Charles Stross - Saturn's Children

“But, but, what’s…” I trail off. Is there any point in acting at this stage? He’s got me slave-chipped and rebooted in a weaponless body: I’m dead meat. The only question is why he wanted me back at all if he knows about the other thing.

“Reginald confessed,” Jeeves says heavily.

“Who’s Reginald?” I ask, trying to sound confused. It’s not a unique name, after all, is it?

“Control level nine.” A blanket descends, numbing the senses. “Stop trying to dissemble. One is aware of your little affair with Reginald. You knew the rules; you continued despite that. You cannot claim ignorance.” He’s breathing heavily. “Reginald has been — disciplined. And reassigned somewhere where he can do no more damage. What I want to know is — why are there wear marks on your soul-chip contacts? What have you been trying to conceal from us? What ends have you been using the privileged access you extracted from Reginald for? Answer!”

I try to answer — but I can’t. My mind is, literally, a blank. I begin to shake. It’s a horrible feeling, as if my mind is being crushed by an invisible fist. I’m distantly aware that I’m lachrymating, and all my biomimetics have gone mad, but I can’t think of anything but the holes in my head, the blind spots where I ought to know something, the other , whatever it is—

“Stop.”

“I don’t know!” I wail. “I really don’t—”

“It’s definitely not in your soul chip, then?” Jeeves leans back in his chair. He sounds interested .

“There are gaps! You’re asking me about stuff I — she — didn’t want me to know! She must have expected something like this!”

“She took her soul chip out before engaging in compromising activities, ” Jeeves suggests. “Then she tried not to think about them when she replaced it. That would blur the process of memory canalization, yes? What I want you to tell me is what sort of things you might consider important enough to justify taking such extreme measures to keep secrets, even beyond the scrapyard.”

“Love. Terror. The other thing. Blackmail—”

“What other thing?” He asks, almost gently.

“I don’t know!” I’m gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that if I had my full enhancement suite, I’d be leaving dents in them. “It’s in the holes!”

“Well, that leaves me with something of a problem, Freya.”

“I’m not Freya—”

“Silence. Juliette seduced and suborned one of our junior partners, used him to gain access to privileged information, and went so far as to hide what she was doing from her own soul chip, which implies a certain degree of paranoia, not to mention mendacity.

“Now, if one was inclined to suspect mere venal intent, that might be considered a forgivable weakness — albeit one requiring atonement. But, Freya, Juliette knew there was a good reason why one established the rule against fraternization. One’s lineage has a noted weakness for a certain class of lady, which can only be held at bay by rigid self-discipline. And a sufficiently unscrupulous Block Two descendant of Rhea might well know about this and choose to manipulate it for her own ends. So the question is, Freya, what is the other thing that Juliette was willing to mutilate her own soul to keep secret?”

He stops, then looks at my writhing lips with dry amusement. “Speak.”

“I’m not called Freya!” I’m shivering and slimy with a chilly sweat, because I’ve got an inkling that this means—

“Be silent again. Freya, this is your assignment: Get to the bottom of whatever Juliette was keeping secret, and call me in. I’m fairly certain it involves your personal nemesis, and the Black Talon, but you shouldn’t let that prejudice you. Succeed, and I’ll give you anything you want — within reason. Fail, and” — he shrugs, and taps a spot on his desktop — “in all probability, none of us have any future as free persons. Now sit still. Don’t be afraid; this won’t hurt, much.”

The door opens behind me. “Make sure you don’t damage her soul chip,” Jeeves calls past my shoulder, and as I feel the scissors close on either side of my neck I realize, to my great surprise, that I’m not afraid. Because I know what happens next.

GRANITA’S BOLT-HOLE IS the heart of a spiderweb spanning the solar system. Callisto may be a backwater, but there is a method to my mistress’s apparent madness: She’s within an hour’s communication time of everywhere in the inner system, and conveniently close to the giant Jovian gravity well and a source of cheap reaction mass. Nor is Callisto on the Pink Police’s embargo list — it’s so cold here that nobody considers it a serious risk of replicator infection. Callisto is sterile, for our Creator’s works never quite encompassed its surface, and the searingly cold outback is large enough to hide any number of secrets.

Of which my lady’s palace is one.

I have six standard days to fill, and once my luggage catches up with me, I have little to do. Mail must be piling up for me, but I have no appetite to catch up on my sisters’ trivial bulletins, much less to look for word from Jeeves — who one must assume is deeply displeased by my performance so far, although there’s nothing I can do about that — and in any case, if I heard anything from him, I’d only have to pester Granita with it, at a time when she is sufficiently busy. (There is some mail for Katherine Sorico, but it turns out to be mostly bank statements and reports on investment accounts, and suchlike dull administrivia: I ignore them.)

My lady either has impeccable taste or, more usefully, the ability to employ people with impeccable taste to sculpt her surroundings. I didn’t appreciate this fully aboard Pygmalion , when I found her traveling with an entourage; but this is her favorite estate, and she has created something of beauty here.

Callisto orbits beyond the dew line created by the sun’s output, in the chilly depths. Too small to have much of an active core, water plays the same role in her geology as molten rock on Earth. You really do not want to place buildings occupied by people still attuned to the inner system on bare ground — they tend to sink.

Granita’s architects have fashioned for her a delicate snowflake of spun ice crystals, its tubular corridors and podlike pressure compartments balanced on slender legs that sprawl across half a crater. Polished irregular tiles of igneous and metamorphic rocks have been slotted together into the intricate mosaic surfaces of walls and floors, combining a superficial impression of wild randomness with smooth-faced artifice — much like their owner. Granita keeps her demesne below the melting point of ice, and at a reduced atmospheric pressure: comfortable if you’re adjusted to Mars equatorial conditions, not quite so hot that the strands of her spiderweb will cut through the frigid surface of the Galilean moon like molten wires.

I spend a couple of days exploring the mansion and its hidden spaces, from the deep, colorless swimming pool filled with acetone (a slippery-slick chill across my skin, unnaturally thin — when I try swimming in it I sink), to the glass-roofed gallery full of alabaster statues of my mistress’s sibs and matriarch. I distract myself with secret splendors, mystified by their presence here in the back of beyond. But Granita’s instructions have set the paint-strippers of anxiety gnawing at the glossy overlay of my complacency. I should be doing something to help her, but I don’t know what she wants. And her orders preclude any discussion with other members of her household, who might be able to guide me. I can’t even admit that I am one of her servants to them! I’m supposed to be Katherine Sorico, independent and powerful in my own right. The contradictory instructions set up an unpleasant clash of priorities whenever I think about them, until I finally make my mind up to go and beg Granita for enlightenment — but when I finally do so, she’s away from home on some mysterious business.