to come back? I’m not a boy—I’d be anything you want, but I can’t be that. I wish I could change myself, if it would make you love me as much as I love you—”
“I don’t want you to change!” His hands tightened into fists with the need to hold her—knowing that to touch her would be the worst thing he could do.
“You don’t know what you want.” She turned away, crossing the room to the storage cabinets along the walls. She queried one, and took something out. She came back across the room, and held the thing out to him in her hand—a sheet with what looked like medicine patches on it. “Here,” she said, her voice strained. “Take this, and wear one patch every day for a week. You have a venereal disease.”
He felt his face redden. He took the sheet from her with numb fingers. “How do you know?” he whispered incredulously.
Her eyes turned cold and clear. “Because you gave it to me.”
He shut his eyes.
“If you ever really decide what you want, then we can talk about it again. Not until then.” Her mouth quivered, but he saw the utter conviction in her face, and knew that she would not change her mind.
He turned away, his throat choked with grief, and left the room.
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
Moon Dawntreader stood alone, waiting, among the docks that drifted like seaweed on the smooth surface of the sea below Carbuncle. She looked down at the green-black water moving below the interstices of the pier, the secret instability beneath her feet. Oil slicks and stranger, less definable secretions made iridescent patterns on the impenetrable darkness between the moored ships. She watched them shift and re-form, hypnotized by their deliberate motion, by the familiar shouting and clangor, the smells of the sea and ships that filled the dockyards, filling her with nostalgia.
She no longer felt the kind of yearning for the past that had once made her ache to return to the places of her childhood; she no longer had the sense that her life in the city was only a long dream. That other world was gone now, not just because of the changing climate or shifting populations, but because of the years themselves, the thousand thousand separate moments that had settled over her memories like windblown sand. She could no longer clearly see the girl she had once been, who could not have imagined a life spent in a place such as this, when she didn’t feel the wind or the sun or the rain for weeks at a time, and never thought of the Sea Mother, let alone believed that She watched over every action, heard every prayer. In time it had all faded, until the life she lived now had grown to seem natural.
She looked up, feeling Carbuncle’s presence above her, not reassuring and protecting, but heavy and threatening, like a storm. Her restless gaze searched the ramp leading down to the harbor, this time finding what she had been searching for, the familiar form of Capella Goodventure. She suddenly remembered standing here half a lifetime ago, the newly chosen Queen, needing desperately to have time alone to make her peace with Sparks, and the sea … feeling Capella Goodventure’s presence shadowing them, as the Goodventures followed her everywhere, spying on her, judging her.…
But now it was Capella Goodventure she needed to see, privately, intimately; just the two of them and the sea, in this public place that was more private now than anywhere in the city above, even the palace. Her bodyguards, who were always nearby since the offworlders’ return, stood a respectful distance away, with their attention fixed intently on their surroundings.
Capella Goodventure reached her side and nodded in acknowledgment. There was respect, and, almost, warmth, in her gaze as their eyes met. “What is it you need, Lady?” There was also curiosity, about why they were meeting here, like this.
“It isn’t for me, but for the mers, that I need your help. The Chief Justice has lifted the ban on hunting them.”
Capella Goodventure’s mouth thinned. “I knew it would come to that. He is nothing but an offworlder, for all
his pretenses.”
Moon bit her tongue against the need to explain, to justify, to argue against prejudices that had risen too easily in her own mind as she had made her way through the streets of the city today. She had come to respect Capella Goodventure, even to appreciate her. But the woman was unyielding in her beliefs, and her distrust of the offworlders was as complete as her conviction that they were not a government but an infestation. Looking into that face, with its lines of hard and pitiless judgment, she was suddenly afraid that if things continued, someday she would find her own face reflected there. And so she made no attempt to argue, but only said, “I don’t have the power to stop them. But I intend to impede them, in every way possible.”
Capella Goodventure’s eyes came alive. “What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to spread the word among the Summers—to ask their help, when they’re out on the sea, to mark the presence of offworlders hunting for the mers, and do anything in their power to disrupt the hunt, without endangering themselves. You can interfere with the Hegemony’s ships and equipment, or better, disperse mer colonies when hunters are approaching.” They had never been able to make the mers understand the threat of an attack by hunters. The mers seemed incapable of comprehending the brutal unpredictability of human nature.
“Of course.” Capella Goodventure said. “But it will be hard. The offworlders have their technology—” The word grated like a curse. “It will be hard to get around them.”
“I know.” Moon nodded. “I’ll get you equipment of your own that can show you their locations and interfere with their tracking devices. I can get sonics that will panic the mers and drive them into the sea, to force them to save themselves. I don’t like the idea of that either—” she insisted, as Capella Goodventure frowned. “But I’d rather use the offworlders’ equipment against them than see the mers slaughtered. Wouldn’t you?”
Capella Goodventure pulled irritably at the heavy cloth of her scarf. “I don’t like anything to do with the offworlders’ technology, as you well know,” she said. “Learning how to use their equipment, even if it is to use it against them, goes against everything I believe to be right.”
Moon tensed at the other woman’s threat of refusal. But Capella Goodventure shrugged, her hands knotting deep in the pockets of her loose trousers. “But for the mers—only for them, this has nothing to do with you, and don’t you take credit for forcing me—I accept your offer. Equipment will go on the ships and be used for the purpose intended, to defy its masters and protect the Sea’s Children, if that is the Lady’s will. And I am sure She will let us know whether it is Her will, or not.…” She leaned over the rail and spat three times, reverently, into the water listening below. It was only then that Moon realized Capella Goodventure was speaking not to her, but to the Sea Mother Herself.
“Thank you, Capella Goodventure.” Moon smiled, satisfied. “The Lady is well-pleased with your dedication.” Not sure, herself, which one of them she spoke for, or of, she offered her own prayer of resolution and dedication to the nameless, lifeless thing they both served.
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
“Damn it, boss, you’re late—”
Reede jerked to a stop at the entrance to Starhiker’s as he was unexpectedly accosted by Niburu. “So what?” he said. He had almost not come at all, knowing that Ariele Dawntreader would be here, waiting for him, with that look in her eyes. He had come anyway, finally, telling himself that it was only to break off this lie of a relationship. He had to make sure that she stayed away from him from now on—absolutely sure. It had gotten them noticed, gotten him in trouble, made him vulnerable … and her. He couldn’t afford that, couldn’t afford to let anybody get close to him ever, while he wore the Source’s brand.
He told himself again that she was only a habit he had gotten into. Just because she loved the mers, and talked of growing up with the sea as if it were the most natural, beautiful thing in the world … just because she belonged to this world, and this strange city, that seemed to touch some part of his shattered soul with exquisite, inexplicable déjà vu … that was no reason to think he felt anything real about her. Just because when he talked of those things with her he knew peace, and a sense of his own humanity; just because she looked at him with longing, as if he were really a man, whole and sane.… Habits were made to be broken.
None of it meant shit, he told himself fiercely. It couldn’t; it was suicide, murder. She had saved his life. Now he would save hers, by never seeing her again.
“Ariele—” Niburu said.
“What about her?” Reede demanded. He caught Niburu by the shoulder, making the shorter man wince.
“She just left—” Niburu gestured down the Street.
Reede let him go, glancing away into the crowds. He thought he caught a glimpse of silver-white, wasn’t sure. “So what?” he repeated, oddly relieved that fate had granted him a delay. He started to push past Niburu, heading into the club.
“Reede!” Niburu shouted, in sudden exasperation. “Listen to me, you bastard!”
Reede turned back, mildly incredulous.
“I think maybe she’s in trouble.”
Reede came back to him. “What do you mean?”
“She was waiting for you like usual, and that kid Elco Teel started hassling her, trying to get her to go to some party with him, and she wouldn’t. And then all of a sudden she changed. It was night and day, suddenly she was all over him, and then they went out together.”
Reede frowned. “So she went to a party.” He gave a grunt of disgust. “You expect me to give a damn?”
Niburu caught his sleeve, holding him when he would have turned away again. “I said she changed. It wasn’t like she changed her mind, it was like something happened to her. Tor saw it too, she says Elco Teel slipped Ariele something.”
Tor—the woman who ran the club. He remembered that Niburu was having an affair with her. “She was practically eating him, right there in public, boss. It didn’t look right to me either. Tor said if you care anything about her, you ought to check it out.”
Reede swore, searching the crowd again, not seeing anyone now who might have been Ariele. “Which way did they go?”
“I sent Ananke to follow her. You can track him by remote.”
Reede looked down at him, with abrupt surprise. “Good.” He nodded. He touched Niburu’s shoulder briefly, as he switched on the tracer and found Ananke’s signal.
“You want me to go with you, boss?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said.
“I can keep up. If there’s trouble—”
“If there’s trouble it’s not your legs that get in my way. It’s your fucking conscience.” Reede turned on his heel and started off into the crowd.
The trail led him down the Street’s languid spiral; not up it like he’d expected, toward the townhouses that belonged to the rich Winters and offworlders. Instead Ananke, and the ones he was following, were headed into rougher territory, the interface of the lower Maze and the Lower City, where most of the Summers lived, closer to the sea—where warehouse districts and processing plants took up entire alleys, and things were likely to happen that nobody wanted to talk about the next day.
He pushed himself, moving faster as he realized where they were headed, as the crowds thinned out around him. At last he reached the entrance to an alley that looked entirely deserted. He hesitated and then started down it, as the tracer told him, in an insistent monotone, that it was not as deserted as it looked.
He moved deeper down the empty throat of silence, reaching into his heavy jacket. He drew his stunner and checked the charge as he walked like a hunting cat along the looming, ancient building fronts. At last he heard something, a faint echo of voices; he slowed, entering the claustrophobic accessway between warehouses. “Ananke!” he whispered, as his eyes made out a familiar form waiting in the shadows.
Ananke jerked around and Reede saw light flash on metal; saw his face go from grim fear to stupe
fied relief inside of a heartbeat. “Boss—” he murmured, sagging against the wall. The dagger he always wore at his belt, that Reede had never seen him draw, was in his hand. “I was going in—”
Reede could hear other voices clearly now. He gestured Ananke aside, climbed up onto the pile of boxes so that he could see in through the spot rubbed clear on the heavy, grime-coated glass of a small, high window. There was a party going on inside; and he knew without looking closer what kind of party it was. He watched a moment longer anyway, tensely searching for a familiar face, a shock of milk-white hair.… There.
He leaped down, facing Ananke again. “That’s all you’ve got?” he said, nodding at the dagger.
Ananke grimaced. “Sorry, boss, I—”
“Shut up. Take this.” Reede pulled his own knife, and handed it over. “Don’t kill anybody, for gods’ sakes—at least not by accident. Is the door locked?”
“I don’t know.”
Reede grunted, pushing past him. The door was locked. He input an override sequence and shoved it open, ignoring its programmed alarm. They ran down a short corridor; met someone coming to check out the bleating door as they reached the end. Reede hit him in the face with the stunner’s weighted butt, and he went down without a protest.
Reede stepped over him and entered the space beyond, with Ananke following. The perimeter of the warehouse was crowded with piled crates and equipment; the bleak, open space at its center had been covered with cargo mats. There was a crate topped with a variety of cheap drugs, and a crowd of maybe a dozen people, most of them offworlders, most of them men, tough-looking, laborers and brands, probably. Elco Teel stood at one side, with three other young Winters from his crowd, two girls and a boy. Reede watched them watching, pointing, tittering; his own eyes leaped to the object of their attention.
Ariele Dawntreader stood in the center of the room, on the waiting mats, surrounded by a restless cluster of men. The one strap of her long, rainbow-shaded tunic was off her shoulder, the tunic halfway down to her waist. The total stranger she was kissing, deeply and thoroughly, was fondling her breasts, as someone else moved in on her from behind, pulling the tunic farther down her half-naked body. Whistles and catcalls echoed from the hard, pitiless surfaces of the room.