Elizabeth Hand - Æstival Tide

Then, “Did we miss it?” Hobi asked, alarmed.

The gravator pitched, water slopped from the fountain onto the floor, and they dropped another level. Hobi tugged aside one of the heavy indigo curtains covering a window. He looked outside and then turned to Nasrani, his face white. “Nasrani—we’re still dropping—shouldn’t we have gotten off sooner?”

Nasrani smiled, hitched up the tail of his greatcoat to scratch his leg. Hobi swallowed. Beneath his flowing trousers the exile wore high boots of burgundy leather; and tucked neatly into a flap on each one was a stiletto of gleaming steel. “No, no, Hobi,” he said, flicking his fingers dismissively. “This isn’t an ordinary visit. You’ll see.”

The boy shivered. It struck him that there was a good reason Nasrani Orsina had been exiled; that he was not merely the polite and epicene dinner guest his mother had been so fond of. And with a small electrical thrill of terror—because of course this was something he should have considered all along—Hobi wondered just what this man was doing with him, the son of the Architect Imperator.

“Should we—maybe we should have waited for my father—” he stammered.

Nasrani shook his head. He frowned, pulling at a stray thread on his greatcoat, then slid one of the stilettos from its sheath and neatly cut it off. He twisted his head, gazing at Hobi with studied casualness. “Have you ever been to the Undercity?”

Hobi felt his whole body freeze, as though he had walked into a replicant’s holding chamber. “Level One? Angels?”

“Mmm mmm,” Nasrani said absently. He glanced at the window, marbled gold and black where they passed through the refineries of Archangels. “Yes, that’s right. The Undercity.”

Hobi bit his lip, grabbing on to the edge of the bench as the gravator bucked and rolled. Near the door hung a slender golden cord with a small neatly lettered sign dangling from it. Pull in case of emergency, it said. He and his friends used to joke about it, and once Magya Electroluxe really had pulled it, with exciting results. But doing such a thing now would mean admitting to himself that in a few minutes the damned thing would stop at Level One, Angels: the Undercity. When he looked aside at Nasrani he saw that the exile was smiling. Hobi reddened. Abruptly he let go of the bench, straightened, and tossed his long hair. “Oh, I’ve been there ,” he lied.

“Really?” Nasrani looked interested. “Weren’t you afraid you’d be tortured or go mad?”

But before Hobi could reply (tortured?), with a sudden boom the gravator jolted and was still. In front of them the heavy metal doors were fanning open. And he had no choice, really, but to follow Nasrani Orsina into the Undercity.

The rickshaw driver slowed to a trot as they rounded the entrance to the vivariums. Ceryl could hear him panting. She shook her head; she should have engaged another before returning to this level. She was thinking of walking the rest of the way when she sighted the gynander strolling by. As the rickshaw rattled past her, Ceryl looked over her shoulder at the slender figure, her mind racing.

The dream inquisition she missed last night; her failed attempt at timoring; and most of all her nightmares…

“Stop!” she ordered the driver, leaning forward until her head peeked out from the rickshaw’s bamboo shell. “Right here, please, stop—”

The rickshaw slowed to a halt. The gynander continued walking, singing to herself and not even raising her head. Ceryl stumbled to her feet, tugged at the rug covering the cab’s floor, and threw it onto the bloody seat beside her as she got out.

“You—”

The gynander stopped. For a moment Ceryl thought she had mistakenly called to a real woman. But no—the slender figure had an elaborately painted face, small breasts emblazoned with colored whorls and waves; and through her diaphanous trousers Ceryl glimpsed her penis, no longer than a finger. Perhaps it was just that she was taller than most morphodites, and had done something to straighten her hair. She looked to be about fifteen. Ceryl knew she could have been twice that age, though not much older—morphodites didn’t live very long.

“Yes?” The gynander’s tone was haughty, and for a moment Ceryl thought of flouncing back into the rickshaw. But then the gynander tipped her head, and for the first time Ceryl got a good look at her face. She gasped. Beneath the oily plaits of lank black hair, behind their heavy swirls of kohl, the eyes she turned to Ceryl were wide and cold as the open water that crashed relentlessly through her dreams, and green. Leaf-green, sea-green, poison-green. The forbidden color; the color of death.

“You,” Ceryl stammered. She would have fled, but the gynander had already stepped forward and was staring at her intently, her eyes slitted.

“You are troubled by a dream,” she said softly, her tone still oddly commanding for a morphodite. Ceryl shrank from her as Reive stretched one powdered hand to touch the other woman’s forehead. “ There —we can feel it, there—”

Reive murmured the traditional greeting to a client, hoping it would calm this woman. She was accustomed to people being startled by her eyes, but this woman seemed terrified. Reive thought maybe she had heard of Reive’s unhappy experience with the diplomat, but no; the woman seemed genuinely frightened.

That could be very good for Reive. If she gave this woman the right kind of reading, she might reward the gynander generously. At first, when the rickshaw passed her Reive had ignored it. She was ravenous, and wanted only to get to one of the shrimp stalls by the Dominations gravator. But then she had seen the woman leaning from the cab. Tall and pale, with yellow hair clipped elegantly short and curling about rubicore earcuffs, she wore a midnight-blue catsuit and bronze leather boots that reached above her knees. Around her neck hung a pendant with Prophet Rayburn’s crucifix and another, the heraldic eye and letter O that marked her as a member of the Orsinate’s pleasure cabinet. If Reive could impress this woman with her scrying, she might take the gynander to her chambers; might even bring her along to one of the Orsinate’s dream inquisitions.

“We are very experienced with nightmares,” she murmured soothingly, “very good, very reasonable…”

Ceryl swallowed. It might be an evil omen—it must be an evil omen—but then her nightmares were evil too. Maybe this green-eyed morphodite could exorcise her horrible dreams, before she was forced to share them with the Orsinate. “Reasonable,” she repeated, stalling.

Reive bit her lip, her mouth filling with the chalky taste of rouge. She hadn’t had a client this wealthy in weeks, not to mention one with access to the very highest levels of the city. She blurted, “Free! We’ll do it for free, for the honor of Prophet Rayburn and the Saints—”

Ceryl sucked in her breath. It was an omen, damn it! The venal morphodites never did anything for free. She toyed with the pendant around her neck, thinking. From behind her she could hear the traceman muttering to himself, his voice rising angrily. In a few minutes he’d refuse to take her any farther.

“Get in,” she said abruptly. “My workchambers are here on Dominations. But hurry.”

Reive frowned. This would be no immediate passport to Cherubim after all. For a moment she looked down the corridor, debating whether she should leave. But then Ceryl grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the rickshaw. Reive tossed her head and flopped in, making a face at the rug covering the seat. When the rickshaw jounced forward she started, drew her hand up smeared with blood. Beside her Ceryl stared through the slits in the bamboo cab, crimson light winking from her earcuffs as they headed down the avenue.