No, it wasn’t so bad at all, not any of it: running a casino, taking care of business as the front woman for the Source’s own on-planet interests. She was the Hostess, the titular owner, of Persipone’s Hell, unquestionably the finest gambling hell in Carbuncle. And on the side she tended to whatever other discreet dealings the Source — the head man of the off world criminal subculture on Tiamat — told her to tend to. It was a part of the Queen’s policy to provide capable Winters to act as a screen for off worlder illegalities, so the vice lords themselves could operate with virtual impunity, free of harassment by the Hedge’s police. She had been picked up four times by the Blues as she was working her way into the Source’s favor; but they had had to turn her over to the Queen’s guard, who had simply let her go.
“Hey—” She squinted through the dance of shifting bodies, saw more clearly the off worlder who had just come through the curtain of tiny, shimmering mirrors with a zombie in tow. “Pollux!” She pressed the caller on her bracelet as a secondary summons as she shouted into the throbbing music around her. Pollux appeared at her shoulder with the reassuring solidness of steel. “That pervert who just came in the door; show him out again. We don’t need his business.” She pointed, trying not to see whether the zombie was male or female, or any detail of its form. The very sight sickened her, and the sight of a man or woman who enjoyed using a living body that way.
“Whatever you say, Tor.” Pollux moved away with single-minded inevitability. He made a better bouncer than any of the humans who worked in this place; she had bought out his rental contract for the duration.
It had all worked out so perfectly… funny how it had. Even Herne… She turned back, leaning an elbow on one end of the coal-black, curving bar. The strange light-absorbing material sucked the warmth out through her skin; she shivered and straightened up. Farther down the way Herne sat in command of the banks of automated drink and drug dispensers, an outrageously popular anachronism. Putting him in charge of the bar, where customers gathered to lose their inhibitions along with their good credit, had been her most inspired move. They spilled their guts to each other, and better yet to him; and she fed what he learned to Dawntreader, who still lapped it up like an addict after all these years.
Who would ever have dreamed, that day in Fate’s alley when Dawntreader had nearly strangled her, that his bad temper would lead her to this? But between Herne ’s savvy and Dawntreader’s contacts with somebody up the line, she had risen higher and faster than she had ever dreamed of doing.
“Hey, Persipone, baby, the Source wants you.” Oyarzabal, one of the Source’s lieutenants, was abruptly behind her. His hands settled on her waist, got dangerously personal under the bib of her sensuous evening suit.
She controlled the unsubtle urge to dig an elbow into his ribs. She had learned tact and sophistication of a sort, painfully, since leaving the loading docks; getting mauled came with the territory. “Careful. You’ll set off my burglar alarm.” She pushed his hands away, but not too far. Oyarzabal was a jerk, proven by the fact that he seemed to prefer her to his choice of the easy, chic women who flowed through this place; but she didn’t work too hard at discouraging him. He was a onetime farmboy from somewhere on Big Blue, and attractive in a loutish, overgrown sort of way. She had gone to bed with him a few times, and hadn’t been too disappointed. She’d even toyed with the idea of getting him to marry her before the final departure, and getting off Tiamat for good.
“Hey, sweeting, how about later on you and me—”
“Tonight’s taken.” She started away before he could get his hands on her again; glanced back, relenting a little, enough for a smile. “Ask me tomorrow.”
He grinned. His teeth were inlaid with rhinestones. She turned away again, shaking her head.
She made her way through the crowd, through the forbidden door that led her to the Source’s private suite of offices and guarded meeting rooms — guarded not only by hidden human eyes, but also by the most elaborate anti snoop devices money could buy. When she had learned that Herne was a Kharemoughi, she had asked him about the possibility of using his legendary technical prowess to let her eavesdrop on the Source’s private dealings. But he was no match for the electronic guards, and she had finally realized that all Kharemoughis weren’t born knowing how a turn ore into computer terminals. So she had had to be content with noticing who called on the Source, and when, and only suspecting why.
She didn’t much like being the caller herself. The door to his office opened as she reached it, with the prescience she had learned to expect, and let her in to her audience. She blinked compulsively and slowed as she entered; the room was dark to the point of blindness for her, as it always was. Incense clogged the air with an overwhelming sweetness. She lifted a hand to rub her eyes, stopped it just short of ruining the perfect flowers painted over her lids. She let her hand drop again, resigned, as a dark form began to coalesce against a dimly reddening background: the Source, in silhouette, the only way she had ever seen him.
She had been told by Oyarzabal that the Source had some disease that made his eyes unable to stand the light. She didn’t know whether to believe it, or just to figure that he liked to keep his face hidden. Sometimes, as she adjusted slowly to the dull wash of red from the wall behind him, she thought there might be a distortion about his face. But she could never be sure.
“Persipone.” His voice was a rasping whisper, and again she didn’t know whether it was the real one. He spoke with an accent she couldn’t identify.
“Here, master.” His chosen form of address took on new and sinister meanings here in the blackness. She pushed uneasily at her wig, her scalp itching with sudden tension. He saw perfectly well in the darkness, she knew, and at each visit she was forced to endure his scrutiny.
“Turn around.”
She circled on the deep carpet pile, wondering pointlessly what color it really was, or whether it was simply black.
“Better… yes, I like it better. You’ll never be beautiful, you know; but you’re learning to disguise the fact. You’ve come a long way. I didn’t think you would come such a long way.”
“Yes, master. Thank you, master.” You’re telling me. She didn’t tell him that she had begun to let Pollux pick her clothes for her. His totally impartial judgment topped her own uncertain taste in choosing the styles that made the most of her flawed body; with the wig and the paint she could, as the Source said, disguise her unrelenting plainness.
“But then, how could anyone be compared to the ideal, and not suffer by the comparison… ?” His voice sighed away, he was silent again through seconds that hung on like hours. Once, when she had been allowed a small red-tipped pencil of light to read a list of directions, she had glimpsed a picture-square on the desk, a woman’s face. A woman of striking off world beauty, with a fog of ebony hair netted in gold. And she had understood with abrupt discomfort why she was wearing the same hair, and why her predecessors had worn it too; and why this place was Persipones, and why they all were, too. It had surprised her that a man like the Source might have loved or even hated one woman enough to be obsessed by her; and it gave her the creeps to be window dressing to the obsession. But the rewards had been enough to keep her from saying so.
“How is business tonight?”
“Real good, master. It’s payday over at the star port we’ve got a big crowd.”
“Was the latest deal successful? Have you got sufficient — variety on hand to satisfy certain private customers?”
“Yeah, Coonabarabran was right where you said he’d be, and everything on him. We can handle any pleasure tonight.” She was sure he already knew the answer to the questions, and so she always answered honestly. He did not ask her to handle all his requests — she didn’t mind fronting on drug transactions, because she could keep herself mentally clear of the consequences. The Source oversaw, and dabbled in, numerous other illegal transactions, and there were some she couldn’t stomach. But there was always someone else around who could.