Saturn's Children (7 page)

“Don’t leave me here,”
I wail, overwhelmed by a sudden bleak stab of horror. (For some reason part of me expected that thing—whoever, whatever, it is—to rescue me. And now that part of me feels betrayed.) I can see what’s going to happen, as if in a theater of gore—the spectacle of my demise. Here I am, tied across three tracks, my head anchored to the northernmost one by my own hair. Here comes Cinnabar, squealing and grating along the tracks on motors powered by the thermal expansion of red-hot metal just beyond the bright horizon. The moving mountain rolls toward me like an incarnation of doom, swallowing the world. First I’ll see the overhanging lip of the city, then the guide-wheel bogies to either side. Stone’s sibs have staked me out thoughtfully close to the center, where the great grinding power wheels drive the city forward at a stately twelve and a half kilometers per hour. Somewhere high up, out of sight beyond the curve of the carrier deck, two evil dolls toast my demise with icy drafts of malice. I freeze for a minute as I imagine the shadows lengthening across me, then a brief glimpse of curved mirror-finished steel, then my head popping apart like a plastic fuel canister as knife-rimmed wheels slice off my feet at the ankles, crunch through my abdominal cavity—

Stop whining and pull yourself together,
part of me warns grimly. The sunlight is already dimming: I can see stars smeared across the sky behind the city.
You’ve got about three minutes of sunlight left, then twelve minutes until it’s over. Which is more important: your hair or your life?

I blink at the sudden realization. If my feet were free I’d kick myself in the ass: I’m a fool!
There may not be enough time ...

I have a full head of long ruby red hair, one of my least unfashionable qualities. It grows from an array of extrusion follicles in my scalp and falls halfway down my back when I wear it loose. The aristo assassins used my own braids to tie my head across the track—they’ve knotted them in two thick hanks under the rail, and I’m not strong enough to yank my own scalp off. But if I
grow
it . . .

Well, yes.
I force my scalp into activity, steeling myself against the crawling, chilly itch as I squeeze everything I can into extruding more hair, willing it to grow. I don’t normally let my hair grow from day to day, but in a fashion emergency I can make ten centimeters in an hour—it’s physically draining, and it never looks as good, but it’ll do at a pinch. Now, with panic driving my follicles into a frenzy, my glands pulse as I strain my neck muscles against my bonds. The hair grows white and fine as glass. As I pull on the still-setting fibers, they stretch, thinning to invisibility—then they begin to snap.

For the first couple of minutes I’m not sure it’s going to work (and wouldn’t it be a crying shame to go to my death looking my worst for my enemy’s imago?), but then I discover I can nearly touch my chest with my chin. I stop squeezing my follicles, lean back until my head is touching the rail, then tense my shoulders and do my best to sit up. There’s an awful tearing from my scalp, then sudden freedom. I pull my head away from my magnificent mane, leaving it wrapped around the rail, its roots thinned to translucency. I’m as bald and ugly as any mecha. I shiver in disgust at the picture I must make: Luckily, I’m the only mirror around here, except for the silent witnesses . . .

A few minutes pass in shock and near exhaustion. The tracks hum and vibrate more urgently beneath my buttocks and ankles. I can tense my abdomen and pull myself nearly upright, but now I face a crueler fate—bisection without extinction. There’s no way I can regenerate from such damage unaided! They’ve shrink-wrapped my arms together behind my back with a sheet of industrial sealant, and lashed it to the rail with a rope—I can flex my fingertips freely, but I can’t get my nails into position to cut through it and it’s far too tough to rip. Not even the silicone lube I sweat when I’m aroused would help.
You could chew your own arms off,
one of myselves suggests dryly. Her lack of ironic awareness frightens me almost as much as the suggestion.
They’d grow back.
I table the notion for future consideration if all else fails.
What about my feet?

I’ve been leaving my feet for last, for no sensible reason, but now I blink: I’ve been stupid again, haven’t I? I’m barefoot, of course, heels retracted.
Heels.
I twist my feet together
en pointe
as I go to full extension. They creak and grate as I tense my tarsal stiffeners, feel extension cables shift position in seldom-used tunnels. It’s not a position I use very often, for in full extension my heels are fifteen-centimeter spikes, and my toes barely touch the ground; it severely restricts my balance, and though some of my Dead Love’s kind might find it erotic,
I
find it impractical. But in this situation all I can do is
stretch
those toes.
Stretch!
I can feel my heels sliding out, narrowing, curling closer to the soles of my feet as the small bones rearrange themselves to support my weight entirely on the tips of my toes. I concentrate, trying to imagine myself in Paris’s bed, try to force myself to sweat—anything to lubricate this fatal passage. Is it my imagination, or is there some give in the bonds? If they lashed my ankles to the rail, they’ll have assumed that my feet are wider from heel to toe.
Pull! Stretch!
But when I’m
en pointe
, my feet are half their normal length—

My right foot slides free a fraction of a second before my left. I nearly knee myself in the eye.

While I’ve been kinky-fying my feet and getting creative in the hairstyle department, full dark has fallen across the tracks. I have to boost my eyes’ sensitivity to see anything, and the grainy, ghostly starlight leaches fine detail from the view. The track thrums and starts to squeal as the vast bulk of Cinnabar bears down on me. It looks huge, stretching halfway across the horizon and scraping at the harsh sunlight overhead with the tips of its spires. I twist sideways, flailing my legs, as the volume of squealing and grinding rises and the track vibrates beneath me.
Push!
My arms twist painfully, and for a moment I have a vision of losing them beneath the cutting disk of a wheel—but something gives. My captors didn’t expect me to get this far, and I manage to slide around so I’m lying lengthwise along the track, feetfirst toward the city.

The rope tries to twist my arms half-out of their sockets, but I dig my feet and my shoulders in and shove, hard, throwing my whole weight sideways. The rope slips just as the shadow of the city’s lower deck looms over me with a harsh grating rumble that I feel through the track—and then I’m lying on the too-hot dirt beside the rail, arms tied behind me. I cower and duck my head toward my chest and give a last kick, curling away from the wrist restraint as the track begins to buck and sway and hiss like a malevolent spirit. The huge drive wheels roll over me like disks of darkness, and for an instant a giant tries to pull my arms off. I force myself to relax in the blackness—and then my shoulders stretch and I sprawl forward in the hot dirt:
I’m free!
Centimeters behind me the huge juggernaut wheels rumble past in procession, matched by the set on the opposite rail where my feet were tied—but my wrists are free now, the rope severed by their awful pressure.

I lie between the tracks for almost a minute as the lead drive bogies thunder overhead. Then there’s nothing overhead for tens of meters but the underside of the city, studded with hatches and access ports and ladders and ramps, and the load-bearing idler bogies on the outer rails. I stand up and stretch, retracting my heels most of the way but keeping my arches tight and springy. Then I turn and start to run after the drive bogie that so nearly chopped me into pieces. There’ll be a ladder, I hope, and an access port.
And then it’ll be time to go looking for payback,
one of myselves thinks coldly.

I shudder. She seems to know what she’s talking about.

Gainful Employment

THERE CAN BE few sights more out of place in a luxury hotel than an angry bald ogress in a ripped black gown who storms in through the service entrance and demands to talk to the management—unless it is the front desk itself in a full-dress panic, sending remotes and drones rushing back and forth, locking down all its pipes and tubes and orifices, and going into an orgy of self-recrimination and hand-wringing apology.

“Don’t
want
an apology!” I say breathlessly. “I want you to find where they came in and block it! And if you can hunt them down and crucify them as well—”

“My dear, I assure you that I will leave no crevice unexamined, no cranny unprobed! But what happened to your hair? Have you any idea who is behind this outrage? You poor thing—” I allow myself to be cosseted and fussed over and whisked up to the Bridal Suite (once I am assured it has been made safe, the entire floor sanitized and sealed), then Paris hugs me tight and holds me, and effusively reassures me that I am safe in his heart. I almost permit myself to believe it, but as he undresses me with his remotes, and I lie down on his chaise, he confesses that he’s afraid. “I know where they got in, but I have no idea why I didn’t notice them. I’ve paid for external security to seal the opening, but it’s absolutely horrible. Vermin!” He shivers beneath me.

I stroke his intromissive adapter. “It’s alright,” I tell him, and this time he shivers for a different reason. “Let’s not worry about that now.” The last thing I need is a host who associates my presence with stress. “Hug me, dearest. I want you to touch me.” It’s manipulative, but by no means the worst thing I’ve done. I very deliberately make love to Paris, afloat in his bed of delirium, aware that with every passing second my shadowy enemies have more time to realize that their fiendish plan has failed.

I SURFACE REINVIGORATED and slippery with sweat, my batteries recharged and my scalp covered with a frizz of thick red bristles just beginning to curl at the tips. The room has cooled around me, and the furnishings are detumescent and dulled after their hot, fleshy urgency: it smells faintly of salt and regrets. Paris has withdrawn his presence to afford me solitude. Or perhaps he feels guilty about taking advantage of me. You can never tell with men, they have such a strange attitude to sex: almost as strange as Creator females, but that’s another story.

I check my tablet. “I made some zombies,” Paris tells me diffidently, “I hope you don’t mind? Three decoys in your shape. Two of them were killed immediately, but the third is still wandering around. I think your assailants realize they have overreached themselves.” He flashes me a disturbing montage of homunculi.
Do I really look like
that
?
I wonder. “I have retained Blue Steel Security for the comfort and safety of my guests, and they have offered to provide you with a chaperone for the duration of your stay.”

The second message is unsigned. “We understand Ichiban sent you. You have now had sufficient time to orient yourself. Please call at our offices at your earliest convenience. Address attached.” And there is no third message. I check the elapsed time. Less than ten hours have passed, barely sufficient to expect a reply from Emma.

I sit at the dressing table, my mood sinking by the second. I came here at their expense; it’s time to pay my part of the bargain.
And find out what’s going on,
my suspicious selves remind me.

I throw my requirements at the printer: Close-cut trousers and a hooded mesh top covered in thermal-absorbent padding, black rubbery spikes on the shoulders. Sexual accessibility
down
, defensiveness
up
. Once garbed, I resemble a skinny, shock-headed thug. Under the circumstances, that feels good. I dial up surface-protective mirror-finished goggles as well, glassy lenses to fuse with the skin around my eye sockets. If I must egress to the surface again, I shall be prepared. I am sure Ichiban’s friends are not interested in me for my deportment and musical skills.

I make my way to the lobby unmolested but encounter signs of Parisian paranoia everywhere, from freshly blocked power sockets and service hatches to a lumbering, green-skinned monstrosity just inside the lobby door. It is three meters tall, two meters wide, has a gun turret for a head and missile launchers along its spine. “Mistress Freya?” it rumbles at me, keeping its muzzle politely tilted at the floor. “Management say am to accompany you. Please to confirm identity?”

I glance at the front desk. Paris is otherwise preoccupied with an irate patron, but has time to tip me a nod. “That’s me,” I say, and reach for the monstrosity’s offered tentacle to exchange recognition keys. “Do you know what offices can be found at this address?” I ask, and pass Ichiban’s friend’s mail to him.

“Excuse, please.” The green giant hunkers down beside me; the floor creaks under his weight. “Am asking Fire Control ... yes. Is planetary branch office of Jeeves Corporation. Fire Control ask, do you want destroy it? Because—”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary!” I interrupt with all due haste. “But I need to go there. Do you know what they do, or who they are? Can you escort me?”

“Not know, not know, yes.”

I wait for more, but he is taciturn—a strong, silent type. I sigh, reflexively emoting. “What’s your name?”

“Blunt.”

“Alright, Blunt. Can we go there? If it’s safe. If not, can you protect me?”

“Yes.” Blunt pauses for a moment then adds, “If not self protect, then Fire Control protect.”
How reassuring.
I blink up a street map and head for the door, but Blunt blocks me with an arm the size of a small crane. “Blunt go first.” He steps through the outer lock, turret-head swiveling, then beckons me behind. I can feel his steps through the pavement, thudding like sledgehammers.

Jeeves Corporation resides in an unfashionable medium-height tower on the edge of the current business district, in an area zoned for reconstruction. As we approach it I see slave-chipped arbeiter gangs at work. They’re stripping out the fixtures from a skeletonized geodesic dome, scrabbling over the corpse of a great enterprise. The air here is underoxygenated, hot with a tang of silicone lubricant fractions. Blunt escorts me to the tower entrance, then pauses. “Will wait,” he rumbles. “Not go in.”