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.
“Good… I’m expecting a particularly important visitor tonight. Make certain the inner meeting room is secure, and prepared appropriately. She will be at the side entrance at midnight. See that she isn’t kept waiting.”
“Yes, master.” She? There were not too many women in the underworld society who rated such solicitude in an audience with the Source.
“That’s all, Persipone. Go back to your guests.”
“Thank you, master,” meekly. The door opened and she escaped, blinking again, into the white glare of the hall beyond. She sighed as the door clicked securely behind her; not offended, as she walked away, that he found her unattractive — only relieved. He was completely off her scale of ambition, and in her private heart she was very much afraid of him, for all the rational reasons — and for all the reasons a child fears the dark.
Arienrhod followed the lurid figure of Persipone through the private passageways to the Source’s inner meeting room. The sounds of the casino reached her distantly through the barrier of separating walls, a deep throbbing that was more vibration than true sound, that reached into her chest like death’s hand. It was more than appropriate she thought, that the heartless merriment of the gaming crowds should show its real nature here in the shadowy halls of the Source’s hidden power. Persipone stopped ahead of her, before a sealed doorway that looked like any other they had passed, and beckoned to her. She moved forward, and Persipone pressed her hand against a panel in the door — the arrival signal, as though they were not already being observed. She nodded to Arienrhod with self-conscious deference, and went away down the hall. Arienrhod was certain that the woman recognized her; wondered what she would think if she realized that Tor Starhiker/Persipone was equally well-known to her Queen as Sparks Dawntreader’s pawn.
But the door was opening before her, opening on darkness, and she put all other thoughts out of her mind. She pushed back the hood of her shadow-colored cloak and walked boldly forward, without waiting to be summoned. But as she crossed over the threshold the door sealed again behind her, sealing her into utter lightlessness. Panic seized her with heavy hands, as it always did. Suddenly it was hard not to believe that she had stepped into another plane, into the merciless unknown of an interstellar vice network — out of the world she knew and controlled. That she was lost… Her mechanical spies peered into every corner of this city, but they could not penetrate this place: It was guarded by even more powerful and sophisticated technology… this all-pervasive darkness that tried to smother her will and swallow her self-control. She stood rigidly still, until the moment passed and she recaptured her perspective. Darkness . it’s a damn good trick. I wish I’d thought of it.
“Your Majesty. You honor my humble establishment.” The Source’s ruined voice (like the voice of a corpse; or was that just an effect, too?) hissed the welcome, oddly accented. “Please take a seat, make yourself comfortable. I would hate to keep the Lady standing.”
Arienrhod noted the intentional play on words, the reference to her barbarian heritage. She made no response, but moved forward confidently to take the deeply cushioned seat across the empty table from him. Ever since their first meeting, where she had been forced to grope humiliatingly through the dark, she had been certain to wear light-enhancing contact lenses when she came to call on him. As her visual purple built up she could actually make out the general form of the room’s contents, and the uncertain outline of the Source himself. Try as she would, she could not fill in the features of his face.
“What is your pleasure, Your Majesty? I have a full store of sensory delights, if you care to indulge.” A broad hand gestured, vaguely misshapen.
“Not tonight.” She gave him no title, refusing to acknowledge the one he demanded of his other clients. “I never combine business with pleasure, unless it’s absolutely necessary.” She felt the heightened intensity of her other senses in the darkened room, and how her crippled sight still struggled to dominate them.