But by the Bastard Boatman, she hadn’t gotten to be a Blue by being a weakling or a quitter. So she was Commander PalaThion now — well, damn it, shed make the most of it! She reached up with great deliberateness and pinned the badges to her collar. “If you think you’re going to ruin me, if you think I’m going to fail,” she said aloud to the Queen of the Air, “then that’s your second mistake.” But her hands trembled. I won’t jail! I’m as good as any man! feeling the pain of old, deep wounds that weakened her self-belief.
She pulled open the drawer in front of her, reaching for the pack of iestas. But the image of LiouxSked’s agony crossed her vision, and her hand closed over itself instead. She shut the drawer. She had not touched the pack of iestas in all the time since his overdose.
Her glance found the mysterious parcel again; she pulled it across the desk instead, to give her hands and her mind a focus. She untied the twine, unwrapped the rough brown cloth that covered a crude box. It looked like something that had come from the outback on a trader’s ship; and there was no one out there whom she could envision sending a parcel to an inspector of police.
She opened the box and lifted the contents out carefully: a shell the size of her two open hands, with one of the spiny fingers broken off of its fragile crest. It was the color of sunrise, and its surface had been patiently burnished until it glowed like the dawn sky. She had seen it last, and admired it, on the mantel over the fireplace at Ngenet ran Ahase Miroe’s plantation house… while she stood listening to the flames crack in the easy silence, sipping the strong black tea Ngenet had urged on her before she went on her way to Carbuncle. That surprisingly peaceful moment came back to her now quite clearly, soothing her. Ironic to think that the only pleasant social visit she could remember since coming to this world ten years ago had been fifteen minutes spent in the company of a man who was probably breaking the law…
She probed inside the shell with her fingers, dumped the packing out of the box; but there was no message for her. She sighed — not sure what she had been expecting, only disappointed that it wasn’t there. “Congratulations on your promotion, Geia Jerusha,” she said wearily. She picked up the shell again, closed her eyes; held it against her ear in the way Ngenet had shown her, listening for the voice of the Sea.
18
HEY SPARKS, DON’T LEAVE WHILE YOU’RE HOT. GIVE US A CHANCE TO BREAK EVEN.
The hologrammic torso above the ravaged city on the game table threw the protest at him as he removed his fragile headset. But he hung it up on the terminal, officially withdrawing.
“Sorry.” He grinned with nonchalant smugness, making his answer more to the hostile stares of the other players than to the computer controlling the phantom croupier. “It’s getting boring.” He tapped his credit card into the slot, saw it pop out again with the new sum — more money than he had imagined existed in the world a few months ago. The idea that it all belonged to him had almost stopped impressing him now; now that he knew how much wealth circulated along the spiraling Street of Carbuncle. He was even getting a feel for how much money must flow through the Black Gates to the other worlds of the Hegemony… he was learning fast. But not fast enough.
He lurched away from the table, drunk on rose-colored Samathan wine, but not so drunk that he couldn’t quit while he was ahead. That was one of the things he was good at, he thought, knowing the odds and his own limits — that was why he was winning more and more often at the games. Arienrhod kept him supplied with money, and he spent the time when he was free of Starbuck’s official persona squandering it in the saloons and gambling halls up and down the Street; ingratiating himself with as many of his fellow pleasure takers as he could stomach. Listening, asking, watching the undercurrents shift: trying to get a feel for where the information came from and flowed to.
But he was struggling to climb out of a pit of abysmal ignorance, and when the wine and the drugged perfume of too many rooms like this one began to clog his senses, the frustration rose up in him until he ached. There was nothing about the city that gave him any pleasure any more: The things that had delighted a Summer boy might still exist here in the Maze’s vibrant convolutions, but he no longer saw them. The longer he lived in Carbuncle, the more he despised the people who were its life.
He had begun to hate the sight of everything and everyone, without knowing why; the blackness stained his past and future, and even the sight of his own face. Everything — except Arienrhod. Arienrhod understood the blackness that lay like poisoned pools in the deepest places of his mind; knew how to bleed off his hostility; reassured him that every soul was black at the heart. Arienrhod comforted him, Arienrhod brought him peace, Arienrhod granted his every wish… Arienrhod loved him. And the fear that he might lose her love, make her regret that she had let him become Starbuck — see her cast him off, as she had cast off his rival — was a cloud always lying on the horizon of that peaceful sea.
She used her own extensive system of electronic spies and confiding nobles to augment the scraps of information he brought her; but off worlders who really had something to hide had effective countermeasures, and he knew that she missed the insider’s knowledge of a real Starbuck, a man who had spent his life among them. The day would come when she would begin to resent his Summer ignorance. Maybe, drunk with the moment, he had lost sight of his own limits just once…
Sparks pushed his credit card into the lining of his belt, felt his elation sour as he started away from the table. He wondered briefly, resentfully, whether he was really any good at these games; or whether Arienrhod watched him secretly even here and arranged the winning for him.
He shook the thought off, his hands bunching on his belt; glanced across the scape of turba ned heads, bare heads, caps, helmets, gem woven coiffures, bowed in unholy worship within the flickering panoramas of their chosen games of chance. This was one of the high class hells; more sophisticated, less luridly obvious than the cheaper joints in the lower Maze, which catered to a crowd made up largely of Winter laborers. But even here there was no honest joy. The players laughed and cursed with equal vindictiveness, oblivious to the glaring music that blurred conversation and muted the sounds from the next room. In the next room were the dream machines, where you could lock yourself into terrifying experiences on other worlds, commit any crime, experience anything up to the moment of death that you had the courage to endure. He used them more and more, and they gave him less and less.
He began to weave his way between the tables toward the entrance, moving with a purpose and assurance that belonged to another man: a man who wore a mask and an off world medallion on his chest. Sparks Dawntreader wore a bright-banded imported tunic and high boots; his hair was cut short like a Winter’s — but it was the unaware arrogance of Starbuck that made the other patrons step out of his way.
“You look like a man who knows what he wants.” The one who didn’t move aside stepped boldly into his path, the slitted silver of her long gown disguising nothing.
He looked, and looked away again, still less than comfortable with the publicity of sexual advances here in the city. “No, thanks. I just want to get out of here.” The silver of her gown, for a flashing instant, made him think of silver-white hair… He pushed on past, trying not to touch her. He felt no real desire for any woman except Arienrhod now: Arienrhod who was teaching him to desire things he had never even dreamed about. And the idea of sex for money seemed grotesque and perverted, even though he knew that half the women and men who offered their bodies in these places were Winters. Bored or money-hungry, they had adapted their normal easiness about sex to the off worlders mercenary appetities.