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  NEAL

  ASHER

  SNOW IN THE DESERT

  TOR

  Snow in the Desert

  A sand shark broke through the top face of the dune only to be snatched by a crab-bird and shredded in mid-air. Hirald squatted down, turned on her chameleonwear and faded into the violet sand, only her Toshiba goggles and the blunt snout of her singun visible. The crab-bird was a small one, but she had quickly learnt never to underestimate them. If the prey was too large for one to take, it would take pieces instead. No motile source of protein was too large to attack. The shame was that all the life-forms on Vatch were based on left-helix proteins, so to a crab-bird human flesh was completely without nourishment. The birds did not know this and just became irritable as their hunger increased. The circle was vicious.

  The bird stripped the shark of its blade-legs and armoured mandibles and flew off with the bleeding and writhing torso, probably to feed to its chick. Hirald stood up and faded back into existence; a tall woman in a tight-fitting body suit webbed with cooling veins and hung with insulated pockets. On her back she carried a desert survival pack, for the look of things. The singun went into a button-down holster that looked as if it might hold only a simple projectile weapon, not the formidable device it did hold. She removed her goggles, mask and hat, and tucked them away in one of her many pockets before moving on across the sand. Her thin features, blue eyes and long blonde hair were exposed to oven temperatures and skin-flaying ultraviolet. Such had been the way of things for many weeks now. Occasionally she drank some water; a matter of form, just in case anyone was watching.

  He was called, inevitably, Snow, but with his plastron mask and dust robes it was not immediately evident he was an albino. The mask, made from the shell of an Earth-import terrapin, was what identified him to those who knew of him – that, and his tendency to leave corpses behind him. At last count the reward for his stasis-preserved testicles was twenty thousand shillings, or the equivalent value in precious metals like copper or manganese. Many people had tried for the reward and their epitaph was just that: they had tried. Three people at the water station, on the edge of the Menilar flat, were waiting to try. They had weapons, strength and skill, balanced against the crippling honour code of the Andronache. Snow had all the former and no honour code. Born on Earth so long ago even he doubted his memories of the time, he had long since dispensed with anything that might get in the way of plain survival. Morality, he often argued, is a purely human invention only to be indulged in times of plenty. Another of his little aphorisms ran something along the lines of: if you’re up shit creek without a paddle, don’t expect the coast guard. His contemporaries on Vatch never knew what to make of that one, but then Vatchians had no use for words like creek, coast or paddle. The water station was an ovoid of metal mounted ten metres above the ground on a forest of scaffolding. Nailing it to the ground was the silvery tube of the geothermal energy tap that provided the power for the transmuter; the reason it was possible for humans to exist on this practically waterless planet. The transmuter took complex compounds, stripped them of their elementary hydrogen, and combined that with the abundant oxygen given off by the dryform algae that turned all the sands of Vatch to violet. Water was the product, but there were many interesting by-products; strange metals and silica compounds were one of the planet’s main exports.

  As he topped the final dune Snow raised his image-intensifier to his eyes and scanned ahead. The station was in reality a small city, the centre of commerce, the centre of life. Under his mask he frowned to himself. He did not know about the three men specifically, but he knew their type would be there. Unfortunately he needed water to take him on the last stage of his journey and this was the only place. A confrontation was inevitable.

  Snow strode down the face of the dune and onto a dusty track snaking towards the station. At the side of the road a water thief lay dying at the bottom of a condensation jar. He scratched at the hot glass with blistered fingers as Snow passed, but Snow ignored him. It was harsh punishment, but how else to treat someone who regarded his fellow human beings as no more than walking water barrels? As he drew nearer to the station the cries of the hawkers and stallholders in the ground city reached out to him, like the chorus from a rookery, and he could see the buzz of activity in the scaffold maze. Soon he entered the ground city and its noisy life, soon after, his presence was noted and reported. By the time he passed through the moisture lock of the Sand House – a ubiquitous name for hostelries – and was taking off his mask in the cool interior, the three killers were buckling on their weapons and offering prayers to their various family gods.

  ‘My pardon, master. I must see your tag. The Androche herself has declared the law enforceable by a two-month branding. The word is that too many outlaws now survive on the fringe.’ The waiter could not help staring at Snow’s pink eyes and bloodless face.

  ‘No problem, friend,’ said Snow, and after fumbling through his robes produced his micro-etched identity tag and handed it over. The waiter glanced at the briefly revealed leather-clad stump that terminated Snow’s left arm and pretended not to notice. He put the tag through his portable reader and was much relieved when no alarm sounded. Snow was well aware that not everyone was checked like this, only the more suspicious-looking customers, like himself.

  ‘What would you like, master?’

  ‘A litre of chilled lager,’ said Snow.

  The waiter looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘Which I will pay for now,’ said Snow, handing over a ten-shilling note. The waiter looked alarmed by such a large sum in cash money and hurried off with it as quickly as he could. When he came back with a litre of lager in a thermos stein with combination-locked top, many eyes followed his progress. Here was an indication of wealth. Snow would not have agreed with this. He had worked it out. A litre of water would only have cost two shillings less, and the water lost through sweat evaporation little different. Two shillings, plus a little, for imbibing fluid in a much more pleasant form. He had nearly finished his litre and was relishing the sheer cellular pleasure of rehydration when the three entered the Sand House. He recognized them for what they were almost immediately. Before paying the slightest attention to them he drained every last drop of lager from the frictionless vessel.

  ‘You are Snow, the albino,’ said the first, standing before his table. Snow observed her and felt a gnawing depression. Even after all these years he could not shake an aversion to killing women, or in this case girls. She could not have been more than twenty. She stood before him attired in monofilament coveralls and weapons harness. Her face was elfin under a head of cropped black hair spiked out with gold-fleck grease.

&nb
sp; ‘No, I’m not,’ he said, and turned his attention elsewhere.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ she said with a tiredness that was beyond her years. ‘I know who you are. You are an albino and your left hand is missing.’ He returned his attention to her.

  ‘My name is Jelda Conley. People call me Whitey. I have often been confused with this Snow you refer to and it was on one such occasion that I lost my hand. Now please leave me alone.’

  The girl stepped back, confused. The Andronache honour code did not allow for creative lying. Snow glanced past her and noted one of her companions speaking to the owner who had sent the nervous waiter over. The lies would not be enough. He watched while the owner called over the waiter and checked the screen of his tag reader. The companion approached the girl, whispered in her ear.

  ‘You lied to me,’ she said.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Snow.

  ‘Yes you did!’

  This was getting ridiculous. Snow stared off into the distance and ignored her.

  ‘I challenge you,’ said the girl.

  There, it was said. Snow pretended he had not heard her.

  ‘I said I challenge you.’

  By the code she could now kill him. It was against the law but accepted practice. Snow felt a sinking sensation as she stepped back.

  ‘Stand and face me, coward.’

  With a tiredness that was wholly genuine Snow rose to his feet. She snatched her slammer. Snow reacted. She hit the floor on her back with the front of her monofilament coverall breaking down and a smoking hole between her pert little breasts. Snow stepped past the table, past her, strode to the moisture lock, vomit held back by clenched teeth. Hoping the whole thing had been too fast for anyone to be sure of the weapon he had used.

  It rested on the violet sands at the edge of a spaceport, which was strewn with huge flying-wing shuttles, outbuildings and hangars. It stood between the spaceport and the sprawl of Vatchian buildings linked by moisture-sealed walkways and the glass domes that covered the incongruous green of the parks. And in no way did it resemble any of the constructs around it. It was standard; to be found on a thousand planets of the human Polity, and it was the reason the expansion of the human race beggared the imagination. The runcible facility was a mirrored sphere fifty metres across, seemingly prevented from rolling away by the two L-shaped constructs of the buffers on either side of it. All around it, the glass-roofed embarkation lounges; a puddle of light. Within, the Skaidon gate performed its miracle every few minutes; bringing in quince, mitter travellers, from all across the Polity, and sending them away again.

  Beck stood back from the arrivals entrance and watched the twin horns of the runcible on its dais of black glass. He watched the shimmer of the cusp between and impatiently checked his watch, not that they would be late, or early. They would arrive on time to the nanosecond. The runcible AI saw to that. Precisely on time a man stepped through the shimmer, a woman, another man, another woman. They matched the descriptions he had been given, and his greeting was effusive as they came through into the lounge.

  ‘Your transport awaits outside,’ he told them, hurrying them to exit. The Merchant did not want them to stay in the city. He wanted them out, those were Beck’s instructions, amongst others. Once they were in the hover transport the man Beck took to be the leader caught hold of his shoulder.

  ‘The weapons,’ he said.

  ‘Not here, not here,’ said Beck nervously, and took the transport out of the city.

  Out on the sand Beck brought the transport down and as the four climbed out he pulled a large case from the back of the transport. He was sweating, and not just because of the heat.

  ‘Here,’ he said, and opened the case.

  The man reached inside and took out a small shiny pistol, snub-nosed and deadly looking.

  ‘The Merchant will meet at the prearranged place, if he manages to obtain the information he seeks,’ he said. He did not know where that was, nor what the information was. The Merchant had not taken him that far into his trust. It surprised him that he had been allowed knowledge of this; hired killers here on Vatch.

  The man nodded as he inspected the pistol, smiled sadly, then pointed the pistol at Beck.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  Beck tried to say something just as he became aware of the arm coming round his face from the man who had moved behind him. A grip like iron closed around his head, locked, wrenched and twisted. Beck hit the sand with his head at an angle it had never achieved in life. He made some choking sounds, shivered a little, died.

  Snow halted as two proctors came in through the lock. They looked past him to the corpse on the floor. The eldest of the two, grey-bearded and running to fat, but with weapons that looked well used and well looked after, spoke to him.

  ‘You are Snow,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Snow replied. This man was not Andronache.

  ‘A challenge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man nodded, looked calculatingly at the two Andronache at the bar, then turned back to the moisture-lock. It was not his job to pick up the corpses. There was an organization for that. The girl would be in a condensation jar within the hour.

  ‘The Androche would speak with you. Come with me.’ To his companion he said, ‘Deal with it. Her two friends look like they ought to spend a little time in detention.’

  Snow followed the man outside.

  ‘Why does she want to see me?’ he asked as they strode down the scaffolded street.

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  Any conversation ended there.

  The Androche, like all in her position, had apartments up in the station she owned. The proctor led Snow to a caged spiral stair and unlocked the gate.

  ‘She is above,’ was all he said. As Snow climbed the stair the gate clanged shut behind him.

  The stairway ended at a moisture-lock hatch next to which depended a monitor and screen unit. Snow pressed the call button and waited. After a few moments a woman with cropped grey hair and a face that was all hard angles looked out at him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You sent for me,’ said Snow.

  The woman nodded and the lock on the hatch clunked open. He spun the handle and it rose on its hinge to allow him access. He climbed into a short metal-walled corridor that ended at a single panel door of imported wood. It looked like oak to Snow; very expensive. He pushed the door open and entered.

  The room was filled with a fortune in antiques; a huge dining table surrounded by carved chairs. Plush eighteenth-century furniture, oil paintings on the walls, hand woven rugs on the floor.

  ‘Don’t be too impressed. They’re all copies.’

  The Androche approached from a drinks cabinet. She carried two glasses half filled with an amber drink. Snow studied her; she was an attractive woman. He estimated her age as somewhere between thirty-five and a hundred and ninety. Three centuries earlier the second figure would have been forty-five, but rejuvenation treatments had come a long way. She wore a simple toga-type dress over an athletic figure. At her hip she carried an antique – or replica – revolver.

  ‘You know my name,’ said Snow meaningfully as he accepted the drink.

  ‘I am Aleen,’ she replied to his unspoken question.

  Snow hardly heard her. He was relishing his first sip.

  ‘My God, whisky,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘Yes,’ said Aleen, taking a sip from her drink then gesturing to a nearby sofa. They moved there and sat facing each other.

  ‘Well, I’m here. What do you want?’

  ‘Why is there a reward of twenty-five thousand shillings for your testicles?’

  ‘Best ask the Merchant Baris that question, but I see it was rhetorical. You already know the answer.’

  Aleen nodded and Snow leant towards her.

  ‘I would be glad to know the answer,’ he said.

  Aleen smiled, Snow leant back.

  ‘There is a price,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t there
always? . . . There is a man. He is the chief proctor here. His name is David Songrel.’

  ‘You want me to kill him.’

  ‘Of course. Isn’t that what you are best at?’

  Snow kept silent. Aleen lay back against the edge of the sofa then and regarded him over her drink.

  ‘That is not all I want from you.’

  He turned and looked at her and at that moment she lifted her feet up onto the sofa so that he could see that she wore nothing underneath. He wondered if she shaved or if she was naturally bald in that area. Still meeting him eye to eye she dropped one leg back to the floor, reached between her legs, and began to masturbate, gently, with two fingers. Snow wondered what it was that turned her on; his white body and pink eyes? Other women had said it was almost like being made love to by an alien, or was it that he was a killer? Probably a bit of both.

  ‘Part of the price?’

  She nodded and put her glass to one side, then she slid closer to him on the sofa and hooked one leg over the back of it.

  ‘Now,’ she said, reaching up and pulling apart her toga to expose breasts just like those of the girl he had killed. Snow searched himself for an adverse reaction to that, and when he found there was none he stood up and unclipped his dust robes.

  ‘You’re white as paper,’ said Aleen in amazement as he peeled off his under suit, and then her eyes strayed to the covered stump terminating his left arm. She said nothing about that.

  ‘Yes,’ said Snow as he knelt between her legs and bowed down to run his tongue round her nipples. ‘A blank page,’ he went on as he worked his way down. She caught his head.

  ‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I want you inside me, now.’

  Snow obliged her, but was puzzled at something he had heard in her voice. It had almost been as if that part of the act was the most important. Perhaps she wanted white-skinned children.

  Hirald called out before approaching the fire. It had been her observation that the Andronache got rather twitchy if you walked into one of their camps unannounced. As she walked in she was surprised to see that these were not Andronache. There were two men and two women dressed in monofilament survival suits that looked to be of Mars manufacture. Hirald noted this but pretended not to notice the weapons laid out on a groundsheet that one of the men had hastily covered at her arrival. She walked to the fire and squatted down. One of the women tossed on another crab-bird carapace and watched her through the flames. The man who had covered the weapons, a tall Marsman with caste markings tattooed on his temples, was the first to speak.