Authors: Patricia A. McKillip
“Oh. Simple,” Aaron said with his mouth full. “Every time the Underworld sells its cruisers to the public, it adjusts the frequency capabilities of the receivers so that an ordinary citizen can’t pick up patroller or Underworld business. The seals are just a proof that the receiver has been altered for public consumption.”
“Why would they—”
“Keeps the air clear for emergencies. And there are a lot of things—docking procedures, patrol codes, other highly restricted information—carried over the UF. The Underworld Frequency.”
She bit into the sandwich, chewed slowly, still transfixed by the diagrams. “Which receiver am I looking at? Before or after the seals?”
“It’s an altered receiver. The Underworld doesn’t like the public even to know that the UF exists. So, not wanting a thousand questions about the seals—which aren’t easy to spot, unless you’re really digging—they didn’t put them in the diagram.”
She looked up, surprised. “How do you know all this?”
“I like knowing things. Coffee?”
“Please. And this place—” She glanced around her at the expensive equipment, the privacy and dustless order of the place. He paused, not knowing what lie or truth he might tell her when she asked. But she only said, “This is the place where you come to learn them…”
Aaron moved to the sink, washed cups. He glanced at her once; she was gazing at her reflection in the darkening screen, or the vague reflection of his own movements.
He turned back to the cups. Her hands lifted to the noiseless keyboard, typed.
Research: Underworld.
Letters ran across the screen, across her face.
A space-prison, satellite of Earth. Designed by H. Kent Claus. Funded by the Free World Government for the purpose of transporting life prisoners and potentially dangerous nonlife prisoners off-Earth. Completed: 29
FWG. Capacity: 500,000. Further information restricted. Apply to FWG Security Bureau for permission and codes.
Architectural design of Underworld.
Restricted.
Docking procedures.
Heavily restricted. Apply to Chief Administrator of the Underworld: Klyos, Jason, for information.
She cleared the screen. Aaron crossed the room, handed her coffee.
“Thank you.”
“Finished?”
“Yes.” She tilted her head on the back of the chair and smiled at him, and he wanted to take her out of the silent, windless, sunless place into the brine-filled dawn. Her smile froze suddenly. She touched him very lightly, for the first time. “I won’t get you into trouble, will I? Using your computer?”
“I like trouble,” he said.
He flew her back to the inner city. She was waiting for him when he came off duty, in the rumpled, light-speckled shadows of his bed. Moved, he did not trust himself to speak. He sat down on the bed, tired, sweating, and lifted the palm of her hand to his mouth. She leaned forward, slid her gold cheek across his stubble, turning her head until their mouths touched.
He gripped her other hand, drew her arms wide, outflung to the light. She pulled him down, down, into a gold and ivory river of forgetfulness.
He heard his voice from a distance, or maybe only in his head, murmuring. Light streaked across his eyes. He heard gulls crying outside the window. Later, he found a thigh under his cheek. He was covering a breast with one hand, holding a foot with the other. He raised the foot curiously, as if he had forgotten what it was, and kissed the instep. Someone said something.
“What?” He lifted his head, blinking. Her face, barbaric gold, startled him. She looked at him silently for a long time, her eyes heavy, unreadable. Then she gathered the pieces of herself back from his hold, and putting her arms around his neck, she kissed him gently.
“You forgot it was me,” she said, “didn’t you? You were remembering…”
He held her face between his hands, gazed at her in amazement. “You aren’t going to kick me out of bed for that?”
“I need you too much.” Her hands were roaming; her voice sank to a whisper. “I need you, I want you, Aaron Fisher…”
“Who are you?”
“The Queen of Hearts.”
“Who are you?”
“A cuber. A hardworking woman you gave a rose to.”
“Who are you?”
Her whispering slid down his belly, licked at his groin like fire. “Don’t ask me, never ask, that’s the question you should never ask…” He cried out. Then he drew her against him, muscle to muscle, bone to bone, as if the stubborn boundaries between them were as inconsequential as air.
He woke slowly, saw her wake with a change of breathing, a flicker of eyelash. Her face was all but hidden by arms and hair; there was only a curve of brow, an eye. He slid his hand beneath her armpit to her cheek and watched the eye smile.
He pulled her on top of him; she lowered her head, circled his head with her arms. In that safe place they kissed until they could not breathe, and the ghosts who knew them were left outside, looking for them in vain.
She sat on top of him, looking down at him. His hands rested on her thighs. He stirred, started to say something, then was silent, smiling up at her. She traced his mouth and ear with her fingers. She sat quietly again, her hands on his chest, her head bowed, reflecting his smile.
When he woke again, he was alone. It was two in the afternoon. The hot light lay in slabs on the floor. For the first time he realized how dusty his windows were. The white walls were bare.
The regulation ghetto carpet looked like a bleak grey desert. I should fix this place up, he thought, surprising himself. For years he had lived sparsely, wanting little more than the fastest sol-car, the finest equipment for the shelter. He swung himself upright, sat blinking at his feet, realizing slowly how much of herself the Queen of Hearts had left behind to linger in his lonely room, in his heart.
Something was staring at him. He turned his head, saw his message-light burning. He reached across the bed, touched it, yawning.
He remembered amazedly as he answered the Magician’s call, that the
Flying Wail
was due to take off.
“Magic-Man?” he said as the Magician’s screen cleared. “You still here?”
“Aaron,” the Magician said vaguely.
Aaron reminded him, “You called me.”
“Oh.” He chuckled. “This tour is already getting to me. I called a couple of hours ago, looking for my cuber. She’s here, now.”
“Is she?” He rubbed his eyes sleepily, trying to think, while the Magician waited patiently.
“You about to leave?”
“We’re waiting to be towed into the launch lineup.”
He was silent again, not thinking, letting feeling come. It came as simply as the rose had, out of his pocket. “I want to say good-bye.”
He flew his sol-car to the dock, found the Queen of Hearts sitting on the ramp of the
Flying Wail
, her chin in her hands. The rest of the band was inside; he heard the engines warming.
She rose without a word, put her arms around him. Her smells were different—soap, scent, fresh face paint—but the dark warmth was still there. He raised his head finally, opened his eyes to the brightness of her hair. “Well,” he said, “good-bye.” Her mask was flawless: the face card in gold, red, sunlit grey, the Queen of Hearts, the lady who traveled from hand to winning hand.
“Good-bye.”
Neither of them moved. She took her arms from around him finally; he felt their reluctance, saw the sudden emptiness in her eyes. He swallowed, his breathing quick, knowing he was about to step into a whirling mist that might be hiding solid earth or a long fall into nowhere. He heard himself say, “I’m such a coward. I want to see you again.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and he saw then the smile she had been born with. Then she drew back, her eyes dark, startled, her face stylized, elegant, hiding a bewildering conflict. “I’ll call you.” Her voice shook. “When I get back. If. When. Aaron—”
“If—”
“If you still want me—”
“Why—”
“I just want you to know something. Before—”
“Before what?”
She sighed, closing her eyes, trying to see in the dark. “I want you to know that you’ll be on my mind. Like the cubes. Like the Magician’s music. Always. Say good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” he said, completely confused. She kissed him and turned. And then the memory struck him, full-force and full of terror, as the hatch opened and closed again behind her. He wanted to scream at her, to batter at the hatch with his fists. I have said good-bye before! He stood rigidly, his mouth dry, urgently separating past and present, and praying to the Cosmos that it was possible, while she, with the dark vision in her eyes, took her place beside the Magician to chart their path to the Underworld.
The Underworld computer had routinely recorded the request for its most tenaciously held secrets and presented the record to Jase’s bleary eyes that morning. He gazed at it, sipping coffee. Kids, he thought. Schoolwork. But he didn’t consign it to the files; he sat staring at it until Nils, about to leave, came to look over his shoulder.
“Kids,” he said. Jase made an ambiguous noise in his throat. He raised one hand slowly, tapped lightly at the screen.
“Track it down for me, will you?”
“Why?” Nils said bewilderedly. “It’s not worth—”
“Please.”
Nils sat down again, worked over his keyboard, looking as close to muttering under his breath as he ever got. “You’re just jumpy because of Terra Viridian,” he said. “Somebody in a Library Bank, playing around out of curiosity…”
“Maybe,” Jase said.
“Your intuitions are working overtime.”
“I know, and so are you. Want to bet on it?”
Nils stopped tracking down the request through a pyramid of codes and stared at him. His fingers moved again. “Suncoast Sector, Public Library Bank 5 fielded the question… How much?” His head ducked down over his work. “Private terminal… All bets off… ID code…”A flush ran over his face to his red hair. Jase leaned forward. “You did it again,” Nils said incredulously.
“Who?”
“Aaron Fisher. ID 2146WOSS. Suncoast Patroller Class A1A.” He looked at Jase, fingers poised. “So now? What? Call it idle curiosity?”
Jase shook his head. “A patroller that good learned all he needed to know about the Underworld years ago.” His voice felt tight in his throat, with anger, with frustration, for he could sense something coming, like some dark planet careening out of its orbit, but its coming was silent, and darker than the night it fell through. Nils was watching him, puzzled, uneasy.
“Why would a first-class patroller try to milk the Underworld for docking procedures?”
“Get his records,” Jase said. “Get his superior and get him up here. We’ll ask him.”
Thousands of miles above the Earth, the
Flying Wail
reached the Underworld’s orbit, made a musical statement to that effect, shut down its engines and began its serene glide to meet the Underworld. The Magician, uncharmed by weightlessness, clamped his boots to the floor grid, strapped himself in, and turned to the news on the video screen. The Nebraskan disappeared into the hold to see what might be floating. The Scholar lay on his side near the ceiling, his arms folded, his eyes closed, listening to a book. Quasar painted her nails grape with a paint-tube especially constructed for the well-groomed traveler in free-fall, and watched over the Magician’s shoulder. The Queen of Hearts lowered the back of the navigator’s chair and took a nap.
“She doesn’t snore,” Quasar commented after half an hour, causing the Magician’s attention to gyrate wildly. “What?”
“The Queen of Hearts. You all snore. She gives nothing away, even sleeping. Look at her.
Comme le chat
.”
The Magician glanced at the Queen of Hearts in spite of himself. “Quasar—”
“
Merde
,” Quasar said surprisedly. The Magician caught a tiny purple globule floating past his face.
“God damn it, Quasar.”
Quasar chastised the paint-tube in old-world. “
Une chose dérangée
,” she finished darkly. “I paid a hand and a foot for it.”
“An arm and a leg.”
“But why?”
“Quasar, I’m trying to watch this.”
“You won’t let me smoke. I’m nervous. I don’t like space. It’s too big, too empty. The sun is too lonely here. I want it ruling the sky, commanding attention among the clouds.” She blew on her nails. The Magician smiled, his eyes on a newscaster in Sundown Sector.
“Just an old-fashioned girl, you are.”
“There was also,” Quasar said with unexpected relevance, “a National Regression Coalition in Lumière Sector. But it argued with itself until it fell apart. Paris. What kind of a name is that?”
“City of lovers, poets,” the Scholar murmured. He touched the ceiling and drifted down to them, taking the book out of his ear. “What’s going on among the Sundowners?”
“The FWG is threatening to move the troops in.”
“
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
,” the Scholar said, causing Quasar to stare at him.
“Your accent,” she said, recovering, “is terrible.”
“My accent is Parisian, yours is sewer.
Comprends
? I don’t like your nail polish either.”
Quasar grinned a purple grin. “Come to the kitchen. I’ll think of something you’ll like.”
“You’re on,” the Scholar said cheerfully. The Magician turned the sound up.
“… Sources say that the FWG will continue its hard-line policy to stamp out the NRC before its ideas have a chance to trouble other Sectors. Nationalism, Secretary of Defense Marie Juneau said today, created the weapons which inspired the formation of the Free World Government. Without the FWG there would have been global war. The National Regression Coalition, she said, wants nothing more than to return to the precarious world situation which caused the FWG forces to form and which compelled its historic takeover of the last world summit meeting. The FWG, the Secretary of Defense stated, prevailed then, will prevail today, and will not hesitate to carry out its policies.
“In other news today…”
“The iron boot heel,” the Magician murmured.
“What else can it do?” the Scholar said. “The FWG, pain in the ass that it is, has actually managed to survive a hundred-odd years. We would have blown ourselves up without it.”