Tangled Up in Blue

by Joan D. Vinge

  One of the officers crouched down, peering at his ID, his face. “LaisTree?” the man murmured, his voice echoing and strangely distorted. “What are you doing here?”

  “Captain…?” The dark, aristocratic features of HN Cambrelle, the Kharemoughi who commanded his unit, swam and re-formed in his uncertain vision. A silver pendant with a shape he vaguely recognized dangled from a chain around Cambrelle’s neck; it winked at him in the shifting light. Tree wiped his mouth, brought his hand away red with bloody spittle. “Doing our job…” he mumbled.

  Cambrelle’s mouth curved upward.

  “What … what are you…?” Tree watched the pendant spin and shine, hypnotized by its motion.

  “It’s really better if you don’t know,” Cambrelle said gently. He pushed the pendant back inside his clothing and stood up. “Better for all of us.” The Blue standing beside him, another Kharemoughi, murmured something and pointed down the passage. Cambrelle looked away, frowning at something Tree couldn’t make out.

  Tree looked down at Staun’s face, frozen in a rictus of agonized disbelief. Gently he laid his hand over his partner’s eyes, closing them for the final time, while the thought came to him that he had never expected to be making that gesture for his own brother.…

  Cambrelle turned back, his face twitching as he looked down at them. And then, almost reluctantly, he raised his gun. The targeting beam toyed with Tree’s heart again, like a betraying lover.

  “Captain…?” Tree whispered.

  Sudden commotion at the far end of the passage made Cambrelle glance up; the plasma rifle’s muzzle dropped.

  Tree lunged forward. The other Blue’s boot caught him square in the chin, slamming him back against the wall. Cambrelle swung the gun up; the beam retraced its path to a point above Tree’s eyes. Cambrelle grimaced. “I’m sorry.…”

  * * *

  Gundhalinu was three meters from the access when its crescent of light burst open; the passageway lay before him like a glowing forge.

  Something too small and fast for human eyes to track flew out, hit his shielded face, and dropped to the floor. He yelped in surprise, stumbling back … saw the oblate, nut-sized form of a fragmentation grenade pulsing redly on the floor in front of him. He felt the air in his lungs turn to stone.

  “Move—!” PalaThion’s shoulder collided with him, driving him into motion. “Go!” she shouted. He saw her kick the grenade, sending it back through the hatchway. “Go! Go!”

  He ran as if his life depended on it.

  * * *

  “Oh, shit! Incoming—”

  Something inscribed a glowing smear across Tree’s vision; it struck a wall, then hit the floor, spinning like a top. Cambrelle made a strangled noise; the gun fell from his hands as the fragmentation grenade wobbled to a stop.

  And detonated.

  * * *

  The shock wave exploded out of the tunnel, catching them from behind like a giant’s fist before Gundhalinu had crossed half the warehouse. It picked him up off his feet and threw him into a wall of crates. He crashed to the floor and lay there gasping for breath, as if the explosion had driven all the air out of the room.

  When his lungs began to function again, he struggled up onto his hands and knees, shaking his vision clear. He looked back toward the open access. The sight of PalaThion lying motionless between two already-dead bodies shocked his stupefied wits back into focus. “Inspector.… Inspector—?” He dragged himself up the wall of boxes until he was standing.

  A wave of nausea hit him; he leaned against the crates until it passed, and then he crossed the storeroom to fall on his knees beside her. Rolling aside the body of a stranger, he checked her throat for a pulse; found it, strong and steady despite the blood blurring her face and soaking her uniform. Blood was dripping onto the floor—his own blood, he realized numbly, wondering why that did not seem to bother him more. PalaThion’s left leg was broken; he could actually see bone jutting through her torn pants leg. Most of the blood was coming from there. He fumbled his belt off, cinched it tight around her leg above the wound. He sat back again, dazed and uncertain, afraid of doing more in case her injuries were worse than they looked. Backup … call for backup, a med team.…

  He activated the radio function on his helmet’s headset. “Officer down! Need help—” he said thickly. “All units … Code Red in Sienna Alley! Repeat, officer down—”

  He broke off, as his own voice ricocheted inside the walls of his skull, the words echoing and reechoing until his mind couldn’t form a coherent thought.

  But feedback triggered deja vu: He had already called for backup. He had called it in.… They were already on their way. They should have been here by now. What the hell was taking them so long—?

  He got to his feet, goaded by a surge of sudden anger; shut off his headset as the voices responding to his call flooded his brain with more incoherent noise. He glanced toward the outer office doorway. Still empty. He looked back at the access the grenade had come through. Its hatch hung from one hinge, in a pall of languidly curling smoke.

  He picked up a stun rifle, not even sure whose it was. His mind seemed to exist somewhere beyond the limits of his body as he checked the gun’s function displays and thumbed the power to MAX.

  He crossed the storeroom to the access. Bringing the rifle up with unsteady hands, he stepped through. He stopped, letting the gun fall to his side again.

  The passageway beyond the access was a morgue … no, a slaughterhouse: bodies and parts of bodies everywhere, blood sprayed on the walls and ceiling, blood pooling on the floor. He leaned against the twisted doorframe and vomited.

  When he could force himself to move again he started into the tunnel, setting his feet down with painful care, trying not to slip and fall on the red, slick floor as he searched the carnage for any survivors.

  At the far end of the passageway there was another access, another hatch blown nearly off its hinges by the explosion. He went on until he reached it; peered through into another vast warehouse space. Movement registered on his helmet’s sensors, pinpointing a figure in the indistinct terrain of boxes and equipment. He brought the gun up, shouting, “Freeze!”

  A lightning strike answered him as someone fired a plasma rifle. The blast struck the hatchway, its backwash kicking him sideways out of the shooter’s line of sight. He took cover against the wall, swearing as he looked down and saw the nearly indestructible monofiber of his uniform jacket smoking.

  He ducked out again, fired at the shooter’s remembered position, fell back to safety; his hands were shaking so badly now that he’d be lucky to hit a planet. Gods, where was his backup…? He hugged the wall, shutting his eyes against the carnage around him as he waited for his attacker to return fire. And waited.

  No blast. No sound at all. He swung around the hatchway again, bringing up the rifle—

  Nothing. The sensors in his helmet confirmed what his eyes found: The shooter had gone; there was nothing moving, nothing alive, in that vast space now.

  He stepped back, turning—jammed his gun into the chest of the startled patrolman half a meter behind him, caught in the act of reaching for his shoulder. The man’s empty hands flew up in the air. Backup had finally arrived.

  “Gods!” Gundhalinu gasped, letting the rifle drop at his feet. “Warn me next time…!” He sagged against the wall, pushing up his flash shield.

  The patrolman’s mouth moved as if he was speaking, but all Gundhalinu could make out was a dim buzzing.

  “What—?” He shook his head. Beyond the patrolman other uniformed figures were making their way into the passage; he saw their stricken faces.

  The patrolman gestured at Gundhalinu’s head, and mouthed a word: Ears.

  Gundhalinu slid a gauntleted hand under the flared rim of his helmet, touched his neck below his ear. His fingers came away red. He stared at the blood, realizing at last that the ringing inside his skull was not the sound of silence. As the others reached his side, he pointed to the blast
mark on the door frame. They nodded, and went on through, carefully.

  “Inspector—?” he asked, pointing, not sure if his speech was any clearer than his hearing. The Blue who’d found him nodded and gave a thumbs-up as they made their way back along the tunnel.

  The warehouse was swarming with uniforms, men already tending to the bodies, or recording evidence. More Police came in from the street as he entered. Shrugging off everyone and everything, he went straight to the spot where the emergency medical team was working on PalaThion. She was still unconscious. He watched them put her on a floater and take her out; resisted when they tried to force him to go too. Finally one of the medics shrugged and treated him where he stood, wiping away blood, doing something to his ears that made him want to retch.

  His head cleared as the transdermal painkillers and stimulant began to take effect. Slowly the vague, amorphous noises around him began to take on some kind of coherence.

  “Sergeant—”

  He turned, to see Chief Inspector Aranne approaching, grim-faced. He wondered how Aranne had gotten here so fast … or whether his own time sense had just been knocked sideways along with the rest of his senses. He made a clumsy salute.

  “You were investigating, with Inspector PalaThion?” Aranne asked.

  “Yes, sir.” He glanced away, distracted, as another body was carried past. “We were returning from—”

  “Do you know what happened here?”

  “I.…” He blinked, forcing his sluggish brain to refocus. “Some off-duty Blues were engaging in vigilante activity, sir.” He saw Aranne’s expression harden. “They must have walked in on something else. They were dead when we got here. Gods, it’s a nightmare in there … I don’t know what … what kind of…” He gestured at the passageway, and took a deep breath. “Whoever did it was still here when we arrived. They fired a fragmentation grenade through the access. We’d be a null set if the Inspector hadn’t kicked it back.” For the first time, he realized clearly that PalaThion had saved his life. “Somebody with a plasma rifle took a shot at me, inside the other warehouse.”

  “But you didn’t get a look at them? Nothing at all that could tell us who did this?”

  “No, sir.” His hands tightened into fists at his sides.

  Aranne glanced away as another body bag was carried from the passage. “All right, Sergeant,” he muttered. “Go with the med team. Get your injuries properly taken care of.”

  “Sir, I’m fine. I want to stay and observe. I want in on this investigation.”

  Aranne shook his head. “You’re not in any—”

  “Chief Inspector!” someone shouted from the passageway. “We’ve got a live one, sir!”

  Aranne headed for the access without finishing his sentence.

  Gundhalinu hesitated, glancing toward the medics for less than a heartbeat before he followed Aranne back to the tunnel.

  Bile rose in his throat as he remembered what he would find. He swallowed it down, moving stubbornly past the tight-lipped patrolmen who were collecting evidence and identifying body parts under the guidance of a forensics officer.

  The Chief Inspector stood at the far end of the passageway, with the medics who were carefully lifting someone onto a floater. From what Gundhalinu could see, the lone survivor wouldn’t be answering anyone’s questions for a long time.

  As the floater moved past him, he caught a glimpse of the survivor’s face; recognized it, even swathed in bandages: LaisTree. The nameday boy. So this was how his celebration had ended, as Saint Ambiko’s Day had drawn to its catastrophic close.

  As they hurried LaisTree out, Gundhalinu watched someone else who hadn’t been as lucky being lifted into a body bag. The mangled corpse wore the remains of a Police uniform; a captain’s bars gleamed on the collar. He moved closer, half frowning. Something fell from the body into a puddle on the floor as the patrolmen sealed the bag, seemingly oblivious. Gundhalinu let them pass and then, pulling off his gloves, he leaned down to pick the object out of the pool of blood. He wiped the thing on his jacket front, turned it over. It was some kind of pendant or medallion. He put it in his pocket, and went on through the hatchway where the shooter had nearly added him to the fatalities.

  There were still more victims in the warehouse beyond, more Blues dealing with their remains.

  “What the hell is this thing—?” A patrolman swore in disgust, as if he had pulled up a fistful of entrails.

  “I don’t know.… Hey, I don’t want it. Yo, Sergeant!” someone else called, spotting Gundhalinu.

  Gundhalinu stopped as one of the patrolmen collecting evidence nearby came toward him. The man held up a piece of equipment. “Sergeant, do you know what the hell this is? They found it by one of the bodies over there.” Surprised, Gundhalinu caught the fragile-looking mesh hemisphere as the patrolman shook it off his hands, grimacing.

  The thing clung disconcertingly to his fingertips. It felt warm and supple, almost as if it were alive, although it appeared to be made of alloy. From its shape and size, he guessed it was some kind of headset. “I don’t know,” he murmured, shaking it from hand to hand. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” The patrolman shrugged, his disappointment obvious, as if he really believed all Kharemoughis instinctively recognized any piece of tech ever made.

  Ever…? Gundhalinu frowned and rubbed his aching head, struggling to make the connection. “You know, this almost reminds me of … of…”

  “Sergeant!”

  He looked up, saw the Chief Inspector coming toward him, accompanied by a medic. He sighed in resignation, and dropped the piece of mesh back into the patrolman’s hands. “I don’t know. Some kind of joy-job, probably. Bag it with the rest of the confiscated tech. At least then the wrong people won’t get their hands on it.”

  The patrolman carried it away as Aranne reached his side. “Gundhalinu-eshkrad,” Aranne said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You should be at the hospital, not at a crime scene.”

  Gundhalinu looked up in surprise at the touch, at the concern in Aranne’s eyes, and the unexpectedly personal form of address. “Sir. But I—”

  “We lost over a dozen men tonight, Gundhalinu. By my sainted ancestors, I don’t want to lose another one. Go to the hospital. Now.”

  Gundhalinu nodded. Aranne started on across the storeroom, and Gundhalinu let the medic lead him away.

  * * *

  “And that was the last I heard that was of any interest, Your Majesty. Except—” Devony broke off, gazing at the nacreous wall of the meeting room. Its opalescent surface shimmered with the slight motion of her head as she tried to banish one final, persistent memory from her thoughts.

  “What?” Arienrhod asked. “Tell me.”

  Devony made half a shrug. “Nothing, really. I danced with a Blue, at the club last night.”

  “What was his rank?”

  “None,” she said, surprised. “He was a patrolman. He came in with some others, off-duty. I’ve never seen a Newhavener Blue in there before; they’re too conservative. The rest of them just sat at a table and drank like fish.” She smiled wryly. “But just before he left, he told me that I should leave too, and go straight home … that ‘something was going to happen’ and it might affect my sensenet.” She glanced up into the sudden, unnerving intentness of the Queen’s gaze.

  “And—?” Arienrhod fingered the single blood-red jewel that rested on the translucent skin of her throat.

  “I went home. I asked him to come by later; he said that he would. But he never did…” Even now, she had no more idea of why she had invited him to than of why she had spent the rest of the night waiting for a visitor who never arrived.

  “He wasn’t a Kharemoughi—?” Arienrhod said. “What was his name?”

  “LaisTree … Nyx LaisTree.”

  Arienrhod leaned back in her wingform chair. She stared at nothing for a space of heartbeats, her expression as shifting and elusive as the surfaces of the walls. “If he does come to see you,” she said at
last, “let me know.”

  Devony nodded. She looked down at her hands, seeing a stranger’s flesh, as she usually did. Each time she came to the palace she came as someone different, to keep her frequent visits from being suspected by Berdaz or anyone else. Today she was Newhavenese. She glanced up again, along with the Queen, as a knock sounded on the closed door of the room.

  Arienrhod’s pale fingers rose to the jewel at her throat; she frowned faintly. Cupping the stone in her palm, she stared at it as though hypnotized for a long moment. Her frown deepened as she released it again.

  Her gaze returned to Devony, although part of her mind was clearly somewhere else as she pulled open a drawer in the ornate desk. She took out a small box made of silverwood, simply but beautifully finished. Devony watched, perplexed, as the Queen removed the jewel she was wearing and placed it in the silk-lined box.

  Arienrhod passed the box across the desk to her. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  Devony took it, wonderingly. Studying the jewel up close, she saw that it was caged in a subtle mesh of almost invisible fineness … and that it was not a carbuncle, as she had thought. It was like no gem she had ever seen; something about its beauty was almost preternatural. “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Neither have I,” Arienrhod said. “It’s unique, and quite rare. And I want you to have it, with my gratitude, as a reward for all that you’ve done for your people, and for me.”

  Devony looked up, speechless with disbelief. Shaking her head she closed the box, and set it back on the desk with painful care. “Your Majesty, I can’t … it’s honor enough simply to be—”

  Arienrhod held up a hand, smiling the smile that Devony had come to know so well, full of feeling and of meaning and yet completely unreadable. “Please take it, Devony. As a favor to me.”

  Devony picked up the box again with an unsteady hand. She slipped it into a pocket-fold of her caftan’s sash.