Tangled Up in Blue

by Joan D. Vinge

  Nothing, except for them to stay far away from him.

  Because it might not be too late, for them.

  They would try to save him, if they could … he knew it as surely as he knew that by now they’d be lucky to save themselves. He’d been a walking death sentence ever since the night of the massacre; with everything he knew, he was already as good as dead, and anybody who got too close to him was going to die too.

  He wanted his brother back. He wanted his life back, and his badge—but he had no more chance of getting them back now than he had of seeing Staun’s smile again, this side of the Beyond. There was nothing anyone could do to help him now; there was nothing left to save.

  And nowhere for him to go, except down. No reason for him to still be breathing, except to deliver the Boatman’s Due.

  He abandoned the patroller at the mouth of the alley and walked in from there, having no more choice about that than he did about his destination. Sienna Alley was where Nhon, a trade broker, kept his office. Nhon’s business was never as clean as he claimed, and the street Blues knew it. They let him go on making his deals, as long as he answered the occasional question about who was buying what, and when. If anybody in Carbuncle knew where to find Humbaba, it would be Nhon.

  Tree kept his gaze fixed on the smothered darkness beyond the storm wall at the alley’s end, barely glancing left or right. But still, he knew—even blindfolded, he would have known—exactly when he passed the featureless warehouse, the peeling door that had led the Nameday Vigilantes straight to hell on Saint Ambiko’s Day. The place where his brother had died in his arms.…

  It should have been him.

  If it weren’t for him, Staun would still be on Newhaven—safe, alive, married to Tarina. His brother could have had a real family, and a life of his own … a long, full, happy life; the one he’d deserved.

  If it weren’t for him, his brother would never have joined the Police. His mind hemorrhaged memories like blood, so much blood that he should have been weeping tears of it.…

  No. His hands knotted into fists. His life belonged to the Boatman, now, the god of the street Blues—the god who only answered the prayers of the dying. And he swore by the Bastard Boatman, this time it would be the killers who wept blood. He kept walking, his vision hazed with red, not seeing how empty the alley had become, how unnaturally still, like the air before a storm. He would stay alive long enough to send those butchers across without a ticket—to give the Boatman just due for his brother and his friends, blood for blood, so that when his own soul finally crossed over, it would be with a ticket honorably in hand.…

  “LaisTree!” Armed men suddenly blocked his way, as if he had conjured them up out of his own blood-red need for vengeance.

  Tree pulled his gun and fired, dropping two of them, scattering the rest. As he turned and ran back toward the patroller, another cadre of armed strangers appeared, cutting off his escape route.

  But before he had even reached the warehouse, someone behind him fired a stun rifle. The beam caught him full in the back, taking out his voluntary nervous system. He hit the pavement, hard.

  He lay like a living corpse, waiting for them to come and get him. Fully conscious, but unable to do anything at all to stop it, he let the strangers gather him up like a corpse and carry him away.

  * * *

  The artificial energy of another stim patch was all that kept Gundhalinu moving as he led Devony Seaward into the Maze’s bright anarchy, toward Jerusha PalaThion’s apartment. She followed him through the evening crowds like an automaton, lost inside the labyrinth of her own thoughts.

  “Devony—” He broke the silence between them at last, looking back over his shoulder as they climbed the stairs to the Inspector’s flat. She glanced up, looking startled.

  They stepped onto the landing; he gestured at the apartment door. “I just wanted to warn you not to shapeshift in front of Inspector PalaThion. It’s not legal for a Tiamatan to be using sensenet technology.” He glanced away as her expression changed. “The Inspector is usually more … tolerant of those things than I am. But even if she doesn’t care,” he looked up again, with a chagrined smile, “frankly, I’d never hear the end of it, if she found out I knew, and I didn’t report you.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” she murmured, smiling back at him.

  “It’s BZ—” he said. He felt himself flush as her expression changed again.

  He knocked on the door, wincing as pain jagged up his arm; they waited together in awkward silence until at last PalaThion opened it. She stared.

  “By the Boatman!” She motioned them inside. “BZ, what the hell happened to you?”

  “Everything.…” For once in his life, only hyperbole seemed to describe his situation. Searching for the beginning, or even a stray end, in the tangled skein of events, he grasped the first coherent thought that came into his head. He pushed his hand carefully into his coat pocket, and pulled out the iestas he had purchased at the diveshop. “Here’s that pack of iestas you wanted, Inspector.”

  “Thanks.” She took the pack from his swollen, purple hand with a faintly incredulous look. “I can’t wait to hear what kept you.…” She glanced past him at Devony. “Don’t tell me you’re married, Sergeant?”

  “Gods, no!” His cursed freckles betrayed him with a hot rush of scarlet. “I mean … Inspector PalaThion, please meet Devony Seaward,” he said, with a hopelessly belated gesture of propriety, “a … close personal friend of Patrolman LaisTree.”

  “Sa mieroux.” Denvoy bowed, speaking the traditional Newhavenese greeting. “Peace to you.” She sent a bemused glance his way as she raised her eyes again.

  “Sa kasse … Likewise.” PalaThion nodded, studying her with frank curiosity. “So this obviously isn’t a social visit.” She moved away, tearing open the pack of iestas as she limped doggedly across her common room.

  They followed. Bright-colored ovals of pressed glass hung in her windows, like the ones he’d seen in the windows of shops that catered to Newhavenese. Watching her pass through their radiant bands of light, he wondered whether they had some ritual function, or were purely for decoration.

  Devony gazed around her in fascination, taking in the room the way he would absorb a datafeed. He realized that she might actually be recording it; realized too, with sudden insight, that her interest was genuine, and not merely a professional habit.

  “No, Inspector, this is definitely not a social call.” He sprawled on the quilt-covered mattress that served as PalaThion’s couch, too exhausted and in too much pain to wait for an invitation. The Inspector seated herself uncomfortably in the single native-made chair, settling her cast-bound leg on a hassock, as Devony sat down beside Gundhalinu.

  PalaThion shook out a small handful of iestas. “All right, BZ. Tell me what’s going on. And this time, tell me everything.” She put the iestas into her mouth, and began to chew.

  He looked up at her, surprised, but only for a moment. “It’s the warehouse massacre,” he said. “Everything goes back to that night.… Maybe you ought to record this.” This time he did tell her everything, beginning with Aranne’s secrets and ending with Herne’s, interrupted only by her occasional question, or by Devony’s comments on the Ondinean and the Snow Queen.

  “… and that’s why I brought Devony here.” He nodded at her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about any of this before, Inspector. And I’m sorry I have to tell it to you now, when it only makes you another target.” He glanced at the cast immobilizing her leg. “But there’s no one else I trust anymore.”

  “Being trusted with someone’s life is an honor I’m not offered every day.” She smiled wryly. “And being a target is what they pay us for.…” She stopped smiling. “If the killers really are some of our own, it only gives me more reason for wanting to help you bring them down.”

  He got to his feet again, swayed, suddenly lightheaded with relief—or something less reassuring. “That’s two things off my mind, then.…” He glanced b
ack at Devony.

  “What are you going to do now?” PalaThion asked.

  He looked down. “I’m going to make my report to the Chief Inspector and the Special Investigator.”

  Her face tensed. “Are you sure you want to do that? From what you’ve told me, you could be handing them your head on a plate.”

  He hesitated. “LaisTree has to be wrong about their involvement. They’re Kharemoughis, Technicians, for gods’ sakes! They have nothing to gain from some conspiracy to steal Old Empire technology, no matter how valuable it might be. If it’s recovered, it will go to Kharemough for research and development anyway.” He shook his head. “What would be the point?”

  “Only another Technician could answer that.” PalaThion shrugged. “Just keep in mind what Saint Arda once said: ‘Unquestioning belief is not rooted in faith—but in doubt’.”

  “‘Carbuncle is like entropy,’” Devony murmured. “‘Everything breaks down here. The meanings don’t hold.’”

  Gundhalinu looked at her, frowning.

  “You said that yourself.” She held his gaze.

  He looked down, trapped inside a moment of paralyzing self-doubt. “I.…” He shook his head again. “No. No, I didn’t really mean that—” He glanced away, seeing PalaThion’s troubled expression. “I won’t tell anyone about either of you being directly involved in this. Inspector, you have the names we got from Herne. I’ll be giving them to Aranne. But you could back me up by making sure they get into the databank at the station. If I—that is, in the unlikely event that I am wrong, I don’t want that information buried along with me.”

  “Consider it done, Sergeant.” She nodded. “What about LaisTree?”

  He shrugged. “He went after the Ondinean. He’s out there alone, he’s not carrying a remote, and he’s not wearing the tracer anymore. I don’t know if that makes him safer, or just crazy.”

  “Moving targets are harder to hit…” PalaThion said. She glanced at Devony’s pale, silent face; looked down at her own cast-encased leg.

  “I’d better get moving, then.” Gundhalinu sighed. Straightening his shoulders, he smiled briefly at them both, before he crossed the room to the door.

  17

  The door of the windowless room opened at last. Tree stirred on the bare cot, where he had been unceremoniously dumped and left to recover. He struggled to his feet, barely able to remain upright as the aftereffects of stunshock harrowed his body’s foundering nervous system.

  The armed guards flanking the door glanced sidelong as Sab Emo Humbaba passed between them; their eyes came back to Tree at the sound of his indrawn breath.

  Herne hadn’t lied. Humbaba’s ritual scarring looked like the result of a disembowling. Tree bowed his head, unable to look at the man for long enough even to meet his gaze.

  “I understand that you have been searching for me.” Humbaba’s voice was deep and resonant, perfectly modulated … completely normal. He seemed oblivious to the effect his own face had on the person he was confronting—which was probably the point. I-shin scarring was all about demoralizing your enemies. “But I gather it is really my wife you wish to see, Officer LaisTree.”

  Tree glanced up again, this time forcing himself to find two eyes somewhere in that mass of twisted flesh. “Yes,” he muttered.

  “What is it you want from her?”

  “I want my brother to still be alive—!” The sudden, blinding pain of his loss rendered the hideousness of Humbaba’s face meaningless, invisible. Tree went on, his voice steadying, his own face a mask of stone. “But I can’t have that. So I want to see the ones who killed him dead.”

  Some seepage of emotion, rising from unseen depths, moved Humbaba’s face; Tree had no idea what the emotion was. Humbaba merely shook his head, murmuring, “My wife observes the traditions of her people. She does not entertain uninvited guests. Not even those who come bearing gifts.” He held up the mesh headset in one perfectly manicured hand.

  Tree looked down at the floor again, twisting his bound hands until the knotted monofilament began to make his wrists bleed.

  “Nonetheless, she feels indebted to you, for returning her property. She would have made an exception, in your case—”

  Tree looked up in surprise.

  “—And because she believes you know what’s become of the rest of it, of course.…” Humbaba shrugged. “Regretfully she had more urgent matters to attend to. Her business associate will see you in her place. He is not fond of Police officers—even disgraced Police officers. If I were in your place, I would be … cooperative.”

  Humbaba turned and left the room, as abruptly as he had entered it. The two guards went out after him; the door locked behind them.

  Tree felt his fleeting relief turn to incomprehension as he realized that the room was beginning to grow dark, the light leaking out of the space around him as inexorably as oxygen. He turned where he stood, filled with the sudden, irrational fear that it actually was becoming harder to breathe. Her ‘business associate’—

  “Oh, gods,” he whispered, almost a prayer; he dropped onto the cot again as his knees buckled. He knew the rumors on the street. He had thought he was simply a walking dead man, but he’d gone one step beyond even that, into the real heart of darkness.… He had reached the Source.

  The blackness around him was total now. All that he could hear was his own heartbeat, the rasp of his frightened breathing. Or was it…? He held his breath.

  The sound of labored breathing went on.

  * * *

  Gundhalinu entered the Chief Inspector’s office, barely able to keep from glancing left and right, up at the ceiling, down at the floor, as if his presence might trigger hidden weapons. “Sir?” he said, forcing his gaze to stay on Aranne’s face.

  Aranne looked up from his work; his expression was exactly as startled as it should have been. “Gundhalinu—?” he said.

  Gundhalinu made an awkward salute, hoping his own expression looked convincingly open and forthright.

  Aranne rose to his feet. “Gods, what happened? Where the hell have you been?”

  “I went to search LaisTree’s apartment, sir. Somebody jumped me there. They seemed to think that I knew something about the … the missing prototype.”

  “You? Why?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe because I was also at the warehouse that night. And because I asked questions about this.” He pulled the necklace out of his belt pouch and laid it on Aranne’s desk. “Chief Inspector, is this part of the missing tech you were looking for?”

  Aranne’s jaw dropped. “Yes! By all the gods, be careful with that.” He took it into his hands as if it were the dust of his ancestors. “Where did you find this?” He looked up again, his face filled with disbelief.

  “The Snow Queen gave it to the woman LaisTree was seeing. Arienrhod must have hoped it would trigger his memory. It didn’t, because he never even saw the missing tech.…”

  Aranne went on staring at him for what seemed like an eternity. At last he said, “Shut the door, Sergeant.”

  Gundhalinu obeyed, cutting off the umbilical of noise and activity from the station house beyond. Turning back, he had the sudden unnerving sense that he had cut his own lifeline. He caught hold of a chair, supporting himself as another wave of dizziness broke over him.

  “Sit down,” Aranne said, with a frown of concern, “and tell me everything you know about this.”

  “What about Special Investigator Jashari?”

  “Jashari is in a meeting,” Aranne said impatiently. “I will keep a full record of your report for him.”

  Gundhalinu sat down. “Sir, about the necklace—”

  Aranne still held it in his hand, as if he was afraid it would vanish if he lost contact with it. “You got this from the shapeshifter? And she got it from the Queen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So Arienrhod had possession of it all along. But she doesn’t have the headset?”

  “No, sir. LaisTree—” He broke off.
>
  “LaisTree what?”

  “LaisTree … and I questioned a man named Herne, who admitted he was at the warehouse that night.”

  “You and LaisTree? Together?”

  “Yes, sir.” Gundhalinu pressed on, before Aranne could ask him more questions. “Herne claimed that the Queen had the tech in the first place, that the Ondinean—”

  “What Ondinean?”

  “A woman named Mundilfoere, who’s working with the Source. She and four others were the ones who … questioned me, at LaisTree’s apartment.”

  Aranne stiffened. “What did they ask you?” The monitor screen in the surface of his desk sent an eerie play of light and shadow over his features as he leaned forward.

  “They asked me what I knew about the missing tech—which was nothing, at that point. They didn’t believe me.…” He looked down at his hands. “And they kept saying that I was ‘a stranger, far from home.’” He shook his head. “I don’t know what that means, but it seemed to mean something to them.”

  Aranne muttered a curse; he looked down at the techno-jewel in his hand. “And they just left you there?”

  Alive. Gundhalinu glanced up as he caught the unspoken coda to Aranne’s question. “Yes, sir.” It only occurred to him now to be surprised that they had let him live. “Maybe they heard someone coming.… LaisTree found me there.”

  “And LaisTree has finally remembered everything that happened at the warehouse?”

  “Yes, sir, he has.” Gundhalinu nodded, reminded with sudden stomach-knotting vividness of the reason LaisTree’s memories had shaken them both so badly. His bandaged hand moved unthinkingly to his holster, found it empty. Wincing, he forced his hands to lie still in his lap. “The vigilantes never had a chance to see anyone in possession of the tech, let alone take it for themselves, before they triggered the hidden defenses.”

  “You believe that?” Aranne said. Gundhalinu wasn’t sure whether it was a question or an assertion.