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 organisation 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 gate leg 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 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 ground sheet 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.
“You’ve come a long way?” he asked.
“Not so far as you,” said Hirald. She looked from him to the woman across the flames, who also had caste marks on her face. The other couple; the man a Negro with incongruous blue eyes and the woman Hirald thought could have come from anywhere until she noted the caps over the neural plugs behind her ears. She was corporate then; from one of the families.
“Yes, we have come a way,” said the man, touching his caste mark.
“We search,” said the Negro intently. “Perhaps you can help us. We search for one who is called Snow. He is an albino.”
They all looked at Hirald then, avidly.
“I have heard of him,” said Hirald, “and I have heard that many people look for him. I do not know where he is though.”
The woman with the neural plugs looked suspicious. Hirald continued to forestall anything more she might say.
“You are after the reward then?”
The four looked to each other, then the latter three looked to the Marsman. He smiled to himself and casually reached for the covered weapons next to him. Hirald glanced at the corporate woman, who was staring back at her.
“Jharit, no.”
Jharit stopped with his hand by the covering.
“What is it, Canard Meck?”
The woman, now identified as a member of the Jethro Manx Canard corporate family, slowly shook her head then looked to Hirald, who had not yet moved.
“We have no dispute with you, but we would prefer it if you left our camp, please.”