Tangled Up in Blue

by Joan D. Vinge

  “Saint Ambiko’s blessed us tonight,” KipuTytto said. “This party really could change something.”

  “What’s our objective?” Tree asked. “Whose ass are we taking a bite out of this time?”

  “The Source’s,” KipuTytto said, and smiled in satisfaction as Tree whistled. Thanin Jaakola, who called himself the Source, was the closest thing the Hegemony’s criminal underworld had to a god. He manipulated the ebb and flow of his personal empire from here; his influence spread like a stain through the levels of the city itself, until sometimes it seemed as though he was the real reason for everything that was wrong with Carbuncle.

  “Jaakola stores contraband in these warehouses between trade deals. They’re off-limits to our inspections, of course, because as usual the actual real estate belongs to a local.”

  Somebody spat. “Gods, how many times have we risked our necks to save these fucking fisheaters from Jaakola’s own thugs, or slavers, or—”

  “—if one of us was lying bleeding in the street, they’d step over him like a pile of dung, those thankless shits.”

  “Hell, kick you in the face, more likely—”

  “It’s no wonder the Hedge won’t make these illiterate bastards full citizens.…”

  KipuTytto waved silent the curses of disgust. “Listen up. I got solid word that the Source had a transaction with the Motherlovers’ Queen set for tonight—”

  “The water of life?” Staun said. “You think Arienrhod’s skimmed the take from another Hunt?”

  “I’d bet my life on it. What else has this godforsaken planet got that’s worth trading?”

  “Besides a skirt to hide behind,” Staun muttered.

  “Yeah, well, not tonight,” KipuTytto said grimly. “All right, let’s get to it. Who knows what we’ll find? This could be our lucky night.”

  Tree followed the others to the waiting pile of pry bars and sledgehammers—anything that would smash delicate components easily and efficiently. Staun handed out EM-filtering goggles and Police-issue communicators.

  “What about weapons?” SudHalek asked.

  Staun shook his head, frowning.

  “But it’s the Source. If he’s got something going on—”

  “No,” Staun said flatly. “We’re the Police; we don’t shit where we eat. We’re not crossing that line.”

  “Anyway, we won’t need guns. TeshRierden took care of the security systems.” KipuTytto gestured at a mech from support services.

  “Damn straight I did,” TeshRierden said. “It wasn’t just silent alarms, either. There are laser cross-beam arrays, heat and motion tagged every two meters, at every single point of access; can you believe that? This place is a fucking death trap.” He lifted a hand in reassurance, answering their sudden frowns. “Not to worry. Anything they can do, we can do better. I blinkered their entire surveillance net, shunted the relays, and shut down their power grid for the duration.”

  SudHalek shrugged, mollified. “And you brought the pulse generators, right?”

  KipuTytto grunted in amusement. “Does Tiamat have an ocean? Any stuff we can’t fry with an EM pulse, we smash. There are two warehouses accessible from this point, and there’s not a damn thing in either one of them that’s not some kind of contraband. You all know why you’re here: to hit that bloated shit peddler where it hurts—in the assets. Do I need to say more?”

  Heads moved, answering in the negative; there were a few satisfied laughs. Tree picked up a pry bar.

  “Right, then,” Staun said. “Let’s go do the job they really pay us for.”

  5

  “Gods … is it actually halfway through graveyard watch already?” Gundhalinu smothered a yawn as he unsealed the doors of the waiting patrol-craft. He slid into the pilot’s seat, peering at the displays.

  Jerusha PalaThion settled into the hovercraft’s shotgun seat, and sighed heavily. “I thought that damn ship would never get off the grid. Let’s get back to the station.”

  Gundhalinu input the ignition code, glancing a last time at the two patrolmen on duty at the lift entrance, where they’d abandoned the patroller for the starport shuttle. The two Newhaveners looked on with obvious relief as the craft’s doors sealed; as if guarding a Police vehicle while its occupants delivered deportees to the port had unreasonably compromised their evening of staring into space.

  “Mouth-breathers.…” He nosed the hovercraft up and around, heading back toward the Police complex in the heart of the Maze.

  PalaThion turned in her seat to give him a look.

  He bit his tongue, and kept his eyes fixed on the way ahead. He had been her aide since shortly after he arrived on Tiamat, just over a standard year ago; as far as he could tell, he had been assigned to work with her because he was Kharemoughi, and therefore didn’t share her own people’s mindless prejudice against women serving on the force. She was currently the only woman officer in Carbuncle. He still found it incredible that there weren’t others, considering that she was probably the most competent Newhavener he had ever met. From what he’d seen, the fact that she’d made inspector by the age of thirty only proved the truth of her own unamused observation that in the Hegemonic Police, a woman had to be twice as good as a man to get half the credit. But that didn’t stop the Newhavenese street Blues from calling her a bitch, if she so much as made the same frank observations they’d slap each other’s palm for.

  And it only fed the jealousy that made them say, behind her back but in his plain hearing, that she’d made inspector only because Arienrhod was a woman … because LiouxSked, the Police Commander, had needed a female puppet he could use as his liaison to the Motherlovers’ bitch queen.

  That much probably was true. As her aide, he had been required until recently to accompany PalaThion on visits to the palace, there to endure the Snow Queen’s infuriating petty harassment of Hegemonic representatives. He knew that PalaThion hated her job as liaison officer; he also knew that she resented wasting her time on tedious assignments like this one, just as much as he did. But because she was constantly on call to deal with the Queen’s complaints and demands, the Chief Inspector rarely gave them work that would let her apply her intellect to real crimes.

  He knew she resented the attitude of the other Newhaveners she served with, too. They belittled her ambition and denigrated her competence as an officer at every opportunity, or made brutal comments about her nonexistent social life, and even about her sexuality. He understood implicitly why she never let her guard down with anyone, even him, long enough for someone to catch a glimpse of vulnerability; but he had heard her curse them in blistering terms when she thought he wasn’t listening.

  Yet she still gave him that look whenever he expressed his own heartfelt opinions about their shortcomings.

  PalaThion yawned, and took a pack of iestas from the supply box between the seats. “We have four hours left before morning watch. I say we use it to get some sleep. You can file the report tomorrow, BZ; it’s not going anywhere.” She shook out a small handful of pods and put them in her mouth.

  He shook his head as, out of habit, she offered him the pack. The dried seed pods contained a harmless, mildly addictive substance that made the user both more relaxed and more alert—or so he’d heard. PalaThion spat a pod into the trash container. Any habit that required spitting into a trash receptacle was not one he wanted to acquire. “I can finish it tonight, ma’am. I don’t want the Chief Inspector to think I’m slacking off on my record-keeping. Anyway, I’ll sleep better if I know the files are up to date … I can do it in my sleep,” he added as she looked at him again, and he realized she was checking to see if his comment was a veiled criticism. He met her gaze, and saw her relax imperceptibly.

  “You should worry less about what other people think of you, and more about what you think of them,” she murmured, looking away as she said it; so that for a moment he wasn’t sure which of them she actually meant the advice for. “You’ll be a better Blue for it.” She shook her head. “Besides
, I’d rather have you sharp in a crisis than up to date on your filework. It’s still Saint Ambiko’s Day, until dawn—”

  “Saint Ambiko’s Day?” Every day of the Newhavenese calendar was named after someone miraculous or martyred. He wondered what that said about Newhavenese history.

  “Ambiko is the patron saint of unexpected change,” she said, expressionless.

  He grinned wryly. “The only real ‘crisis’ since I joined the force was that day the plumbing backed up at the station house, and nobody wanted to mop the floor.”

  “When you’re a Blue, any day can turn into Ambiko’s—”

  “Inspector.” He held up a hand. He had been monitoring the Police communications bandwidth with half an ear, and now he put it onto the speaker, upping the volume. A barely audible coherent signal emerged from static. “That’s a shielded personal communicator.” He felt adrenaline jolt his brain and body to vivid life. “On the Police band.”

  She listened for a moment, shook her head. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “No.…” He looked over at her. “It’s a vigilante action. It has to be. There was a nameday party tonight, wasn’t there? For a patrolman named—”

  “LaisTree. Yes.” She half frowned. “What about it?”

  “I ran a pattern search on the data about the raids—”

  “Who ordered you to do that?”

  “I took the initiative; all the information was right there in the files. I was surprised that nobody had done it before. I didn’t think you’d mind.…” He looked down, as her frown suddenly deepened.

  Forcing himself to meet her eyes again, he said, “Inspector, the results show an eighty-percent correlation between the vigilante raids and those nameday parties. And who the hell else would be out at this time of night, using shielded transmission, except—” He broke off as her expression registered. “You mean you don’t even want to check this out?”

  She hesitated, her hand covering the insignia on her collar. “BZ, as long as the vigilantes only destroy smuggled goods and contraband, they’re just doing their job—the job Arienrhod does her best to keep them from doing.” She looked back at him, her eyes shadowed. “Frankly, I don’t see the problem there.”

  “They’re breaking the law.” He stared at her, incredulous. “It’s as simple as that. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  “It’s not that simple, Gundhalinu—” she snapped. “In Carbuncle, two wrongs are only the beginning.”

  “We’re Police officers! We uphold Hegemonic law. We don’t take it into our own hands,” he said angrily. “If we don’t obey the law, who the hell will?”

  “There’s the letter of the law,” she said, something hard and stubborn coming into her voice, “and there’s justice. When you’ve been a Blue in this city as long as I have, you’ll understand that sometimes they’re not the same thing.”

  He looked away, his hands tightening over the controls. “So if you can’t get justice, you’ll settle for revenge?”

  For an endless moment, her eyes were fixed on him like searchlights. Then, finally, she said, “Track the transmission.”

  He activated a signal trace, waited. “It’s Sienna Alley, Inspector. We’re two minutes away—”

  “All right then, Sergeant.” She nodded. “Let’s check it out.”

  * * *

  KipuTytto led the way through the access into another, even darker space. Tree knew it for a storeroom by the sudden, distant echo of his footsteps. He pulled his lenses down into place, watched KipuTytto’s wrecking crew fan out around him like eerily shining glowflies as they went to work. Staun gestured his own crew on across the room.

  Another access opened on an intestine-like passageway, that should have been a real alley, open to the sky; if this had been a real city, on a civilized world, like Miertoles lo Faux back on Newhaven.… Tree felt a disorienting rush of homesickness hit him, a longing he hadn’t felt in years for the parched heat and blazing white light of his remembered childhood. He followed Staun into the tunnel, swallowing the sudden tightness in his throat.

  At the far end of the passage there was another access, closed. Its hatch resisted when Staun tried it. Tree watched him cancel the locks with a descrambler, Staun pushed the hatch open; stopped, staring. He said, “What the—”

  Tree moved forward, peering past his shoulder into the space beyond.

  “Nyx, no!” Staun flung out an arm, shoving Tree back.

  And then he screamed, as a beam of superheated plasma punched his body backward into Tree’s arms. Tree went down under the impact, stunned by blinding brilliance and blistering pain as the energy discharged kissed his exposed flesh.

  He struggled out from under Staun’s dead weight, barely aware that he was screaming … because now everyone everywhere was screaming, as their bodies were torn by strike after strike of laser crossfire from a security system that should have been without power and completely off-line, but had suddenly triggered along the entire length of the tunnel.

  Tree doubled back like a mindless worm and took Staun’s body into his arms, shielding it with his own. He went on screaming as knives of amplified light ripped open the black intestinal depths of Carbuncle, and its death cry was the sound of human agony.…

  * * *

  Gundhalinu stopped the patroller at the entrance to Sienna Alley. He studied the data coming up on his monitor, and frowned. “Inspector, all the security’s out for this entire block. Somebody must’ve nailed it.”

  PalaThion glanced at the displays. “Shit…” she breathed. “Call for backup.”

  He called; nodded as he received confirmation. “ETA about three minutes, Inspector. Do we wait?”

  She peered out through the windshield at the silent, time-eaten building walls. She turned back and pushed his hand aside to input another query on the CPU. He watched in disbelief as a sudden, massive energy spike gave the data displays a seizure. “No,” she said grimly. “We don’t wait—”

  She unholstered her pistol, checked its charge and stuck it through her belt. She reached up to free the stun rifles racked behind them, pushed one at Gundhalinu, and hit the release stud for the doors.

  Hastily checking his own weapons, Gundhalinu followed her down the deserted alleyway. He felt giddy, as if the strobing brilliance of the patrolcraft’s flashers had affected his brain.

  “Here.” She stopped abruptly, midway down the alley’s row of indistinguishable warehouses. “Ready?” she asked, looking back.

  He nodded.

  “Right. Let’s go.” She took a deep breath, adjusting her helmet as she started toward the nearest building entrance. He recited an adhani under his breath to calm himself as he followed.

  PalaThion glanced back suddenly; his reflected image danced in the lowered flash shield of her helmet. “Face shield down, Sergeant.” Her voice came at him through his helmet’s headset, making him wince. “Use full-spectrum filters on your night eyes. No headlamp.”

  He obeyed, hiding his chagrin. Displays winked on at the limits of his vision as he activated the visual filters and the motion tracker.

  PalaThion tried the ancient door. It swung inward, showing them an empty office. They entered, crossed cautiously to the access that stood open at the far side of the room. At her nod, they stepped through into a vast storage space.

  His night vision showed him chaos, painted in the eerie glow of enhanced light: a floor littered with the remains of things he identified at a glance as tech items, all of them contraband. He swore under his breath as he shoved aside a charred crate.

  And froze, staring. The dark stain on the wall of boxes beyond it pulled his gaze down, inexorably, to the body sprawled on the floor in front of him. He swept the room with his eyes, identifying another victim, and another, by their fading auras of heatglow—their bodies broken, burned, ruined, like the equipment they had been in the process of destroying when something—someone—had betrayed them. He suddenly identified the smell in the air.

  H
e edged forward, reached down to turn over the body at his feet. A vacant face gaped up at him. He recognized the man: a Blue, a support-systems mech named Tesh-something.… He stood staring down into the empty eyes.

  PalaThion’s hand on his arm made him jump. He looked back; face-to-face with her, he could see her expression through the helmet’s shield. She shook her head, gesturing: All dead.

  She looked past him. He followed her glance, and saw the gleaming crescent of another half-open hatchway, offering them access to whatever lay beyond this stygian cave. PalaThion bent her head toward it; he nodded. Cautiously, they started across the room.

  * * *

  Tree stirred, rolling onto his side. As his arm slid down, light—real light—seeped through the lids of his eyes. Gently but insistently it reminded him that the flesh-searing agony-made-visible had ceased, he didn’t know when; that the nightmare was over, and somehow he was still alive.

  Slowly he raised his head, pushing his protective goggles up onto his forehead as he fell back against the wall’s cold comfort. He sneezed and spat, clearing out his throat, rubbed his eyes until he made out the blurred motion of figures in the distance, beyond his brother’s motionless body. He reached for Staun’s shoulder, shook him. “Staun … wake up.” Staun rolled onto his back. Tree stared, uncomprehending, at what had become of his chest. “Staun…?”

  “He’s dead.” Two men loomed over him, throwing Staun’s body into merciful shadow. He looked up at them, at the uniforms they wore, at the plasma rifles they carried. He looked down as a targeting beam fingered his heart. The bead of light slid upward, came to rest between his eyes. “Just like you’re about to be.” Uniforms—

  “… Police officer! Don’t shoot—!” He lurched to his knees, hands high. Their faces were unshielded; he saw them look at each other, their expressions unreadable. Slowly, carefully, he lowered a hand to pull his badge from his coat pocket. He swore, almost dropped it … realized with dim surprise that his hand was badly burned.