‘Well, of course, Randy,’ said Zimmy with a hurt expression. ‘I have better sense than that.’
Maybelle Thonks listened to her stepmother singing and cringed inside. Honeypeach only sang when in the ascendency, and Maybelle hated to guess whose bloody and recumbent bodies her father’s wife must be currently and unmelodically stomping over.
‘Problem?’ asked Rheme Gentry. He had just come out of the Governor’s office with a stack of papers, which he placed on his desk. ‘Anything the Governor’s aide can do to help?’
‘Honeypeach is singing.’
‘Ah?’
‘It probably means she’s just killed somebody.’
‘May Bee.’ It was said softly, but unmistakably as a warning.
‘Well, it does.’
He whispered. ‘It may, but we are not going to say so. Not inside Government House. Not anywhere where we might be overheard. Are we?’ He took her hand and led her out onto the wide terrace, which extended along two sides of the house, well away from concealing shrubbery or roof overhangs.
When they were clear of the building, she said, ‘Rheme, how do you stand it?’
‘Well, I confess I was somewhat dismayed when I arrived to take the job as your father’s aide and learned exactly what his wife thought that entailed.’
‘How did you keep out of her clutches?’
‘I told her I had picked up a virulent and sexually transmitted infection on Rentree Four, that it was currently in remission but still quite communicable, and that the symptoms of the disease in women included complete atrophy of the breasts and other genitalia.’
‘Rheme! Did you really? You did. My God, I never would have … how marvelous.’
‘I further told her that she needn’t worry about her stepdaughter because I found women of your type unattractive. I told her I disliked light brown hair and hazel eyes because they reminded me of my evil aunty, the scourge of my youth.’
‘You beast.’
‘As a result, she has not worried, and you and I are allowed to be much together. Of course, she may be watching you eagerly for signs of atrophy. One doesn’t know.’
‘You didn’t answer my first question. How do you stand it? You know what Daddy’s up to.’
‘I do, indeed. He is up to making a very large fortune for himself before the bottom falls out here on Jubal. He is taking money from the Crystallites with one hand and from BDL with the other. When BDL does whatever it is planning to do, which I haven’t totally figured out yet, there will be big trouble, following which there will probably be an inquiry. In advance of the inquiry your father will resign to enjoy his retirement on Serendipity or Eutopia or New Havah-eh or some such place.’
‘It’s dishonorable.’
‘Not a word that your father has used much, Maybelle. One thing I confess that I don’t understand is why you are as you are while he is what he is.’
‘Because I had Mother around for over twenty years. And he’s had Honeypeach. She corrupts people. Not that Daddy needed much corrupting. He’s had her since she was fifteen. Can you believe that? Her son, Ymries Fedder, is really my father’s son, too. It’s why Mother left him, when she finally found out about it.’
‘And you are here only because your mother died.’
‘I’m here because I had nowhere else to go. Mother’s family disowned her when she married the honorable Wuyllum. The honorable Wuyllum was sending support for me, but he quit when Mother died. She and I were living on Serendipity, but as an off-worlder I couldn’t even get a work permit there.’
‘You could work here.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Your father could put in a word with BDL. There should be some kind of registered job available.’
‘He won’t. I’ve begged him. He doesn’t want me to have any resources at all except what he provides. He’s a terrible man, Rheme. He possesses people. Mother had told me some things, but I didn’t have any idea what he’s really like until I got here. He doesn’t do anything much with people, but he likes to own them. Every now and then he’ll twitch the chain, just to be sure it’s still attached.’ She turned away, biting her lip to keep the tears back.
‘You could marry me.’
‘Yes, I could. The idea is a very attractive one, too. But it would be the end of your job here, believe me. We’d have to leave.’
‘That wouldn’t be the end of the universe, May Bee.’
‘Not if we got away. We might not, Rheme. I know you think I’m overstating things, but things happen to people who don’t do what Daddy or Honeypeach want them to do. Sometimes they have accidents and die. Sometimes they just disappear.’
‘Ah,’ he said again, not arguing with her. After his interview with Brother Jeshel, he no longer doubted her – not that he ever had.
‘I get so … so angry. I love this place – not Government House, but Jubal. I met an explorer, Donatella Furz, at one of the receptions. I told her I’d never seen the countryside, and she took me out into the crystal country. It’s beautiful, very strange and mystical. It’s obvious what’s going to happen to it. It’s going to be destroyed. By my father. By BDL. I keep thinking there must be something I could do.’
‘Thou and I,’ he mused, looking back into Government House through the door they had left open behind them. Honeypeach Thonks was standing in that doorway, staring at her stepdaughter with the look that a hungry gyre-bird might fasten on some bit of tasty carrion. Rheme bowed in her direction, a bit more deeply than custom required. When he got his head up again, she was gone. ‘Yes,’ he mused softly, so that only Maybelle could hear. ‘We’re going to have to do something.’
On the roof of the Crystallite Temple in Splash One, just to one side of the high mud brick, plastic gilded dome, there was a comfortable apartment reached by a twisting stair hidden in one of the
