Charles Stross - Saturn's Children

I’m dreaming of Juliette frequently now, and that worries me, too. Juliette has an astringent, cynical personality, and I can tell for sure that she’d sniff in haughty contempt if she knew how I’d let myself be tamed by Granita. (As would I, only five days ago.) Juliette had a long history with Jeeves, as I am now recollecting, and a longer history of run-ins with the petty, low-order aristos who make life so miserable for those around them, having to reinforce their own sense of superiority at the expense of all those who they perceive as falling below their own precarious station. The soul chip of hers that I’m wearing now — the one with that ominous message from the Jeeves in charge of Internal Security, terminated by the snicker-snack of the scrapper’s shears — tells me that I don’t have a full grasp of her intentions. She’s been leading a secret life on the side, and I’ve got a nasty feeling that I’ve already fallen headfirst into it.

Through her eyes I’m getting disturbing flashes of a bigger struggle, one in which the Jeeveses and their allies are pitted against a variety of loose consortia: the Black Talon (to which my nemesis the Domina belongs), the Ownership Confederation, the Sleepless Cartel, and other groups who are trying, for their own reasons, to reconstruct our Creators. (Even the Manikin Church, those sad and pathetic souls who think they are the reincarnations of the Flesh, Remade In Techné: They want to become Creators, but their hunger for the pink goo is the same.)

The situation makes for strange alliances of convenience. The Pink Police hunt JeevesCo couriers like me at one moment, but work fist in glove with Jeeves on other projects, in pursuit of their own goal: to prevent alien replicators from contaminating the sterile growth medium of Earth’s lithosphere before the ultimate bureaucratically approved day of resurrection.

I don’t think Jeeves was lying to me when he said he wasn’t going to use me as a spy, but what one Jeeves says may not be what another Jeeves is thinking — that much is becoming harshly clear. It was definitely a lie when one of them said exactly the same thing to Juliette, more than thirty years ago, when they first offered her a job. That cow Emma was certainly lying, and it was her urgent plea for help and request that Juliette (who had been working as a clerk in a clip joint) should load a soul chip recorded by Rhea that first sucked her into this dirty little game. I can’t help wondering what else he’s lied to me about. Granita, at least, I can trust — even though she cares for me only as an arbeiter in her possession.

Meanwhile, the black depression is creeping closer behind me, snuffling hungrily along my trail and casting its shadow across my soul whenever I find myself at a loss. Until, one evening, Granita summons me.

AT THE TOP of a flight of narrow stairs on the third floor of the west-wing master suite, there’s an observation dome made of ice polished to the transparency of fine crystal. A blank-faced munchkin leads me to it along a circuitous and infrequently used passage. We pass doorways cunningly disguised as trompe l’oeil paintings, and paintings disguised as windows onto unreal spaces; and finally a curtain that appears to be woven from strands of dead green replicator stuff from Earth — priceless, grotesque contraband. Finally, he directs me to the steps up to the observation dome and leaves me. The room is sparsely furnished, with a circular bench seat running around the wall and an unlit candelabra in the center of the floor.

I sit alone in the twilight for a few minutes, wondering what I’m doing here. Then I hear footsteps ascending. It’s her, my owner! My melancholy evaporates on a sudden gust of well-conditioned excitement. “Granita?” I stand. “You wanted to see me?”

Her face is unreadable in the near darkness. “Leave us,” she calls down to the bottom of the steps. “Yes, I did. Sit down, Kate.” I obey hurriedly. She turns to the candelabra and flicks a heated wire at one of the perchlorate candles. It ignites with a burning-metal hiss, fizzing and sputtering as it pumps oxygen into the air. She breathes deeply, then turns to stand in front of me, chill and silent in a silver trouser suit of archaic cut, her hair drawn up in a chignon secured with a flawless icicle. “My factor has acquired a lease on a suitable ship, and we will be departing shortly, Kate. I thought we should have a little heart-to-heart first.”

A heart-to-heart? I’m confused. She owns me — isn’t that enough? She stares at me with cool regard in her too-big eyes, and I stare back at her uncertainly. “Mistress?”

She slaps me across the face so suddenly that I have no sense of the blow coming, no time to tense. I fall sideways and catch myself heavily on one elbow. “That’s for Pete, bitch,” she says, her voice congested and indistinct with emotion. I cringe away from her in abject humiliation, and she steps back. “Excuse me.” She thrusts her striking hand into the opposite armpit. “Sit up, Freya. Kate. Please.” She’s so volatile I don’t know what to do. From fury to remorse in seconds. I lean away from her, distressed and uncertain.

“What did I do ?” I wail quietly. If it was anyone else, I’d be at her throat, but against Granita’s wrath I’m as helpless as any arbeiter serf. I’m not sure which aspect of it is worse: not knowing what I’ve done to offend her, or being unable even to imagine defending myself.

“Hush.” She sits down just beyond arm’s reach, staring intently at me as if she’s looking for something. “Pete isn’t yours to take. Remember that. He should be—” She stops and cocks her head to one side, as if listening for something, but she doesn’t hear it, and after a few seconds she shakes her head. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have done that. You’ll have to forgive me if I ask, won’t you? But I’m sorry. Love is toxic to our kind. It destroys us. I’ve seen it happen. Never again.”

I shake my head, confused. This is utterly incomprehensible, utterly unlike the Granita I knew aboard the Pygmalion , who was about as volatile as a uranium ingot. I should know. She courted me for months. What’s gotten into her?

She inhales, then tenses as she speaks. “This is an instruction, Kate: You must not speak to anyone about what I am going to tell you here. Once we embark, it is likely that our conversations will be monitored. When we arrive, we will definitely be monitored. We won’t be safe until we return here, and even then there may be spies or worse within my household.” She gives me a meaning-laden look. “Do you understand?”

There are spies here? “Let me root them out!” I offer, eager to redeem myself. “I can lure them—” It’s the opening I’ve been looking for, the mission to offer at her feet for the sake of my own peace of mind.

“No,” she says firmly, looking almost spooked. “Conducting a purge would be just as much of a giveaway as talking in front of eavesdroppers. I’ve got something else in mind for you to do when we arrive.”

“Where?” I can’t help myself. I need to know what I can do for her.

“We’re going to Eris,” says Granita, just as matter-of-fact as if she’d announced we were going to visit a gambling casino on Ganymede or a sulfur mine on Io.

“Eris?” I echo stupidly.

“Yes, Eris. Where they build starships and harbor black laboratories. Nicely outside the reach of the Pink Police, don’t you think? I’m going there to participate in an auction. And you’re coming along because I need someone I can trust at my back.”

A shock transfixes me. She wants me! I’m flustered but happy. “What do you want me to do?”