Tangled Up in Blue

1 "You two! Patrolmen! Wait a minute" Hegemonic Police officer Nyx LaisTree stopped at the exit of the station house, his hands already pushing open the windowed doors. He turned, along with his partner, to see a Kharemoughi sergeant gesturing them back toward the dispatch desk. "Damn!" Tree muttered. "It's Gundhalinu." "Relax." His partner, Staun LaisNion, laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "He's a Technician; he doesn't even know our names. It's probably nothing." Grudgingly they reentered the obstacle course of work stations, and backtracked through the human gridlock created by the evening's shift change. They halted at last in front of Gundhalinu. "Sergeant, we just got off duty," Staun said, somehow keeping his face expressionless and his voice respectful. Gundhalinu didn't deserve their respect any more than he deserved to be a sergeant, not when he was barely old enough to spend his pay in the kinds of places they'd just spent their shift policing. Tree glanced over at Haig KraiVieux, the duty officer observing their interaction from his seat at the dispatch desk. KraiVieux had been a Blue longer than Gundhalinu had been alive, and he was still only a sergeant. But then, he was a Newhavener, not a Kharemoughi. Most of the force stationed here on Tiamat were from Newhaven; but Kharemough, Gundhalinu's homeworld, was first among equals in the Hegemony. Members of Kharemough's aristocratic Technician caste tended to advance rapidly within the Hedge's bureaucracy. They dominated the highest levels of its foreign service, including its paramilitary peacekeeping force, the Hegemonic Police. "We had plans" "They'll have to wait." Gundhalinu cut Staun short with the unthinking arrogance of every Technician that Tree had ever met; and he had met a lot of them since joining the Hegemonic Police. The more of them he knew, the less he liked about them. "We need extra men working tonight." "Why, Sergeant? Is there some kind of trouble?" Staun asked. Gundhalinu shook his head. "The Snow Queen has requested extra security at the palace. She's having a party." "Another one?" Staun said glumly. "Why do we have to do guard duty at these things? She's got all of Carbuncle's city constables, plus her own private security force." "The Winters are celebrating another successfulmerhunt, I suppose," Gundhalinu said. "Since the Queen controls our access to the water of life, it's in the Hegemony's best interest to humor her." Tree grunted in disgust. Tiamat's seas were a fountain of youth, from which only the richest and most privileged could afford to drink. The most convenient way of obtaining die extract that humans euphemistically referred to as die "water of life" was to cut themers' throats and let them bleed to death. It didn't seem to bother die human users that what it all came down to was drinking blood. What was the life of an animal, compared to their own? The kind of people who were willing to pay anything for eternal youth would probably cut their neighbors' throats and collect the blood in a bucket to get it. Tree had no doubt at all that the Snow Queen would do it. The water of life was die only resource tins godforsaken planet possessed that was valuable enough to make Tiamat worth the Hegemony's trouble. And besides, the Queen herself used die drug every day, for free. She had ruled for nearly a huVinge, Joan D. is the author of 'Tangled Up in Blue', published 2001 under ISBN 9780812576368 and ISBN 0812576365.