The Iron Maiden (16 page)

“And I must arrest you too,” he continued miserably. “And ground the fleet.”

It was as though the Solar system had foundered, but for the moment it was the personal aspect that stung her. “Is this the end for us?”

“I very much fear it is.”

She kissed him. “Then do your duty, Gerald.”

“Consider yourself relieved of your position,” he said. Then he braced himself and went off to find Hope.

Gerald Phist did his duty like the good soldier he was. All of the top officers were interned and held incommunicado as the fleet headed back for Jupiter.

Then several significant things happened: The Beautiful Dreamer, deprived of his drugs, died. The marriages of Hope and Roulette, and of Gerald and Spirit, were dissolved, and on Mondy's insightful suggestion Gerald married Roulette, to preserve the necessary connections. It was an irony, as Gerald and Roulette loved not each other but Spirit and Hope, but each understood the other's position perfectly. They were to be a successful long-term couple publicly, and possibly privately, perhaps because of that common passion.

Hope wrote the narrative of his migrant and military memoirs, settling his soul in a way that Spirit could not. She suffered her loss of Gerald alone. She was, after all, the Iron Maiden.

The woman of QYV met with Hope, and they made a deal: Helse's key for Jupiter citizenship and information on Megan. Hope and Spirit, at the ages of thirty and twenty seven respectively, were honorably discharged from the Navy--in fact Hope was hailed as the Hero of the Belt--and they came at last to the planet of Jupiter. It was not by their choice, at this stage, but was the best compromise settlement they could manage. As it turned out, Hope's core unit was not destroyed; it merely became invisible, and his officers went on to consolidate power in the Navy, supported by a solid cadre of enlisted personnel. Some liaisons did not follow official chains of command, but were as potent. That was to have significant later effect on Jupiter politics.

9

Second Love

It was as though they were starting their lives over, leaving all they had known to join a new world. Both Hope and Spirit knew that they would never recover their Navy relationships; they might as well be dead, just as their family and refugee friends had been dead when they first came to the navy. Hope was in depression, and Spirit sustained him as well as she could, whether by diverting him with inconsequential talk, or holding him. He was not ashamed to show his weakness when they were alone together; she could not afford to show hers, needing to be strong for him. It would take time for their pain to fade.

Meanwhile they faced the future with nominally positive attitudes.

Jupiter up close was ferociously beautiful, with its mighty bands and spots. It was also somewhat daunting, because the atmospheric pressure at the residential level was five bars: five times that of Earth's surface. Spirit tried to bury the feeling of being crushed. She was used to vacuum, emotionally, dreadful as it was.

They came to the city of Nyork, a giant bubble about one and a half miles in diameter. Once they were inside, Spirit's tension eased; it was like being in any other bubble, except that this was larger. It hardly mattered whether the surrounding substance was atmosphere or vacuum; both were similarly lethal to unprotected human beings.

They were treated to a parade in their honor. They rode in a wheeled vehicle with the mayor of the city, and throngs of people cheered. This was weird; could it really be for them? It seemed it was.

Theoretically Jupiter's press was open, but it was clear that the real situation had not been publicized. So they were retired champions rather than cashiered outcasts.

When they entered the Hispanic section, the chant became monstrous. “Hubris! Hubris!” The car was pelted by flowers. This conspicuous waste embarrassed them, for ornamental plants were precious in space. Spirit made the most of it: she picked up several that fell inside the car and made a bouquet that she set in her hair, and there was a deafening roar of approval. She made another, her nine fingers nimble enough, and put it in her brother's hair, and the noise swelled yet farther.

A girl launched herself into the car, and flung her arms about Hope. “Hubris, I love you,” she cried in Spanish.

A Saxon policeman pursued her, but Spirit interceded. “Let her stay, officer,” she urged. “She will be no trouble, I'm sure.” She put her arms protectively around the girl.

But the girl had another notion. She snuggled closer to Hope. “Hero Hubris, why don't you stay here in Nyork and become mayor, and I will be your mistress!”

He was so surprised that he choked. Spirit knew why: the girl was obviously under the age of consent by a year or two, though her anatomy was fully formed. Hope had sex with women of all ages, but in recent years had settled on nominally legitimate ones. He had never anticipated such a bald proposition by a stranger.

Spirit decided to rescue him. “My brother has already arranged to settle in Ybor, in Sunshine. He will get married.”

“Married!” the girl cried, clutching him.

“He is not for you,” Spirit said. “You would be too much woman for him. He is thirty years old.”

“Thirty,” the girl repeated, evidently shocked that anyone could be such an age. Then she reconsidered.

“Still, a married man needs a mistress, too, and May-December liaisons can work out. Sometimes an older man can be very considerate and not too demanding--”

“And he has been long in space,” Spirit continued, keeping her face straight. “The radiation--”

“The radiation!” The girl glanced down at Hope's crotch as if expecting to see crawling gangrene. Of course space radiation did no apparent physical damage; it merely sterilized men who remained off-planet too long without taking special precautions. That was why the navy needed no contraceptives.

Most men had stored semen samples in shielded reserve if they later decided to become fathers.

Regardless, the notion had done the trick; the girl was no longer much interested in seducing him.

But soon the crowd became a riot, and they were in danger as the car was stalled by aggressive Saxons who thought Hispanics were taking their jobs. Spirit exchanged a glance with Hope: they knew what to do.

“Crowd control procedure,” he said. “Cover me, Spirit.”

She reached into her blouse and brought out a pencil-laser pistol. “Covered.”

“Hey, you aren't supposed to be armed,” the mayor protested. “Weapons are banned in--”

Spirit pointed the laser at his nose and he stopped talking. Hope jumped out of the car and ran ahead.

For a moment no one realized what he was doing; then a worker pointed at him and shouted.

But by that time Hope had reached the leader. He caught the man by the right arm, spun him around, and applied a submission lock.

“You can't do that!” another man cried, reaching for Hope. Spirit was ready; a beam from her laser burned a hole in his shirt and stung his chest. It was only a momentary flash, just enough to make him jump. Jump he did, falling back, staring at the car.

“That was just a warning,” Hope told him. “Stand clear.”

The others stood clear, realizing that the Navy personnel did indeed know how to conduct themselves in a fighting situation, and that the presence of the weapon made them far from helpless. Lasers did not have to be set at trace level.

A kind of hush descended on the crowd as Hope marched the labor leader to the car. Spirit's gaze remained on the crowd, not on Hope, and she fired again, stinging the hand of a man who was getting ready to throw another brick. She had always had acute reflexes and perfect marksmanship with whatever weapon she chose. Hope got the leader into the car.

“Sit there. Put your arm around the young lady.”

“That spic?” he demanded angrily. “I wouldn't touch her with--”

Spirit's laser tube swung around to bear on his nose.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, disgruntled. He took the seat and moved his left arm.

“Keep your filthy Saxon hands to yourself!” the girl snapped in Spanish.

“Suffer yourself to be touched by this man,” Hope told her in the same language. “We want to show the crowd how tolerant their leader is.”

Her eyes widened as she caught on. She smiled sweetly. “Come here, you Saxon tub of sewage,” she said in dulcet Spanish tones. “Put your big fat stinking white paw on me, snotface.”

It went on from there, with the publicity cameras watching. Hope exerted his genius and in due course got the labor leader and the Hispanic girl to agree on a city program for the mayor to implement, that would bring more jobs for both factions. And the two natural enemies actually began to warm to each other.

“Know something, Captain?” the mayor said to Hope. “You're a born politician.”

And that profession was exactly what Hope had in mind. It wasn't that he craved notoriety or power, but that he had a woman to win and a score to settle. Spirit would support him in both quests.

They took a shuttle flight to the state of Sunshine and the city of Ybor, and to the suburb of Pineleaf, which was a small spinning bubble reminding her of their early life in Halfcal and the disaster of the refugee bubble.

“Do you still have your finger-whip?” Hope asked her as they explored it.

“I can get one,” she replied, laughing. It was good to laugh; she was beginning to reorient on the new reality, putting the pain of the Navy betrayal half a step behind her.

Within a day they discovered racism: an anonymous neighbor did not like the fact that they were Hispanic. But a non-anonymous neighbor went out of her way to counter it, and they were made welcome. As Hope put it: “Prejudice, racism, and unprovoked hate do exist in our society, though normally they are masked; they do their mischief in darkness. But they are more than compensated by the elements of openness, tolerance, and fairness that manifest in light.” When it came to conceptual expression, Hope was the one.

They had funds from their Navy retirement to sustain them for some time, so did not have to obtain paying work immediately. Instead they oriented on Hope's next objective: Megan, the woman he believed he could love. He was a dreamer in his fashion, but that was all right; Spirit had enough practical sense to keep him functioning. She envied him his fancy; he had lost his first love, but at least had hope of a second one. Spirit had no such hope. She was not about to delude herself that any other man could ever take the place of Gerald in her life and heart.

Gerald. She hoped he was satisfied with Roulette. It had been a marriage of convenience to salvage what the Beautiful Dreamer had dreamed and Hope had made, but the girl was smart, nervy, beautiful, and passionate, and had essential connections. They would be having sex, of course, with or without love, because it was the Navy way, but Gerald was so gentle and Rue so masochistic that it was probably perfunctory. Spirit hoped they found some viable compromise. She discovered that she was motivated not by jealousy, but by the wish for Gerald to be happy. Maybe Rue could fake it, letting her unparalleled body carry the onus. Maybe Gerald could fake brutality with a feather whip, making The Ravished come truly to life.

But for now Spirit could sublimate her core of grief by focusing on her brother's prospective romance.

“Call Kife,” she told him once they were settled in.

He needed no second urging. He put in a call to a code he had memorized. The letter Q appeared on the screen. “This is Hope Hubris.”

In a moment the screen lighted with a silent schematic of the Pineleaf apartment complex, with one apartment briefly highlighted. Then it faded, and the connection broke.

He looked at Spirit. “Here?”

“Are you surprised?”

“Yes. I thought they'd just arrange to print out the data--”

“She's a woman, Hope.”

He laughed. “She's interested in my career, not my body!”

“So am I.”

He glanced at her, for a moment fathoming the farther reaches of that statement. Spirit was interested in his career, as hers was bound to his, but that was hardly the limit of their association. The QYV woman, Reba, had recommended that Hope get into politics, and hinted that she, and therefore QYV, would lend its potent subtle support; he would be expected to reciprocate as convenient and/or necessary. But no woman was immune to Hope's magnetism, and so it figured that however coldly ambitious Reba was, she also had at least a small worm of desire for his favor gnawing in her core.

“But it is to locate Megan that I need Kife,” he said.

“You haven't located her yet.”

He got the point: therefore he was not yet committed. So he could exercise his charm on this smart, tough, ambitious older woman, and perhaps gain by it.

He went alone, taking along his manuscript of Navy experience to give her for safekeeping. Reba had obtained the Refugee manuscript, and there was no reason to doubt her sincerity in protecting it.

He returned some time later, visibly awed. “She's young--my age,” he said. “And she does have an interest.”

“Of course.”

“She says I am potentially Jupiter's next president.”

Even Spirit was floored by that. “President! I thought some state office, maybe mayor of a city.”

“She is ambitious, and means to use me to further it. I am daunted by the power of her mind and her grasp of reality. If we associated, I might orbit her.”

Instead of the woman orbiting him in the usual manner. Any woman could impress Hope with her body, but few impressed him with their minds. If he was shaken, Spirit needed to take warning: Reba was dangerous.

“I kissed her,” he added.

“Then you set her back.”

He nodded. “I had to. She is too strong not to counter in some way.”

Spirit nodded. That worm of desire would now be a snake. Reba might have power to affect Hope's career, but she would have a continuing hunger for his embrace. That would mitigate her sterness in dealing with him.

“She gave me something.”

It was a case similar to the one he had had containing his Navy manuscript. That hinted at the woman's research; she had been prepared even in that detail. It was filled with material relating to Megan. They studied it together.