“All right…” The curly head bobbed once, and then the somber, up slanting eyes found her face again. “When I’m grown, I’m going to be a Blue too.”
Jerusha smiled, without irony or condescension. “Yes, I think maybe you will.”
They glanced up together as Marika entered the den, veiled in gray; she gestured her daughter to her side, and Andradi moved away reluctantly. “Everything is ready, Jerusha.” Her voice was as dreary and gray as she was. “You may see us to the star port now.”
Jerusha nodded. “Yes, Madame LiouxSked.” She followed them gladly out of the abandoned room.
Jerusha left the hovercraft to an attendant whose presence she barely registered, walked toward the heavy windowed doors that separated the cavernous garage from police headquarters on the other side. The whole of this alley was taken up by offices and detention cells and the court buildings, a drab stain of moral rectitude on the crazy quilt of the Maze. Officially it was the Olivine Alley; but everyone, including its inhabitants, knew it as Blue Alley.
She barely remembered to pause for the second it took the sluggish doors to snap open and let her pass through, into the anonymous hallway beyond. Her mind still lay on the trip she had just made, the reason for it, the whole incredible, ugly chain of events that had shaken everyone in this’ Excuse me, patrolman. Excuse me, patrolman. Excuse me, patrolman.”
Something clutched at her uniform sleeve as she pushed into the crowded ward room. She looked up distractedly into the faceless plastic shielding a head full of mechanical brains — a pol rob blocking her way with mindless urgency. “Inspector,” she said, with something of the same robot monotony. Someone jostled her from behind.
“Excuse me, Inspector. I must make my report and return to work. Please authorize me.” There was a hint of desperation in the mechanical inflections. “A man from Number Four has been making seditious remarks about the Hegemony in the Stardock Bar. He is also telling locals that sibyls have access to forbidden knowledge. He appears to be under the influence of drugs.”
“Yeah, all right, authorization 77A. File an ident on him and we’ll pick him up.” Drugs. Don’t think about drugs. She moved on across the room, concentrating on not looking toward what had been LiouxSked’s private office until a month ago.
“Excuse me, Inspector!” This time from an apologetic patrolman as he backed into her with an armload of holo files.
“My fault; I wasn’t watching.” Already the inundation of paperwork that marked the end of their stay on Tiamat was beginning to mount. Merchants and other resident aliens had already begun to worry about the future, or the lack of it; begun to plague the bureaucracy about the hundred different permits and forms and regulations it demanded of them before the final departure. And if she thought they were busy now, just wait another four years… Yes, busy, busy, have to keep busy; too busy to think about it…
But nothing kept her mind clogged with interference loud enough to drown the images of horror and grief for long. She had not lied when she told Andradi that her father didn’t make himself into a drooling vegetable. It made no sense — she knew that man, and whatever he might have been, or done, he was not the kind of man to play with drugs. Hell, he wouldn’t touch a pack of iestas! But there were half a hundred dealers in Carbuncle who could arrange to have an overdose dropped into a cup of tea or a bowl of soup.
And one person who might want to see it happen — Arienrhod. Jerusha had seen the look on her face at the news of the girl Moon’s kidnapping — the fury and despair. And suddenly she had known why Moon Dawntreader had looked at her from the face of another woman, the face of Winter’s Queen. There was only one way a perfect stranger could be the Queen’s double — and that was if that stranger was the Queen’s clone. Arienrhod had had plans for that girl, plans that must have had something to do with the coming Change, when the off worlders would leave and turn this world over to the Summers again. Their records showed that every past Snow Queen had tried something to keep her power, and Winter’s reign, intact when the Change came. Somehow that girl had fitted into this queen’s plan; she was sure of it. But she had spoiled that plan inadvertently. And Arienrhod was not a woman to let an injury go unpunished. She had taken revenge on the force, on LiouxSked; Jerusha was sure of that, too, just as she was sure that she would never be able to prove it. But she might be able to find out who had done the actual deed…
If the Queen didn’t take revenge on her before then. Jerusha swallowed the familiar lump of tension that formed in her throat. She was the one actually to blame; if Arienrhod wanted to punish anyone, it ought to be her. She had barely been able to eat or drink for a week, afraid that the thing that had happened to LiouxSked was waiting to happen to her. And maybe that was part of the punishment: the waiting. Gods, she couldn’t stand it, to end up like that…
“Inspector.”
She flinched with the shock of her return to the real world; blinked the corridor that led to her office, and Gundhalinu’s worried face, into focus. “Oh… BZ, what are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of her office, back at her, concern spreading on his freckled face. “Inspector, the Commander’s sitting down there in your office — and so is the Chief Justice. I don’t know what the hell they want, but I thought you ought to have some warning.”
“The Chief Justice?” Her voice echoed incredulously along the walls. “Shit.” She shut her eyes. “It looks like the waiting is over.”
Gundhalinu raised his eyebrows. “You know what it’s about?”
“Not exactly.” She shook her head, feeling cold despair settle in the pit of her stomach. The Chief Justice was at the pinnacle of the off world judicial system on Tiamat, the only man who could give orders to the Commander of Police. There was no reason she could possibly imagine for his being in her office… no good reason. This was Arienrhod’s revenge, then. Was she being dismissed, arrested, deported; charged with corruption, coercion, sex perversion? A thousand nightmares of unjust persecution peopled the silent hallway like a gauntlet of demons, waiting for her to pass. Maybe I should have gotten on that ship this morning after all. “Thanks for the warning, BZ.” Her voice sounded small and faraway.
“Inspector—” Gundhalinu hesitated, his eyes still asking the question he didn’t have the nerve to ask aloud.
“Later.” She took a deep breath. “Ask me later, when I know the answer.” She went on down the hall, knowing as she took each step that it was the bravest thing she had ever done.
She saw them through the clear panel of the door before they noticed her standing outside it. Mantagnes, formerly Chief Inspector and now the Acting Commander, sat tapping on her desk terminal with ill-concealed discomfort; the aging Chief Justice sat in a chair, gaunt with dignity in his tight-collared official robes. She felt her hand slip as she turned the tarnished brass knob on the door.
Both men rose abruptly as she entered the room. The unexpectedness of it left her staring; she recovered in time to make her salute, a fraction of a second before Mantagnes began his own. “Commander… Your Honor.” The Chief Justice acknowledged her; they both remained standing. She wondered whether they were waiting for her to sit down first out of some misguided sense of tribunal chivalry. She glanced at the emptiness behind her; if they were, then they must be expecting her to sit on the floor. “Please . don’t stand on my account.” The gracious tone rang very false in the small space. She didn’t try to match it with a smile.