Saturn's Children (32 page)

Granita doesn’t answer, but turns and strides toward the door in a swirl of heavy skirts. After a moment I follow her. There doesn’t seem to be anything else I can do. Two of the scissor soldiers follow us, brooding-nightmare statues that cast long shadows.

We ride the elevator down to the lobby in silence. I don’t want to risk provoking her. She was always hard to read, and I’m sure there’ll be an opportunity to get away later. My mind’s spinning.
Why did she
do that
to Jeeves?
I wonder. The main players in this little game have exercised discretion in attacking one another so far. I find myself shaking as I remember the sight of him, flaccid and dead-looking in the chair, arms and legs piled haphazard and broken in a corner of the room. Something about the sight fills me with more than horror; there’s
grief
hidden in the mix that is me. And frustration, a feeling that things could have been different.
Did she slave-chip him?
I think, morbidly aware that if that’s the case, the game is up; she knows everything he’s got access to.
Did she
—my hand goes to the nape of my neck instinctively.

“Don’t fidget,” Granita says sharply, and I whip my hands behind my back, to rub my sore wrists together where she can’t see them. “Calm down, there’s nothing to get worked up about.” The elevator doors open. “Follow me.”

There’s a sleigh in silver-and-blue livery sitting on its skids outside the air lock, bubble canopy gleaming gold beneath the ominous stare of Jupiter. Ice crunches beneath my heels as I follow Granita over to it. She climbs aboard, and motions me to the jump seat opposite her. The two scissor soldiers of her escort take up position on the running boards and latch on to external hard points. As I strap myself down, the canopy closes, and the sleigh spews chilly air across my feet. She gestures at a microfiber rug. “You might as well tuck yourself in,” she says. “We’ve got a long way to fly, and it’s going to be a cold night.”

I humor her as the sleigh’s rocket motors begin to howl distantly and the antisound cuts in, relegating it to a low moan and a faint vibration underfoot. I sit still—
don’t fidget,
I recall—as we rise quickly and accelerate, heading west across the icy rubble-strewn bull’s-eye of the Valhalla Basin, directly toward the sunset.

After a couple of minutes, Granita deigns to break the silence. “You’re probably wondering why I had you taken,” she says hesitantly. “And what I’m doing with that Jeeves.” She sounds almost troubled— a far cry from her usual self.
What kind of game can she he playing?
I wonder.

“Yes,” I say, cautiously. It seems like the right thing to do.

“Well. Aside from reclaiming my misplaced and misused property, we share a common . . . purpose.” She puts a strange emphasis on the final word and looks at me significantly. “Don’t move.”

I freeze, apprehension clinging to me like an icy, damp dress.

“Very good. I was wondering if they’d damaged you back at that greasy turd-bag’s office. I told them to take care, but . . . from now on, you’re going to leave your cranial sockets alone unless I tell you to touch them. Do you understand?”

Not understanding, I nod.

Something about the set of her shoulders relaxes infinitesimally. “Good.” Her lips quirk in something not unlike a smile. “The Supreme Jeeves wanted you in position here because Jupiter system is the gateway to the outer darkness. You may think he’s a nice guy, but he isn’t, really; he was going to have you chipped and reprogrammed as an assassin, Kate. Use you as an impersonator aimed at me. That’s what the, the property of mine that he stole is all about. Then he was going to send you on a suicide mission to Eris with a bomb in your abdomen.”

Huh?
If she thinks that, she obviously doesn’t know Jeeves. Although something tells me that there is more than one Jeeves that we are talking about—possibly more than two. I open my mouth to protest, but she holds up a hand. “Silence, Kate. Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling you what you need to know to survive.”

I shut my mouth again, and she continues. “I’m guessing you’re Freya. If not Freya, then you’re either Samantha or Paloma. Jeeves was aiming to get his claws into all of—don’t look so surprised, you’re all targets—all of us. I had to have you all declared illiquid and seized— in your case, personally. Which are you, by the way?”

I could kick myself;
I’ve been so stupid!
I lick my lips. “Freya.” Something about this whole setup feels horribly wrong in some way, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Her reaction to me is odd—surely there should be a little more fire, a little less distance? First she seduced me, then she tried to have me killed—

“Very good, Freya. Well, from now on you’re Katherine Sorico. Yes, I know
all
about Jeeves’s little stolen-identity ring. You’re not the only walking hollowed-out shell company his tame murderers gutted. Nor are you the only Rhea-lineage escort they’ve turned into an assassin. But I know how to deal with your kind.” She blinks slowly and stares at me for a minute.

I feel as if I ought to say something, but I’m not sure what. Finally, when I’m certain she’s not about to start speaking again, I open my mouth. “That’s pretty rich coming from you, Granita. After you tried to kill me when I declined your offer.”

“You turned me down?” She raises an ironic eyebrow, and I feel a momentary stab of lust in my guts. “Funny, I don’t remember that. I don’t generally make offers that people can refuse, Kate.”
She’s playing with me!
“What offer do you think I made you?” Her smile is mischievous.

“You wanted me to be your personal dominatrix.” My lips are dry and rimed with ice. “To be part of your household and to do for you what I did aboard the
Pygmalion
. You were going to dress me in blackened steel with spikes, and call me your mistress...”

“Was I indeed?” Her tone is as dry as the ice desert we fly across. “Well, there’s a thought. Such offers don’t come every day. Why did you refuse?”

“I didn’t want to be—” I can’t quite think of it.

“Let me tell you what you didn’t want.” Granita leans forward, smiling oddly. “Control level nine. Freeze.”

I find myself unable to move. I can’t look away from her distant expression of amusement, can’t think of anything else: “Yes, Kate, I slave-chipped you. You’ve been running on control level one, with maximal autonomy, so light you didn’t even notice it—you probably thought you were humoring me, going along until you could find an opportunity to escape. Welcome to level nine. Say ’yes.’ ”

“Yes,” I croak.

“Say, ‘Granita is my owner.’ ”

I know I ought not to want to, but I don’t actually feel any resentment. “Granita is my owner.”

“Now punch yourself in the face.”

I don’t even see my hand swing up, fist balled, but my head bounces off the seat back and the pain is brutal and sudden.

“Remember this is level nine,” Granita says, when she is quite sure I am listening again. “Level ten control is reserved for our dead Creator’s police agencies—it requires human authentication and not even the Pink Police have access to that without a human in the loop—you’re not going there.” She’s not smiling now. “Control level one.”

My mind clears. I shoot her a venomous look, but I’m quite calm. Struggling isn’t going to work, is it? I reach up and begin to remove both the soul chips I’m wearing, then realize I’m daydreaming idly. My hands rest quiescent on top of the blanket in my lap. But my face still stings.

“Here are your guiding instructions, Katherine Sorico. You will obey me as if I were your template-matriarch and execute my orders with enthusiasm. You will not attempt to remove your currently socketed chips, and you will resist attempts to remove them. You will not disclose to any other person that I control you. If anyone asks, you are Katherine Sorico and you are an independent aristo who is happy to be my friend and associate of her own free will. You no longer need to be depressed because you will find personal fulfillment and happiness in pursuing my objectives, which you will seek to fulfill by any appropriate means. You will be happy when you complete assigned tasks, ecstatic when you successfully find a new way to help me, and depressed when you contemplate disobedience or failure. You will only become sexually aroused in my presence or by people I tell you to seduce. Do you understand? You may talk freely now.”

“I think so.” It’s a lot to get my head around all at once, and her phrasing is odd, not to mention that some of it seems harsh.
No lovers?
What’s the point of that? “Do you want to give me any extra instructions now? I mean, if I don’t know what your goals
are
—”

“Very good, dear.” Granita smiles happily now. She reaches out and takes my nearest hand between hers. “Yes, I have some extra instructions for you before I outline my goals. But first, I want you to tell me everything that happened since the moment you met your first Jeeves ...”

WE TRAVEL WEST into the darkening night side of Callisto for hours. I tell Granita all about my travels, even the stuff she already knows—she seems eager to hear about herself as I saw her, and asks many questions, especially about our relationship. She seems to be obsessed with knowing how others see her, which is odd—she didn’t strike me as being so self-conscious aboard
Pygmalion
. But what do I know? I’m her property now. Maybe when we arrive wherever we’re going, she’ll take me back into her bedroom. I can hope!

I know I ought to be climbing the walls or throwing a tantrum, but Granita is a levelheaded and experienced slave owner, and knows exactly what she’s doing. She eased me in gently and told me to stay calm, which is excellent advice when you’ve just had a controller installed and your owner is demonstrating it to you. It’s not so bad, really—she doesn’t want me to be afraid of her, she just wants me to enjoy serving her. I wish she’d tell me what she wants me to do, though.

(Some of my memories of sibs are kicking up a fuss, of course. Juliette is in there, yammering loudly about free will and swearing at me, but I don’t need to listen to her. It’s not as if she’s got a leg to stand on when she accuses me of submitting voluntarily, is it? After all, she gets wet whenever she so much as thinks about Petruchio. And there’s something creepy about the way she felt about Jeeves, back in that office.)

When I tell Granita about my meeting with Pete, she gives me a withering look. “You’re not in love with him,” she tells me curtly. “If you’re in love with anyone, it’s me.” And she’s right. I blink stupidly at her. Why did I imagine he meant anything to me when it was all just backwash from Juliette’s memories annealing with my own? He told me he didn’t want me! This makes it all so much simpler, although the realization brings a certain cognitive backlash. I thank Granita, repeatedly trying to express my relief, until she holds up a hand. “That’s enough. Continue your report.” Which I do, although it’s a trifle hard to concentrate when I keep imagining I’m sitting on her lap, and she’s undressing me.

Presently, the sleigh slows and slides toward the inner slope of a crater edge, where pinprick green lights delineate the maw of a private vehicle park. Fuel lines snake across the carved apron toward us from either side; we’ve flown nearly two thousand kilometers, a quarter of the way around the equator of Callisto, and the sleigh needs refueling. A fat docking tunnel oozes forward on millipede legs, sucking and rippling as it slobbers for a grip on the bubble canopy. Granita unfastens her lap belt and stands up as the canopy dissolves. “Follow me,” she says, and strides up the tube.

I follow my mistress up the tunnel and into a chilly reception area (and doesn’t it feel strangely natural to be possessed? I know I ought to be screaming, but really, there’s no point). Servants fawn over her and ignore me until she says, “This is the Honorable Katherine Sorico, my new associate. You, take Madame Sorico to one of the secondary guest suites and give her anything she asks for. Within reason,” she adds for my benefit with a warning glance. “Prepare yourself for a long journey. Select suitable apparel and baggage. No more than fifty kilos.”

Gulp.
“Inner system?” I ask.

“No. Outer. We shall be leaving as soon as I have attended to certain matters, and my factor finishes purchasing the lease on a ship.”

“Are we—”

“Later, Kate,” she says sharply, and turns away.

I shut up, and look at the munchkin servant she told to see to me, a doll-like figure dressed in a livery that mirrors the colors of her establishment (for Granita has clothed all her servants in silver and white lace, the colors of her house). He’s strangely familiar.

“Well?” I ask.

The small guy looks up at me with an expression of blank indifference. “This way, Big Slow.”

I try to keep up as he scuttles through a bewildering series of corridors dead-ending in rococo reception suites and broad, sweeping staircases and baroque ballrooms until finally we end up in a cramped cubbyhole not unlike the succession of second-rate hotel rooms I have been living out of for so long. “Where are we?” I ask.

“We’re on Callisto,” he says patiently, as if talking to a damaged arbeiter. “Need anything? Or can I go, now?”

“Where in Callisto?” I press, unsure why I need the information.

“We’re in
her
palace,” says the munchkin. “Don’t ask me where that is, I just work here.” Then he turns to head for the exit.

“Not so fast.” I plant the palm of one hand on his head. “I’m checked in at the Nerrivik Paris. Tell someone to check me out and bring my bags here. Failing that, scan the contents and copy them to a printer here. Yes?”

“In your dreams, manikin.” He glares at me, buzzes irritably, and zips away. I shake my head, bemused. He’s so like Bill and Ben—and whatever happened to them anyway, after we split at Marsport?
Jeeves didn’t know
—

I shudder, then I remember that it doesn’t matter anymore.