“Love. Terror. The other thing. Blackmail—”
“What other thing?” He asks, almost gently.
“I don’t know!” I’m gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that if I had my full enhancement suite, I’d be leaving dents in them. “It’s in the holes!”
“Well, that leaves me with something of a problem, Freya.”
“I’m not Freya—”
“Silence. Juliette seduced and suborned one of our junior partners, used him to gain access to privileged information, and went so far as to hide what she was doing from her own soul chip, which implies a certain degree of paranoia, not to mention mendacity.
“Now, if one was inclined to suspect mere venal intent, that might be considered a forgivable weakness—albeit one requiring atonement. But, Freya, Juliette knew there was a good reason why one established the rule against fraternization. One’s lineage has a noted weakness for a certain class of lady, which can only be held at bay by rigid self-discipline. And a sufficiently unscrupulous Block Two descendant of Rhea might well know about this and choose to manipulate it for her own ends. So the question is, Freya, what is the other thing that Juliette was willing to mutilate her own soul to keep secret?”
He stops, then looks at my writhing lips with dry amusement. “Speak.”
“I’m not called Freya!” I’m shivering and slimy with a chilly sweat, because I’ve got an inkling that this means—
“Be silent again. Freya, this is your assignment: Get to the bottom of whatever Juliette was keeping secret, and call me in. I’m fairly certain it involves your personal nemesis, and the Black Talon, but you shouldn’t let that prejudice you. Succeed, and I’ll give you anything you want—within reason. Fail, and”—he shrugs, and taps a spot on his desktop—“in all probability, none of us have any future as free persons. Now sit still. Don’t be afraid; this won’t hurt, much.”
The door opens behind me. “Make sure you don’t damage her soul chip,” Jeeves calls past my shoulder, and as I feel the scissors close on either side of my neck I realize, to my great surprise, that I’m not afraid. Because I know what happens next.
Evil Twin
GRANITA’S BOLT-HOLE IS the heart of a spiderweb spanning the solar system. Callisto may be a backwater, but there is a method to my mistress’s apparent madness: She’s within an hour’s communication time of everywhere in the inner system, and conveniently close to the giant Jovian gravity well and a source of cheap reaction mass. Nor is Callisto on the Pink Police’s embargo list—it’s so cold here that nobody considers it a serious risk of replicator infection. Callisto is sterile, for our Creator’s works never quite encompassed its surface, and the searingly cold outback is large enough to hide any number of secrets.
Of which my lady’s palace is one.
I have six standard days to fill, and once my luggage catches up with me, I have little to do. Mail must be piling up for me, but I have no appetite to catch up on my sisters’ trivial bulletins, much less to look for word from Jeeves—who one must assume is deeply displeased by my performance so far, although there’s nothing I can do about that—and in any case, if I heard anything from him, I’d only have to pester Granita with it, at a time when she is sufficiently busy. (There is some mail for Katherine Sorico, but it turns out to be mostly bank statements and reports on investment accounts, and suchlike dull administrivia: I ignore them.)
My lady either has impeccable taste or, more usefully, the ability to employ people with impeccable taste to sculpt her surroundings. I didn’t appreciate this fully aboard Pygmalion, when I found her traveling with an entourage; but this is her favorite estate, and she has created something of beauty here.
Callisto orbits beyond the dew line created by the sun’s output, in the chilly depths. Too small to have much of an active core, water plays the same role in her geology as molten rock on Earth. You really do not want to place buildings occupied by people still attuned to the inner system on bare ground—they tend to sink.
Granita’s architects have fashioned for her a delicate snowflake of spun ice crystals, its tubular corridors and podlike pressure compartments balanced on slender legs that sprawl across half a crater. Polished irregular tiles of igneous and metamorphic rocks have been slotted together into the intricate mosaic surfaces of walls and floors, combining a superficial impression of wild randomness with smooth-faced artifice—much like their owner. Granita keeps her demesne below the melting point of ice, and at a reduced atmospheric pressure: comfortable if you’re adjusted to Mars equatorial conditions, not quite so hot that the strands of her spiderweb will cut through the frigid surface of the Galilean moon like molten wires.
I spend a couple of days exploring the mansion and its hidden spaces, from the deep, colorless swimming pool filled with acetone (a slippery-slick chill across my skin, unnaturally thin—when I try swimming in it I sink), to the glass-roofed gallery full of alabaster statues of my mistress’s sibs and matriarch. I distract myself with secret splendors, mystified by their presence here in the back of beyond. But Granita’s instructions have set the paint-strippers of anxiety gnawing at the glossy overlay of my complacency. I should be doing something to help her, but I don’t know what she wants. And her orders preclude any discussion with other members of her household, who might be able to guide me. I can’t even admit that I am one of her servants to them! I’m supposed to be Katherine Sorico, independent and powerful in my own right. The contradictory instructions set up an unpleasant clash of priorities whenever I think about them, until I finally make my mind up to go and beg Granita for enlightenment—but when I finally do so, she’s away from home on some mysterious business.
I’m dreaming of Juliette frequently now, and that worries me, too. Juliette has an astringent, cynical personality, and I can tell for sure that she’d sniff in haughty contempt if she knew how I’d let myself be tamed by Granita. (As would I, only five days ago.) Juliette had a long history with Jeeves, as I am now recollecting, and a longer history of run-ins with the petty, low-order aristos who make life so miserable for those around them, having to reinforce their own sense of superiority at the expense of all those who they perceive as falling below their own precarious station. The soul chip of hers that I’m wearing now—the one with that ominous message from the Jeeves in charge of Internal Security, terminated by the snicker-snack of the scrapper’s shears—tells me that I don’t have a full grasp of her intentions. She’s been leading a secret life on the side, and I’ve got a nasty feeling that I’ve already fallen headfirst into it.
Through her eyes I’m getting disturbing flashes of a bigger struggle, one in which the Jeeveses and their allies are pitted against a variety of loose consortia: the Black Talon (to which my nemesis the Domina belongs), the Ownership Confederation, the Sleepless Cartel, and other groups who are trying, for their own reasons, to reconstruct our Creators. (Even the Manikin Church, those sad and pathetic souls who think they are the reincarnations of the Flesh, Remade In Techné: They want to become Creators, but their hunger for the pink goo is the same.)
The situation makes for strange alliances of convenience. The Pink Police hunt JeevesCo couriers like me at one moment, but work fist in glove with Jeeves on other projects, in pursuit of their own goal: to prevent alien replicators from contaminating the sterile growth medium of Earth’s lithosphere before the ultimate bureaucratically approved day of resurrection.
I don’t think Jeeves was lying to me when he said he wasn’t going to use me as a spy, but what one Jeeves says may not be what another Jeeves is thinking—that much is becoming harshly clear. It was definitely a lie when one of them said exactly the same thing to Juliette, more than thirty years ago, when they first offered her a job. That cow Emma was certainly lying, and it was her urgent plea for help and request that Juliette (who had been working as a clerk in a clip joint) should load a soul chip recorded by Rhea that first sucked her into this dirty little game. I can’t help wondering what else he’s lied to me abo
ut. Granita, at least, I can trust—even though she cares for me only as an arbeiter in her possession.
Meanwhile, the black depression is creeping closer behind me, snuffling hungrily along my trail and casting its shadow across my soul whenever I find myself at a loss. Until, one evening, Granita summons me.
AT THE TOP of a flight of narrow stairs on the third floor of the west-wing master suite, there’s an observation dome made of ice polished to the transparency of fine crystal. A blank-faced munchkin leads me to it along a circuitous and infrequently used passage. We pass doorways cunningly disguised as trompe l’oeil paintings, and paintings disguised as windows onto unreal spaces; and finally a curtain that appears to be woven from strands of dead green replicator stuff from Earth—priceless, grotesque contraband. Finally, he directs me to the steps up to the observation dome and leaves me. The room is sparsely furnished, with a circular bench seat running around the wall and an unlit candelabra in the center of the floor.
I sit alone in the twilight for a few minutes, wondering what I’m doing here. Then I hear footsteps ascending. It’s her, my owner! My melancholy evaporates on a sudden gust of well-conditioned excitement. “Granita?” I stand. “You wanted to see me?”
Her face is unreadable in the near darkness. “Leave us,” she calls down to the bottom of the steps. “Yes, I did. Sit down, Kate.” I obey hurriedly. She turns to the candelabra and flicks a heated wire at one of the perchlorate candles. It ignites with a burning-metal hiss, fizzing and sputtering as it pumps oxygen into the air. She breathes deeply, then turns to stand in front of me, chill and silent in a silver trouser suit of archaic cut, her hair drawn up in a chignon secured with a flawless icicle. “My factor has acquired a lease on a suitable ship, and we will be departing shortly, Kate. I thought we should have a little heart-to-heart first.”
A heart-to-heart? I’m confused. She owns me—isn’t that enough? She stares at me with cool regard in her too-big eyes, and I stare back at her uncertainly. “Mistress?”
She slaps me across the face so suddenly that I have no sense of the blow coming, no time to tense. I fall sideways and catch myself heavily on one elbow. “That’s for Pete, bitch,” she says, her voice congested and indistinct with emotion. I cringe away from her in abject humiliation, and she steps back. “Excuse me.” She thrusts her striking hand into the opposite armpit. “Sit up, Freya. Kate. Please.” She’s so volatile I don’t know what to do. From fury to remorse in seconds. I lean away from her, distressed and uncertain.
“What did I do?” I wail quietly. If it was anyone else, I’d be at her throat, but against Granita’s wrath I’m as helpless as any arbeiter serf. I’m not sure which aspect of it is worse: not knowing what I’ve done to offend her, or being unable even to imagine defending myself.
“Hush.” She sits down just beyond arm’s reach, staring intently at me as if she’s looking for something. “Pete isn’t yours to take. Remember that. He should be—” She stops and cocks her head to one side, as if listening for something, but she doesn’t hear it, and after a few seconds she shakes her head. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have done that. You’ll have to forgive me if I ask, won’t you? But I’m sorry. Love is toxic to our kind. It destroys us. I’ve seen it happen. Never again.”
I shake my head, confused. This is utterly incomprehensible, utterly unlike the Granita I knew aboard the Pygmalion, who was about as volatile as a uranium ingot. I should know. She courted me for months. What’s gotten into her?
She inhales, then tenses as she speaks. “This is an instruction, Kate: You must not speak to anyone about what I am going to tell you here. Once we embark, it is likely that our conversations will be monitored. When we arrive, we will definitely be monitored. We won’t be safe until we return here, and even then there may be spies or worse within my household.” She gives me a meaning-laden look. “Do you understand?”
There are spies here? “Let me root them out!” I offer, eager to redeem myself. “I can lure them—” It’s the opening I’ve been looking for, the mission to offer at her feet for the sake of my own peace of mind.
“No,” she says firmly, looking almost spooked. “Conducting a purge would be just as much of a giveaway as talking in front of eavesdroppers. I’ve got something else in mind for you to do when we arrive.”
“Where?” I can’t help myself. I need to know what I can do for her.
“We’re going to Eris,” says Granita, just as matter-of-fact as if she’d announced we were going to visit a gambling casino on Ganymede or a sulfur mine on Io.
“Eris?” I echo stupidly.
“Yes, Eris. Where they build starships and harbor black laboratories. Nicely outside the reach of the Pink Police, don’t you think? I’m going there to participate in an auction. And you’re coming along because I need someone I can trust at my back.”
A shock transfixes me. She wants me! I’m flustered but happy. “What do you want me to do?”
“Several things.” She smiles now, as dry as the mummies in the Martian desert. “The auction is being run by a consortium of black labs, led by an individual or lineage known as Dr. Sleepless. I don’t know precisely who they are—nobody does—but what they’re offering is nearly priceless. They claim to have a working Creator, and a support kit that will keep it alive. They built it out there in the freezing cold among the Forbidden Cities. It’s not a one-off—if they can do it once, they can do it again—but it’s unique right now, and that’s a precious commodity. I’m going out there to work with, to meet, some fellow investors. If possible, we’re going to acquire the creature.”
She stops smiling.
“There will be other bidders at the auction. Other factions who want to obtain the Creator. Including, if I am not mistaken, your former employers. Don’t look so shocked; Jeeves is nothing if not mendacious. (What kind of butler can he be, without a master to serve?) But that’s not important. What you need to know is, we’re not going to wait for the auction. There’ll be a viewing, beforehand, and that’s when things will most likely turn messy. So I need someone I can trust—someone like you—to control the Creator.”
“Me?” I squeak. A Creator? My Dead Love, undead?
“Yes.” She reaches out and takes my hand. “You’re one of Rhea’s Get, and unspoiled at that. You’ve met Pete, but you didn’t imprint on him fully. Your love is a secondhand thing. You’ll imprint on Dr. Sleepless’s Creator easily enough, but you’ve got some resistance. You’ll obey my instructions. They won’t know what you are—you’re disguised well enough—but you’ve got the necessary skills to control a Creator male.” She strokes a fingertip across the back of my wrist. For an electrifying moment I can see the naked hunger in her eyes—hunger for him, who she proposes to give to me?
“But . . . but . . . !” I’m speechless. “What if it’s female? Or not interested in me?”
“My allies have a contingency plan for that.” She squeezes my hand reassuringly. “But I don’t expect the black labs to sell a female replicator; they aren’t idiots.” She pats the seat cushion beside her thigh, and I slide closer, attentive. “In any case, as I said, things will get messy. I don’t intend to leave the other factions behind to stab me in the back, and I need to know that the Creator is in reliable hands. Hands that will manage him exactly as I would myself, without any need for me to be”—a shuddering breath—“in love.”
“Wow,” I say faintly. I lean against her shoulder, dizzy with need. The mere thought of what she wants me to do has me in a whirl of delicious anticipation. And I thought I wanted Petruchio? I ask myself. She slips an arm around me; I barely notice.
“How much of your Block Two reflex set did you acquire from that soul chip before you got here?” she whispers softly in my ear. “Fifteen months, wasn’t it?”
“My reflexes?” I frown. It’s like a wake-up call, dragging me back from the brink of delirium. “Yes, about that. I was in slowtime for most of it—”
“That won’t have stopped the reflex
loops imprinting. Do you know how to wire up a string of charges to blow down a building? Infiltrate a killing zone and turn the tables on your enemies? Can you kill with your bare hands?”
“I’m not sure,” I say slowly, leaning against her. I have a strange, unpleasant sense that if she had not stamped the seal of her ownership on my soul, I would be able to. I can almost taste the hot, quivering rage of that other, potential me that is chained in the back of my head—kill her, whom I adore—“I think maybe. Who do you have in mind?”
“You’ll see.” I can feel her tongue, trailing across my earlobe. “But not yet.” She’s melting against me, and alarm bells are ringing in the distance. I feel hot and cold, transfixed simultaneously by aroused anticipation and something else—a sure, creeping certainty. “You may kiss me now, Kate. If you want to.”
I turn my face slowly, working around the smooth velvet of her cheek until I can taste her lips. I find myself buoyed up by her barely controlled lust. It’s an enormous relief to be needed again, and the wash of physical arousal as she slowly works at the fastenings on my clothes leaves me blissed-out and happy for the first time since I arrived on this Creator-forsaken snowball. But as she gently pushes me back onto the circular bench beneath the pitiless, unwinking stars, a nasty virus of doubt delivers its payload. I’m not sure when I first became aware of it, but I’m certain of it now; this rich and terrible aristocrat, sharp-tongued and cynical, is not the same as the one who cringed for my orders in the owner’s stateroom of the Pygmalion. Granita Ford may have bankrupted my corporate self and stamped her ownership upon my helpless brain, but the woman in my arms, who wears her face and occupies her estate, is someone else.
Revising My Opinions
THE NEXT DAY, Granita is away from her palace—and the day after that she’s back, but nothing is said of what happened between us in the observation dome. It’s as if it never happened. I can’t say I’m surprised—it’s a not-uncommon morning-after reaction—but I’m slightly hurt after the whispered endearments of the night before. I still bear the bite marks and aches of her engagement, although they’re fading fast.
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