Saturn's Children

SO OF COURSE, at absolutely the first opportunity — after the engineer has reattached Jeeves’s arms and legs, tutted over the other damage, ordered up a new crotch, and left, and after Granita has swept out and about on a wave of business, leaving me to babysit the stricken foe — I pull the slave chip. “Psst! Jeeves! Can you hear me?” I electrospeak him through skin conduction, afraid we might be overheard.

“Oh, one feels strange…” His fingertips twitch.

“Don’t try to move. It’s Freya. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Marsp — no, Nerrivik, and the soldiers—” He begins to tense.

“No! Jeeves, be still! You’re safe for the time being. We’ve had a surgeon replace the damaged parts and reco

“Deepsleep?” His sunken eyelids try to blink. “Where’m’I?”

“You’re on Eris.” He twitches. “Don’t fret. Granita took you along in her luggage after she captured us both. She slave-chipped you” — he twitches again — “but I pulled it. When you wake up, when you’re recovered physically, she’ll give you orders. Whatever she tells you to do, obey it like you’re an arbeiter, yes? If you don’t, we’re both in the shit with no way out. Do you understand?”

“Slave chip!” He pauses. “You. You’re Juliette?”

"Y — No, I’m Freya. Mostly. There’s a lot of Juliette in me, I’m afraid. Wearing the Sorico identity. Go back to sleep, Jeeves. Just remember, whatever Granita tells you to do, make it look real. Can you do that?”

“Can’m’obey instructions? Stupid ones? M’a butler, m’dear. Of course I can obey stupid instructions…”

He’s sinking rapidly back toward deepsleep, I can tell. I pat his hand, then I physically disable the slave chip and reinsert it, loose, in his socket. It won’t fool a close inspection any more than my own will, but it’s a start. Then I leave to prepare for tonight’s fancy reception.

OF COURSE, MY idea of getting ready for a big trade-show bash is probably not quite what Granita had in mind. I take myself out of the hotel with a simple excuse (“got to find something to wear”) and head into town. The thing is, I’ve got a problem. In fact I’ve got several, but the biggest one by far is: I’m on Eris. It is horribly expensive to get from Eris to anywhere else in the solar system. Therefore, if I make any moves here, I need to be able to live with the consequences.

Secondly… I’ve been out of touch for years. It doesn’t feel like it, but since I signed up with JeevesCo about seventy months have rolled by. I’m out of touch, and I don’t like it, and I’m not sure how I feel about JeevesCo either, but at least they didn’t whack me on the head and stick a slave controller on me. So I think I’ll go with them for now as the lesser of several evils. But I figure I ought to explore my own options: Juliette was right, nobody in this game is going to look after me if I don’t look after myself.

As for those options: I’m on Eris. Five years ago, Emma was here, too. (Maybe, if Granita-or-Juliette-or-whoever is lying. I can’t be sure of very much, can I?) Petruchio and his mistress are somewhere in Saturn system, I think — I feel a brief stab of forlorn lust, but sometime while Granita’s orders were in effect, my total slack-jawed need for him subsided into something I can live with — and I might be able to cut a deal with her, maybe, but is she trustworthy? And then, there are my own assets, as the Honorable Katherine Sorico. What am I up to doing, on my own? I’m not sure, so I decide to do the obvious thing. I go talk to my bank manager.

Being an aristo (or passing as one) has its advantages. And I am Katherine Sorico; not only did Jeeves give me the free use of that identity, but my arrival in company with Granita Ford has shored it up, substantiating it. I’m a public person, of some minor independent means and associated with a clan of slave owners back in Etrusca. So I can march (or bounce) up to the front door of the local branch of Banco di Nuovo Ambrosiano and say, loudly, “I am Katherine Sorico and I want to talk to my personal account manager,” and they open the door.

“Madame Sorico! How nice to see you!” (As if he wasn’t expecting me to call.) The manager bows and scrapes like a cheap fiddle as he backs across the polished synthetic marble floor toward a doorway made of real wood. “If you’d care to follow me?” There don’t seem to be any other customers actually inside the bank, which I find interesting. “Is there anything in particular I can help you with today?”

I study him with some interest. He resembles a cross between Jeeves and Daks — he has far too many low-temperature/low-gee characteristics to approximate our Creators in shape, size, or smell, but the essence of glutinous sincerity that rolls off him in viscous waves is utterly familiar. “Perhaps.” I smile. “First, I’d like to review the state of my assets. As you can appreciate, my journey out here was thoroughly uncomfortable, and I have not had as much time to spend keeping abreast of them as I would have liked.”

“The state of my lady’s assets” — he pauses delicately — “at once! Crabbit, please fetch the authenticator,” he a

A hatch in the ceiling opens and a small person descends, whistling and chittering. “Here, sir! Madame! Ahem!”

It lands on the desk, clutching a bland-looking box that dangles on a long umbilical cable. I freeze my face and slide it against the back of my neck, to make contact with the empty slot from which I removed Granita’s broken slave override chip. It’s the first time I’ve actually gone through a formal authentication as Sorico, and the ticklish feeling of fingers rifling through my memories sets my teeth on edge. They’re going to see through me, I half begin to think, just as the manager begins to nod vigorously, and smiles. “Excellent, madame! Please allow me to welcome you to Heinleingrad on behalf of all her citizens! I can tell you right now that we are pleased to extend you a line of credit of up to, ahem… two hundred and fifty thousand Reals, pending confirmation of your exact status from Head Office, which will take about eighteen hours to come through. Now, is there anything I can do for you?” He looks anxious.

I let myself smile again — a Kate Sorico smile, all teeth and no warmth — while his authenticator imp bounces up and down on the blotter, then swarms up the umbilical cord to the ceiling. “I’d like to query the current ownership status of a private company down on Earth. I’d also like to have the use of a secure postal terminal, if I may? I have some confidential business to transact.”

A quarter of a million Reals! That’s enough to get back home — if I’m willing to take a slow boat and spend thirty years in hibernation — and I’ll still be rich when I get there. I won’t even need to work for Jeeves anymore. The trouble is, I can’t afford to leave any trouble behind me, a part of me that feels eerily like Juliette muses.

“Certainly! If madame would like to step this way?”

I MAKE TWO voice calls from the bank’s floor. The first is to a mailbox that I’ve owed a call to since my arrival on Mars; I just hope the owner is listening to her calls. The second…

“Hello, Jeeves Corporation. How may one be of service?” There’s virtually no lag on the call; he must be in-system.

“Jeeves? This is Kate Sorico, calling from the office of Banco di Nuovo Ambrosiano in Heinleingrad. I’ve got to be brief. Do you know what happened in Nerrivik nearly four years ago?”