Chapter 53

Jerusha sighed, leaning back in her chair at the night-duty desk, as her eyes wandered the nearly deserted room. Virtually all of the force were out patrolling the last night of the Festival; their final, most enervating duty on this world. Having nothing she wanted to celebrate, she had no heart for watching the rest of the world celebrate without her, and so she had stayed at headquarters. There had been few major problems: She had been surprised at how excruciatingly long and empty the night had been. Empty... that's the word for it. She sighed again, turning the radio up a little louder to drown out the future. Gods, was it worse not knowing what was going to happen to me, or knowing it for certain?

Tor Starhiker stirred and rubbed her eyes, on the lonely bench along the wall where she had fallen asleep a couple of hours ago. Passed out, more likely. Jerusha could smell her clear across the room when she had brought the Pollux unit in ... or it had brought her in, reeking and full of slurred, sloppy sentiment. The pol rob stood motionless at the end of the bench, looking for all the world as though it were watching over her. Jerusha found it hard to believe that anyone could feel that maudlin about a robot, drunk or not. But who knows? She's lost more than a robot in the past few days, I suppose. If she wanted to spend these last hours holding its mechanical hand — or drugged to oblivion — that was her business.

Jerusha took out a pack of iestas, the strongest thing shed had the nerve to touch in five years. She was sending a message to LiouxSked's family back on Newhaven, telling them what shed learned, at last... May it do them more good than it's done me.

"What — ?" Tor started and sat up abruptly, yawning. "Ohhh." Her hands pressed her head and her stomach indiscriminately. "I may not even live till Summer gets here."

Jerusha smiled faintly, leaning across the computer console. "If you're going to throw up, use the facilities; don't do it out here."

"Sure." Tor propped her head on her hands. "What time's it, anyway?"

Jerusha glanced at her watch. "Nearly time for me to start down toward the docks." She typed a summons on the comm frequency, to bring back a few more men to watch the station while she was gone, and to accompany her to her final duty on this world.

"You mean, for the — sacrifice?" Tor looked up. Jerusha nodded. "Hm. Well, you know, I just want to say ... thanks for letting me keep Polly here until the end of his cont rac I mean, I know you knew I heard — you know." She shrugged.

"Don't remind me." Jerusha pushed herself to her feet, stretching. Lax, PalaThion, you were lax, talcing a spiteful pleasure in acknowledging it.

"Well, still, Polly an' I—" Tor broke off, turning toward Pollux as someone else entered the station: a tall man, an off worlder

Jerusha caught at the corner of the duty desk. "Miroe!"

He stopped across from Tor in the middle of the room. "Jerusha." His voice sounded as stupified as her own. "I didn't think I'd find you here ... but I didn't know where else to look." He looked as though he hadn't known what he would say to her when he did find her. He was dressed like any Winter sailor, and showing a stubble of beard.

"Yes, still on the job, Miroe. Until the New Millennium," bitterly inane.

"I was afraid I wasn't going to reach Carbuncle in time; the weather was bad down the coast." She realized that he looked very tired. "One more day and I would have been too late; you'd all have been gone."

She shook her head, keeping her face and her voice even. "No. Tomorrow we cease to exist here technically; but it takes a few days to make sure nothing critical gets left behind. What are you doing here, Miroe? Your people said — they said they didn't even know where you'd gone."

"It was a spur-of-the-moment decision." His eyes searched the empty corners of the room. "I didn't plan on making this trip. The gods know I couldn't afford the time. There's too much — preparation left to do, showing my people how to do things in new ways new old ways." Jerusha had the feeling that she was hearing more than she understood; perhaps more than she wanted to know.

"You going off world Tor said with sudden interest. Ngenet glanced at her as though he had only just noticed there was someone else in the station. "Looking for a wife, handsome?"

Ngenet looked only mildly incredulous. "Maybe. But not one who wants to leave Tiamat. Because I'm not leaving Tiamat." He glanced at Jerusha again and came on across the room.

"Oh." The word was full of disbelief more than disappointment. "Thanks for warning me. Who wants to marry a loony. Right, Pollux?" She nudged him.

"Whatever you say, Tor."

She laughed loudly, for no obvious reason.

Jerusha leaned against the desk. "So you're really staying here for the rest of your life, then. Forever." The disappointment was all hers, although it had no right to be. "You didn't come here to be taken off."

"No. Tiamat is my home, Jerusha. Nothing has changed my feelings about that. And I don't expect anything has changed your feelings about leaving Tiamat either," as though it were a foregone conclusion.

"No." She heard the weakness, the moment of hesitation that should have been certainty. But he was expecting what he heard, and did not. He nodded, resigned; not taking it any further, simply accepting her decision without question — the way he had done before, at their last meeting. As though it didn't matter. "Then why did you come?" with a little too much force. "You said that you didn't want to see this Festival." "I didn't." He matched her sharpness with his own. "I came to say good-bye to you. That was the only reason."

The only reason? She felt her face turn hot with surprise and embarrassment. Damn it. Ngenet! I don't understand you at all! But she didn't question this failure to question; couldn't bring herself to ask, if he would not. "I ... uh, I'm glad that you came. I'm honored, that you've come so far just to say good-bye." Glancing at Tor, she caught hold of the gap between them again, and pulled it together. "Because this way I can tell you the news in person: Your young friend Moon is alive."

"Moon?" He shook his head, pushed back his hair. "How? I can't believe—" He laughed, and she saw something alive in him again that she thought had been torn out of him forever that day on the beach.

"She was picked up by Winter nomads; but she got away from them, along with one of my inspectors they'd been holding."

"She's here, in the city, then?" Jerusha saw him glance away suddenly, toward the unseen interior of the station. "Where is she?"

"Not in a cell, Miroe." Jerusha straightened away from the desk. "As far as I know she's reigning over the Festival along with her cousin Sparks. She's the Summer Queen."

He looked astounded, and so did Tor, standing behind him. But his expression changed again to something more private and prescient. "And a more perfect Queen could not have been chosen... Thank you, Jerusha." He nodded.

"Me? I had nothing to do with it."

"You had everything to do with it — you could have stopped it."

She almost smiled. "No. I don't think anyone could have stopped it, somehow."

"Maybe not." He did smile. "And she found her cousin Sparks, then? After all this time?"

"And yanked him out of the Snow Queen's boudoir. He was Star buck."

"Gods—" His face emptied. "Starbuck." The word turned as ugly on his tongue as it had on hers. "And — Moon?"

She nodded, her mouth tight. "I know. Strange bedfellows; a sibyl and a monster. But I knew that boy before Arienrhod got her claws in him — and so did Moon. And that's still the boy she sees, even knowing the truth about him. Maybe she's right, maybe she's not; who knows? That's not up to me to judge, thank the gods."

"Then you've let him go? That doesn't erase what he's done. That doesn't change it!" Revenge rose in his voice.

So even you would take revenge over justice, if the wound went deep enough. Even you. And I thought you were a goddamn saint, all these years. Not disappointed, but only relieved to understand finally that even he was human, with a right to human emotions, human failings. "I know, Miroe... And they'll know it, too. The best day of their lives, it'll come between them like an open grave, it'll carry away their happiness like the smoke of a funeral pyre." She saw the knowledge of what Starbuck had done to the mers struggle with his feelings for Moon.

He looked down at last; his head jerked once, accepting it.

"And Miroe, I've got the one who's really to blame, Arienrhod, that's who I'm talking about. She's the one who put him up to it. And she tried to take over the city by starting a plague among the Summers. But she didn't get away with it; and at dawn this morning her unnaturally prolonged reign comes to an unnatural end."

Ngenet looked up again. "She tried to do that? The Winters' Queen?"

"I told you what she was. And I told you I'd see that the guilty party paid. So now I've kept all my promises here." Except for the ones I made to myself.

"Then I owe you my thanks again, for seeing that justice was done. Real justice, not blind justice." He smiled, barely. "At our last meeting, as at our first... Where are you going next, Jerusha? Where's your new assignment?"

She pushed away from the desk abruptly. "I'm being sent to Big Blue." She moved in a tight, restless circle, tugged at her jacket sleeves.

Ngenet raised his eyebrows when she didn't say more. "Whereabouts? Not the cinder camps, I hope," reaching for a joke.

"Yes." She turned on him, stung. "That is where I'm going. I'm in charge of the penal colonies there."

"What?" He laughed uncomfortably, not able to believe it wasn't a joke in return.

"It's no joke," flatly.

The laughter stopped. "You ... running a place like that?" He looked at the desk, as though he expected it to give him an explanation. "Do they think so little of Tiamat that a penal colony is considered a step up?"

"No, Miroe." They think so little of me. She covered the Commander's insignia on her collar with the fingers of a hand. "You could say it's a case of blind justice."

"Do you want the job?" He stroked his mustache.

"No." She frowned. "It's a dead end, an insult—" She caught her breath.

"Didn't you complain, then? After all, you're a Commander of Police—" trying to comprehend the suddenly incomprehensible.

It was her turn to laugh without meaning. "I am a joke, that's what I am." She shook her head. "I either go where I'm assigned, or I quit."

"Quit, then."

"Damn it, that's all I ever hear from a man! Give up ... give in you can't handle it! Well, I can! I expected more from you, but I should have known better—"

"Jerusha," shaking his head, "for gods' sakes. Don't turn me into a thing."

"Then don't treat me like one."

"I don't want to see you turn yourself into one! And you will, running a place like that ... when you treat another human being like something less than human, you make yourself less than human. Either it'll destroy your humanity, or it'll destroy your sanity. And I don't want to remember you going toward that; or imagine you—" He moved his large hands futilely.

"Then what else am I supposed to do? All my life I wanted to do something with my life — something worthwhile, something important. And becoming a police officer gave me that. Maybe it hasn't exactly been everything I thought it would be — but what ever is, anyway?" If only there was something.

"You consider what you'll be doing there worthwhile?" thick with sarcasm. He pushed his hands into his pockets.

"I already answered that." She turned away. "In time, maybe I'll be able to get a transfer. And besides, what else can I do? There's nothing else."

"You could stay here," an uncertain invitation.

She shook her head, not looking at him. "And do what? I'm not cut out to be a fishwife, Miroe." Tell me there's something else.

But if there was an answer, he was kept from making it by the arrival of two of the officers she had called in. They had Festival confetti hi their hair and faintly martyred expressions on their faces, but they saluted her with reasonable deference.

She returned the salute, tugged her uniform and her thoughts into order. "Make yourselves official; you're going to the Change ceremony with me as soon as Mantagnes gets here."

They brightened some at the prospect of getting front-row seats for the human sacrifice; stole curious glances at Tor Starhiker as they moved away. Jerusha recalled her presence with belated chagrin, until she saw that Tor had fallen asleep again.

Miroe stood broodingly beside her, his gaze on the floor. "You're attending the — sacrifice?" He seemed to have a hard time getting the word out, just as Tor had. "The Snow Queen's death?"

She nodded, feeling uncomfortable with the thought despite having lived with the prospect of it for so long. The Snow Queen's death. A human sacrifice. My gods. And yet she wondered why the prospect of the clean, public execution of a woman who richly deserved it should seem more terrible than the living death of punishment at the place she was going to. The gods knew, a society that could undergo a total restructuring with only two executions as a result was better off than most. "It's my last official act as a Hegemonic representative; we turn over to the new Queen the keys to her kingdom, so to speak." And watch Arienrhod drown in regret. She glanced down, faltering. "Will you come, Miroe? I know it's not a thing you want to see — so I don't ask it lightly."

He shifted his weight, shifting his emotions. "Yes, I'll come. You're right, it's not a thing I ever thought I'd want to see. But knowing what I know of her now ... They say it's supposed to be a catharsis, to watch the living symbol of the old order die: something that everyone needs, to clean the ugliness out of their souls. Well, I never thought I'd need it ... but maybe I'm not so much better than anyone else, after all."

"Welcome to the club," not quite smiling. "I'll be right back." She went to her office for her cloak and helmet.

When she returned she found Mantagnes waiting, with supercilious aloofness, in answer to her call. She returned his salute without expression and ordered him to take her place hi the station.

She stopped again on the way to the entrance and shook Tor awake. "Wake up, Whiter. It's nearly dawn."

Tor sat up, rubbing bleary misery over her face.

"I'm going down to the Change ceremony now." Jerusha gentled her voice. "I didn't know whether you wanted to be there. If you do, you can come with us." Though I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to sleep through it.

Tor shook her head, stretched out her arms; her eyes cleared. "Yeah ... I guess I will, after all. I can't stay here forever, can I?" rhetorical. She stood up, turning to Pollux, who still stood in the same place beside her. "I'd better go see the end of the world, Polly; there won't be another one. And if I don't see it, I might not believe it."

"Good-bye, Tor." The voice sounded thinner and even more dreary than Jerusha remembered. "Goodbye."

"G'bye, Polly." Her mouth worked. "I won't forget you. Trust me."

"I trust you, Tor." The pol rob raised its hand, imitating a farewell.

"Good boy." She backed away slowly.

Still watching, Jerusha saw Tor wipe briefly at her eyes as she followed them out of the station.