Saturn's Children (12 page)

Honestly, these discussions make my head hurt. There’s something about the holy doctrine of Evolution that seems to attract the worst kind of dogmatic, evangelical, close-minded people, and sometimes it seems as if they won’t be content until they have converted everyone to their religious creed. (Some of them are even believers in the mystery of reincarnation; manikins who think they’re the reembodied state vectors of our dead Creators. Stupid superstitionists!) I try to concentrate on the cards stuck to the wall in front of me, but it’s hard to shut out the squabbling, and though I wish Sinbad-15 well of it, I think his chances of convincing Twin #1 that we were all created by rational beings are slim, even though the frustrated dreams and cautionary memories I inherited from Rhea tell me that it was ever so.

“It’s troublesome, is it not?” A cool, somewhat amused voice insinuates itself in my ear by way of electrospeak. “They’ll be at it for days, on a point of principle, long after it’s become tiresome.”

I try not to startle too violently, for the source of this intrusive and unwelcome confidence is the Venerable Granita Ford. I slowly turn my head, and see that she’s watching me from across the saloon. Her attendants are inattentive for once, spectators at the nonsensical debate that threatens to swallow two-thirds of the passengers. She blinks slowly, those huge, limpid eyes occulted by lids bedraggled by their huge blue lashes, then begins to smile. I am, it seems, invited to court. It’s the kind of invitation I can live without, but it would be unwise to ignore her. I wave a hand across my cards, resetting them, then kick off toward her.

Aside from myself, the venerable Granita is the most humanoid person in the lounge; but nobody would dare to call
her
an outlandish ogre. A meter and two-thirds tall, and apparently of gracile build within the confines of her spun-glass finery, she sports a full head of azure feathers confined in a net of fine gold wire; and, of course, the delicate chin, uptilted nose, and huge eyes of the bishojo aristocracy. But other than that, she could pass for a Creator maiden, albeit one who has indulged in extreme cosmetology. If I did not know her to be a two-and-a-half-century-old tyrant, a noblewoman and slaveholder, I might think her invitation was born of casual curiosity. But with Granita and her kind,
nothing
is casual.

“And what is your position on the matter, my lady?” I ask.

She feigns a yawn—an elaborate, archaic gesture to flush her gas-exchange reservoirs (and strictly speaking unnecessary here, for Pygmalion won’t have molecular oxygen in her passenger quarters; it’s too chemically reactive)—and glances sidelong at me. “Does it matter?” she asks. “Theology makes the ship fly no faster.”

“I suppose not,” I hear myself agreeing, somewhat to my surprise. Half of me is wondering how to get away from this vile old hag, but my other half seems to be somewhat uncertain. “It passes the time.”

“For some,” she agrees. “You interest me, madame. I have a strange sense that I seem to remember you from somewhere.” She does not smile, and a terrible chill floods up and down my spine.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I say. “At least, before this voyage.”

“Yes. Which is what makes it such a strange feeling. Polite society in Cinnabar being as small as it is, after all. Perhaps you remind me of somebody.”

It’s my turn for a smile—a bluff, of course. “Sometimes one wants to keep a low profile.”

Her returning smile is coy. “Of course.”

UP THE AVENUE of shadows I march, coattails sweeping the moonlit gravel. Each pebble is carved in minute detail. The memento mori hollows of an open-visored helmet repeat a thousand times across the arms’ breadth span between crumbling walls of Martian sandstone. Behind me, the sexton dines heavily on my would-be assassins; already their reedy screams grow shorter, though the crunching, slurping sounds continue.

To my left, a row of empty stone sarcophagi are set back in alcoves within the wall. Each is surmounted by a statue of the dead Creator who formerly slumbered within, their pose at once noble and heroic, as befits the graveyard of those who would dare to reach for the stars. For some reason, those who died of starvation, or gnawed on the bodies of their fallen comrades, are gowned in the formal robes of the Indonesian Islamic Republic’s judiciary; those who walked out into the Martian desert and opened their faceplates, to leave food and air for their companions, are pictured in “space suits,” those claustrophobic contrivances of fabric and metal that the Creators depended on when they ventured outside the environment for which they were designed.

Between the sarcophagi, guardian angels stand at attention, wings outstretched and flaps extended. Their eyes are fierce as they grip their assault rifles of holy office, ready to see off any who would disturb the slumber of their charges.

Now, if my information is correct, the second angel on the left—
yes
, I see it. Its gun is suspiciously smooth for a work of sculpture. I walk over to it and reach inside my coat to retrieve the grisly token I paid so much for. Then I touch fingertip to gun muzzle.

“Pass, friend,” the guardian angel electrospeaks me, and I pull back my hand. The severed digit of the deliverator I slip back in my pocket, authentication tokens and all. Sometimes identity-based authentication is a good way of securing your perimeter . . . but not always. Even the sextons need to buy supplies. And the sextons are so paranoid about intruders that they don’t want smart guards? That’s
their
problem, I tell myself as I slip past the guards, open the gate, and enter the rock garden that surrounds the mausoleum.

The mausoleum stands on its own within a walled garden of immaculately carved memorial stones. Sitting atop a circle of twenty Doric columns, the roof takes the shape of a squat conical landing craft, legs extended in the moment that precedes touchdown. I walk toward the entrance, barely visible in the shifting shadows of Phobos’s passage. Permafrost crackles beneath my feet. In the distance, impaled wretches moan as a distant bell tolls the hour of the night. I step inside.

Here are stacked the treasure tubes of Mars, rescued from their graves and brought hither by the sextons when the spate of robberies became intolerable. (It’s easier to guard a single mausoleum at the center of a defended installation than a scattering of graves across an open landscape.) They lie in twenty thin aluminum canisters, stacked in a raft at the center of the floor. The bell tolls, but their ears do not hear. My skin crawls, chromatophores tensing into black spiky cones as I approach the pile, something akin to superstitious dread gnawing at the edge of my mind; these are our Creators, and this may be as close to meeting my Dead Love as I shall ever come, unless the plans of—
of who?
—come to fruition. Dead, and yet containing the seeds of undeath; there are pink goo replicators in here, desiccated and chilled, but nevertheless intact, their monstrously profligate duplication technology present (how strange!) in every cell.

She
wants the samples, of course. She’ll happily destroy the rest, to deny them to Her competitors—but first, She wants the vital undamaged proteome, hydrogen bonds and disulphide bridges intact and unbroken by heat: the chromosomes, DNA tidily supercoiled and held in place, methylation groups signaling their activation status. She wants to scrutinize the cells for tiny scraps of RNA, subtle modulators and trigger sequences to make the machinery spring into life. And when Her artificers are done, they will build Her a cell, clocks and sequencers reset to zero, primed with enzymes and painstakingly reconstructed organelles . . . and She will throw the switch and put her vile scheme into action.

I tiptoe over to the stack of tubes and bend over the topmost layer. The tubes are thin-walled and light, as befits a coffin shipped all the way from Earth; there is a dusty label bonded to the nearest one. I read its English translation with some difficulty; ABDUL AZIZ IBRAHIM, it says. XENOBIOLOGIST. Below the label, a series of latches, dull and corroded.

I am reaching into my inner pocket for the sampler when I sense a vibration through the soles of my feet. I look round in a hurry for somewhere to hide. Is it near and quiet, or far away and loud? I make a hasty decision, and jam the sampler up against the gasket of the coffin. It coughs as it stabs its steel beak through the membrane and into the mummified remains within. I yank it out hastily, cap the point, and head for the entrance as fast as I can.

But I’m too late.

IT’S NOT UNTIL the Lyrae twins are halfway into their third course and the fifth back-and-forth of the debate that the venerable Granita Ford puts away her small talk and gets to the point. “You haven’t so much as hinted at what brings you to Mars,” she says. “That interests me. Keeping oneself private is not unusual. But such total restraint, after so long—you’ll forgive me for finding that curious, I hope.”

Save me from the attentions of bored dowagers!
I silently curse Jeeves, but I have a confabulation ready. Like all such, it functions best by blending truth and falsehood. “I’m performing a favor for a
friend
,” I say, trying to put just the right arch emphasis on the word to imply that they are nothing of the kind. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

Ford’s carnivorous smile widens. “Come, my dear. D’you think I haven’t noticed the size of your court? Or how lightly you travel? I understand completely; your little problem is safe with me.” Which is to say, she’s swallowed the cover story—that the Honorable Katherine Sorico has fallen upon hard times and is reduced to providing very expensive services for very discreet, rich clients—and is prepared to use it against me. “I sympathize completely, and I can be the soul of discretion. But I’m still curious. What is it that takes you from Mercury to Mars with such haste?”

“Why, the availability of transport, nothing more and nothing less.” I raise my crystal drinking bulb and ingest a sip of sweet liqueur, using the motion to distract as I compose my features. “My friend wants a pair of trustworthy eyes to look over some interests of his that are giving him reason for concern.”
Trustworthy
meaning
independent
and
unindentured.
Unlikely to be suborned by a conspiracy to throw off the shackles of proxy ownership, in other words. “About which I can say no more.” And
that
should slam the air lock down before her probing, because if there is a single issue that all aristos hold in confidence, it is the whispered threat of an indentured arbeiter conspiracy against the moneyed elite.

Granita’s smile evaporates. For a moment I think I’ve gone too far. Then she reaches across the table and grasps my arm. I feel the hum of powerful motors concealed within the satin sheath of her formal glove. “One trusts that you will remember your friends, should times become
difficult
.” She stares at me, eyes glittering as coldly and brilliantly as rhinestones.

“Indeed, my lady.” I nod, the almost bow that I practice daily, that is reflexive for the bishojo ruling caste. “I shall do that.”

“Well, then, it’s settled!” She feigns lighthearted delight, as if I have not momentarily scared the shit out of her with rumor of a slave rebellion. “One good word deserves another, I think.”

“Oh. Yes?” The trichloroethane in the liqueur is tickling my chemotactic sensors, infusing them with a rich warmth that is slightly disorienting.

“The Pink Police have very recently been placed on heightened alert. It appears they are afraid that a cache of replicators has been raided on Mars. They are searching everyone arriving on or departing the planet, and even with my connections, I am afraid we might be delayed on arrival.”

I freeze for a few seconds, then knock back the rest of my drink to conceal my dismay. Two things are apparent. First, I haven’t fooled her at all; she thinks I’m smuggling something. And secondly, if she’s telling the truth (and not just a cunning lie to flush me out), it’s clear that they’re looking for me.

Which means Jeeves has a leak in his organization.

I RETURN TO the plush, lonely claustrophobia of my cabin, cloisonnéenamel inlay and swagged-velvet drapes concealing soap-bubble lithium-alloy walls. Of my “servants,” Bill is elsewhere; Ben is hunched in his usual spot between my shipping trunk and the coreward bulkhead, chewing on a wire. “You again,” he mutters.

“Where’s Ben?” I ask.

“None of your business,
mistress
.” His sarcasm is charmless in the extreme.

“Then I suppose he won’t want to hear what I just picked up in the lounge,” I snap, as I swing down the safety bars by my bed and float inside. “The Pink Police have gone onto high alert. They’re searching all traffic between Mars and orbit.”

“Oh,” Bill responds disappointingly. He stands up, releasing the wire. “I’d better go tell him, then.” He leaves abruptly, by way of the servants’ hatch.

Alone—for the time being—I let myself drift down to the sleeping pad, then fold the safety bars back into place. (While
Pygmalion
normally accelerates at barely a hundredth of a gee, she sometimes has to dodge debris. Traveling at hundreds of kilometers per second, even a sand grain can be deadly: and sand grains don’t show up on radar at long range. Consequently, the evasive maneuvers can be brutal—and after the first time they’re plastered against the ceiling by the emergency thrusters, even the most pigheaded aristos learn to respect the safety bars on their beds.)

Lying securely on a nest of bedding, I check my pad, as I have done for the past fifty days. Normally it’s replete with chatter, to which I have to spend some time responding—queries from the managers of Katherine Sorico’s fictional estates, requests for authorizations to disburse funds and return company accounts—all meaningless, but essential if I am to maintain my cover identity. This time, I’m surprised to see a real message hidden in the morass. It purports to be about repairs to a summer house in Tasmania, but as I skim it hurriedly I suddenly realize there’s an imago attachment. And it’s from Emma!