‘There is not!’ he hissed, ‘and if you keep on about it I will have to enter your name in the scrutator’s log.’
‘I beg your pardon.’ Tiaan thanked him and went out. So Joeyn had been right. But why had the tale been withdrawn?
Just outside the door, Tiaan was called to Gi-Had’s office. The overseer was sitting behind his table. He said nothing as she came in and shut the door, though he held himself as straight as a poker. He indicated a chair. She sat down.
‘What did you want to see me about, overseer?’
He pinned her with those deeply sunken eyes. ‘This!’ Gi-Had threw a controller onto the table.
Tiaan started. It was the one Irisis had been working on for the past month, though so battered that it could not be repaired. She picked it up. ‘How did this happen?’
‘Irisis accuses you,’ Gi-Had said without expression.
‘Me?’ Tiaan swallowed. ‘Why would I do such a wicked thing?’
‘Because you and Irisis are feuding? Because you hate her? Perhaps because you are in the pay of the enemy?’ He held his hands out as if offering her a choice rather than accusing her, but all at once she felt desperately afraid. The breeding factory could be the least of her worries. Gi-Had looked every bit as ferocious as that perquisitor of her childhood. And after all, Irisis was his second cousin. Blood was thick in these parts.
It was hard to control her voice. ‘I – I don’t like Irisis, but I don’t hate her. I’m just trying to do my job and my best for the war.’
‘The guards say you’re the only one who went in there this morning.’
‘The night guard spends most of her shift gossiping by the furnaces. She’s never around when I finish work.’
‘The day guard says the same thing. And Irisis’s controller has been smashed in your cubicle.’
‘Maybe someone is trying to get rid of me,’ she said simply.
‘Are you accusing Irisis?’
‘I don’t believe she would wreck her controller, even to be rid of me. She loves her work too much.’
‘Then who?’ Gi-Had cried.
‘I don’t know, overseer.’
‘I suggest you try very hard to find out!’ Once Perquisitor Jal-Nish hears of this outrage he may decide to pay us a visit. He’s not as trusting as I am, Tiaan, and he’s quick to jump to conclusions. If he decides against you, nothing I say will change his mind. That’s all!’
She went out, a black chill settling over her. She had heard all about the new perquisitor. Before she reached her cubicle Tiaan found another reason to be afraid. The perquisitor was Nish’s father. She had spurned the little artificer and now he was Irisis’s lover. There was no doubt whose word Jal-Nish would take.
Her only refuge was work, though it could not stop her cycling thoughts. The new crystal needed no shaping; it was perfect as it was. After waking it with her pliance, Tiaan merely cleaned up a few sharp edges, then reconstructed the mounting on the front of her helm to fit. At dinnertime she slipped the crystal into place. It fitted perfectly. Pushing the clasps down, she sat back. It was a fine piece of work, as good as she could do, but it gave her no pleasure. And again, as she put her devices down, Tiaan had the feeling that someone, in some distant place, was trying to find her.
Uncomfortable with that thought, she closed her eyes and lay her head on the bench. The door opened. Irisis stood there, the last person she wanted to see. ‘I heard about your controller –’ Tiaan began.
Such fury passed across Irisis’s face that Tiaan froze. ‘Don’t say another word!’ Irisis snarled.
Tiaan looked down at her helm, wondering what it was that Irisis wanted.
‘Have you found the answer yet?’ Irisis picked up one of the failed hedrons.
‘No, but I’m making progress. What about you?’
‘It’s not my controllers that failed.’
‘I thought you’d want to help, for the sake of the war,’ Tiaan said acidly. A tiny victory but it made her feel better.
Irisis’s eyes darted to the globe and helm. ‘What’s that? Another toy for your bastard brothers and sisters?’
As little as twenty years ago that would not have been an insult, in the days when women could choose to take a partner, or not. Tiaan clenched her fists. Irisis laughed openly. ‘You came from the breeding factory and that’s where you’ll end up. It’s all you’re good for anyway, lying on your back with your legs over your shoulders.’
Tiaan gritted her teeth and said nothing, since that would annoy Irisis more than any reply she could think of.
‘Well, what is it?’ Irisis burst out.
‘I should have thought someone with your great crafter heritage would know at a glance.’
‘Just tell me!’
‘It’s a probe,’ Tiaan said, ‘to read the history of the faulty controllers and find out why they failed.’
A spark lit in Irisis’s eyes. ‘It’ll never work.’ Picking up the helm, she weighed it in her hands and then put it on her head, where it sat like a pancake. ‘Doesn’t even fit.’
‘My head is smaller than yours.’
Irisis rotated the helm, pushing its spidery legs down hard. She reached for the globe that still held the faulty hedron, but as she touched it the crystal in the helm flared white. There came a snapping sound, accompanied by a sizzle. Irisis screamed, tore the helm off and hurled it at the bench.
‘Are you all right?’ Tiaan could not comprehend what had happened.
Irisis staggered drunkenly about, her eyes crossed. Her fingers rubbed furiously at her temple. Tiaan got her into a chair. The skin beneath where the crystal had sat was blistered and several strands of yellow hair had frizzled up.
Irisis’s eyes uncrossed and she slapped Tiaan across the face with the full weight of arm and shoulder. It knocked Tiaan sideways. ‘You rotten little cow, you did that deliberately. Stay away from me, do you hear?’
Tiaan backed away, rubbing her cheek.
Irisis rose out of her chair as if propelled by a spring. She looked frightened, not a common expression on her face. What had the device done to her?
‘That thing’s corrupt, like you, Tiaan. You’ll never get anything out of it.’
‘You just don’t understand it,’ said Tiaan as Irisis made for the door. She could not resist a taunt, for she seldom got the last word with Irisis. ‘Maybe it’s you who’ll be going to the breeding factory.’
‘People like me don’t go to the breeding factory!’ she spat. She was peculiarly sensitive to slights against her ability as an artisan. ‘We marry well and live in luxury. Enjoy it while it lasts, Tiaan. You won’t be here much longer.’
Tiaan, who before her mother’s decline had come from a long line of proud, independent women, wanted to fling herself on Irisis, clawing and screaming. But restraining herself, she slammed the door in her rival’s face. In a few days she had made two mortal enemies. And despite the shortage of men, she had no doubt that Irisis would make a good match. Her kind usually did.
These controllers would decide Tiaan’s fate. If she found out why they had failed, and could solve the problem, she should be secure. If not, she was surely doomed.
Tiaan could never submit to the breeding factory. It was a propaganda weapon, but also a way of using women who had failed in other areas of life, and those who could never find a mate because so many men had been killed in the war. Whole generations of youths had gone away and not come back.
It was impossible to work now. As she was locking her door, Tiaan saw Nish across the way, leaning against the wall of the offices. No doubt he was gathering evidence for the perquisitor. Her life was collapsing around her.
In her room, too shaken to eat or wash, Tiaan tossed her clothes into the basket, crawled in between the freezing sheets and curled up into a ball. Using a hedron always gave her fantastic dreams, as if it left her mind close to the ethyr that was the carrier of power. She hoped her dreams would be romantic ones tonight. Dreams were a refuge and an escape. She had never needed one more desperately.