Other books by Bruce Sterling
INVOLUTION OCEAN
THE ARTIFICIAL KID
SCHISMATRIX

by Bruce Sterling
ARBOR HOUSE
New York

Copyright 1985 by Bruce Sterling
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in
whole or in part in any form. Published in the United States
of America by Arbor House Publishing Company and in
Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 987654321
This book is printed on acid-free paper. The paper in this
book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of
the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data


Bruce Sterling

Schismatrix (lacking pp 78-79, 102-103 of this paper version)



PROLOGUE

Painted aircraft flew through the core of the world. Lindsay
stood in knee-high grass, staring upward to follow their flight.
	Flimsy as kites, the pedal-driven ultralights dipped and soared
through the free-fall zone, far overhead. Beyond them, across
the diameter of the cylindrical world, the curving landscape
glowed with the yellow of wheat and the speckled green of
cotton fields.
	Lindsay shaded his eyes against the sunlit glare from one of the
world's long windows. An aircraft, its wings elegantly stenciled
in blue feathers on white fabric, crossed the bar of light and
swooped silently above him. He saw the pilot's long hair trailing
as she pedaled back into a climb. Lindsay knew she had seen
him. He wanted to shout, to wave frantically, but he was
watched.
His jailers caught up with him: his wife and his uncle. The two
old aristocrats walked with painful slowness. His uncle's face
was flushed; he had turned up his heart's pacemaker. "You
ran," he said. "You ran!"
"I stretched my legs," Lindsay said with bland defiance.
"House arrest cramps me."
His uncle peered upward to follow Lindsay's gaze, shading his
eyes with an age-spotted hand. The bird-painted aircraft now
hovered over the Sours, a marshy spot in the agricultural panel
where rot had set into the soil. "You're watching the Sours, eh?
Where your friend Constantine's at work? They say he signals
you from there."
"Philip works with insects, Uncle. Not cryptography."
	Lindsay was lying. He depended on Constantine's covert signals for news during his house arrest.
He and Constantine were political allies. When the crackdown
came, Lindsay had been quarantined within the grounds of his
family's mansion. But Philip Constantine had irreplaceable ecological
skills. He was still free, working in the Sours.
The long internment had pushed Lindsay to desperation. He
was at his best among people, where his adroit diplomatic skills
could shine. In isolation, he had lost weight: his high cheek-
bones stood out in sharp relief and his gray eyes had a sullen,
vindictive glow. His sudden run had tousled his modishly curled
black hair. He was tall and rangy, with the long chin and
arched, expressive eyebrows of the Lindsay clan.
	Lindsay's wife, Alexandrina, took his arm. She was dressed
fashionably, in a long pleated skirt and white medical tunic. Her
pale, clear complexion showed health without vitality, as if her
skin were a perfectly printed paper replica. Mummified kiss-
curls adorned her forehead.
"You said you wouldn't talk politics, James," she told the
older man. She looked up at Lindsay. "You're pale, Abelard.
He's upset you."
"Am I pale?" Lindsay said. He drew on his Shaper diplomatic
training. Color seeped into his cheeks. He widened the dilation
of his pupils and smiled with a gleam of teeth. His uncle
stepped back, scowling.
Alexandrina leaned on Lindsay's arm. "I wish you wouldn't do
that," she told him. "It frightens me." She was fifty years older
than Lindsay and her knees had just been replaced. Her Mechanist teflon kneecaps still bothered her.
Lindsay shifted his bound volume of printout to his left hand.
During his house arrest, he had translated the works of Shakespeare into modern circumsolar English. The elders of the Lindsay clan had encouraged him in this. His antiquarian hobbies,
they thought, would distract him from plotting against the state.
	To reward him, they were allowing him to present the work to
the Museum. He had seized on the chance to briefly escape his
house arrest.
The Museum was a hotbed of subversion. It was full of his
friends. Preservationists, they called themselves. A reactionary
youth movement, with a romantic attachment to the art and
culture of the past. They had made the Museum their political
	stronghold.
Their world was the Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate
Republic, a two-hundred-year-old artificial habitat orbiting the
Earth's Moon. As one of the oldest of humankind's nation-
states in space, it was a place of tradition, with the long habits of
a settled culture.
But change had burst in, spreading from newer, stronger
worlds in the Asteroid Belt and the Rings of Saturn. The
Mechanist and Shaper superpowers had exported their war into
this quiet city-state. The strain had split the population into
factions: Lindsay's Preservationists against the power of the
Radical Old, rebellious plebes against the wealthy aristocracy.
	Mechanist sympathizers held the edge in the Republic.
The Radical Old held power from within their governing hospitals. These ancient aristocrats, each well over a century old,
were patched together with advanced Mechanist hardware, their
lives extended with imported prosthetic technology. But the
medical expenses were bankrupting the Republic. Their world
was already deep in debt to the medical Mech cartels. The
Republic would soon be a Mechanist client state.
But the Shapers used their own arsenals of temptation. Years
earlier, they had trained and indoctrinated Lindsay and Constantine. Through these two friends, the leaders of their generation, the Shapers exploited the fury of the young, who saw their
birthrights stolen for the profit of the Mechanists.
Tension had mounted within the Republic until a single gesture could set it off.
Life was the issue. And death would be the proof.
Lindsay's uncle was winded. He touched his wrist monitor and
	turned down the beating of his heart. "No more stunts," he said.
"They're waiting in the Museum." He frowned. "Remember, no
speeches. Use the prepared statement."
Lindsay stared upward. The bird-painted ultralight went into a
powerdive.
"No!" Lindsay shouted. He threw his book aside and ran.
	The ultralight smashed down in the grass outside the ringed
stone seats of an open-air amphitheatre.
	The aircraft lay crushed, its wings warped in a dainty convulsion of impact. "Vera!" Lindsay shouted.
He tugged her body from the flimsy wreckage. She was still
breathing; blood gushed from her mouth and nostrils. Her ribs
were broken. She was choking. He tore at the ring-shaped collar
of her Preservationist suit. The wire of the collar cut his hands.
The suit imitated space-suit design; its accordioned elbows were
crushed and stained.
Little while moths were flying up from the long grass. They
milled about as if drawn by the blood.
	Lindsay brushed a moth from her face and pressed his lips to
hers. The pulse stopped in her throat. She was dead.
	"Vera," he groaned. "Sweetheart, you're burned. . . ."
	A wave of grief and exultation hit him. He fell into the sun-
warmed grass, holding his sides. More moths sprang up.
	She had done it. It seemed easy now. It was something the two of them had talked about a hundred times, deep into the night
at the Museum or in bed after their adultery. Suicide, the last
protest. An enormous vista of black freedom opened up in
Lindsay's head. He felt a paradoxical sense of vitality. "Darling,
it won't be long. . . ."
His uncle found him kneeling. The older man's face was gray.
"Oh," he said. "This is vile. What have you done?"
Lindsay got dizzily to his feet. "Get away from her."
His uncle stared at the dead woman. "She's dead! You damned
fool, she was only twenty-six!"
	Lindsay yanked a long dagger of crudely hammered metal
from his accordioned sleeve. He swept it up and aimed it at his
own chest. "In the name of humanity! And the preservation of
human values! I freely choose to-"
His uncle seized his wrist. They struggled briefly, glaring into
one another's eyes, and Lindsay dropped the knife. His uncle
snatched it out of the grass and slipped it into his lab coat.
"This is illegal," he said. "You'll face weapons charges."
	Lindsay laughed shakily. "I'm your prisoner, but you can't stop
me if I choose to die. Now or later, what does it matter?"
"You're a fanatic." His uncle watched him with bitter con-
tempt. "The Shaper schooling holds to the end, doesn't it? Your
training cost the Republic a fortune, and you use it to seduce
and murder."
"She died clean! Better to burn in a rush than live two hundred years as a Mechanist wirehead."
The elder Lindsay stared at the horde of white moths that
swarmed on the dead woman's clothing. "We'll nail you for this
somehow. You and that upstart plebe Constantine."
	Lindsay was incredulous. "You stupid Mech bastard! Look at
her! Can't you see that you've killed us already? She was the
best of us! She was our muse."
His uncle frowned. "Where did all these insects come from?"
He bent and brushed the moths aside with wrinkled hands.
	Lindsay reached forward suddenly and snatched a filigreed
gold locket from the woman's neck. His uncle grabbed his
sleeve.
"It's mine!" Lindsay shouted. They began to fight in earnest.
His uncle broke Lindsay's clumsy stranglehold and kicked
Lindsay twice in the stomach. Lindsay fell to his knees.
	His uncle picked up the locket, wheezing. "You assaulted me,"
he said, scandalized. "You used violence against a fellow citizen." He opened the locket. A thick oil ran out onto his fingers.
"No message?" he said in surprise. He sniffed at his fingers.
"Perfume?"
	Lindsay knelt, panting in nausea. His uncle screamed.
	White moths were darting at the man, clinging to the oily skin
of his hands. There were dozens of them.
	They were attacking him. He screamed again and batted at his
face.
Lindsay rolled over twice, away from his uncle. He knelt in the
grass, shaking. His uncle was down, convulsing like an epileptic.
Lindsay scrambled backward on his hands and knees.
	The old man's wrist monitor glared red. He stopped moving.
The white moths crawled over his body for a few moments, then
flew off one by one, vanishing into the grass.
	Lindsay lurched to his feet. He looked behind him, across the
meadow. His wife was walking toward them, slowly, through the
grass.
	
Part One
SUNDOG ZONES

CHAPTER ONE

THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 27-12-'15

They shipped Lindsay into exile in the cheapest kind of Mechanist drogue. For two days he was blind and deaf, stunned with
drugs, his body packed in a thick matrix of deceleration paste.
Launched from the Republic's cargo arm, the drogue had
drifted with cybernetic precision into the polar orbit of another
circumlunar. There were ten of these worlds, named for the
lunar mares and craters that had provided their raw materials.
They'd been the first nation-states to break off all relations with
the exhausted Earth. For a century their lunar alliance had been
the nexus of civilization, and commercial traffic among these
"Concatenate worlds" had been heavy.
	But since those glory days, progress in deeper space had
eclipsed the Concatenation, and the lunar neighborhood had
become a backwater. Their alliance had collapsed, giving way to
peevish seclusion and technical decline. The circumlunars had
fallen from grace, and none had fallen further than the place of
Lindsay's exile.
	Cameras watched his arrival. Ejected from the drogue's docking port, he floated naked in the free-fall customs chamber of
the Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu. The
chamber was of dull lunar steel, with strips of ragged epoxy
where paneling had been ripped free. The room had once been
a honeymoon suite, where newlyweds could frolic in free-fall.
Now it was bleakly transformed into a bureaucratic clearing
area.
	Lindsay was still drugged from the trip. A drip-feed cable was
plugged into the crook of his right arm, reviving him. Black
adhesive disks, biomonitors, dotted his naked skin. He shared
the room with a camera drone. The free-fall videosystem had
two pairs of piston-driven cybernetic arms.
	Lindsay's gray eyes opened blearily. His handsome face, with
its clear pale skin and arched, elegant brows, had the slack look
of stupor. His dark, crimped hair fell to high cheekbones with
traces of three-day-old rouge.
	His arms trembled as the stimulants took hold. Then, abruptly,
he was back to himself. His training swept over him in a phys-
ical wave, flooding him so suddenly that his teeth clacked to-
gether in the spasm. His eyes swept the room, glittering with
unnatural alertness. The muscles of his face moved in a way that
no human face should move, and suddenly he was smiling. He
examined himself and smiled into the camera with an easy,
tolerant urbanity.
	The air itself seemed to warm with the sudden radiance of his
good-fellowship.
	The cable in his arm disengaged itself and snaked back into
the wall. The camera spoke.
	"You are Abelard Malcolm Tyler Lindsay? From the Mare
Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic? You are seeking
political asylum? You have no biologically active materials in
your baggage or implanted on your person? You are not carry-
ing explosives or software attack systems? Your intestinal flora
has been sterilized and replaced with Zaibatsu standard microbes?"
	"Yes, that's correct," Lindsay said, in the camera's own Japanese. "I have no baggage." He was comfortable with the modern
form of the language: a streamlined trade patois, stripped of its
honorific tenses. Facility with languages had been part of his
training.
	"You will soon be released into an area that has been ideologically decriminalized," the camera said. "Before you leave customs, there are certain limits to your activities that must be
understood. Are you familiar with the concept of civil rights?"
Lindsay was cautious. "In what context?"
	"The Zaibatsu recognizes one civil right: the right to death.
You may claim your right at any time, under any circumstances.
All you need do is request it. Our audio monitors are spread
throughout the Zaibatsu. If you claim your right, you will be
immediately and painlessly terminated. Do you understand?"
	"I understand," Lindsay said.
	"Termination is also enforced for certain other behaviors," the
camera said. "If you physically threaten the habitat, you will be
killed. If you interfere with our monitoring devices, you will be
killed. If you cross the sterilized zone, you will be killed. You
will also be killed for crimes against humanity."
	"Crimes against  humanity?"   Lindsay said.  "How are those
	defined?"
	"These are biological and prosthetic efforts that we declare to
be aberrant. The technical information concerning the limits of
our tolerance must remain classified."
	"I see," Lindsay said. This was, he realized, carte blanche to
kill him at any time, for almost any reason. He had expected as
much. This world was a haven for sundogs: defectors, traitors,
exiles, outlaws. Lindsay doubted that a world full of sundogs
could be run any other way. There were simply too many
strange technologies at large in circumsolar space. Hundreds of
apparently innocent actions, even the breeding of butterflies,
could be potentially lethal.
	We are all criminals, he thought.
	"Do you wish to claim your civil right?"
	"No, thank you," Lindsay said politely. "But it's a great solace
to know that the Zaibatsu government grants me this courtesy. I
will remember your kindness."
	"You need only call out," the camera said, with satisfaction.
	The interview was over. Wobbling in free-fall, Lindsay stripped
away the biomonitors. The camera handed him a credit card
and a pair of standard-issue Zaibatsu coveralls.
Lindsay climbed into the baggy clothing. He'd come into exile
alone. Constantine, too, had been indicted, but Constantine, as
usual, had been too clever.
	Constantine had been his closest friend for fifteen years. Lindsay's family had disapproved of his friendship with a plebe, but
	Lindsay had defied them.
In those days the elders had hoped to walk the fence between
the competing superpowers. They'd been inclined to trust the
	Shapers and had sent Lindsay to the Ring Council for diplomatic training. Two years later, they'd sent Constantine as well,
for training in biotechnology.
	But the Mechanists had overwhelmed the Republic, and Lindsay and Constantine were disgraced, embarrassing reminders of
	a failure in foreign policy. But this only united them, and their
dual influence had spread contagiously among the plebes and
the younger aristos. In combination they'd been formidable:
Constantine, with his subtle long-term plans and iron determination; Lindsay as the front man, with his persuasive glibness
and theatrical elegance.
	But then Vera Kelland had come between them. Vera: artist,
actress, and aristocrat, the first Preservationist martyr. Vera
believed in their cause; she was their muse, holding to the
conviction with an earnestness they couldn't match. She too was
married, to a man sixty years her senior, but adultery only
added spice to the long seduction. At last Lindsay had won her.
But with the possession of Vera came her deadly resolve.
	The three of them knew that an act of suicide would change
the Republic when all else was hopeless. They came to terms.
Philip would survive to carry on the work; that was his consolation for losing Vera and for the loneliness that was to come.
And the three of them had worked toward death in feverish
intimacy, until her death had truly come, and made their sleek
ideals into a sticky nastiness.
	The camera opened the customs hatch with a creak of badly
greased hydraulics. Lindsay shook himself free of the past. He
floated down a stripped hallway toward the feeble glow of
daylight.
	He emerged onto a landing pad for aircraft, cluttered with
dirty machines.
	The landing pad was centered at the free-fall zone of the
colony's central axis. From this position, Lindsay could stare
along the length of the Zaibatsu, through five long kilometers of
gloomy, stinking air.
	The sight and shape of the clouds struck him first. They were
malformed and bloated, with an ugly yellowish tinge. They
rippled and distorted in fetid updrafts from the Zaibatsu's land
panels.
	The smell was vile. Each of the ten circumlunar worlds of the
Concatenation had its own native smell. Lindsay remembered
that his own Republic had seemed to reek when he first re-
turned to it from the Shaper academy. But here the air seemed
foul enough to kill. His nose began to run.

	Every Concatenate world faced biological problems as the
habitat aged.
	Fertile soil required a minimum of ten million bacterial cells
per cubic centimeter. This invisible swarm formed the basis of
everything fruitful. Humanity had carried it into space.
	But humanity and its symbionts had thrown aside the blanket
of atmosphere. Radiation levels soared. The circumlunar worlds
had shields of imported lunar rubble whole meters deep, but
they could not escape the bursts of solar flares and the random
shots of cosmic radiation.
	Without bacteria, the soil was a lifeless heap of imported lunar
dust. With them, it was a constant mutational hazard.
	The Republic struggled to control its Sours. In the Zaibatsu,
the souring had become epidemic. Mutant fungi had spread like
oil slicks, forming a mycelial crust beneath the surface of the
soil. This gummy crust repelled water, choking trees and grass.
Dead vegetation was attacked by rot. The soil grew dry, the air
grew damp, and mildew blossomed on dying fields and orchards, gray pinheads swarming into blotches of corruption,
furred like lichen. . . .
	When matters reached this stage, only desperate efforts could
restore the world. It would have to be evacuated, all its air
decompressed into space, and the entire inner surface charred
clean in vacuum, then reseeded from scratch. The expense was
crippling. Colonies faced with this had suffered breakaways and
mass defections, in which thousands fled to frontiers of deeper
space. With the passage of time, these refugees had formed their
own societies. They joined the Mechanist cartels of the Asteroid
Belt, or the Shaper Ring Council, orbiting Saturn.
	In the case of the People's Zaibatsu, most of the population
had gone, but a stubborn minority refused defeat.
	Lindsay understood. There was a grandeur in this morose and
rotting desolation.
	Slow whirlwinds tore at the gummy soil, spilling long tendrils
of rotten grit into the twilit air. The glass sunlight panels were
coated with filth, a gluey amalgam of dust and mildew. The long
panels had blown out in places; they were shored up with
strut-braced makeshift plugs.
	It was cold. With the glass so filthy, so cracked, with daylight
reduced to a smeared twilight, they would have to run the place
around the clock simply to keep it from freezing. Night was too
dangerous; it couldn't be risked. Night was not allowed.
	Lindsay scrabbled weightlessly along the landing deck. The
aircraft were moored to the scratched metal with suction cups.
	
	There were a dozen man-powered models, in bad repair, and a
few battered electrics.
	He checked the struts of an ancient electric whose fabric wings
were stenciled with a Japanese carp design. Mud-smeared skids
equipped it for gravity landings. Lindsay floated into the skeletal
saddle, fitting his cloth-and-plastic shoes into the stirrups.
	He pulled his credit card from one of the coverall's chest
pockets. The gold-trimmed black plastic had a red LED readout
displaying credit hours. He fed it into a slot and the tiny engine
hummed into life.
	He cast off and caught a downdraft until he felt the tug of
gravity. He oriented himself with the ground below.
	To his left, the sunlight panel had been cleaned in patches. A
cadre of lumpy robots were scraping and mopping the fretted
glass. Lindsay nosed the ultralight down for a closer look. The
robots were bipedal; they were crudely designed. Lindsay realized suddenly that they were human beings in suits and gas
masks.
	Columns of sunlight from the clean glass pierced the murk like
searchlights. He flew into one, twisted, and rode its updraft.
The light fell upon the opposite land panel. Near its center a
cluster of storage tanks dotted the land. The tanks brimmed
with oozing green brew: algae. The last agriculture left in the
Zaibatsu was an oxygen farm.
	He swooped lower over the tanks. Gratefully, he breathed the
enriched air. His aircraft's shadow flitted over a jungle of refinery pipes.
	As he looked down, he saw a second shadow behind him.
Lindsay wheeled abruptly to his right.
	The shadow followed his movement with cybernetic precision.
Lindsay pulled his craft into a steep climb and twisted in the
seat to look behind him.
	When he finally spotted his pursuer, he was shocked to see it
so close. Its splattered camouflage of dun and gray hid it perfectly against the interior sky of ruined land panels. It was a
surveillance craft, a remotely controlled flying drone. It had flat,
square wings and a noiseless rear propeller in a camouflaged
exhaust cowling.
	A knobbed array of cylinders jutted from the robot aircraft's
torso. The two tubes that pointed at him might be telephoto
cameras. Or they might be x-ray lasers. Set to the right frequency, an x-ray laser could char the interior of a human body
without leaving a mark on the skin. And x-ray beams were
invisible.
The thought filled him with fear and profound disgust. Worlds
were frail places, holding precious air and warmth against the
hostile nothingness of space. The safety of worlds was the universal basis of morality. Weapons were dangerous, and that
made them vile. In this sundog world, only weapons could keep
order, but he still felt a deep, instinctive outrage.
	Lindsay flew into a yellowish fog that roiled and bubbled near
the Zaibatsu's axis. When he emerged, the aircraft had vanished.
	He would never know when they were watching. At any moment, unseen fingers might close a switch, and he would fall.
	The violence of his feelings surprised him. His training had
seeped away. There flashed behind his eyes the uncontrollable
image of Vera Kelland, plunging downward, smashing to earth,
her craft's bright wings crumpling on impact. . . .
	He turned south. Beyond the ruined panels he saw a broad
ring of pure white, girdling the world. It abutted the Zaibatsu's
southern wall.
	He glanced behind him. The northern wall was concave,
crowded with abandoned factories and warehouses. The bare
southern wall was sheer and vertical. It seemed to be made of
bricks.
	The ground below it was a wide ring of blazingly clean, raked
white rocks. Here and there among the sea of pebbles, enigmatically shaped boulders rose like dark islands.
	Lindsay swooped down for a closer look. A squat guardline of
black weapons bunkers swiveled visibly, tracking him with delicate bluish muzzles. He was over the Sterilized Zone.
	He climbed upward rapidly.
	A hole loomed in the center of the southern wall. Surveillance
craft swarmed like hornets in and around it. Microwave antennae bristled around its edges, trailing armored cables.
	He could not see through the hole. There was half a world
beyond that wall, but sundogs were not allowed to glimpse it.
	Lindsay glided downward. The ultralight's wire struts sang with
tension.
	To the north, on the second of the Zaibatsu's three land
panels, he saw the work of sundogs. Refugees had stripped and
demolished wide swaths of the industrial sector and erected
crude airtight domes from the scrap.
	The domes ranged from small bubbles of inflated plastic,
through multicolored caulked geodesies, to one enormous isolated hemisphere.
	Lindsay circled the largest dome closely. Black insulation foam
covered its surface. Mottled lunar stone armored its lower rim.
	Unlike most of the other domes, it had no antennae or aerials.
He recognized it. He'd known it would be here.
	Lindsay was afraid. He closed his eyes and called on his
Shaper training, the ingrained strength of ten years of
psychotechnic discipline.
	He felt his mind slide subtly into its second mode of conscious-
ness. His posture altered, his movements were smoother, his
heart beat faster. Confidence seeped into him, and he smiled.
His mind felt sharper, cleaner, cleansed of inhibitions, ready to
twist and manipulate. His fear and his guilt faltered and warped
away, a tangle of irrelevance.
	As always, in this second state, he felt contempt for his former
weakness. This was his true self: pragmatic, fast-moving, free of
emotional freight.
	This was no time for half measures. He had his plans. If he was to survive here, he would have to take the situation by the
throat.
	Lindsay spotted the building's airlock. He brought the
ultralight in for a skidding landing. He unplugged his credit
card and stepped off. The aircraft sprang into the muddy sky.
	Lindsay followed a set of stepping-stones into a recessed alcove in the dome's wall. Inside the recess, an overhead panel flicked into brilliant light. To his left, in the alcove's wall, a camera lens flanked an armored videoscreen. Below the screen, light
gleamed from a credit-card slot and the steel rectangle of a
sliding vault.
	A much larger sliding door, in the interior wall, guarded the
airlock. A thick layer of undisturbed grit filled the airlock's
groove. The Nephrine Black Medicals were not partial to visitors.
	Lindsay waited patiently, rehearsing lies.
	Ten minutes passed. Lindsay tried to keep his nose from
running. Suddenly the videoscreen flashed into life. A woman's
face appeared.
	"Put your credit card in the slot," she said in Japanese.
	Lindsay watched her, weighing her kinesics. She was a lean,
dark-eyed woman of indeterminate age, with close-cropped
brown hair. Her eyes looked dilated. She wore a white medical
tunic with a metal insignia in its collar: a golden staff with two
entwined snakes. The snakes were black enamel with jeweled
red eyes. Their open jaws showed hypodermic fangs.
	Lindsay smiled. "I haven't come to buy anything," he said.
	"You're buying my attention, aren't you? Put in the card."
"I didn't ask you to appear on this screen," Lindsay said in
English. "You're free to sign off at any time."
	The woman stared at him in annoyance. "Of course I'm free,"
she said in English. "I'm free to have you hauled in here and
chopped to pieces. Do you know where you are? This isn't
some cheap sundog operation. We're the Nephrine Black
Medicals."
	In the Republic, they were unknown. But Lindsay knew of
them from his days in the Ring Council: criminal biochemists
on the fringes of the Shaper underworld. Reclusive, tough, and
vicious. He'd known that they had strongholds: black laboratories scattered through the System. And this was one of them.
	He smiled coaxingly. "I would like to come in, you know. Only
not in pieces."
	"You must be joking," the woman said. "You're not worth the
credit it would cost us to disinfect you."
	Lindsay raised his brows. "I have the standard microbes."
	"This is a sterile environment. The Nephrines live clean."
	"So you can't come in and out freely?" said Lindsay, pretend-
ing surprise at the news. "You're trapped in there?"
	"This  is where we  live"  the woman  said.  "You're trapped
outside."
	"That's a shame," Lindsay said. "I wanted to do some recruit-
ing here. I was trying to be fair." He shrugged. "I've enjoyed our
talk, but time presses. I'll be on my way."
	"Stop," the woman said. "You don't go until I say you can go."
Lindsay feigned alarm. "Listen," he said. "No one doubts your
reputation. But you're trapped in there. You're of no use to
me." He ran his long fingers through his hair. "There's no point
in this."
"What are you implying? Who are you, anyway?"
	"Lindsay."
	"Lin Dze? You're not of oriental stock."
	Lindsay looked into the lens of the camera and locked eyes
with her. The impression was hard to simulate through video,
but its unexpectedness made it very effective on a subconscious
level. "And what's your name?"
	"Cory Prager," she blurted. "Doctor Prager."
	"Cory, I represent Kabuki Intrasolar. We're a commercial the-
atrical venture." Lindsay lied enthusiastically. "I'm arranging a
production and I'm recruiting a cast. We pay generously. But, as
you say, since you can't come out, frankly, you're wasting my
time. You can't even attend the performance." He sighed.
"Obviously this isn't my fault. I'm not responsible."
	The woman laughed unpleasantly. Lindsay had grasped her
kinesics, though, and her uneasiness was obvious to him. "You
think we care what they do on the outside? We have a seller's
market cornered here. All we care about is their credit. The rest
is of no consequence."
	"I'm glad to hear you say that. I wish other groups shared your
attitude. I'm an artist, not a politician. I wish I could avoid the
complications as easily as you do." He spread his hands. "Since
we understand each other now, I'll be on my way."
	"Wait. What complications?"
	"It's not my doing," Lindsay hedged. "It's the other factions. I
haven't even finished assembling the cast, and already they're
plotting together. The play gives them a chance to negotiate."
	"We can send out our monitors. We can watch your production."
	"Oh, I'm sorry," Lindsay said stiffly. "We don't allow our plays
to be taped or broadcast. It would spoil our attendance." He
was rueful. "I can't risk disappointing my cast. Anyone can be
an actor these days. Memory drugs make it easy."
	"We sell memory drugs," she said. "Vasopressins, carbolines,
endorphins. Stimulants, tranquilizers. Laughers, screamers,
shouters, you name it. If there's a market for it, the Nephrine
black chemists can make it. If we can't synthesize it, we'll filter
it from tissue. Anything you want. Anything you can think of."
She lowered her voice. "We're friends with Them, you know.
The ones beyond the Wall. They think the world of us."
	Lindsay rolled his eyes. "Of course."
	She looked offscreen; he heard the rapid tapping of a key-
board. She looked up. "You've been talking to the whores,
haven't you? The Geisha Bank."
	Lindsay looked cautious. The Geisha Bank was new to him. "It
might be best if I kept my dealings confidential."
	"You're a fool to believe their promises."
	Lindsay smiled uneasily. "What choice do I have? There's a
natural alliance between actors and whores."
	"They must have warned you against us." The woman put a
pair of headphones against her left ear and listened distractedly.
	"I told you I was trying to be fair," Lindsay said. The screen
went silent suddenly and the woman spoke rapidly into a pin-
head microphone. Her face flashed offscreen and was replaced
by the wrinkle-etched face of an older man. Lindsay had a brief
glimpse of the man's true appearance-white hair in spiky dis-
array, red-rimmed eyes -before a video-manicuring program
came on line. The program raced up the screen one scan line at
a time, subtly smoothing, deleting, and coloring.
	"Look, this is useless," Lindsay blustered. "Don't try to talk
me into something I'll regret. I have a show to put on, I don't
have time for this-"
	"Shut up, you," the man said. The steel vault door slid open,
revealing a folded packet of transparent vinyl. "Put it on," the
man said. "You're coming inside."
	Lindsay unfolded the bundle and shook it out. It was a full-
length decontamination suit. "Go on, hurry it up," the Black
Medical insisted. "You may be under surveillance."
	"I hadn't realized," Lindsay said. He struggled into the booted
trousers. "This is quite an honor." He tunneled into the gloved
and helmeted top half of the suit and sealed the waist.
	The airlock door shunted open with a scrape of grit. "Get in,"
the man said. Lindsay stepped inside, and the door slid shut
behind him.
	Wind stirred the dust. A light, filthy rain began to fall. A
skeletal camera robot minced up on four tubular legs and
trained its lens on the door.
	An hour passed. The rain stopped and a pair of surveillance
craft kited silently overhead. A violent dust storm blew up in
the abandoned industrial zone, to the north. The camera continued to watch.
	Lindsay emerged from the airlock, weaving a little. He set a
black diplomatic bag on the stone floor beside him and struggled out of the decontamination suit. He stuffed the suit back
into the vault, then picked his way with exaggerated grace along
the stepping-stones.
	The air stank. Lindsay stopped and sneezed. "Hey," the cam-
era said. "Mr. Dze. I'd like a word with you, Mr. Dze."
"If you  want  a  part  in  the  play  you'll   have  to  appear   in
person," Lindsay said.
"You astonish me," the camera remarked. It spoke in trade
	Japanese. "I have to admire your daring, Mr. Dze. The Black
	Medicals have the foulest kind of reputation. They could have
	rendered you for your body chemicals."
Lindsay walked north, his flimsy shoes scuffing the mud. The
	camera tagged after him, its left rear leg squeaking.    .
Lindsay  descended  a  low hill  into an  orchard  where fallen
	trees, thick  with black smut, formed a  loose, skeletal  thicket.
	Below the orchard was a scum-covered pond with a decayed
	teahouse at its shore. The once-elegant wooden and ceramic
	building had collapsed into a heap of dry rot. Lindsay kicked
one of the timbers and broke into a coughing fit at the explosion of spores. "Someone ought to clean this up," he said.
	"Where would they put it?" the camera said.
	Lindsay looked around quickly. The trees screened him from
observation. He stared at the machine. "Your camera needs an
overhaul," he said.
	"It was the best I could afford," the camera said.
	Lindsay swung his black bag back and forth, narrowing his
eyes. "It looks rather slow and frail."
	The robot prudently stepped backward. "Do you have a place
to stay, Mr. Dze?"
	Lindsay rubbed his chin. "Are you offering one?"
	"You shouldn't stay in the open. You're not even wearing a
	mask."
	Lindsay smiled. "I told the Medicals that I was protected by
advanced antiseptics. They were very impressed."
	"They must have been. You don't breathe raw air here. Not
unless you want your lungs to end up looking like this thicket."
The camera hesitated. "My name is Fyodor Ryumin."
	"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Lindsay said in
Russian. They had injected him with vasopressin through the
suit, and his brain felt impossibly keen. He felt so intolerably
bright that he was beginning to crisp a little around the edges.
Changing from Japanese to his little-used Russian felt as easy as
switching a tape.
	"Again you astonish me," the camera said in Russian. "You
pique my curiosity. You understand that term, 'pique'? It's not
common to trade Russian. Please follow the robot. My place
isn't far. Try to breathe shallowly."
	Ryumin's place was a small inflated dome of gray-green plastic
near the smeared and broken glass of one window panel. Lindsay unzipped the fabric airlock and stepped inside.
	The pure air within provoked a fit of coughing. The tent was
small, ten strides across. A tangle of cables littered the floor,
connecting stacks of battered video equipment to a frayed storage battery propped on ceramic roof tiles. A central support
pole, wreathed in wire, supported an air filter, a lightbulb, and
the roots of an antenna complex.
	Ryumin was sitting cross-legged on a tatami mat with his hands
on a portable joystick. "Let me take care of the robot first," he
said. "I'll be with you in a moment."
	Ryumin's broad face had a vaguely Asiatic cast, but his
thinning hair was blond. Age spots marked his cheeks. His
knuckles had the heavy wrinkles common to the very old.

	Something was wrong with his bones. His wrists were too thin
for his stocky body, and his skull looked strangely delicate. Two
black adhesive disks clung to his temples, trailing thin cords
down his back and into the jungle of wires.
	Ryumin's eyes were closed. He reached out blindly and tapped
a switch beside his knee. He peeled the disks from his temples
and opened his eyes. They were bright blue.
	"Is it bright enough in here?" he said.
	Lindsay glanced at the bulb overhead. "I think so."
	Ryumin tapped his temple. "Chip grafts along the optic
nerves," he said. "I suffer a little from video burn. I have
trouble seeing anything not on scan lines."
	"You're a Mechanist."
	"Does it show?" Ryumin asked, ironically.
	"How old are you?"
	"A hundred and  forty. No, a hundred  and  forty-two."  He
smiled. "Don't be alarmed."
	"I'm not prejudiced," Lindsay said falsely. He felt confusion,
and, with that, his training seeped away. He remembered the
Ring Council and the long, hated sessions of anti-Mech indoctrination. The sense of rebellion recalled him to himself.
	He stepped over a tangle of wires and set his diplomatic bag on a low table beside a plastic-wrapped block of synthetic tofu.
"Please understand me, Mr. Ryumin. If this is blackmail, you've
misjudged me. I won't cooperate. If you mean me harm, then do
it. Kill me now."
	"I wouldn't say that too loudly," Ryumin cautioned. "The
spyplanes can burn you down where you stand, right through
that tent wall."
	Lindsay flinched.
	Ryumin grinned bleakly. "I've seen it happen before. Besides,
if we're to murder each other, then you should be killing me. I
run the risks here, since I have something to lose. You're only a
fast-talking sundog." He wrapped up the cord of his joystick.
"We could babble reassurances till the sun expands and never
convince each other. Either we trust each other or we don't."
	"I'll trust you," Lindsay decided. He kicked off his mud-
smeared shoes.
	Ryumin rose slowly to his feet. He bent to pick up Lindsay's
shoes, and his spine popped loudly. "I'll put these in the micro-
wave," he said. "When you live here, you must never trust the
mud."
	"I'll remember," Lindsay said. His brain was swimming in
mnemonic chemicals. The drugs had plunged him into a kind of
epiphany in which every tangled wire and pack of tape seemed
of vital importance. "Burn them if you want," he said. He
opened his new bag and pulled out an elegant cream-colored
medical jacket.
	"These are good shoes," Ryumin said. "They're worth three or
four minutes, at least."
	Lindsay stripped off his coveralls. A pair of injection bruises
mottled his right buttock.
	Ryumin squinted. "I see you didn't escape unscathed."
Lindsay    pulled    out    a    pair   of   creased    white    trousers.
"Vasopressin," he said.
	"Vasopressin," Ryumin mused. "I thought you had a Shaper
look about you. Where are you from, Mr. Dze? And how old
are you?"
	"Three hours old," Lindsay said. "Mr. Dze has no past."
Ryumin looked away. "I can't blame a Shaper for trying to
hide  his  past. The System  swarms  with  your enemies."  He
peered at Lindsay. "I can guess you were a diplomat."
"What makes you think so?"
"Your success with the Black Medicals. Your skill is impressive.
Besides, diplomats often  turn sundog." Ryumin studied
him.  "The   Ring Council   had  a  secret  training  program   for diplomats of a special type. The failure rate was high. Half the alumni were rebels and defectors." Lindsay zipped up his shirt.
"Is that what happened to you?"
"Something of the sort."
	"How fascinating. I've met many borderline posthumans in my
day, but never one of you. Is it true that they enforced an entire
second state of consciousness? Is it true that when you're fully
operational, you yourself don't know if you're speaking the
truth? That they used psychodrugs to destroy your capacity for
sincerity?"
	"Sincerity," Lindsay said. "That's a slippery concept."
Ryumin  hesitated.  "Are you  aware that your class  is being
stalked by Shaper assassins?"
	"No," Lindsay said sourly. So it had come to this, he thought.
All those years, while the spinal crabs burned knowledge into
every nerve. The indoctrinations, under drugs and brain taps.
He'd gone to the Republic when he was sixteen, and for ten
years the psychotechs had poured training into him. He'd re-
turned to the Republic like a primed bomb, ready to serve any
purpose. But his skills provoked panic fear there and utter
distrust from those in power. And now the Shapers themselves
were hunting him. "Thank you for telling me," he said.
	"I wouldn't worry," Ryumin said. "The Shapers are under
siege. They have bigger concerns than the fate of a few
sundogs." He smiled. "If you really took that treatment, then
you must be less than forty years old."
	"I'm thirty. You're a cagey old bastard, Ryumin."
	Ryumin took Lindsay's well-cooked shoes out of the micro-
wave, studied them, and slipped them on his own bare feet.
"How many languages do you speak?"
	"Four, normally. With memory enhancement I can manage
seven. And I know the standard Shaper programming language."
	"I speak four myself," Ryumin said. "But then, I don't clutter
my mind with their written forms."
	"You don't read at all?"
	"My machines can do that for me."
	"Then you're blind to mankind's whole cultural heritage."
	Ryumin looked surprised. "Strange talk for a Shaper. You're
an antiquarian, eh? Want to break the Interdict with Earth,
study the so-called humanities, that sort of thing? That explains
why you used the theatrical gambit. I had to use my lexicon to
find out what a 'play' was. An astonishing custom. Are you
really going through with it?"
	"Yes. And the Black Medicals will finance it for me."
	"I see. The Geisha Bank won't care for that. Loans and finance
are their turf."
	Lindsay sat on the floor beside a nest of wires. He plucked the
Black Medicals pin from his collar and twirled it in his fingers.
"Tell me about them."
	"The Geishas are whores and financiers. You must have noticed that your credit card is registered in hours."
	"Yes."
	"Those are hours of sexual service. The Mechanists and Shapers use kilowatts as currency. But the System's criminal element
must have a black market to survive. A great many different
black currencies have seen use. I did an article on it once."
	"Did you?"
	"Yes. I'm a journalist by profession. I entertain the jaded
among the System's bourgeoisie with my startling exposes of
criminality. Low-life antics of the sundog canaille." He nodded
at Lindsay's bag. "Narcotics were the standard for a while, but
that gave the Shaper black chemists an edge. Selling computer
time had some success, but the Mechanists had the best cybernetics. Now sex has come into vogue."
"You  mean people come to this godforsaken place just for
sex?"
	"It's not  necessary to visit a bank  to use it, Mr. Dze. The
Geisha Bank has contacts throughout the cartels. Pirates dock
here to exchange I6ot for portable black credit. We get political
exiles from the other circumlunars, too. If they're unlucky."
Lindsay showed no reaction. He was one of those exiles.
His problem was simple now: survival. It was wonderful how
this cleared  his  mind.  He could  forget his  former  life: the
Preservationist rebellion, the political dramas he'd staged at the
Museum. It was all history.
	Let it fade, he thought. All gone now, all another world. He
felt dizzy, suddenly, thinking about it. He'd lived. Not like Vera.
Constantine had tried to kill him with those altered insects.
The quiet, subtle moths were a perfect modern weapon: they
threatened only human flesh, not the world as a whole. But
Lindsay's uncle had taken Vera's locket, booby-trapped with the
pheromones that drove the deadly moths to frenzy. And his
uncle had died in his place. Lindsay felt a slow, rising flush of
nausea.
	"And the exhausted come here from the Mechanist cartels,"
Ryumin went on. "For death by ecstasy. For a price the Geisha
Bank offers shinju: double suicide with a companion from the
staff. Many customers, you see, take a deep comfort in not dying
alone."
	For a long moment, Lindsay struggled with himself. Double
suicide -the words pierced him. Vera's face swam queasily be-
fore his eyes in the perfect focus of expanded memory. He
pitched onto his side, retching, and vomited across the floor.
The drugs overwhelmed him. He hadn't eaten since leaving the
Republic. Acid scraped his throat and suddenly he was choking,
fighting for air.
	Ryumin was at his side in a moment. He dropped his bony
kneecaps into Lindsay's ribs, and air huffed explosively through
his clogged windpipe. Lindsay rolled onto his back. He breathed
in convulsively. A tingling warmth invaded his hands and feet.
He breathed again and lost consciousness.
	Ryumin took Lindsay's wrist and stood for a moment, counting
his pulse. Now that the younger man had collapsed, an odd,
somnolent calm descended over the old Mechanist. He moved
at his own tempo. Ryumin had been very old for a long time.
The feeling changed things.
	Ryumin's bones were frail. Cautiously, he dragged Lindsay
onto the tatami mat and covered him with a blanket. Then he
stepped slowly to a barrel-sized ceramic water cistern, picked
up a wad of coarse filter paper, and mopped up Lindsay's
vomit. His deliberate movements disguised the fact that, without
video input, he was almost blind.
	Ryumin donned his eyephones. He meditated on the tape he
had made of Lindsay. Ideas and images came to him more easily
through the wires.
	He analyzed the young sundog's movements frame by frame.
The man had long, bony arms and shins, large hands and feet,
but he lacked any awkwardness. Studied closely, his movements
showed ominous fluidity, the sure sign of a nervous system
subjected to subtle and prolonged alteration. Someone had devoted great care and expense to that counterfeit of footloose
case and grace.
	Ryumin edited the tape with the reflexive ease of a century of
practice. The System was wide, Ryumin thought. There was
room in it for a thousand modes of life, a thousand hopeful
monsters. He felt sadness at what had been done to the man,
but no alarm or fear. Only time could tell the difference be-
tween aberration and advance. Ryumin no longer made judgments. When he could, he held out his hand.
	Friendly gestures were risky, of course, but Ryumin could
never resist the urge to make them and watch the result. Curios-
ity had made him a sundog. He was bright; there'd been a place
for him in his colony's soviet. But he had been driven to ask
uncomfortable questions, to think uncomfortable thoughts.
	Once, a sense of moral righteousness had lent him strength.
That youthful smugness was long gone now, but he still had pity
and the willingness to help. For Ryumin, decency had become
an old man's habit.
	The young sundog twisted in his sleep. His face seemed to
ripple, twisting bizarrely. Ryumin squinted in surprise. This man
was a strange one. That was nothing remarkable; the System was
full of the strange. It was when they escaped control that things
became interesting.
	Lindsay woke, groaning. "How long have I been out?" he said.
"Three hours, twelve minutes," Ryumin said. "But there's no
day or night here, Mr. Dze. Time doesn't matter."
Lindsay propped himself up on one elbow.
	"Hungry?" Ryumin passed Lindsay a bowl of soup.
Lindsay  looked  uneasily at the warm  broth. Circles of oil
dotted its surface and white lumps floated within it. He had a
spoonful. It was better than it looked.
	"Thank you," he said. He ate quickly. "Sorry to be trouble-
some."
	"No matter," Ryumin said. "Nausea is common when Zaibatsu
microbes hit the stomach of a newcomer."
"Why'd you follow me with that camera?" Lindsay said.
Ryumin poured himself a bowl of soup. "Curiosity," he said. "I
have the Zaibatsu's entrance monitored by radar. Most sundogs
travel in factions. Single passengers are rare. I wanted to learn
your story. That's how I earn my living, after all." He drank his
soup. "Tell  me about your future,  Mr.  Dze.  What are you
planning?"
	"If I tell you, will you help me?"
"I might. Things have been dull here lately."
"There's money in it."
	"Better and better," Ryumin said. "Could you be more specific?"
	Lindsay stood up. "We'll do some acting," he said, straightening his cuffs. " 'To catch birds with a mirror is the ideal snare,'as my Shaper teachers used to say. I knew of the Black Medicalsin the Ring Council. They're not genetically altered. The Shapers despised them, so they isolated themselves. That's their
habit, even here. But they hunger for admiration, so I made
myself into a mirror and showed them their own desires. I
promised them prestige and influence, as patrons of the theatre." He reached for his jacket. "But what does the Geisha
Bank want?"
	"Money. Power," Ryumin said. "And the ruin of their rivals,
who happen to be the Black Medicals."
	"Three lines of attack." Lindsay smiled. "This is what they
trained me for." His smile wavered, and he put his hand to his
midriff. "That soup," he said. "Synthetic protein, wasn't it? I
don't think it's going to agree with me."
	Ryumin nodded in resignation. "It's your new microbes. You'd
better clear your appointment book for a few days, Mr. Dze.
You have dysentery."

CHAPTER TWO

THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 28-12-'15

Night never fell in the Zaibatsu. It gave Lindsay's sufferings a
timeless air: a feverish idyll of nausea.
	Antibiotics would have cured him, but sooner or later his body
would have to come to terms with its new flora. To pass the
time between spasms, Ryumin entertained him with local anecdotes and gossip. It was a complex and depressing history,
littered with betrayals, small-scale rivalries, and pointless power
games.
	The algae farmers were the Zaibatsu's most numerous faction,
glum fanatics, clannish and ignorant, who were rumored to
practice cannibalism. Next came the mathematicians, a proto-Shaper breakaway group that spent most of its time wrapped in
speculation about the nature of infinite sets. The Zaibatsu's
smallest domes were held by a profusion of pirates and privateers: the Hermes Breakaways, the Gray Torus Radicals, the
Grand Megalics, the Soyuz Eclectics, and others, who changed
names and personnel as easily as they cut a throat. They feuded
constantly, but none dared challenge the Nephrine Black
	Medicals or the Geisha Bank. Attempts had been made in the
past. There were appalling legends about them.
	The people beyond the Wall had their own wildly varying
mythos. They were said to live in a jungle of overgrown pines
and mimosas. They were hideously inbred and afflicted with
double thumbs and congenital deafness.
	Others claimed there was nothing remotely human beyond the
Wall: just a proliferating cluster of software, which had acquired
a sinister autonomy.
	It was, of course, possible that the land beyond the Wall had
been secretly invaded and conquered by-aliens. An entire
postindustrial folklore had sprung up around this enthralling
concept, buttressed with ingenious arguments. Everyone expect-
ed aliens sooner or later. It was the modern version of the
Millennium.
	Ryumin was patient with him; while Lindsay slept feverishly,
he patrolled the Zaibatsu with his camera robot, looking for
news. Lindsay turned the corner on his illness. He kept down
some soup and a few fried bricks of spiced protein.
	One of Ryumin's stacks of equipment began to chime with a
piercingly clear electronic bleeping. Ryumin looked up from
where he sat sorting cassettes. "That's the radar," he said.
"Hand me that headset, will you?"
	Lindsay crawled to the radar stack and untangled a set of
Ryumin's adhesive eyephones. Ryumin clamped them to his
temples. "Not much resolution on radar," he said, closing his
eyes. "A crowd has just arrived. Pirates, most likely. They're
milling about on the landing pad."
	He squinted, though his eyes were already shut. "Something
very large is moving about with them. They've brought some-
thing huge. I'd better switch to telephoto." He yanked the
headset's cord and its plug snapped free.
	"I'm going outside for a look," Lindsay said. "I'm well
enough."
	"Wire yourself up first," Ryumin said. "Take that earset and
one of the cameras."
	Lindsay attached the auxiliary system and stepped outside the
zippered airlock into the curdled air.
	He backed away from Ryumin's dome toward the rim of the
land panel. He turned and trotted to a nearby stile, which led
over the low metal wall, and trained his camera upward.
	"That's good," came Ryumin's voice in his ear. "Cut in the
brightness amps, will you? That little button on the right. Yes,
that's better. What do you make of it, Mr. Dze?"
	Lindsay squinted through the lens. Far above, at the northern
end of the Zaibatsu's axis, a dozen sundogs were wrestling in
free-fall with a huge silver bag.
	"It looks like a tent," Lindsay said. "They're inflating it." The
silver bag wrinkled and tumesced suddenly, revealing itself as a
blunt cylinder. On its side was a large red stencil as wide as a
man was tall. It was a red skull with two crossed lightning bolts.
	"Pirates!" Lindsay said.
	Ryumin chuckled. "I thought as much."
	A sharp gust of wind struck Lindsay. He lost his balance on
the stile and looked behind him suddenly. The glass window
strip formed a long white alley of decay. The hexagonal
metaglass frets were speckled with dark plugs, jackstrawed here
and there with heavy reinforcement struts. Leaks had been
sprayed with airtight coats of thick plastic. Sunlight oozed sullenly through the gaps.
	"Are you all right?" Ryumin said.
	"Sorry," Lindsay said. He tilted the camera upward again.
	The pirates had gotten their foil balloon airborne and had
turned on its pair of small pusher-propellers. As it drifted away
from the landing pad, it jerked once, then surged forward. It
was towing something-an oddly shaped dark lump larger than
a man.
	"It's a meteorite," Ryumin told him. "A gift for the people
beyond the Wall. Did you see the dark rocks that stand in the
Sterilized Zone? They're all gifts from pirates. It's become a
tradition."
	"Wouldn't it be easier to carry it along the ground?"
	"Are you joking? It's death to set foot in the Sterilized Zone."
	"I see. So they're forced to drop it from the air. Do you
recognize these pirates?"
	"No," Ryumin said. "They're new here. That's why they need
the rock."
	"Someone seems to know them," Lindsay said. "Look at that."
	He focused the camera to look past the airborne pirates to the
sloping gray-brown surface of the Zaibatsu's third land panel.
Most of this third panel was a bleak expanse of fuzz-choked
mud, with surging coils of yellowish ground fog.
	Near the third panel's blasted northern suburbs was a squat,
varicolored dome, built of jigsawed chunks of salvaged ceramic
and plastic. A foreshortened, antlike crowd of sundogs had
emerged from the dome's airlock. They stared upward, their
faces hidden by filter masks. They had dragged out a large
crude machine of metal and plastic, fitted with pinions, levers,
and cables. They jacked the machine upward until one end of it
pointed into the sky.
"What are they doing?" Lindsay said.
"Who knows?" Ryumin said. "That's the Eighth Orbital Army,
or so they call themselves. They've been hermits up till now."
The airship passed overhead, casting blurred shadows onto all
three land panels. One of the sundogs triggered the machine.
A long metal harpoon flicked upward and struck home. Lind-
say saw  metal  foil   rupture  in  the airship's tail  section. The
javelin gleamed crazily as it whirled end over end, its flight
disrupted by the collision and the curve of Coriolis force. The
metal bolt vanished into the filthy trees of a ruined orchard.
The airship was in trouble. Its crew kicked and thrashed in
midair, struggling to force their collapsing balloon away from
the ground attackers. The massive stone they were towing continued its course withweightless, serene inertia. As its towline grew tight, it slowly tore off the airship's tail. With  a   whoosh of gas, the airship crumpled  into a twisted metal rag. The engines fell, tugging the metal foil behind them in a rippling streamer.
The pirates thrashed as if drowning, struggling to stay within
the zone of weightlessness. Their plight was desperate, since the
zone was riddled with slow, sucking downdrafts that could send
fliers tumbling to their deaths.
	The rock blundered into the rippling edge of a swollen
cloudbank. The dark mass veered majestically downward, wobbling a bit, and vanished into the mist. Moments later it
reappeared below the cloud, plummeting downward in a vicious
Coriolis arc.
	It slammed into the glass and patchwork of the window strip.
Lindsay, following it with his camera, heard the sullen crunch of
impact. Glass and metal grated and burst free in a sucking roar.
	The belly of the cloud overhead bulged downward and began
to twist. A white plume spread above the blowout with the grace
of creeping frost. It was steam, condensing from the air in the
suddenly lowered pressure.
	Lindsay held the camera above his head and leaped down onto
the grimy floor of the window. He ran toward the blowout,
ignoring Ryumin's surprised protests.
	A minute's broken-field running brought him as close as he
dared go. He crouched behind the rusted steel strut of a plug,
ten meters from the impact site. Looking down past his feet
through the dirty glass, Lindsay saw a long trail of freezing spray
fanning out in rainbowed crystals against the shine of the sun-
light mirrors.
	A roaring vortex of sucking wind sprang up, slinging gusts of
rain. Lindsay cupped one hand around the camera's lens.
	Motion caught his eye. A group of oxygen farmers in masks
and coveralls were struggling across the glass from the bordering
panel. They cradled a long hose in their arms. They lurched
forward doggedly, staggering in the wind, weaving among the
plugs and struts.
	Caught by the wind, a camouflaged surveillance plane crashed
violently beside the hole. Its wreckage was sucked through at
	once.
	The hose jerked and bucked with a gush of fluid. A thick spray
of gray-green plastic geysered from its nozzle, hardening in
midair. It hit the glass and clung there.
	Under the whirlwind's pressure the plastic warped and bulged,
but held. As more gushed forth, the wind was choked and
became a shrill whistle.
	Even after the blowout was scaled, the farmers continued to
pump plastic sludge across the impact zone. Rain fell steadily
from the agitated clouds. Another knot of farmers stood along
the window wall, leaning their masked heads together and
pointing into the sky.
	Lindsay turned and looked upward with the rest.
	The sudden vortex had spawned a concentric surf of clouds.
Through a crescent-shaped gap, Lindsay saw the dome of the
Eighth Orbital Army, across the width of the Zaibatsu. Tiny
forms in white suits ringed the dome, lying on the ground. They
did not move.
	Lindsay focused the telephoto across the interior sky. The
fanatics of the Eighth Orbital Army lay sprawled on the fouled
earth. A knot of them had been caught trying to escape into the
airlock; they lay in a tangle, their arms outstretched.
	He saw no sign of the airship pirates. He thought for a moment
that they had all escaped back to the landing port. Then he
spotted one of them, mashed flat against another window panel.
	"That was excellent footage," Ryumin said in his ear. "It. was
also very stupid."
	"I owed you a favor," Lindsay said. He studied the dead. "I'm
	going over there," he decided.
	"Let me send the robot. There'll be looters there soon."
"Then I want them to know me," Lindsay said. "They might be
useful."
	He crossed  another stile onto the  land  panel.  His  lungs  felt
raw, but he had decided never to wear a breathing mask. His
reputation was more important than the risk.
	He skirted the Black Medicals' stronghold and crossed a second window strip. He walked north to the ragtag junk dome of
the Orbital Army. It was the only outpost in the entire third
panel, which had been abandoned to a particularly virulent
form of the blight. This had once been an agricultural zone, and
the heightened fertility of the soil brought forth a patchy crop of
ankle-high mold. Farm buildings, all pastel ceramic and plastic,
had been looted but not demolished, and their stiff inorganic
walls and gaping windows seemed to long to lapse into an
unattainable state of rot.
	The recluses' dome was built of plastic door panels, chopped
to shape and caulked.
	The corpses lay frozen, their limbs oddly bent, for they had
been dead before they hit the ground, and their arms and legs
had bounced a little, loosely, with the impact. There was a
curious lack of horror about the scene. The faceless masks and
watertight body suits of the dead fanatics conveyed a sense of
bloodless, prim efficiency. Nothing marked the dead as human
beings except the military insignia on their shoulders. He counted eighteen of them.
	The lenses on the faces of the dead were fogged over with
internal steam.
	He heard the quiet whir of aircraft. A pair of ultralights circled
once and skidded in for a landing. Two of the airship pirates
had arrived.
	Lindsay trained his camera on them. They dismounted,
unplugging their credit cards, and the aircraft taxied off.
	They walked toward him in the half-crouching shuffle of people unused to gravity. Lindsay saw that their uniforms were
full-length silver skeletons etched over a blood-red background.
	The taller pirate prodded a nearby corpse with his foot. "You
saw this?" he said in English.
	"The spyplanes killed them," Lindsay said. "They endangered
the habitat."
	"The Eighth Orbital Army," the taller pirate mused, examining
a shoulder patch. The second pirate muttered through her
mask's filters, "Fascists. Antinationalist scum."
	"You knew them?" Lindsay said.
	"We dealt with them," said the first pirate. "We didn't know
they were here, though." He sighed. "What a burn. Do you
suppose there are others inside?"
	"Only dead ones," Lindsay said. "The planes use x-ray lasers."
	"Really?" the first pirate said. "Wish I could get my hands on
one of those."
	Lindsay twirled his left hand, a gesture in surveillance argot
stating that they were watched. The taller pirate looked upward
quickly. Sunlight glinted on the silver skull inlaid over his face.
	Me looked at Lindsay, his eyes hidden behind gleaming silver-
plated eye sockets. "Where's your mask, citizen?"
	"Here," Lindsay said, touching his face.
	"A negotiator, huh? Looking for work, citizen? Our last diplomat just took the plunge. How are you in free-fall?"
	"Be careful, Mr. President," the second pirate warned.
"Remember the confirmation hearings."
	"Let me handle the legal implications," the President said
impatiently. "I'll introduce us. I'm the President of the Fortuna
Miners' Democracy, and this is my wife, the Speaker of the
House."
	"Lin Dze, with Kabuki Intrasolar," Lindsay said. "I'm a theatrical impresario."
	"That some kind of diplomat?"
	"Sometimes, your excellency."
	The President nodded. The Speaker of the House warned,
"Don't trust him, Mr. President."
	"The executive branch handles foreign relations, so shut the
fuck up," the President snarled. "Listen, citizen, it's been a hard
clay. Right now, we oughta be in the Bank, having a scrub,
maybe getting juiced, but instead these fascists cut in on us with
their surface-to-air stuff, a preemptive strike, you follow me? So
now our airship's burned and we've lost our fuckin' rock."
	"That's a shame," Lindsay said.
	The President scratched his neck. "You just can't make plans
in this business. You learn to take it as it comes." He hesitated.
"Let's get out of this stink, anyway. Maybe there's loot inside."
	The Speaker of the House took a hand-held power saw out of
a holster on her red webbing belt and began to saw through the
wall of the sundog dome.-The caulk between the plastic panels
powdered easily. "You got to go in unexpected if you want to
live," the President explained. "Don't ever, never go in an
enemy airlock. You never know what's in 'em." Then he spoke
into a wrist attachment. He used a covert operational jargon;
Lindsay couldn't follow the words.
	Together the two pirates kicked out the wall and stepped
inside. Lindsay followed them, holding his camera. They re-
placed the burst-out panel, and the woman sprayed it with
sealant from a tiny propellant can.
	The President pulled off his skull mask and sniffed the air. He
had a blunt, pug-nosed, freckled face; his short ginger-colored
hair was sparse, and the skin of his scalp gleamed oddly. They
had emerged into the communal kitchen of the Eighth Orbital
Army: there were cushions and low tables, a microwave, a crate
of plastic-wrapped protein, and half a dozen tall fermenting
units, bubbling loudly. A dead woman whose face looked sun-
burned sprawled on the floor by the doorway.
"Good," the President said. "We eat." The Speaker of the
House unmasked herself: her face was bony, with slitted, suspicious eyes. A painful-looking skin rash dotted her jaw and neck.
The two pirates stalked into the next room. It was a combination bunkroom and command center, with a bank of harsh,
flickering videos in a central cluster. One of the screens was
tracking by telephoto: it showed a group of nine red-clad pirates
approaching on foot down the Zaibatsu's northern slope, picking their way through the ruins.
"Here come the rest of us," the Speaker said.
The President glanced about him. "Not so bad. We stay here,
then. At least we'll have a place to keep the air in."
Something rustled under one of the bunks. The Speaker of the
House flung herself headlong under the bed. Lindsay swung his
camera around. There was a high-pitched scream and a brief
struggle; then  she emerged, dragging out a small child. The
Speaker had  pinned  the child in a complicated one-handed
armlock. She got it to its feet.
	It was a dark-haired, glowering, filthy little creature of indeterminate sex. It wore an Eighth Orbital Army uniform, cut to size.  It was missing some teeth. It looked about five years old.
"So they're not all dead!" the President said. He crouched and
looked the child in the eye. "Where are the rest of you?"
He showed it a knife. The blade flickered into his hand from
nowhere. "Talk, citizen! Otherwise I show you your guts!"
"Come on!" said Lindsay. "That's no way to talk to a child."
"Who  are  you   kidding,  citizen?  Listen,  this  little squealer
might be eighty years old. There are endocrine treatments-"
	Lindsay knelt by the child and tried to approach it gently.
"How old are you? Four, five? What language do you speak?"
"Forget it," the Speaker of the House said. "There's only one
small-sized bunk, see it? I guess the spyplanes just missed this
one."
	"Or spared it," Lindsay said.
	The President laughed skeptically. "Sure, citizen. Listen, we
can sell this thing to the whore bankers. It ought to be worth a
few hours' attention for us, at least."
	"That's slavery," Lindsay protested.
	"Slavery? What are you talking about? Don't get theological,
citizen. I'm talking about a national entity freeing a prisoner of
war to a third party. It's a perfectly legal commercial transaction."
	"I don't want to go to the whores," the child piped up suddenly. "I want to go to the farmers."
	"The farmers?" said the President. "You don't want to be a
farmer, micro-citizen. Ever had any weapons training? We could
use a small assassin to sneak through the air ducts - "
	"Don't underestimate those farmers," Lindsay said. He gestured at one of the video screens. A group of two dozen farmers
had walked across the interior slope of the Zaibatsu. They were
loading the dead Eighth Orbitals onto four flat sledges, drawn
by shoulder harnesses.
	"Blast!" the President said. "I wanted to roll them myself." He
smirked. "Can't blame 'em, I guess. Lots of good protein in a
corpse."
	"I want to go with the farmers," the child insisted.
	"Let it go," Lindsay spoke up. "I have business with the Geisha
Bank. I can treat your nation to a slay."
	The Speaker of the House released the child's arm. "You
can?"
	Lindsay nodded. "Give me a couple of days to negotiate it."
	She caught her husband's eye. "This one's all right. Let's make
him Secretary of State."

THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 2-1-'16
	
The Geisha Bank was a complex of older buildings, shellacked
airtight and connected by a maze of polished wooden halls and
sliding paper airlocks. The area had been a red-light district
even before the Zaibatsu's collapse. The Bank was proud of its
heritage and continued the refined and eccentric traditions of a
gentler age.
	Lindsay left the eleven nationals of the Fortuna Miners' De-
mocracy in an antiseptic sauna vault, being scrubbed by impassive bathboys. It was the first real bath the pirates had had in
months. Their scrawny bodies were knobbed with muscle from
constant practice in free-fall jujutsu. Their sweating skins were
bright with fearsome tattoos and septic rashes.
	Lindsay did not join them. He stepped into a paneled dressing
room and handed over his Nephrine Medicals uniform to be
cleaned and pressed. He slipped into a soft brown kimono. A
low-ranking male geisha in kimono and obi approached him.
"Your pleasure, sir?"
"I'd like a word with the yarite, please."
	The geisha looked at him with well-bred skepticism. "One
moment. I will ask if our chief executive officer is prepared to
accept guests."
	He vanished. After half an hour a blonde female geisha in
business suit and obi appeared. "Mr. Dze? This way, please."
	He followed her to an elevator guarded by two men armed
with electrode-studded clubs. The guards were giants; his head
barely came to their elbows. Their long, stony faces were
acromegalic: swollen jaws, clifflike jutting cheekbones. They had
been treated with hormonal growth factors.
	The elevator surged up three floors and opened.
	Lindsay faced a thick network of brightly colored beads. Thou-
sands of dangling, beaded wires hung from floor to ceiling. Any
movement would disturb them.
	"Take my hand," the banker said. Lindsay shuffled behind her,
thrashing and clattering. "Step carefully," she said. "There are
traps."
	Lindsay closed  his eyes and followed. His guide stopped; a
hidden   door   opened   in   a   mirrored   wall.   Lindsay   stepped
through it, into the yarite's private chamber.
The floor was of ancient wood, waxed to a dark gleam. There
were flat square cushions underfoot, in patterns of printed bamboo. In the long wall to Lindsay's left, glass double-doors
showed a sunlit wooden balcony and a splendid garden, where
crooked pines and tall japonicas arched over curving paths of
raked white pebbles. The air in the room smelled of evergreen.
He was gazing on this world before its rot, an image of the past,
projected on false doors that could never open.
The yarite was sitting cross-legged on a cushion. She was a
wizened old Mech with a tight-drawn mouth and hooded, reptilian   eyes.   Her   wrinkled   head   was  encased   in   a   helmetlike
lacquered wig, skewered with pins. She wore an angular flowered kimono supported by starch and struts. There was room in it for three of her.
	A second woman knelt silently with her back to the right-hand
wall, facing the garden's image. Lindsay knew at once that she
was a Shaper. Her startling beauty alone was proof, but she had
that strange, intangible air of charisma that spread from the
Reshaped like a magnetic field. She was of mixed Asiatic-
African gene stock: her eyes were tilted, but her skin was dark.
Her hair was long and faintly kinked. She knelt before a rack of
white keyboards with an air of meek devotion.
The yarite spoke without moving her head. "Your duties,
Kitsune." The girl's hands darted over the keyboards and the air
was filled with the tones of that most ancient of Japanese
instruments: the synthesizer.
	Lindsay knelt on a cushion, facing the old woman. A tea tray
rolled to his side and poured hot water into a cup with a chaste
tinkling sound. It dipped a rotary tea whisk into the cup.
	"Your pirate friends," the old woman said, "are about to
bankrupt you."
	"It's only money," Lindsay said.
"It is our sweat and sexuality. Did you think it would please us
	to squander it?"
"I needed your attention," Lindsay said. His training had
	seized him at once, but he was still afraid of the girl. He hadn't
	known he would be facing a Shaper. And there was something
	drastically wrong with the old woman's kinesics. It looked like
	drugs or Mechanist nerve alteration.
"You came here dressed as a Nephrine Black Medical," the
	old woman said. "Our attention was guaranteed. You have it.
	We are listening."
With Ryumin's help, Lindsay had  expanded  his  plans. The
	Geisha Bank had the power to destroy his scheme; therefore,
	they had to be co-opted into it. He knew what they wanted. He was ready to show them a mirror. If they recognized their own
ambitions and desires, he would win.
Lindsay launched into his spiel. He paused midway to make a
point. "You can see what the Black Medicals hope to gain from
the performance. Behind their walls they feel isolated, paranoid.
	They plan to gain prestige by sponsoring our play.
"But   I   must  have  a  cast. The  Geisha   Bank   is  my  natural reservoir of talent. I can succeed without the Black Medicals. I can't succeed without you."
"I see," the yarite said. "Now explain to me why you think we
can profit from your ambitions."
Lindsay  looked  pained. "I  came here to arrange a cultural
event. Can't that be enough?"
He glanced at the girl. Her hands flickered over the keyboards.
	Suddenly she looked up at him and smiled, slyly, secretly. He
saw the tip of her tongue behind her perfect teeth. It was a
bright, predatory smile, full of lust and mischief. In an instant it
burned itself into his bloodstream. Hair rose on the back of his
neck. He was losing control.
	He looked at the floor, his skin prickling. "All right," he said
heavily. "It isn't enough, and that shouldn't surprise me.
Listen, madame. You and the Medicals have been rivals for
years. This is your chance to lure them into the open and
ambush them on your own ground. They're naive about finance.
Naive, but greedy. They hate dealing in a financial system that
you control. If they thought they could succeed, they'd leap at
the chance to form their own economy.
	"So, let them do it. Let them commit themselves. Let them pile success on success until they lose all sense of proportion and
greed overwhelms them. Then burst their bubble."
	"Nonsense," the old woman said. "How can an actor tell a
banker her business?"
	"You're not dealing with a Mech cartel," Lindsay said in-
tensely, leaning forward. He knew the girl was staring at him.
He could feel it. "These are three hundred technicians, bored,
frightened, and completely isolated. They are perfect prey for
mass hysteria. Gambling fever will hit them like an epidemic."
He leaned back. "Support me, madame. I'll be your point man,
your broker, your go-between. They'll never know you were
behind their ruin. In fact, they'll come to you for help." He
sipped his tea. It tasted synthetic.
	The old woman paused as if she were thinking. Her expression
was very wrong. There were none of the tiny subliminal flickers
of mouth and eyelid, the movements of the throat, that accompanied human thought processes. Her face was more than calm.
It was inert.
	"It has possibilities," she said at last. "But the Bank must have
control. Covert, but complete. How can you guarantee this?"
	"It will be in your hands," Lindsay promised. "We will use my
company, Kabuki Intrasolar, as a front. You will use your contacts outside the Zaibatsu to issue fictitious stock. I will offer it
for sale here, and your Bank will be ambivalent. This will allow
the Nephrines to score a financial coup and seize control of the
company. Fictitious stockholders, your agents, will react in
alarm and send in pleas and inflated offers to the new owners.
This will flatter their self-esteem and overwhelm any doubts.
	"At the same time, you will cooperate with me openly. You
will supply me with actors and actresses; in fact, you will
jealously fight for the privilege. Your geishas will talk of nothing
else to every customer. You will spread rumors about me: my
charm, my brilliance, my hidden resources. You will underwrite
all my extravagances, and establish a free-wheeling, free-
spending atmosphere of carefree hedonism. It will be a huge
confidence trick that will bamboozle the entire world."
	The old woman sat silently, her eyes glazed. The low, pure tones of the synthesizer stopped suddenly. A tense hush fell over the room. The girl spoke softly from behind her keyboards. "It will work, won't it?"
	He looked into her face. Her meekness had peeled off like a
layer of cosmetics. Her dark eyes shocked him. They were full
of frank, carnivorous desire. He knew at once that she was
feigning nothing, because her look was beyond pretense. It was
not human.
	Without knowing it, he rose to one knee, his eyes still locked
with hers. "Yes," he said. His voice was hoarse. "It will work, I
swear it to you." The floor was cold under his hand. He realized
that, without any decision on his part, he had begun to move
toward her, half crawling.
	She looked at him in lust and wonder. "Tell me what you are,
darling. Tell me really."
	"I'm what you are," Lindsay said. "Shaper's work." He forced
himself to stop moving. His arms began to tremble.
	"I want to tell you what they did to me," the girl said. "Let me
tell you what I am."
	Lindsay nodded once. His mouth was dry with sick excitement.
"All right," he said. "Tell me, Kitsune."
	"They gave me to the surgeons," she said. "They took my
womb out, and they put in brain tissue. Grafts from the pleasure
center, darling. I'm wired to the ass and the spine and the
throat, and it's better than being God. When I'm hot, I sweat
perfume. I'm cleaner than a fresh needle, and nothing leaves my
body that you can't drink like wine or eat like candy. And they
left me bright, so that I would know what submission was. Do
you know what submission is, darling?"
	"No," Lindsay said harshly. "But I know what it means not to
care about dying."
	"We're not like the others," she said. "They put us past the
limits. And now we can do anything we like to them, can't, we?"
	Her laugh sent a shuddering thrill through him. She leaped
	with balletic grace over her deck of keyboards.
	She kicked the old woman's shoulder with one bare foot, and
	the yarite fell over with a crunch. Her wig ripped free with a
	shredding of tape. Beneath it, Lindsay glimpsed her threadbare skull, riddled with cranial plugs. He stared. "Your keyboards,"he said.
	"She's my front," Kitsune said. "That's what my life is. Fronts
and fronts and fronts. Only the pleasure is real. The pleasure of
control."
	Lindsay licked his dry lips.
	"Give me what's real," she said.
	She undid her obi sash. Her kimono was printed in a design of
irises and violets. The skin beneath it was like a dying man's
dream of skin.
	"Come here," she said. "Put your mouth on my mouth."
	Lindsay scrambled forward and threw his arms around her.
She slipped her warm tongue deep into his mouth. It tasted of
spice.
	It was narcotic. The glands of her mouth oozed drugs.
	They sprawled on the floor in front of the old woman's half-
lidded eyes.
	She slipped her arms inside his loose kimono. "Shaper," she
said, "I want your genetics. All over me."
	Her warm hand caressed his groin. He did what she said.

THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 16-1-'16

Lindsay lay on his back on the floor of Ryumin's dome, his long
fingers pressed to the sides of his head. His left hand had two
glittering impact rubies set in gold bands. He wore a shimmering black kimono with a faint pattern of irises set in the weave.
His hakama trousers were of the modern cut.
	The right sleeve of his kimono held the fictitious corporate
emblem of Kabuki Intrasolar: a stylized white mask striped
across the eyes and cheeks with flaring bands of black and red.
His sleeves had fallen back as he clutched his head and revealed
an injection bruise on his forearm. He was on vasopressin.
	He dictated into a microphone. "All right," he said. "Scene
Three: Amijima. Jihei says: No matter how far we walk, there'll
never be a place marked for suicides. Let us kill ourselves here.
	"Then Koharu: Yes, that's true. One place is as good as an-
other to die. But I've been thinking. If they find our dead
bodies together, people will say that Koharu and Jihei commit-
ted a lovers' suicide. I can imagine how your wife will resent
and envy me. So you should kill me here, then choose another
spot, far away, for yourself.
	"Then Jihei says-" Lindsay fell silent. As he had been
dictating, Ryumin had occupied himself with an unusual handicraft. He was sifting what appeared to be tiny bits of brown
cardboard onto a small slip of white paper. He carefully rolled
the paper into a tube. Then he pinched the tube's ends shut and
sealed it with his tongue.
	Me put one end of the paper cylinder between his lips, then
held up a small metal gadget and pressed a switch on its top.
Lindsay stared, then screamed. "Fire! Oh my God! Fire, fire!"
	Ryumin blew out smoke. "What the hell's wrong with you?
This tiny flame can't hurt anything."
	"But it's fire! Good God, I've never seen a naked flame in my
life." Lindsay lowered his voice. "You're sure you won't catch
fire?" He watched Ryumin anxiously. "Your lungs are smoking."
	"No, no. It's just a novelty, a small new vice." The old Mechanist shrugged. "A little dangerous maybe, but aren't they all."
	"What is it?"
	"Bits of cardboard soaked in nicotine. They've got some kind
of flavoring, too. It's not so bad." He drew on the cigarette;
Lindsay stared at the glowing tip and shuddered. "Don't worry,"
Ryumin said. "This place isn't like other colonies. Fire's no
danger here. Mud doesn't burn."
	Lindsay sagged back to the floor and groaned. His brain was
swimming in memory enhancements. His head hurl and he had
an indescribable tickling sensation, like the first fraction of a
second during an onset of deja vu. It was like being unable to sneeze.
	"You made me lose my place," he said peevishly. "What's the
use? When I think of what this used to mean to me! These plays
that hold everything worth preserving in human life. . . . Our
heritage, before the Mechs, before the Shapers. Humanity, mortality, a life not tampered with."
	Ryumin tapped ashes into an upended black lens cap. "You're
talking like a circumlunar native, Mr. Dze. Like a Concatenate.
What's your home world? Crisium S.S.R.? Copernican Com-
monwealth?"
	Lindsay sucked air through his teeth.
	Ryumin said, "Forgive an old man's prying." He blew more
smoke and rubbed a red mark on his temple, where the
eyephones fit. "Let me tell you what I think your problem is.
Mr. Dze. So far, you've recited three of these compositions:
Romeo and Juliet, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and
now The Love Suicide at Amijima. Frankly, I have some problems with these pieces."
"Oh?" said Lindsay on a rising note.
	"Yes. First, they're incomprehensible. Second, they're impossibly morbid. And third and worst of all, they're preindustrial.
"Now  let  me  tell  you  what  I  think.  You've  launched  this audacious fraud, you're creating a huge stir, and you've set the whole Zaibatsu on its ear. For this much trouble, you should at
least repay the people with a little fun."
"Fun?" Lindsay said.
"Yes. I know these sundogs. They want to be entertained, not clubbed by some ancient relic. They want to hear about real people, not savages."
	"But that's not human culture."
	"So what?" Ryumin puffed his cigarette. "I've been thinking.
I've heard three 'plays' now, so I know the medium. There's notmuch to it. I can whip one up for us in two or three days, I
think."
	"You think so?"
	Ryumin nodded. "We'll have to scrap some things."
	"Such as?"
	"Well, gravity, first of all. I don't see how you can get any good dancing or fighting done except in free-fall."
	Lindsay sat up. "Dancing and fighting, is it?"
	"That's right. Your audience are whores, oxygen farmers, two
dozen pirate bands, and fifty runaway mathematicians. They
would all love to see dancing and fighting. We'll get rid of the
stage; it's too flat. The curtains are a nuisance; we can do that
with lighting. You may be used to these old circumlunars with
their damned centrifugal spin, but modern people love free-fall.
These poor sundogs have suffered enough. It'll be like a holiday
for them."
	"You mean, get up to the free-fall zone somehow."
	"Yes indeed. We'll build an aerostat: a big geodesic bubble,
airtight. We'll launch it off the landing zone and keep it fixed up
there with guy wires, or some such thing. You have to build a
theatre anyway, don't you? You might as well put it in midair
where everyone can see it."
	"Of course," Lindsay said. He smiled as the idea sank in. "We
can put our corporate logo on it."
	"Hang pennants from it."
	"Sell tickets inside. Tickets and stock." He laughed aloud. "I
know just the ones to build it for me, too."

	"It needs a name," Ryumin said. "We'll call it ... the Kabuki
	Bubble!"
	"The Bubble!" Lindsay said, slapping the floor. "What else?"
Ryumin smiled and rolled another cigarette.
"Say," Lindsay said. "Let me try some of that."
	WHEREAS, Throughout this Nation's history, its citizens have
always confronted new challenges; and
	The Nation's Secretary of State, Lin Dze, finds
 himself in  need  of aeronautic engineering expertise  that  our
citizens are uniquely fitted to supply; and
	, Secretary Dze, representing Kabuki Intrasolar, an
autonomous corporate entity, has agreed to pay the Nation for
its labors with a generous allocation of Kabuki Intrasolar corporate stock;
	NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Fortuna Miners' Democracy, the Senate concurring, that the Nation will construct the Kabuki Bubble auditorium, provide promotional services for Kabuki stock, and
extend political and physical protection to Kabuki staff, employees, and property.
	"Excellent," Lindsay said. He authenticated the document and
replaced the Fortuna State Seal in his diplomatic bag. "It truly
eases my mind to know that the FMD will handle security."
	"Hey, it's a pleasure," said the President. "Any dip of ours
who needs it can depend on an escort twenty-four hours a day.
Especially when you're going to the Geisha Bank, if you get my
meaning."
	"Have this resolution copied and spread through the
Zaibatsu," Lindsay said. "It ought to be good for a ten-point
stock advance." He looked at the President seriously. "But don't
get greedy. When it reaches a hundred and fifty, start selling
out, slowly. And have your ship ready for a quick getaway."
	The President winked. "Don't worry. We haven't been sitting
on our hands. We're lining up a class assignment from a Mech
cartel. A bodyguard gig ain't bad, but a nation gets restless.
When the Red Consensus is shipshape again, then our time has
come to kill and eat."

THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 13-3-'16

Lindsay slept, exhausted, with his head propped against the
diplomatic hag. An artificial morning shone through the false
glass doors. Kitsune sat in thought, toying quietly with the keys
of her synthesizer.
	Her proficiency had long since passed the limits of merely
technical skill. It had become a communion, an art sprung from
dark intuition. Her synthesizer could mimic any instrument and
surpass it: rip its sonic profile into naked wave forms and
rebuild it on a higher plane of sterilized, abstract purity. Its
music had the painful, brittle clarity of faultlessness.
	Other instruments struggled for that ideal clarity but failed.
Their failure gave their sound humanity. The world of humanity
was a world of losses, broken hopes, and original sin, a flawed
world, yearning always for mercy, empathy, compassion. ... It
was not her world.
	Kitsune's world was the fantastic, seamless realm of high pornography. Lust was ever present, amplified and tireless, broken
only by spasms of superhuman intensity. It smothered every
other aspect of life as a shriek of feedback might overwhelm an
orchestra.
	Kitsune was an artificial creature, and accepted her feverish
world with a predator's thoughtlessness. Hers was a pure and
abstract life, a hot, distorted parody of sainthood.
The surgical assault on her body would have turned a human
woman into a blank-eyed erotic animal. But Kitsune was a
Shaper, with a Shaper's unnatural resilience and genius. Her
narrow world had turned her into something as sharp and
slippery as an oiled stiletto.
	She had spent eight of her twenty years within the Bank, where she dealt with customers and rivals on terms she thoroughly
understood. Still, she knew there was a realm of mental experience, taken for granted by humanity, that was closed to her.
Shame. Pride. Guilt. Love. She felt these emotions as dim
shadows, dark reptilian trash burnt to ashes in an instant by
searing ecstasy. She was not incapable of human feeling; it was
simply too mild for her to notice. It had become a second
subconscious, a buried, intuitive layer below her posthuman
mode of thought. Her consciousness was an amalgam of coldly
pragmatic logic and convulsive pleasure.
	Kitsune knew that Lindsay was handicapped by his primitive
mode of thought. She felt a kind of pity for him, a compassionate sorrow that she could not recognize or admit to herself.
She believed he must be very old, from one of the first generations of Shapers. Their genetic engineering had been limited
and they could scarcely be told from original human stock.
	He must be almost a hundred years old. To be so old, yet look
so young, meant that he had chosen sound techniques of life
extension. He dated back to an era before Shaperism had
reached its full expression. Bacteria still swarmed through his
body. Kitsune never told him about the antibiotic pills and
suppositories she took, or the painful antiseptic showers. She
didn't want him to know he was contaminating her. She wanted
everything between them to be clean.
	She had a cool regard for Lindsay. He was a source of lofty
and platonic satisfaction to her. She had the craftsmanlike respect for him that a butcher might have for a sharp steel saw.
She took a positive pleasure in using him. She wanted him to
last a long time, so she took good care of him and enjoyed
giving him what she thought he needed to go on functioning.
	For Lindsay, her affections were ruinous. He opened his eyes
on the tatami mat and reached out at once for the diplomatic
bag behind his head. When his fingers closed over the smooth
plastic handle, an anxiety circuit shut off in his head, but that
first relief only triggered other systems and he came fully awake
into a queasy combat alertness.
	He saw that he was in Kitsune's chamber. Morning was breaking over the image of the long-dead garden. False daylight
slanted into the room, gleaming from inlaid clothes chests and
the perspex dome of a fossilized bonsai. Some repressed part of
him cried out within him, in meek despair. He ignored it. His
new diet of drugs had brought the Shaper schooling back in full
force and he was in no mood to tolerate his own weaknesses. He
was full of that mix of steel-trap irritability and slow gloating
patience that placed him at the keenest edges of perception and
reaction.
	He sat up and saw Kitsune at the keyboards. "Good morning,"
he said.
	"Hello, darling. Did you sleep well?"
	Lindsay considered. Some antiseptic she used had scorched histongue. His back was bruised where her Shaper-strengthened
fingers had dug in carelessly. His throat had an ominous
rawness-he had spent too much time without a mask in the
open air. "I feel fine," he said, smiling. He opened the complex
lock of his diplomatic bag.
	He slipped on his finger rings and stepped into his hakama trousers.
	"Do you want something to eat?" she said.
	"Not before my shot."
	"Then help me plug in the front," she said.
	Lindsay repressed a shudder. He hated the yarite's withered,
waxlike, cyborged body, and Kitsune knew it. She forced him to
help her with it because it was a measure of her control.
	Lindsay understood this and wanted to help her; he wanted to
repay her, in a way she understood, for the pleasure she had
given him.
	But something in him revolted at it. When his training faltered,
as it did between shots, repressed emotions rose and he was
aware of the terrible sadness of their affair. He felt a kind of
pity for her, a compassionate sorrow that he would never insult
her by admitting. There were things he had wanted to give her:
simple companionship, simple trust and regard.
	Simple irrelevance. Kitsune hauled the yarite out of its
biomonitored cradle beneath the floorboards. In some ways the
thing had passed the limits of the clinically dead; sometimes
they had to slam it into operation like push-starting a balky
engine.
	Its maintenance technology was the same type that supported
the Mechanist cyborgs of the Radical Old and the Mech cartels.
Filters and monitors clogged the thing's bloodstream; the inter-
nal glands and organs were under computer control. Implants
sat on its heart and liver, prodding them with electrodes and
hormones. The old woman's autonomous nervous system had
long since collapsed and shut down.
	Kitsune examined a readout and shook her head. "The acid
levels are rising as fast as our stocks, darling. The plugs are
degrading its brain. It's very old. Held together with wires and
patchwork."
	She sat it up on a floor mat and spooned vitaminized pap into
its mouth.
	"You should seize control on your own," he said. He inserted
a dripping plug into a duct on the yarite's veiny forearm.
	"I'd like that," she said. "But I have a problem getting rid of
this one. The sockets on its head will be hard to explain away. I
could cover them with skin grafts, but that won't fool an au-
topsy. . . . The staff expect this thing to live forever. They've
spent enough on it. They'll want to know why it died."
	The yarite moved its tongue convulsively and dribbled out its
paste. Kitsune hissed in annoyance. "Slap its face," she said.
	Lindsay ran a hand through his sleep-matted hair. "Not this
early," he said, half pleading.
	Kitsune said nothing, merely straightened her back and shoulders and set her face in a prim mask. Lindsay was defeated at
once. He jerked his hand back and swung it across the thing's
	face in a vicious open-handed slap. A spot of color showed in
	its leathery cheek.
"Show me its eyes," she said. Lindsay grabbed the thing's gaunt
	checks between his thumb and fingers and twisted its head so
	that it met Kitsune's eyes. With revulsion, he recognized a dim
	flicker of debased awareness in its face.
Kitsune   took   his   hand   away   and   lightly   kissed   his   palm.
	"That's  my  good   darling,"  she  said. She slipped  the spoon
	between the thing's slack lips.
	
THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU:21-4-'16

The Fortuna pirates floated like red-and-silver paper cutouts
against the interior walls of the Kabuki Bubble. The air was
loud with the angry spitting of welders, the whine of rotary
sanders, the wheeze of the air filters.
	Lindsay's loose kimono and trousers ruffled in free-fall. He
reviewed the script with Ryumin. "You've been rehearsing this?" he said.
	"Sure," said Ryumin. "They love it. It's great. Don't worry."
Lindsay scratched his floating, puffy hair. "I don't quite know
what to make of this."
	A camouflaged surveillance plane had forced itself into the
Bubble just before the structure was sealed shut. Against the
bright triangular pastels, its dreary camouflage made it as obvious as a severed thumb. The machine yawed and dipped
within the fifty-meter chamber, its lenses and shotgun micro-
phones swiveling relentlessly. Lindsay was glad it was there, but
it bothered him.
	"I have the feeling I've heard this story before," he said. He
flipped through the printout's pages. The margins were thick
with cartoon stick figures scribbled there for the illiterate. "Let
me see if I have it right. A group of pirates in the Trojan
asteroids have kidnapped a Shaper woman. She's some kind of
weapons specialist, am I right?"
	Ryumin nodded. He had taken his new prosperity in stride. He
wore ribbed silk coveralls in a tasteful shade of navy and a loose
beret, high fashion in the Mech cartels. A silver microphone bead dotted his upper lip. 
Lindsay said, "The Shapers are terrified by what the pirates
might do with her expertise. So they form an alliance and put
	the pirates under siege. Finally they trick their way in and burn
	the place out." Lindsay looked up. "Did it really happen, or
	didn't it?"
"It's an old story," Ryumin said. "Something like that actually
	happened  once;  I   feel  sure of it.  But  I  filed  off the serial
numbers and made it my own."
	Lindsay smoothed his kimono. "I could swear that . . . hell.
They say if you forget something while you're on vasopressin,
you'll never remember it. It causes mnemonic burnout." He
shook the script in resignation.
	"Can you direct it?" Ryumin said.
	Lindsay shook his head. "I wanted to, but it might be best if I
left it to you. You do know what you're doing, don't you?"
	"No," Ryumin said cheerfully. "Do you?"
	"No. . . . The situation's getting out of hand. Outside investors
keep trying to buy Kabuki stock. Word got out through the
Geisha Bank's contacts. I'm afraid that the Nephrine Black
Medicals will sell their Kabuki holdings to some Mech cartel.
And then ... I don't know . . . it'll mean - "
	"It'll mean that Kabuki Intrasolar has become a legitimate
business."
	"Yes." Lindsay grimaced. "It looks like the Black Medicals will
escape unscathed. They'll even profit. The Geisha Bank won't
like it."
	"What of it?" said Ryumin. "We have to keep moving forward
or the whole thing falls apart. The Bank's already made a killing
selling Kabuki stock to the Black Medicals. The old crone who
runs the Bank is crazy about you. The whores talk about you
constantly."
	He gestured at the center stage. It was a spherical area
crisscrossed with padded wires, where a dozen actors were going
through their paces. They flung themselves through free-fall
aerobatics, catching the wires, spinning, looping, and
rebounding.
	Two of them collided bruisingly and clawed the air for a
handhold. Ryumin said, "Those acrobats are pirates, you under-
stand? Four months ago they would have slit each other's
throats for a kilowatt. But not now, Mr. Dze. Now they have too
much at stake. They're stage-struck."
	Ryumin laughed conspiratorially.
	"For once they're more than pocket terrorists.  Even the whores are more than sex toys. They're real actors, with a real script and a real audience. It doesn't matter that you and I know
	It's a fraud, Mr. Dze. A symbol has meaning if someone gives it meaning. And they're giving it everything they have."
Lindsay watched the actors begin their routine again. They
flew from wire to wire with feverish determination. "It's pathetic," he said.
"A tragedy to those who feel. A comedy to those who think,"
	Ryumin said.  Lindsay stared at him suspiciously. "What's gotten into you, anyway? What are you up to?"
	Ryumin pursed his lips and looked elaborately nonchalant.
"My needs are simple. Every decade or so I like to return to the
cartels and see if they've made any progress with these bones of
mine. Progressive calcium loss is not a laughing matter. Frankly,
I'm getting brittle." He looked at Lindsay. "And what about
you, Mr. Dze?"
	He patted Lindsay's shoulder.
	"Why not tag along with me? It would do you good to see
more of the System. There are two hundred million people in
space. Hundreds of habitats, an explosion of cultures. They're
not all scraping out a living on the edge of survival, like these
poor bezprizorniki. Most of them are the bourgeoisie. Their
lives are snug and rich! Maybe technology eventually turns them
into something you wouldn't call human. But that's a choice
they make-a rational choice." Ryumin waved his hands expansively. "This Zaibatsu is only a criminal enclave. Come with me
and let me show you the fat of the System. You need to see the cartels."
	"The cartels. . ." Lindsay said. To join the Mechanists would
mean surrendering to the ideals of the Radical Old. He looked
around him, and his pride flared. "Let them come to me!"

THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 1-6-'16

For the first performance, Lindsay gave up his finery for a
general-issue jumpsuit. He covered his diplomatic bag with bur-
lap to hide the Kabuki decals.
	It seemed that every sundog in the world had filtered into the
Bubble. They numbered over a thousand. The Bubble could not
have held them, except in free-fall. There were light opera-box
frameworks for the Hank elite, and a jackstraw complex of
padded bracing wires where the audience clung like roosting
sparrows.
	Most floated freely. The crowd formed a percolating mass of
loose concentric spheres. Broad tunnels had opened spontaneously in the mass of bodies, following the complex kinesics of crowd flow. There was a constant excited murmur in a flurry of differing argots.
	The play began.  Lindsay watched  the crowd.  Brief shoving
matches broke out during the first fanfare, but by the time the
dialogue started the crowd had settled. Lindsay was thankful for
that. He missed his usual bodyguard of Fortuna pirates.
The pirates had  finished their obligations to him and were
busy preparing their ship for departure. Lindsay, though, felt
safe in his anonymity. If the play failed disastrously, he would
simply be one sundog among others. If it went well, he could
change in time to accept the applause.
	In the first abduction scene, pirates kidnapped the young and
beautiful weapons genius, played by one of Kitsune's best. The
audience screamed in delight at the puffs of artificial smoke and
bright free-fall gushes of fake blood.
	Lexicon computers throughout the Bubble translated the script
into a dozen tongues and dialects. It seemed unlikely that this
polyglot crowd could grasp the dialogue. To Lindsay it sounded
like naive mush, mangled by mistranslation. But they listened
raptly.
	After an hour, the first three acts were over. A long intermission followed, in which the central stage was darkened. Rude
claques had formed spontaneously for the cast members, as
pirate groups shouted for their own.
	Lindsay's nose stung. The air inside the Bubble had been
supercharged with oxygen, to give the crowd a hyperventilated
elan. Despite himself, Lindsay too felt elation. The hoarse
shouts of enthusiasm were contagious. The situation was moving
with its own dynamics. It was out of his hands.
	Lindsay drifted toward the Bubble's wall, where some enterprising oxygen farmers had set up a concessions stand.
The farmers, clinging awkwardly to footloops on the Bubble's
frame, were doing a brisk business. They sold their own native
delicacies: anonymous green patties fried up crisp, and white
blobby cubes on a stick, piping hot from the microwave. Kabuki
Intrasolar took a cut, since the food stands were Lindsay's idea.
The farmers paid happily in Kabuki stock.
	Lindsay had been careful with the stock. He had meant at first inflate it past all measure and thereby ruin the Black
Medicals. But the miraculous power of paper money had se-
duced him. He had waited too long, and the Black Medicals had
sold their stock to outside investors, at an irresistible profit.
	Now the Black Medicals were safe from him -and grateful.
They sincerely respected him and nagged him constantly for
	further tips on the market.
	Everyone was happy. He foresaw a long run for the play. After
that, Lindsay thought, there would be other schemes, bigger and
better ones. This aimless sundog world was perfect for him. It
only asked that he never stop, never look back, never look
farther forward than the next swindle.
	Kitsune would see to that. He glanced at her opera box and
saw her floating with carnivorous meekness behind the Bank's
senior officers, her dupes. She would not allow him any doubts
or regrets. He felt obscurely glad for it. With her limitless
ambition to drive him, he could avoid his own conflicts.
	They had the world in their pocket. But below his giddy sense
of triumph a faint persistent pain roiled through him. He knew
that Kitsune was simply and purely relentless. But Lindsay had
a fault line through him, an aching seam where his training met
his other self. Now, at his finest moment, when he wanted to
relax and feel an honest joy, it came up tainted.
	All around him the crowd was exulting. Yet something within
him made him shrink from joining them. He fell cheated, twist-
ed, robbed of something that he couldn't grip.
	He reached for his inhaler. A good chemical whiff would boost
his discipline.
	Something tugged the fabric of his jumpsuit, from behind him,
to his left. He glanced quickly over his shoulder.
	A black-haired, rangy young man with flinty gray eyes had
seized his jumpsuit with the muscular bare toes of his right foot.
"Hey, target," the man said. He smiled pleasantly. Lindsay
watched the man's face for kinesics and realized with a dull
shock that the face was his own.
	"Take it easy, target," the assassin said. Lindsay heard his own
voice from the assassin's mouth.
	The face was subtly wrong. The skin looked too clean, too new.
It looked synthetic.
	Lindsay twisted around. The assassin held a bracing wire with
both hands, but he reached out with his left foot and caught
Lindsay's wrist between his two largest toes. His foot bulged
with abnormal musculature and the joints looked altered. His
grip was paralyzing. Lindsay felt his hand go numb.
	The man jabbed Lindsay's chest with the toe of his other foot.'
"Relax," he said. "Let's talk a moment."
	Lindsay's training took hold. His adrenaline surge of terror
transmuted into icy self-possession, "flow do you like the performance?" he said.
	The man laughed. Lindsay knew that he was hearing the assassin's true voice; his laugh was chilling. "These moondock worlds
are full of surprises," he said.
	"You should have joined the cast," Lindsay said. "You have a
talent for impersonation."
	"It comes and goes," the assassin said. He bent his altered
ankle slightly, and the bones of Lindsay's wrist grated together
with a sudden lancing pain that made blackness surge behind
his eyes. "What's in the bag, targ? Something they'd like to
know about back home?"
"In the Ring Council?"
	"That's right. They say they have us under siege, all those
Mech wireheads, but not every cartel is as straight as the last.
And we're well trained. We can hide under the spots on a dip's
conscience."
	"That's clever," Lindsay said. "I admire a good technique.
Maybe we could arrange something."
	"That would be interesting," the assassin said politely. Lindsay
realized then that no bribe could save him from this man.
The assassin released Lindsay's wrist. He reached into the
breast pocket of his jumpsuit with his left foot. His knee and hip
swiveled eerily. "This is for you," he said. He released a black
videotape cartridge. It spun in free-fall before Lindsay's eyes.
	Lindsay took the cartridge and pocketed it. He snapped the
pocket shut and looked up again. The assassin had vanished. In
his place was a portly male sundog in the same kind of general-
issue dun-brown jumpsuit. He was heavier than the assassin and
his hair was blond. The man looked at him indifferently.
	Lindsay reached out as if to touch him, then snatched his hand
back before the man could notice.
	The lights went up. Dancers came onstage. The Bubble rang
with howls of enthusiasm. Lindsay fled along the Bubble's walls
through a nest of legs tucked through footloops and arms
clutching handholds. He reached the anterior airlock.
	He hired one of the aircraft moored outside the lock and flew
at once to the Geisha Bank.
	The place was almost deserted, but his credit card got him in.
The enormous guards recognized him and bowed. Lindsay hesitated, then realized he had nothing to say. What could he tell
them? "Kill me, next time you see me?"
To catch birds with a mirror was the ideal snare.
	The yarite's network of beads would protect him. Kitsune had
taught him how to work the beads from within. Even if the
assassin avoided the traps, he could be struck down from within
by high voltage or sharp flechettes.
	Lindsay walked the pattern flawlessly and burst into the
yarite's quarters. He opened a videoscreen, flicked it on, and
loaded the tape.
	It was a face from his past: the face of his best friend, the man
who had tried to kill him, Philip Khouri Constantine.
	"Hello, cousin," Constantine said.
	The term was aristocratic slang in the Republic. But Constantine was a plebe. And Lindsay had never heard him put
such hatred into the word.
	"I take the liberty of contacting you in exile." Constantine
looked drunk. He was speaking a little too precisely. The ring-
shaped collar of his antique suit showed sweat on the olive skin
of his throat. "Some of my Shaper friends share my interest in
your career. They don't call these agents assassins. The Shapers
call them 'antibiotics.'
	"They've been operating here. The opposition is much less
troublesome with so many dead from 'natural causes.' My old
trick with the moths looks juvenile now. Very brash and risky.
	"Still, the insects worked well enough, out here in the
moondocks. . . . Time flies, cousin. Five months have changed
things.
	"The Mechanist siege is failing. When the Shapers are trapped
and squeezed, they ooze out under pressure. They can't be
beaten. We used to tell each other that, when we were boys,
remember, Abelard? When our future seemed so bright we
almost blinded each other, sometimes. Back before we knew
what a bloodstain was. . . .
	"This Republic needs the Shapers. The colony's rotting. They
can't survive without the biosciences. Everyone knows it, even
the Radical Old.
	"We never really talked to those old wireheads, cousin. You
wouldn't let me; you hated them too much. And now I know
why you were afraid to face them. They're tainted, Abelard, like
you are. In a way, they're your mirror image. By now you know
what a shock it is to see one." Constantine grinned and
smoothed his wavy hair with a small, deft hand.
	"But I talked to them, I came to terms. . . . There's been a
coup here, Abelard. The Advisory Council is dissolved. Power
belongs to the Executive Board for National Survival. That's me,
and a few of our Preservationist friends. Vera's death changed 
everything, as we knew it would. Now we have our martyr. Now 
we're full of steel and fury.
	"The Radical Old are leaving. Emigrating to the Mech cartels
where they belong. The aristocrats will have to pay the costs for 
it.
	"There are others coming your way, cousin. The whole mob of 
broken-down aristos: Lindsays, Tylers, Kellands, Morrisseys. Political  exiles.  Your wife is with  them. They're squeezed dry
between their Shaper children and their Mechanist grandparents, and thrown out like garbage. They're all yours.
	"I want you to mop up after me, tie up my loose ends. If you
won't accept that, then go back to my messenger. He'll settle
you." Constantine grinned, showing small, even teeth. "Except
for death, you can't escape the game. You and Vera both knew
that. And now I'm king, you're pawn."
Lindsay shut off the tape.
	He was ruined. The Kabuki Bubble had assumed a grotesque
.solidity; it was his own ambitions that had burst.
	He was trapped. He would be unmasked by the Republic's
refugees. His glittering deceptions would fly apart to leave him
naked and exposed. Kitsune would know him for what he was: a
human upstart, not her Shaper lover.
	His mind raced within the cage. To live here under Constantine's terms, in his control, in his contempt-the thought
scalded him.
	He had to escape. He had to leave this world at once. He had
no time left for scheming.
	Outside, the assassin was waiting, with Lindsay's own stolen
face. To meet him again was death. But he might escape the
man if he disappeared at once. And that meant the pirates.
	Lindsay rubbed his bruised wrist. Slow fury built in him: fury
at the Shapers and the destructive cleverness they had used to
survive. Their struggle left a legacy of monsters. The assassin.
Constantine. himself.
	Constantine was younger than Lindsay. He had trusted Lind-
say, looked up to him. But when Lindsay had come back on
furlough from the Ring Council, he'd painfully felt how deeply
the Shapers had changed him. And he had deliberately sent
Constantine into their hands. As always, he had made it sound
plausible, and Constantine's new skills were truly crucial. But
Lindsay knew that he had done it selfishly, so that he'd have
company, outside the pale.
	Constantine had always been ambitious. But where there had
been trust, Lindsay had brought a new sophistication and deceit.
Where he and Constantine had shared ideals, they now shared
murder.
	Lindsay felt an ugly kinship with the assassin. The assassin's
training must have been much like his own. His own self-hatred
added sudden venom to his fear of the man.
	The assassin had Lindsay's face. But Lindsay realized with a
sudden flash of insight that he could turn the man's own
strength against him.
	He could pose as the assassin, turn the situation around. He
could commit some awful crime, and the assassin would be
	blamed.
	Kitsune needed a crime. It would be his farewell gift to her, a
message only she would understand. He could free her, and his
enemy would pay the price.
	He opened the diplomatic bag and tossed aside his paper heap
of stocks. He opened the floorboards and stared at the body of
the old woman, floating naked on the wrinkled surface of the
waterbed. Then he searched the room for something that would
cut.


CHAPTER THREE

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 2-6-'16

When the last slave rocket from the Zaibatsu had peeled away,
and the engines of the Red Consensus had cut in, Lindsay began
to think he might be safe.
	"So how about it, citizen?" the President said. "You sundogged
off with the loot, right? What's in the bag, State? Ice-cold drugs?
Hot software?"
	"No," Lindsay said. "It can wait. First we have to check every-
one's face. Make sure it's their own."
	"You're   twisted,   State,"   said   one   of   the   Senators.   "That
'antibiotic' stuff is just agitprop crap. They don't exist."
"You're safe," the President said. "We know every angstrom
on this ship, believe me." He brushed an enormous crawling
roach from the burlapped surface of Lindsay's diplomatic bag.
"You've scored, right? You want to buy into one of the cartels?
We're on assignment, but we can detour to one of the Belt
settlements-Bettina or Themis, your choice." The President
grinned evilly. "It'll cost you, though."
"I'm staying with you," Lindsay said.
	"Yeah?" said  the President. "Then this belongs to us!"  He
picked up Lindsay's diplomatic bag and threw it to the Speaker of the House.
	I'll open it for you," Lindsay said quickly. "Just let me
explain first."
	"Sure," the Speaker said. "You can explain how much it's
worth." She pressed her portable power saw against the bag.
Sparks flew and the reek of melted plastic filled the spacecraft.
Lindsay averted his face.
	Speaker groped within the bag, bracing her knee against it
in free-fall. With a wrenching motion she dragged out Lindsay's
booty. It was the yarite's severed head.
	  She let go of the head with the sudden hiss of a scorched cat.
"Get 'im!" the President yelled.
	Two of the Senators bounced off the spacecraft's walls and
seized Lindsay's arms and legs in painful jujutsu holds.
	"You're the assassin!" the President shouted. "You were hired
to hit this old Mechanist! There's no loot at all!" He looked at
the input-studded head with a grimace of disgust. "Get it into
the recycler," he told one of the representatives. "I won't have a
thing like that aboard this ship. Wait a second," he said as the
representative took tentative hold of a lock of sparse hair.
"Take it up to the machine shop first and dig out all the
circuitry."
	He turned to Lindsay. "So that's your game, eh, citizen? An
assassin?"
	Lindsay clung to their expectations. "Sure," he said reflexively.
"Whatever you say."
	There was an ominous silence, overlaid by distant thermal
pops from the engines of the Red Consensus. "Let's throw his
ass out the airlock," suggested the Speaker of the House.
	"We can't do that," said the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. He was a feeble old Mechanist who was subject to
nosebleeds. "He is still Secretary of Stale and can't be sentenced
without impeachment by the Senate."
	The three Senators, two men and a woman, looked interested.
The Senate didn't see much action in the government of the tiny
Democracy. They were the least trusted members of the crew
and were outnumbered by the House.
	Lindsay shrugged. It was an excellent shrug; he had captured
the feel of the President's own kinesics, and the subliminal
mimicry defused the situation for the crucial instant it took him
to start talking. "It was a political job." It was a boring voice,
the leaden sound of moral exhaustion. It defused their
bloodlust, made the situation into something predictable and
tiresome. "I  was working for the Mare Serenitatis Corporate!
Republic. They had a coup there. They're shipping a lot of their
population to the Zaibatsu soon and wanted me to pave the
way." 
	They were believing him. He put some color into his voice.
"But they're fascists. I prefer to serve a democratic government.
Besides, they set an 'antibiotic' on my track -at least, I think it
was them." Me smiled and spread his hands innocently, twisting
his arms in the loosened grips of his captors. "I haven't lied to 
you, have I? I never claimed that I wasn't a killer. Besides, think 
of the money I made for you."
	"Yeah, there's that," the President said grudgingly. "But did
you have to saw its head off?"
	"I was following orders," Lindsay said. "I'm good at that, Mr.
President. Try me."
	
ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 13-6-'16
	
Lindsay had stolen the cyborg's head to free Kitsune, to guarantee that her power games would not come to light. He had
deceived her, but he had freed her as a message of apology. The
Shaper assassin would bear the blame for it. He hoped the
Geisha Bank would tear the man apart.
	He put aside the horror. His Shaper teachers had warned him
about such feelings. When a diplomat was thrown into a new
environment, he should repress all thoughts of the past and
immediately soak up as much protective coloration as possible.
Lindsay surrendered to his training. Crammed into the tiny
spacecraft with the eleven-member Fortuna nation, Lindsay felt
the environment's semiotics as an almost physical pressure. It
would be hard to keep a sense of perspective, trapped in a can
with eleven lunatics.
	Lindsay had not been in a real spacecraft since his schooldays
in the Shaper Ring Council. The Mech cargo drogue that had
shipped him into exile didn't count; its passengers were drugged
meat. The Red Consensus was lived in; it had been in service for
two hundred and fifteen years.
	Within a few days, following bits of evidence present within the spacecraft, Lindsay learned more about its history than the
Fortuna Miners knew themselves.
	The living decks of the Consensus had once belonged to a
Terran national entity, an extinct group calling themselves the
Soviet Union, or CCCP. The decks had been  launched  from
Earth to form one of a series of orbiting "defense stations."
	The ship was cylindrical, and its living quarters were four
interlocked round decks. Each deck was four meters tall and
ten meters across. They had once been equipped with crude
airlock safety doors between levels, but those had been
wrenched out and replaced with modern self-sealing pressure
filaments.
	The stern deck had been ripped clean to the padded walls. The
pirates used it for exercise and free-fall combat practice. They
also slept there, although, having no day or night, they were
likely to doze off anywhere at any time.
	The next deck, closer to the bow, held their cramped surgery
and sick bay, as well as the "sweatbox," where they hid from
solar flares behind lead shielding. In the "broom closet," a
dozen antiquated spacesuits hung flabbily beside a racked-up
clutter of shellac sprayers, strap-on gas guns, ratchets, clamps,
and other "outside" tools. This deck had an airlock, an old
armored one to the outside, which still had a series of peeling
operations stickers in green Cyrillic capitals.
	The next deck was a life-support section, full of gurgling racks
of algae. It had a toilet and a food synthesizer. The two units
were both hooked directly to the algae racks. It was an object
lesson in recycling, but not one that Lindsay relished much.
This deck also had a small machine shop; it was tiny, but the
lack of gravity allowed the use of every working surface.
	The bow deck had the control room and the power hookups to
the solar panels. Lindsay grew to like this deck best, mostly
because of the music. The control room was an old one, but
nowhere near as old as the Consensus itself. It had been de-
signed by some forgotten industrial theorist who believed that
instruments should use acoustic signals. The cluster of systems,
spread out along a semicircular control panel, had few optical
readouts. They signaled their functions by rumbles, squeaks, and
steady modular beeping.
	Bizarre at first, the sounds were designed to sink unobtrusively
into the backbrain. Any change in the chorus, though, was
immediately obvious. Lindsay found the music soothing, a com-
bination of heartbeat and brain.
	The rest of the deck was not so pleasant: the armory, with its
nasty racks of tools, and the ship's center of corruption: the
particle beam gun. Lindsay avoided that compartment when he
could, and never spoke of it.
	He could not escape the knowledge that the Red Consensus
was a ship of war. 
"Look," the President told him, "taking out some feeble old
Mech whose brain's shut down is one thing. But taking out an
armed Shaper camp full of hot genetics types is a different
proposition. There's no room for feebs or thumb-sitters in the
Fortuna National Army."
	"Yes sir," said Lindsay. The Fortuna National Army was the
military arm of the national government. Its personnel were
identical to the personnel of the civilian government, but this
was of no consequence. It had an entirely different organization
and set of operating procedures. Luckily the President was
commander in chief of the armed forces as well as head of state.
They did military drills in the fourth deck, which had been
stripped down to the ancient and moldy padding. It held three
exercycles and some spring-loaded weights, with a rack of storage lockers beside the entrance port.
	"Forget up and down," the President advised. "When we're
talking free-fall combat, the central rule is haragei. That's this."
He punched Lindsay suddenly in the stomach. Lindsay doubled
over with a wheeze and his velcro slippers ripped free from the
wall, shredding loudly.
	The President grabbed Lindsay's wrist, and with a sinuous
transfer of torque he stuck Lindsay's feet to the ceiling. "Okay,
you're upside down now, right?" Lindsay stood on the upward
or bow side of the deck; the President crouched on the stern-
ward side, so that their feet pointed in opposite directions. He
glared upside down into Lindsay's eyes. His breath smelled of
raw algae.
	"That's what they call the local vertical," he said. "The body
was built for gravity and the eyes look for gravity in any situ-
ation; that's the way the brain's wired. You're gonna look for
straight lines that go up and down and you're going to orient
yourself to those lines. And you're gonna get killed, soldier,
understand?"
	"Yes sir!" Lindsay said. In the Republic, he'd been taught from
childhood to despise violence. Its only legitimate use was against
one's self. But his brush with the antibiotic had changed his
thinking.
	"That's what haragei's for." The President slapped his own
belly. "This is your center of gravity, your center of torque. You
meet some enemy in free-fall, and you grapple with him, well,
your head is just a stalk, see? What happens depends on your
center of mass. Your haragei. Your actions, the places where
you can punch out with hands and feet, form a sphere. And that
sphere is centered on your belly. You think of that bubble
around you all the lime."
	"Yes sir," Lindsay said. His attention was total.
	"That's number one," the President said. "Now we're gonna
talk about number two. Bulkheads. Control of the bulkhead is
control of the fight. If I pull my feet up, off this bulkhead, how
hard do you think I can hit you?"
	Lindsay was prudent. "Hard enough to break my nose, sir."
	"Okay. But if I have my feet planted, so my own body holds
me fast against the recoil, what then?"
	"You break my neck. Sir."
	"Good thinking, soldier. A man without bracing is a helpless
man. If you got nothing else, you use the enemy's own body as
bracing. Recoil is the enemy of impact. Impact is damage.
Damage is victory. Understand?"
	"Recoil is impact's enemy. Impact is damage, damage is victory," Lindsay said immediately. "Sir."
	"Very good," the President said. He then reached out, and,
with a quick pivoting movement, he broke Lindsay's forearm
over his knee with a wet snap. "That's number three," he said
over Lindsay's sudden scream. "Pain."
	"Well," said the Second Justice, "I see he showed you the old
number three."
	"Yes, ma'am," Lindsay said.
	The Second Justice slid a needle into his arm. "Forget that,"
she said kindly. "This isn't the army, this is sick bay. You can
just call me Judge Two."
	A rubbery numbness spread over the fractured arm. "Thanks,
Judge." The Second Justice was an older woman, maybe close
to a century. It was hard to tell; her constant abuse of hormone
treatments had made her metabolism a patchwork of anomalies.
Her jawline was freckled with acne, but her wrists and shins
were flaky and varicose-veined.
	"You're okay, State, you'll do," she said. She stuck Lindsay's
anesthetized arm into the wide rubber orifice of an old-
fashioned CAT scanner. Multiple x-rays whirred from its ring,
and a pivoting three-D image of Lindsay's arm appeared on the
scanner's screen.
	"Good clean break, nothin' to it," she said analytically. "We've
all had it. You're almost one of us now. Want me to scroll you
up while the arm's still numb?"
	"What?"
	"Tattoos, citizen."
	The thought appalled him. "Fine," he said at once. "Go right!
ahead."
	"I knew you were okay from the beginning," she said, nudging
him in the ribs. "I'll do you a favor: vein-pop you with some of
those anabolic steroids. You'll muscle up in no time; the Prez'll
think you're a natural." She pulled gently on his forearm; the
sullen grating of jagged bone ends was like something happening
at the other end of a telescope.
	She pulled a needled tattoo rig from the wall, where it clung
by a patch of velcro. "Any preferences?"
	"I want some moths," Lindsay said.
	The history of the Fortuna Miners' Democracy was a simple
one. Fortuna was a major asteroid, over two hundred kilometers
across. In the first flush of success, the original miners had
declared their independence.
	As long as the ore held out, they did well. They could buy
their way out of political trouble and could pay for life-
extension treatments from other more advanced worlds.
	But when the ore was gone and Fortuna was a mined-out heap
of rubble, they found they had crucially blundered. Their wealth
had vanished, and they had failed to pursue technology with the
cutthroat desperation of rival cartels. They could not survive on
their outmoded expertise or sustain an information economy.
Their attempts to do so only hastened their bankruptcy.
	The defections began. The nation's best and most ambitious
personnel were brain-drained away to richer worlds. Fortuna
lost its spacecraft, as defectors decamped with anything not
nailed down.
	The collapse was exponential, and the government devolved
upon smaller and smaller numbers of diehards. They got into
debt and had to sell their infrastructure to the Mech cartels;
they even had to auction off their air. The population dwindled
to a handful of knockabout dregs, mostly sundogs who'd me-
andered to Fortuna out of lack of alternatives.
	They were, however, in full legal control of a national govern-
ment, with its entire apparat of foreign relations and diplomatic
protocol. They could grant citizenship, coin money, issue letters
of marque, sign treaties, negotiate arms control agreements.
There might be only a dozen of them, but that was irrelevant.
They still had their Mouse, their Senate, their legal precedents,
and their ideology.
	They therefore redefined Fortuna, their national territory, as
the boundaries of their last surviving spacecraft, the Red Con-
sensus. Thus equipped with a mobile nation, they were able to
legally annex other people's property into their national bound-
aries. This was not theft. Nations are not capable of theft, a legal
 fact of great convenience to the ideologues of the FMD. Protests
were forwarded to the Fortuna legal system, which was computerized and of formidable intricacy.
	Lawsuits were the chief source of income for the pirate nation.
Most cases were settled out of court. In practice, this was a
simple process of bribing the pirates to make them go away. But
the pirates were very punctilious about form and took great
pride in preserving the niceties.

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 29-9-'16

"What are you doing in the sweatbox, State?"
	Lindsay smiled uneasily. "The State of the Nation address," he
said. "I'd prefer to escape it." The President's rhetoric filled the
spacecraft, filtering past the slight figure of the First Representative. The girl slipped into the radiation shelter and wheeled the
heavy hatch shut behind her.
	"That ain't very patriotic. State. You're the new hand here;
you ought to listen."
	"I wrote it for him," Lindsay said. He knew he had to treat this
woman carefully. She made him nervous. Her sinuous movements, the ominous perfection of her features, and the sharp, somehow overattentive intensity of her gaze all told him that she was Reshaped.
"You Shaper types," she said. "You're slick as glass."
	"Are we?" he said.
	"I'm no Shaper," she said. "Look at these teeth." She opened
her mouth and showed a crooked overlapping incisor and ca-
nine. "See? Bad teeth, bad genetics."
Lindsay was skeptical. "You had that done yourself."
"I was born," she insisted. "Not decanted."
Lindsay rubbed a fading combat training bruise on  his high
cheekbone. It was hot and close in the box. He could smell her.
"I was a ransom," the girl admitted. "A fertilized ovum, but a
Fortuna citizen brought me to term." She shrugged. "I did do
the teeth, it's true."
"You're a rogue Shaper, then,"  Lindsay said. "They're rare.
	Ever had your quotient done?"
	"My IQ? No. I can't read," she said proudly. "But I'm Rep
	One, the majority whip in the House.  And I'm married to?
Senator One."
	"Really? He never mentioned it."
	The young Shaper adjusted her black headband. Beneath it,
her red-blonde hair was long and done up with bright pink
alligator clips. "We did it for tax reasons. I'd throw you a juice
otherwise, maybe. You're looking good, State." She drifted closer. "Better now that the arm's healed up." She ran one fingertip
along the tattooed skin of his wrist.
	"There's always Carnaval," Lindsay said.
	"Carnaval don't count," she said. "You can't tell it's me,
tripped out on aphrodisiacs."
	"There's three months left till rendezvous," Lindsay said.
"That gives me three more chances to guess."
	"You been in Carnaval," she said. "You know what it's like,
shot up on 'disiacs. After that, you ain't you, citizen. You're just
wall-to-wall meat."
	"I might surprise you," Lindsay said. They locked eyes.
	"If you do I'll kill you, State. Adultery's a crime."

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 13-10-'16

One of the shipboard roaches woke Lindsay by nibbling his
eyelashes. With a start of disgust, Lindsay punched it and it
scuttled away.
	Lindsay slept naked except for his groin cup. All the men wore
them; they prevented the testicles from floating and chafing in
free-fall. He shook another roach out of his red-and-silver
jumpsuit, where it feasted on flakes of dead skin.
	He got into his clothes and looked about the gym room. Two
of the Senators were still asleep, their velcro-soled shoes stuck
to the walls, their tattooed bodies curled fetally. A roach was
sipping sweat from the female senator's neck.
	If it weren't for the roaches, the Red Consensus would eventually smother in a moldy detritus of cast-off skin and built-up
layers of sweated and exhaled effluvia. Lysine, alanine,
methionine, carbamino compounds, lactic acid, sex pheromones:
a constant stream of organic vapors poured invisibly, day and
night, from the human body. Roaches were a vital part of the
spacecraft ecosystem, cleaning up crumbs of food, licking up.
grease.
	Roaches had haunted spacecraft almost from the beginning,
too tough and adaptable to kill. At least now they were well-
trained. They were even housebroken, obedient to the chemical
lures and controls of the Second Representative. Lindsay still
hated them, though, and couldn't watch their grisly swarming
and free-fall leaps and clattering flights without a deep conviction that he ought to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Dressed,    Lindsay    meandered    in    free-fall    through    the
filamented doors between docks. The plasticized doors unraveled into strands as he approached and knitted themselves shut
behind him. They were thin but airtight and as tough as steel
when pressed. They were Shaper work. Stolen, probably, Lindsay thought.
	He wandered into the control room, drawn by the instrumental
music. Most of the crew was there. The President, two Reps,
and Justice 3 were watching a Shaper agit-broadcast with strap-
on videogoggles.
	The Chief Justice was strapped in beside the waist-high con-
sole, monitoring deep-space broadcasts with the ship's drone.
The Chief Justice was by far the oldest member of the crew. He
never took part in Carnaval. This, his age, and his office made
him the crew's impartial arbiter.
Lindsay spoke loudly beside the man's earphones. "Any
news?"
	"The siege is still on," the Mech said, without any marked
satisfaction. "The Shapers are holding." He stared emptily at the
control boards. "They keep boasting about their victory in the
	Concatenation."
Justice 2  came  into  the  control   room.  "Who  wants  some
ketamine?"
	Rep 1 took off her videogoggles. "Is it good?"
	"Fresh out of the chromatograph. I just made it myself."
	"The Concatenation was a real power in my day," the Chief
Justice said. With his earphones on, he hadn't seen or heard the
two women. Something about the broadcast he had monitored
had stirred some deep layer of ancient indignation. "In my day
the Concatenation was the whole civilized world."
	Through long habit, the women ignored him, raising their
voices. "Well, how much?" Rep 1 said.
	"Forty thousand a gram?" the Judge bargained.
	"Forty thousand? I'll give you twenty."
	"Come on, girl, you charged me twenty thousand just to do my nails."
	Lindsay listened with half an ear, wondering if he could cut
himself in. The EMD still had its own banks, and though its
currency was enormously inflated, it was still in circulation as
the exclusive legal tender of eleven billionaires. Lindsay, unfortunately, as junior crew member, was already deeply in debt.
	"Mare Serenitatis," the old man said. "The Corporate Republic." He fixed Lindsay suddenly with his ash-gray eyes. "I hear
you worked for them."
	Lindsay was startled. The unwritten taboos of the Red Consensus suppressed discussion of the past. The old Mech's face had
brightened with a reckless upwash of memory. Decades of the
same expressions had dug deep furrows into his ancient muscle
and skin. His face was an idiosyncratic mask.
	"I was only there briefly," Lindsay lied. "I don't know the
moondocks well."
	"I was born there."
	Rep 1 cast an alarmed glance in the old man's direction. "All
right, forty thousand," she said. The two women left for the lab.
The President lifted his videogoggles. He looked sardonically at
Lindsay, then deliberately turned up the volume on his headset.
The other two, Rep 2 and the grizzled Justice 3, ignored the
whole situation.
	"The Republic had a system in my day," the Mech said.
"Political families. The Tylers, the Kellands, the Lindsays. Then
there was an underclass of refugees we'd taken in, just before
the Interdict with Earth. The plebes, we called them. They were
the last ones to get off the planet, just before things fell apart.
So they had nothing. We had the kilowatts in our pockets, and
the big mansions. And they had the little plastic slums."
	"You were an aristocrat?" Lindsay said. He couldn't restrain
his fatalistic interest.
	"Apples,"  the  Mech  said  sadly. The word  was  heavy  with
nostalgia. "Ever had an apple? They're a  kind of vegetable
growth."
"I think so."
	"Birds. Parks. Grass. Clouds. Trees." The Mech's right arm, a
prosthetic job, whirred softly as he whacked a roach from the
console with one wire-tendoned finger. "I knew it would come
to trouble, this business with the plebes. ... I even wrote a play
about it once."
	"A play? For the theatre? What was it called?"
	Vague surprise showed in the old man's eyes. "The Conflagration."
	"You're Evan James Tyler Kelland," Lindsay blurted.
"I-ah ... I saw your play. In the archives." Evan Kelland was
Lindsay's own great-granduncle. An obscure radical, his play of
social protest had been lost for years until Lindsay, hunting for
weapons, had found it in the Museum. Lindsay had staged the
play's revival to annoy the Radical Old. The men who had
exiled Kelland were still in power, sustained by Mech technologies after a hundred years. When the time was right they had
exiled Lindsay too.
	Now they were in the cartels, he remembered suddenly. Constantine, the descendant of plebes, had cut a deal with the
wireheads. And the aristocracy had paid at last, as Kelland had
prophesied. Lindsay, and Evan Kelland, had only paid early.
	"You happened to see my play," Kelland said. Suspicion
turned the lines in his face to deep crevasses. He looked away,
his ash-gray eyes full of pain and obscure humiliation. "You
shouldn't have presumed."
	"I'm sorry," Lindsay said. He looked with new dread at his old
kinsman's mechanical arm. "We won't speak of this again."
	"That would be best." Kelland turned up his earphones and
seemed to lose the grip on his fury. His eyes grew mild and
colorless. Lindsay looked at the others, deliberately blind be-
hind their videogoggles. None of this had happened.

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 27-10-'16

"Sleep troubles, citizen?" said the Second Judge. "Those
steroids getting under your skin, stepping on your dream lime? I
can fix it." She smiled, showing three ancient, discolored teeth
amid a rack of gleaming porcelain.
	"I'd appreciate it," Lindsay said, struggling for politeness. The
steroids had covered his long arms with ropes of muscle, healed
the constellation of bruises from constant jujutsu drills, and
filled him with hot flashes of aggressive fury. But they robbed
him of sleep, leaving only feverish catnaps.
	As he watched the Fortuna medic through red-rimmed eyes,
he was reminded of his ex-wife. Alexandrina Lindsay had had
just that same china-doll precision of movement, the same
parchmentlike skin, the same telltale age wrinkles on the
knuckles. His wife had been eighty years old. And, watching the
Judge, Lindsay fell stifled by secondhand sexual attraction.
	"This'll do it," Judge Two said, drawing up a hypo of muddy
fluid from a plastic-topped vial. "Some REM promoter,
serotonin agonists, muscle relaxant, and just a taste of mnemonics to pry loose troublesome memories. Use it all the time
myself; it's fabulous. While you're out, I'll scroll up the other
arm."
	"Not just yet," Lindsay said through gritted teeth. "I haven't
decided what I want on it yet." 
	The Second Judge put away her tattoo rig with a moue of
disappointment. She seemed to live, eat, and breathe needles,
Lindsay thought. "Don't you like my work?" she said.
	Lindsay examined his right arm. The bone had knitted well,
but he'd put on so much muscle that the designs were distorted:
coax-cable snakes with television eyes, white death's-heads with
flat solar-panel wings, knives wreathed in lightning, and every-
where, fluttering along and between them, a horde of white
moths. The skin of his arm from wrist to bicep was so laden
with ink that it felt cold to the touch and no longer sweated.
"It was well done," he said as the hypo sank  into his arm
through the hollow eye of a skull. "But wait till I've finished
muscling for the rest, all right, citizen?"
"Sweet dreams," she said.
	At night, the Republic was truest to itself. The Preservationists
preferred the night, when watchful older eyes were closed in
sleep.
	Truths hidden in daylight revealed themselves in blazing night-
lights. The solar energy of the power panels was the Republic's
currency. Only the wealthiest could squander financial power.
	To his right, at the world cylinder's north end, light poured
from the hospitals. In their clinics around the cylinder's axis,
the frail bones of the Radical Old rested easily, almost in
free-fall. Gouts of light spilled from distant windows and landing pads, a smeared and bogus Milky Way of wealth.
Suddenly Lindsay, looking up, was behind those windows. It
was his Great-Grandfather's suite. The old Mechanist floated in
a matrix of life-support tubes, his eye sockets wired to a video
input, in a sterile suite flooded with oxygen.
"Grandfather, I'm leaving," Lindsay said. The old man raised
one hand, so crippled with arthritis that its swollen knuckles
bulged, and rippled, and suddenly burst into a hissing net of
needle-tipped tubes. They whipped into Lindsay, clinging, piercing, sucking. Lindsay opened his mouth to scream-
The lights were far away. He was walking across the fretted
glass windowpane. He emerged onto the Agricultural panel.
	A faint smell of curdling rot came with the wind. He was near
the Sours.
	Lindsay's shoes hissed through genetically altered wiregrass at
the swamp's margins. Grasshoppers creaked in the undergrowth,
and a chitinous thing the size of a rat scurried away from him.
Philip Constantine had the rot under siege.
The wind  gusted.  Constantine's  tent   flapped   loudly  in   the
darkness. By the tent's doorflaps, two globes on stakes shone
	yellow bioluminescence.
 Constantine's sprawling lent dominated the wiregrass border-
lands, with  the Sours to  its  north  and  the  fertile grainfields
shielded behind  it. The no-man's land, where he battled the
contagion, clicked and rustled with newly minted vermin from
his labs. From within, he heard Constantine's voice, choked with sobs.
	"Philip!" he said. He went inside.
	Constantine sat at a wooden bench before a long metal lab
bureau, cluttered with Shaper glassware. Racks of specimen
cases stood like bookshelves, loaded with insects under study.
Globes on slender, flexible supports cast a murky yellow light.
	Constantine seemed smaller than ever, his boyish shoulders
hunched beneath his lab jacket. His round eyes were bloodshot
and his hair was disheveled.
	"Vera's burned," Constantine said. He trembled silently and
put his face into his gloved hands. Lindsay sat on the bench
beside him and threw his long, bony arm over Constantine's
back.
	They were sitting together as they had sat so often, so long ago. Side by side as usual, joking together in their half-secret argot of Ring Council slang, passing a spiked inhaler back and forth.
They laughed together, the quiet laughter of shared conspiracy.
They were young, and breaking all the rules, and after a few
long whiffs from the inhaler they were brighter than anyone
human had a right to be.
	Constantine laughed happily, and his mouth was full of blood.
Lindsay came awake with a start, opened his eyes, and saw the
sick bay of the Red Consensus. He closed his eyes and slept
again at once.
	Lindsay's cheeks were wet with tears. He was not sure how
long they had been sitting together, sobbing. It seemed a long
time. "Can we talk freely here, Philip?"
	"They don't need police spies here," Constantine said bitterly.
"That's why we have wives."
	"I'm sorry for what's come between us, Philip."
	"Vera's dead," Constantine said. He closed his eyes. "You and
I did this. We engineered her death. We share that guilt. We
know our power now. And we've discovered our differences."
Me wiped his eyes with a round disk of filter paper.
	"I lied to them," Lindsay said. "I said my uncle died of hear
failure. The inquest said as much. I let them think so, so that I
could shield you. You killed him, Philip. But it was me you;
meant to kill. Only my uncle stumbled into the trap."
"Vera and I discussed it," Constantine said. "She thought you
would fail, that you wouldn't carry out the pact. She knew your
weaknesses.  I knew them. I bred those moths for stings and
poison.  The Revolution needs its weapons.  I gave her the
pheromones to drive them into frenzy. She took them gladly."
"You didn't trust me," Lindsay said.
"And you're not dead."
Lindsay said nothing.
	"Look at this!" Constantine peeled off one of his lab gloves.
Beneath it his olive skin was shedding like a reptile's. "It's a
virus," he said. "It's immortality. A Shaper kind, from the cells
themselves, not those Mech prosthetics. I'm committed, cousin."
He picked at an elastic shred of skin. "Vera chose you, not me.
I'm going to live forever, and to hell with you and your cant
about humanities. Mankind's a dead issue now, cousin. There
are no more souls. Only states of mind. If you think you can
deny that, then here." He handed Lindsay a dissection scalpel.
"Prove yourself. Prove your words weren't empty. Prove you're
better dead and human."
	The knife was in Lindsay's hand. He stared at the flesh of his
wrist. He stared at Constantine's throat. He raised the knife over
his head, poised it, and screamed aloud.
	The sound woke him, and he found himself in sick bay,
drenched in sweat, while the Second Judge, her eyes heavy with
intoxicants, ran one veiny hand along the inside of his thigh.

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 20-11-'16

The Third Representative, or Rep 3 as he was commonly called,
was a stocky, perpetually grinning young man with a scarred
nose and short, brush-cut sandy hair.
	Like many EVA experts, he was a space fanatic and spent most of his time outside the ship, towed on long kilometers of line.
Stars talked to him, and the Sun was his friend. He always wore
his spacesuit, even inside the craft, and the whiff of long-
fermented body odor came through its open helmet collar with
eye-watering pungency.
	"I'm gonna send out the drone," he said to Lindsay as they ate
together in the control room. "You can hook up to it from in
here. It's almost like being Outside."
Lindsay put aside his empty canister of green paste. The drone
was an ancient planetary probe, found in long-forgotten orbit by
some long-forgotten crew, but its telescopes and microwave an-
tennae were still useful, and it could broadcast as well. Hundreds of klicks out on its fiber-optic cable, the unmanned drone
could pick up deep-space broadcasts and mislead enemy radar
with electronic countermeasures. "Sure, citizen," Lindsay said.
"What the hell."
	Rep 3 nodded eagerly. "It'll be beautiful, State. Your brain'll
spread out so-fast-so-thin be like a second skin for you."
	"I won't take any drugs," Lindsay said guardedly.
	"You can't take drugs," Rep 3 said. "If you take drugs the Sun
won't talk to you." He picked a pair of strap-on videogoggles
from the console and adjusted them over Lindsay's head. With-
in the goggles, a tiny video system projected images directly
onto the eyeballs. The drone was shut down at the moment;
Lindsay saw only an array of cryptic blue alphanumeric
readouts across the bottom of his vision. There was no sense of
a screen. "So far so good," he said.
	He heard a series of keyboard clicks as Rep 3 activated the
drone. Then the whole ship shook gently as the robot probe cast
off. Lindsay heard his guide strap on another pair of showphones, and then, through the drone's cameras, he saw the outside of the Consensus for the first time.
	It was pitiful how shabby and makeshift it looked. The old
engines had been ripped off the stern and replaced with a
jury-rigged attack tunnel, a long, flexible, accordioned tube with
the jagged teeth of a converted mining drill at its end. A new
engine, one of the old-fashioned Shaper electromagnetic SEPS
types, had been welded on at the end of four long stanchions.
The globular engine was a microwave hazard and was kept as
far as possible from the crew's quarters. Foil-wrapped control
cables snaked up the stanchions, which had been clumsily
bolted to the stern deck.
	Beside the stanchions crouched the inert hulk of a mining
robot. Seeing it waiting there, powered down, Lindsay realized
what a powerful weapon it was; its gaping, razor-sharp claws
could rip a ship like tinfoil.
	Another mechanism clung to the hull: a parasite rocket. The
old corrugated hull, painted an ugly shade of off-green, bore
scrapes and scratches from the little rocket's magnetic feet.
Being mobile, the parasite handled all the retrorocket work.
	The third  deck, with  its life-support system, was an  untidy 
mashed tangle of fat ventilation and hydraulics tubes, some so 
old that their insulation had burst and hung in puffy free-fall
streamers. "Don't worry, we don't use those," Rep 3 said conversationally.
	The four jointed solar panels spread laterally from the fourth
deck, a gleaming cross of black silicon cut by copper gridwork.
The nasty muzzle of the particle beam gun was just visible
around the curve of the hull.
	"Little star nation under the Sun's eye," the Rep said. He
swung the drone around so that, briefly, Lindsay saw the drone's
own tether line. Then its cameras focused on the rigging of the
spacecraft's solar sail. In the bow was a storage chamber of
accordioned fabric, but it was empty now; the nineteen tons of
metallic film were spread for light pressure in a silver arc two
kilometers across. The camera zoomed in and Lindsay saw as
the sail expanded that it too was old: creased a bit here and
there, and peppered with micrometeor holes.
	"Prez says, next time, if we can afford it, we get a monolayer
sprayer, stencil a big mother-burner skull and crossed lightnings
on the outside of that," the Rep offered.
	"Good idea," Lindsay said. He was off steroids now, and
feeling a lot more tolerant.
	"I'll take it out," the Rep said. Lindsay heard more clicks, and
suddenly the drone unreeled its way into deep space at frighten-
ing speed. In seconds, the Red Consensus shrank to thimble-size
beside the tabletop smear of its sail. Lindsay was seized with a
gut-wrenching vertigo and clutched blindly at the console. He
closed his eyes tightly within the goggles, then opened them
onto the cosmic panorama of deep space.
	"Milky Way," the Rep said. An enormous arc of white spread
itself across half of reality. Lindsay lost control of perspective:
he felt for a moment that the billion white pinpoints of the
galactic ridge were pressing pitilessly down onto his eyeballs. He
closed his eyes again, deeply thankful that he was not actually
out there.
	"That's where the aliens will come from," the Rep informed him.
	Lindsay opened his eyes. It was just a bubble, he told himself,
with white specks spattered on it: a bubble with himself at its
center-there, now he had it stabilized. "What aliens?"
	"The aliens, State." The Rep was genuinely puzzled. "You
know they're out there."
	"Sure," Lindsay said.
	"Wanna watch the Sun a while? Maybe it'll tell us something."
	"How about Mars?" Lindsay suggested.
	"No good, it's in opposition. We can try asteroids, though.
Check out the ecliptic." There was a moment's silence, filled by
the low-key music of the control room, as the stars wheeled.
	Lindsay used haragei and felt the drone's turning as a smooth
movement around his own center of gravity. The constant training paid off; he felt solid, secure, confident. He breathed from
the pit of his stomach.
	"There's one," the Rep said. A distant pinpoint of light centered itself in his field of vision and swelled into a smudge.
When it seemed about finger-sized, its edges fuzzed out and lost
definition. The Rep kicked in the computer resolution and the
image grew into a sausage-shaped cylinder, glowing in false
data-bit colors.
	"It's a decoy," the Rep said.
	"You think so?"
	"Yeah, I've seen 'em. Shaper work. Just a polymer skin, a
balloon. Airtight, though. There might be someone in it."
	"I've never seen one," Lindsay said.
	"There's thousands." It was true. Shaper claim-jumpers in the
Belt had been manufacturing the decoys for years. The polymer
skins were large enough to house a small outpost of data spies,
drone hijackers, or defectors. Would-be Mech sundogs could
hide from police agencies there, or Shaper cypher experts could
lurk within them, tapping inter-cartel broadcasts.
	The strategy was to overload Mech tracking systems with a
swarm of potential hideouts. The Shapers had made a strong
early showing in the struggle for the Belt, and there were still
isolated groups of Shaper agents moving from cell to cell behind
Mech lines while the Ring Council was under siege. Many
decoys were outfitted with propaganda broadcasting systems or
with solar wind-tracking devices that could distort their orbits;
some could shrink and expand repeatedly, disappearing from
Mech radar. It was cheaper to manufacture them than it was to
track down and destroy them, giving the Shapers a financial
edge.
	The outpost the Red Consensus had been hired to hit was one
of those manufacturing centers.
	"When there's peace," the Rep told him, "you get a dozen of
these, link 'em up with tubeways, and you got a good cheap
nation-station."
	"Will there ever be peace?" Lindsay said.
	
(lacking pp 78-79 of this paper version)

modern Mech cartels, in the Shaper Ring Council, even in the
far-flung outposts of the cometary miners and the blazing smelters of intra-Mercurian orbit, every single thinking being carried
this knowledge. Too many generations had lived and died under
the shadow of catastrophe. It had soaked itself into everyone
from childhood.
	Habitats were sacred; sacred because they were frail. The frailty was universal. Once one world was deliberately destroyed,
there could  be  no more safety anywhere, for anyone. Every
world would burst in a thousand infernos of total war.
There was no true safety. There had never been any. There
were a hundred ways to kill a world: fire, explosion, poison,
sabotage. The constant vigilance exercised by all societies could
only reduce the risk. The power of destruction was in the hands
of anyone and everyone. Anyone and everyone shared the burden of responsibility. The specter of destruction had shaped the
moral paradigm of every world and every ideology.
The destinies of man in space had not been easy, and Lindsay's
universe was not a simple one. There were epidemics of suicide,
bitter power struggles, vicious techno-racial prejudices, the crippling suppression of entire societies.
	And yet the ultimate madness had been avoided. There was
war, yes: small-scale ambushes, spacecraft destroyed, tiny min-
ing camps claim-jumped with the murder of their inhabitants:
all the grim and obscure conflicts that burst like sparks from the
grinding impact of the Mech and Shaper superpowers. But
humankind had survived and flourished.
	It was a deep and fundamental triumph. On the same deep
level of the mind that held the constant fear, there was a
stronger hope and confidence. Ft was a victory that belonged to
everyone, a victory so thorough and so deep that it had van-
shed from sight, and belonged to that secret realm of the mind
on which everything else is predicated.
	And yet these pirates, as pirates must, controlled a weapon of
mass destruction. It was an ancient machine: a relic of a lunatic
era when men first pried open the Pandora crypts of physics. An
age when cosmic explosives had spread across the surface of
Earth like bleeding scabs across the brain of a paretic.
"I fired it myself last week," the President said, "so I know the
Zaibatsu security didn't booby-trap the bastard. Some of the
Mech cartels will do that. Pick you up with frontier craft four
thousand klicks out, shut down your weaponry, then put a delay
chip in the wiring-you pull the trigger, chip vaporizes, nerve
as. . . . It makes no difference. You pull that trigger in combat
you're dead anyway, ninety-nine percent. The Shapers we're
attacking have Armageddon stuff too. We gotta have anything
they have. We gotta do anything they can do. That's nuclear
war, soldier; otherwise, we can't talk together. . . . Now, fire."
	"Fire!" cried Lindsay. There was nothing. The gun was silent.
	"Something's wrong," Lindsay said.
	"Gun down?"
	"No, it's my arm. My arm." Me pulled backward. "I can't get it
off the pistol grip. The muscles have knotted."
	"They what?" the President said. He gripped Lindsay's fore-
arm. The muscles stood out like cables, cramped in paralytic
rigor.
	"Oh, God," Lindsay said, a well-practiced edge of hysteria in
his voice. "I can't feel your hand. Squeeze my arm."
	The President crushed his forearm with bruising force.
"Nothing," Lindsay said. He had filled his arm with anesthetic
in the spacesuit. The cramping was a diplomatic trick. It was not
an easy one. He hadn't meant to get his fingers caught around
the grip.
	The President dug his calloused fingertips into the outside
groove of Lindsay's elbow. Even past the anesthetic, pain knifed
through the crushed nerves. His hand jumped slightly, releasing
the grip. "I felt that, just a little," he said calmly. There was
something he could do with pain, if the vasopressin would help
him remember. .. . There. The pain transformed itself, lost its
color, became something nastily close to pleasure.
	"I could try it left-handed," Lindsay said gamely. "Of course, if
that arm goes too, then - "
	"What the hell's wrong with you. State?" The President dug his
thumb cruelly into the complex of nerves in Lindsay's wrist.
Lindsay felt the agony as a cool black sheet draped across his
brain. He almost lost consciousness; his eyes fluttered and he
smiled faintly.
	"It must be some Shaper thing," he said. "Neural programming. They fixed it so that I could never do this." He swallowed
hard. "It's like it's not my arm." Sweat beaded on his forehead.
He was so wired on vasopressin that he could feel each muscle
in his face as a separate entity, just like they taught at the
Academy.
	"I can't accept this," the President told him. "If you can't pull
the trigger then you can't be one of us."
	"It might be possible to rig up some kind of mechanical thing,"
Lindsay said adroitly. "Some kind of piston-powered glove I
could fit over it. I'm willing, sir. It's this that's not." He lifted
the arm, stiffly, from the shoulder, then slammed it down on the
hard-edged ridge of the gun. He hit it again. "I can't feel it."
Skin peeled from the muscle.   Bright microglobes of blood
leaped   up  to  float  in   midair.  The arm stayed  rigid.  A flat
amoebalike ripple of blood oozed from the long scrape.
"We can't try an arm for treason," the President said.
Lindsay shrugged one-sidedly. "I'm doing my best, sir." He I
knew that he would never pull that trigger. He thought they 
might kill him for it, though he hoped to escape that. Life was I
important, but not so crucial as the trigger.
"We'll see what Judge Two says," the President said.
Lindsay was willing. This much had gone according to plan.
Judge Two was asleep in sick bay. She came awake with a start, 
her eyes wild. She saw the blood, then stared at the President. 
"Burn it, you've hurt him again."
	"Not me," said the President, with a flicker of confusion and
guilt. The President explained while Judge 2 examined the arm
and bandaged it. "Might be psychosomatic."
"I want that arm moving," the President said. "Do it, soldier."
"Yes sir," said the Judge, startled. She hadn't realized they
were under military rule. She scratched her head. "I'm outa my
depth. I'm just a mechanic, not some Shaper psychotech." She
looked sidelong at  the  President; he was adamant. "Lemme
think. . . .   This   should   do   it."   She   produced   another   vial,
labeled in an impenetrable scrawl. "Convulsant. Five times as
powerful as the nerves' own firing signals." She drew up three
cc's. "We'd better tourniquet that arm. If this hits his blood-
stream it'll really rack him up." She looked guiltily at Lindsay.
"This'll hurt some. A lot."
	Lindsay saw his chance. His arm was full of anesthetic, but he
could fake the pain. If he seemed to suffer badly enough, they
might forget about the test. They would feel he'd been punished
enough, for something that wasn't his fault. The Judge was
sympathetic; he could play her against the President. Their guilt
would do the rest.
	He spoke sternly. "The President knows best. You should
follow his orders. Never mind my arm, it's numb anyway."
	"You'll feel this, State. If you ain't dead." The needle went in.
She twisted the hose tight around his bicep. The tattoos rippled
as his veins began to bulge.
	When agony hit he knew the anesthetic was useless. The
convulsant scorched him like acid. "It's burning!" he screamed.
"It's burning!" His arm rippled, its muscles writhing eerily. It
	began to flop in spasms, yanking one end of the hose loose from the Judge's grip.
	Congested   blood  seeped   past  the  tourniquet  into   Lindsay's
chest. He choked on a scream and bent double, his face gray.
The drug crept like hot wires around his heart. He swallowed
his tongue and went into convulsions.
	He was near death for two days. By the time he'd recovered,
the others had reached a decision. No one ever spoke of the test
again. It had never happened.
	
ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 19-12-'16
	
"It's just a rock," said  Rep 2. She brushed a roach from the
videoscreen.
"It's the target," said the Speaker of the House. The control
	room  was   powered   down,  and   the   familiar  chorus  of  pops, squeaks, and rumbles had dwindled to a faint, tense scratching.
The Speaker's face was greenish with screen light. "It's camouflage. They're in there. I can feel it."
	"It's a rock," said Senator 3. Her tool belt rattled as she drifted
overhead, watching the screen. "They've scrammed, they've scarpered. There's no infrareds."
	Lindsay drifted quietly in a corner of the control room, not
watching the screen. He was rubbing the tattooed skin of his
right arm, slowly, absently, staring at nothing. The skin had
healed, but the combination of drugs had burned the crushed
nerves. His skin felt rubbery below the cold ink of his tattoos.
His right-hand fingertips were numb.
	He had no faith in the Shapers' restraint. The billowing sunsail
of the Red Consensus was supposed to hide the ship itself from
radar, preventing a preemptive strike from the asteroid. But he
expected at any moment to feel the last half second of impact as
Shaper weapons tore the ship apart. From within the gun room,
he heard the whine of the gunner's seat as Justice 3 shifted
nervously.
	"They're waiting for us to drift past," the President said.
"They're waiting for a shot past the sail."
	"They can't just blow us away," Senator 2 said plaintively. "We
might be sundogs. Mech defectors."
	"Stay on that drone, Rep Three!" the President ordered.
	Smiling sunnily, Rep 3 removed his earphones and turned his
goggled face toward the others. "What's that, Mr. President?"
	"I said stay on those frequencies, God damn it!" the President
shouted.
	"Oh, that," said Rep 3. He scratched within his spacesuit
collar, holding the doubled phones to one ear. "I was doing that
already. And -oh, yeah." He paused, while the crew held their
breath. The goggles blocked his eyesight, but he reached out
unerringly and touched switches on the board before him. The
control room was filled with a high-pitched staccato whine.
	"Cut it in on visuals," Rep 3 explained, tapping the keyboard.
The asteroid vanished, replaced on the screen by column after
column of alphanumeric gibberish:
	 TCGAGGCTATCTAGCTAAAGCTCTCCCGATCGATATCGTCTCGAGATCGATCGATGCRTAGCRAGCTAGTTGTCGATCGTAGGGCTCGAGCTA. . .
	"Shaper genetics code," the Speaker said. "I told you so."
	"Their last signal before we take them out," the President said
boldly. "I'm declaring martial law as of this moment. I want
everyone in battle gear-except you, State. Hop to it."
	The crew scrambled, their nerves unkinking in a burst of
action. Lindsay watched them go, thinking of the stream of data
to the Ring Council that had betrayed the outpost.
	The Shapers might have thrown their lives away with that last
cry. But the enemy, at least, had someone who would know
their deaths, and mourn.
	
CHAPTER FOUR
	
ESAIRS XII: 21-12-'16

	They called the asteroid ESAIRS 89-XII, the only name it had ever
had, drawn from an ancient catalog. ESAIRS XII was a potato-
shaped lump of slag, half a kilometer long.
	The Red Consensus hovered over its bulging equator, anchored by a guy line.
	Lindsay pulled himself one-handed down the line. Glimpsed
through his faceplate, the asteroid was dark, with long coal-
powder streaks of carbonaceous ore. Cold gray and white blurs
marked the charred impact points of primeval collisions. The
biggest craters were eighty meters across, huge lava sumps of
cracked slag and splattered glass.
	Lindsay landed. The expanse beneath his boots was like pumice, a static off-while surf of petrified bubbles. He could see up
and down the asteroid's length, but its width curved out of sight
behind a horizon a dozen steps away.
	He bent and pulled himself along, gripping knobs and cavities
with the rough fingers of his gauntlets. The right hand was bad.
The tough interior fabric of the glove felt soft as cotton to his
nerve-burned fingers.
	He crawled, legs bobbing aimlessly, over the rim of an oblong
crater, the scarred gouge of some glancing collision. It was five
times as deep as he was tall, and its floor was a long gas-
smoothed blister of greenish basalt. A long bloated ridge of
molten rock had almost lifted free into space but then frozen,
preserving every last ripple and warp. . . .
	It slid aside. The rock ridge shriveled, crumpling like silk, its
warps and bumps revealed as shaded camouflage on a plastic
film.
	A cavern yawned below. It was a tunnel, curving just below the surface.
	Lindsay picked his way cautiously down the slope and flung
himself into the tunnel. He braced himself against its walls.
Stretching overhead, he pushed against the tunnel's ceiling to
plant his feet.
	Sunlight dawned over the tiny horizon and fell into the tunnel.
	It was precisely circular and inhumanly smooth. Six tracks of
thin metallic ribbon had been epoxied into place, running
lengthwise along the corridor. In raw sunlight the tracks had the
gleam of copper.
	The tunnel apparently girdled the asteroid. It curved rapidly,
like the horizon. Before him, almost hidden by the tunnel's
curvature, he glimpsed the dim sheen of brown plastic. Jumping
and shoving along the walls, he bounced toward it in free-fall.
	It was a plastic film with an inset fabric airlock. Lindsay pulled
the zippered airlock tag and stepped in. He zipped it up behind
him, undid a second zipper in the lock's inner wall, and
climbed through.
	He was in a cavernous black and ocher balloon. It had been
blown up within the tunnel, filling it tightly.
	A figure in a plastic decontamination suit floated upside down
below the ceiling, a bright green silhouette against hand-sprayed
black arabesques on an ocher background.
	Lindsay's suit had gone flat, indicating air pressure. He took
his helmet off and inhaled cautiously. It was an oxy-nitrogen
mix, standard air.
	Lindsay held his right arm across his chest with deliberate
awkwardness. "I, uh, have a prepared statement to read. If you
have no objection."
	"Please proceed." The woman's voice was thin, half muffled.
He glimpsed her face behind the plate: cold eyes, tawny skin,
dark hair held in a green net.
	Lindsay read the words slowly, without inflection. "Greetings
from the Fortuna Miners' Democracy. We are an independent
nation, operating under the rule of law, firmly predicated on a
basis of individual civil rights. As emigrants into our national
territory, new members of the body politic are subject to a brief
naturalization process before assuming full citizenship. We re-
gret any inconvenience caused by the imposition of a new politi-
cal order.
	"It is our policy that ideological differences be settled by a
process of negotiation. To that end, we have deputized our
Secretary of State to establish preliminary terms, subject to
ratification by the Senate. It is the wish of the Fortuna Miners'
Democracy, as expressed in House Joint Resolution Sixteen,
Sixty-Seventh Session, that you begin negotiation without delay
under the Secretary's aegis, so that the interim period may be as
brief and as secure as possible.
	"We extend to our future -citizens the hand of friendship and
warm congratulations.
"Signed, President."
Lindsay looked up.
	"You'll want a copy of this," he said, extending it.
The Shaper woman floated closer. Lindsay saw that she was
beautiful. It meant very little. Beauty was cheap among Shapers.
She took the document. Lindsay pulled more from a hip valise,
with his left hand. "These are my credentials." He handed them
over: a wad of recycled printout gaudy with Fortuna foil seals.
The woman said, "My name is Nora Mavrides. The rest of the
Family has asked me to convey to you our impression of the
situation. We feel  that we can convince you  that the actions
you've taken are rash, and that you can profit by turning your
attention elsewhere. We ask for nothing but the time to con-
vince you. We have even shut down our main gun."
	Lindsay nodded. "That's nice. Very good. Should impress the
government very much. I'd like to see this gun."
"We are inside it," said Nora Mavrides.
	
ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 22-12-'16

	Lindsay said, "I played dumb. But I don't think she bought it."
He was addressing a joint session of the House and Senate, with
the Speaker of the House presiding. The President was in the
audience. The Supreme Court Justices were manning the gun
and control room, listening in on intercom.
The President shook his head. "She believed it. Shapers always
think we're stupid. Hell, to Shapers we are stupid" Lindsay said,
"We're tethered just past the outlet of their
launch ring. It's a long circular tunnel, a ring around the rock's
center of gravity, cored just under the surface. It has magnetic
snips for acceleration and some kind of magnetic launch buck-
et."
	"I heard of those," said Justice 3, over the intercom. He was
their regular gunner, a former miner, close to a century old. "It
starts with just a little boost, get that bucket up, magnetized.
Rides on a magnetic cushion, then you accelerate it, let it zip
around a while, then brake it just behind the outlet. The bucket
slows but the cargo shoots out at klicks per second."
	"Klicks per second?" said the Speaker of the House. "That
could blow us away."
	"No," said the President. "They'd have to use a lot of power
for a launch. This close, we'd pick up the magnetics."
"They won't let us in," Lindsay said. "Their Family lives clean.
No microbes, or only tailored ones. And we have Zaibatsu stuff
in every pore. They're going to offer us loot to go away."
"That's not our assignment," the Speaker said.
"We can't judge their loot unless we see their quarters," Rep 1
said.  The  young  Shaper   renegade   brushed  at   her  hair  with
enameled fingertips. She had been dressing well lately.
	"We can dig our way in with the excavator," the President said.
"We'll use the sonar readings we made. We gol a good idea of
the closest tunnels to the surface. We could core in in five-ten
minutes, while State negotiates." He hesitated. "They might kill
us for it."
	The Speaker's voice held cold certainty. "We're dead anyway,
if they keep holding us off at arm's length. Our gun is short-
range. That launch ring can plaster us hours after we leave."
"They didn't do it before," said Rep I.
"Now they know who we are."
	"There's only one thing for it," the President said. "Put it to a
vote."

ESAIRS XII: 23-12-'16

	"We're a miners' democracy, after all," Lindsay told Nora
Mavrides. "According to Forluna ideology, we had a perfect
right to drill. If you'd mapped your tunnel network for us, this
wouldn't have happened."
	"You risked everything," Nora Mavrides said.
	"You have to admit there were benefits," Lindsay said. "Now
that your network has been, as you say, 'contaminated,' we can
at least meet face to face, without spacesuits."
	"It was reckless, Secretary."
	Lindsay touched his chest left-handed. "Look at it from our
perspective, Dr. Mavrides. The FMD will not wait indefinitely
to take possession of its own property. I think we've been quite
reasonable.
	"You  keep assuming that we  mean  to leave. We are settlers,
not brigands. We won't be turned aside by nebulous promises
and anti-Mechanist propaganda. We are miners."
	"Pirates. Mech hirelings."
	Lindsay shrugged one-sidedly.
	"Your arm," she said. "Is it really hurt? Or do you pretend it,
to make me think you're harmless?"
	Lindsay said nothing.
	"I take your point," she said. "There's no true negotiation
without trust. Somewhere we have common ground. Let's find
it."
	Lindsay straightened his arm. "All right, Nora. If this is between just the two of us, role-playing aside, let's hear you. I can
bear any level of frankness you're willing to advance."
	"Tell me your name, then."
	"It won't mean anything to you." She was silent. "It's
Abelard," he said. "Call me Abelard."
	"What's your gene-line, Abelard?"
	"I'm no Shaper."
	"You're lying, Abelard. You move like one of us. The arm
business camouflaged it, but your clumsiness is too deliberate.
How old are you? A hundred? Less? How long have you been
sundogging it?"
	"Does that matter?" Lindsay said.
	"You can go back. Believe me, it's different now. The Council
needs you. I'll sponsor you. Join us, Abelard. We're your people. Not these germy renegades."
	Lindsay reached out. Nora drew back, the long laces of her
sleeve ties jerking in free-fall.
	"You see," Lindsay said. "I'm as filthy as they are." lie
watched her closely.
	She was beautiful. The Mavrides clan was a gene line he hadn't seen before. Wide, hazel eyes, with a trace of epicanthic fold,
more Amerindian than oriental. High cheekbones, straight aquiline nose. Feathery black eyebrows, and a wealth of shimmering
black hair, which in free-fall formed a bushy mass of curled
tendrils. Nora's hair was confined in a loose free-fall headdress,
a jade-green plastic turban with a crimson drawstring at the
back and a serrated fringe of forest green above her bangs. Her
coppery skin was clear and inhumanly smooth, with a dusting of
rouge.
	There were six of them. They had a close family resemblance,
but they were not identical clones. The six were that tiny per-
centage of the Mavrides gene-line which had been drafted: Kleo,
Paolo, Fazil, lan, Agnes, and Nora Mavrides. Kleo was their
leader. She was forty. Nora was twenty-eight. The rest were all
seventeen years old.
	Lindsay had seen them. He'd pitied them. The Ring Council
did not waste investment. A seventeen-year-old genius was more
than sufficient for the assignment, and they were cheap. They
had looked him over with cold hazel eyes, with the alert and
revolted stare that a man reserves for vermin. They longed to
kill him, with a hunger tempered only by disgust.
	It was loo late for that now. They should have killed him far
away, when they could have stayed clean. Now he was too close.
His skin, his breath, his teeth, even his blood seethed with
corruption.
	"We have no antiseptics," Nora said. "We never thought we'd
need them. It won't be pleasant for us, Abelard. Boils, weals,
rashes. Dysentery. There's no help for it. Even if you left tomorrow, (he air from your ship ... it was crawling." She spread her
hands. Her blouse had scarlet drawstrings at the wrists, with
puffed slashed sleeves showing the smooth skin of her forearms.
The blouse was a wraparound garment, tied with short strings at
each hip and belted at the waist. She'd sewn it herself, embroidering the lapels in pink-and-white gridwork. Below it she wore
shorts cinched at the knee and lace-up crimson sandals.
	"I'm  sorry,"  Lindsay said.  "But  it's  better  than  dying. The
Shapers are burned, Nora. They're finished. I have no love for
the Mechs, believe me." For the first time, he gestured with his
right arm. "Let me tell you something I'll deny if you repeat.
The Mechs wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. Their Union of
Cartels is a sham. It's only united by fear and hatred of the
Reshaped. When they've destroyed the Ring Council, as they
must, the Mechs themselves will fly to pieces.
"Please, Nora. See it my way for a moment, for the sake of
argument. I know you're committed, I  know you're loyal  to
your gene-line, your people back home. But your death won't
save them. They're burned, doomed. It's just you and us now.
Eighteen people. I've lived with these Fortunans. We know what
they are. They're scum, pirates, marauders. Failures. Victims,
	Nora. They live in the gap between what's right and what's
possible.
	"But if you go along, they won't kill you. It's your chance, a
chance for the six here. . . . After they've shut you down, they'll
go back to the cartels. If you surrender, they'll take you along.
You're all young. Disguise your pasts, and in a century you
could be running those cartels. Mech, Shaper, those are only
labels. The point is that we live."
	"You're tools," the woman said. "Victims, yes, I'll accept that.
We're victims ourselves. But victims in a better cause than
yours. We came here naked, Abelard. We were shipped here in
a one-way drogue, and the only reason we weren't blown away
in flight is because the Council launches fifty decoys for every
real mission. It costs the cartels mote to kill us than we're
worth.
	"That's why they hired you. The rich Mechs, the ones in
power, have turned you on us. And we were surviving. We made
this base from nothing with our hands, brains, and wetware. It
was you who came to kill us."
	"But we're here now," Lindsay said. "What's past can't be
helped. I'm begging you to let me live, and yon give me ideology. Please, Nora, bend a little. Don't kill us all."
	"I want to live," she said. "It's you who should join us here.
Your lot won't be of much use, but we could tolerate you.
You'll never be true Shapers, but there's room for the
unplanned under our aegis. In one way or another, we outflank
every move the cartels make against us."
	"You're under siege," Lindsay said.
	"We break out. Haven't you heard? The Concatenation will
declare for us. We have one circumlunar already: the Mare
Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic."
	Even here Constantine's shadow had touched him. "You call
that a triumph?" he said. "Those decadent little worlds? Those
broken-down relics?"
	"We will rebuild them," she said with chilling confidence. "We
own their youth."

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 1-1-'17

	"Welcome aboard,  Dr.  Mavrides,"  the  President  said.  He  extended his hand. Nora shook it without hesitation; her skin was
protected under the thin plastic of her spacesuit.
"A fine beginning for the new year," Lindsay said.  They were
on the control deck of the Red Consensus. Lindsay realized how
much he'd missed the familiar pop-blip-and-squeak of the instruments. The sound settled into him, releasing tension he
hadn't known he had.
	The negotiations were twelve days old. He'd forgotten how bad the pirates looked, how consummately grubby. They had
clogged pores, hair rank with grease, teeth rimmed with plaque.
To a Shaper's eyes they looked like wild animals.
	"This is our third agreement," the President said formally.
"First the Open Channels Act, then the Technological Assessment and Trade Consensus, and now a real breakthrough in
social justice policy, the Integration Act. Welcome to the Red
Consensus, doctor. We hope you'll regard every angstrom of the
craft as part of your national heritage."
	The President pinned the printout treaty to a bulkhead and
signed it with a flourish. Lindsay printed the state seal with his
left hand. The flimsy paper ripped a little.
"We're all nationals here," the President said. "Let's relax a
little. Get to, uh, know each other." He pulled a gunmetal
inhaler and sniffed at it ostentatiously.
	"You sew that spacesuit yourself?" the Speaker of the House
said.
	"Yes, Madam Speaker. The seams are threadwire and epoxy
from our wetware tanks."
"Clever."
	"I like your roaches," said Rep 2. "Pink and gold and green.
Hardly look like roaches at all. I'd like to have some of those."
"That can be arranged, I'm sure," Nora said.
"Trade you some relaxant for it. I have lots."
"Thank  you,"  Nora  said. She  was  doing  well.  Lindsay  felt
obscurely proud of her.
	She unzipped her spacesuit and stepped out of it. Below it she
wore a triangular over-the-shoulders poncho, geometrically embroidered in white and ice blue. The poncho's tapering ends
were laced across her hips, leaving her legs bare except for
lace-up velcro sandals.
	The pirates had tactfully given up their red-and-silver skeleton
jumpsuits. Instead they wore dun-brown Zaibatsu coveralls.
They looked like savages.
	"I could do with one of these," said Rep 3. He held the
accordioned arm of his ancient spacesuit next to the thin plastic
of hers. "How you breathe in that sucker?"
	"It's not for deep space. We just fill it with pure oxygen and
breathe as long as we can. Ten minutes."
	"I could hook tanks to one. More spacey, citizen-to-be. The
Sun would like it."
	"We could teach you to sew one. It's an art worth knowing."
She smiled at Rep 3, and Lindsay shuddered inwardly. He knew
how the sweaty reek of the Rep's suit must turn her stomach.
He drifted between the two of them, unobtrusively nudging
Rep 3 to one side. And, for the first time, he touched Nora
Mavrides. He put his hand gently on the soft blue and white
shoulder of her poncho. The muscle beneath his hand was as
stiff as wire.
	She smiled again, quickly. "I'm sure the others will find this
ship fascinating. We came here in a drogue. Our cargo was
nine-tenths ice, for the wetware tanks. We were in paste, close
to dead. We had our robot and our pocket tokamak. The rest
was bits and pieces. Wire, a handful of microchips, some salt
and trace minerals. The rest's genetics, Eggs, seeds, bacteria. We
came here naked, to save launch weight. Everything else we've
done with our hands, friends. Flesh against rock. Flesh wins, if
it's smart enough."
	Lindsay nodded. She had not mentioned their electromagnetic
pulse weapon. No one talked about the guns.
She struggled to charm the pirates, but her pride stung them.
The pride of the Family was justified. They'd bootstrapped
themselves into prosperity with bacterial wetware from gelatin
capsules no bigger than pinheads. They had mastered plastics;
they conjured them out of the rock. Their artifacts were as
cheap as life itself.
	They had grown themselves into the rock; wormed their way in with softbodied relentless persistence. ESAIRS was riddled with
tunnels; their sharp-toothed tunneling hoops ran around the
clock. They had air blowers rigged from vinyl sacks and ribs of
memory plastic. The ribs breathed. They were wired to the
tokamak fusion plant, and a small change in voltage made them
bend and flex, bend and flex, sucking in air with a pop of plastic
lung and an animal wheeze of exhalation. It was the sound of
life inside the rock, the rasp of the hoops, the blowers breathing, the sullen gurgling of the fermenters.
	They had plants. Not just algae and protein goo but flowers:
roses, phlox, daisies-or plants that had known those names
before their DNA had felt the scalpel. Celery, lettuce, dwarf
corn, spinach, alfalfa. Bamboo: with fine wire and merciless
patience they could warp bamboo into complex pipes and bot-
tles. Eggs: they even had chickens, or things that had once been
chickens before Shaper gene-splicers turned them into free-fall
protein tools.
	They were powerful, subtle, and filled with desperate hatred.
Lindsay knew that they were waiting for their chance, weighing
odds, calculating. They would attack to kill if they could, but
only when they could maximize the chance of their own survival.
	But he also knew that with each day that passed, with each
minor concession and agreement, another frail layer of shellac
was laid over the open break between them. Day by day a new
status quo struggled to form, a frail detente supported by nothing but habit. It was not much, but it was all he had: the hope
that, with time, the facade of peace would take on substance.

ESAIRS XII: 3-2-'17

"Hey. Secretary of State."
	Lindsay woke. In the ghostlike gravity of the asteroid he had
settled imperceptibly to the bottom of his cavern. They called
his dugout "the Embassy." With the passage of the Integration
Act, Lindsay had moved into the rock, with the rest of the FMD.
	Paolo had spoken. Fazil was with him. The two young men
wore embroidered ponchos and stiff plastic crowns holding
floating manes of shoulder-length hair.
	The skin bacteria had hit them badly. Every day they looked
worse. Paolo's neck was so badly inflamed that his throat looked
cut. Fazil's left ear was infected; he carried his head tilted to
one side.
	"We want to show you something," Paolo said. "Can you come
with us, Mr. Secretary? Quietly?" His voice was gentle, his hazel
eyes so clear and guileless that Lindsay knew at once that he
was up to something. Would they kill him? Not yet. Lindsay
laced on a poncho and struggled with the complex knots of his
sandals. "I'm at your disposal," he said.
	They floated into the corridor. The corridors between dugouts
were  o more than long wormholes, a meter across.  The Mavrides clansmen propelled themselves along with a quick
side-to-side lizardlike skittering. Lindsay was slower. His injured
arm was bad today, and his hand felt like a club.
They glided silently through the soft yellow light of one of the
fermenting rooms. The blunt, nippled ends of three wetware
bags jutted into the room. They were stuffed like a string of
sausages into stone tunnels. Each tunnel held a series of bags,
united by filters, each bag passing its output to the next. The last
bag had a spinneret running, a memory-plastic engine, clacking
slowly. A hollow tube of flawless clear acrylic coiled in free-fall,
reeking as it dried.
	They entered another black tunnel. The tunnels were all identical, all perfectly smooth. There was no need for lighting. Any
genius could easily memorize the nexus.
	To his left Lindsay heard the slow clack-rasp, clack-rasp of a
tunneling hoop. The hoops were handmade, their teeth hand-set
in plastic, and they each sounded slightly different. They helped
him navigate. They could gnaw two meters a day through the
softer rock. In two years they had gnawed over twenty thousand
tons of ore.
	When the ore was processed, the tailings were shot into space.
Everything launched away left a hole behind it. A hole ten
kilometers long, pitch black, and as knotted as snarled fishline,
beaded with living caverns, greenhouses, wetware rooms, and
private hideyholes.
	They took  a  turn   Lindsay  had  never  used  before.  Lindsay heard the grating sound of a stone plug hauled away.
They went a short distance, squirming past the flaccid bulk of
	a deactivated  air blower.  As  Lindsay crawled  past it  in  the
	darkness, the blower came to life with a gasp.
"This is our secret place," Paolo said. "Mine and Fazil's." His
voice echoed in the darkness.
Something fizzed  loudly with  a leaping of white-hot sparks.
	Startled,  Lindsay braced  to fight.  Paolo was holding a short
white stick with flame gnawing at one end. "A candle," he said.
"Kindle?" said Lindsay. "Yes, I see."
"We play with fire," Paolo said. "Fazil and I."
They were in a workshop cavern, dug into one of the large
stony veins within ESAIRS XII. The walls looked like granite to Lindsay's untrained eye: a grayish-pink rock studded with little
gleams of rock crystal.
"There  was  quartz  here," Paolo  said.  "Silicon dioxide.  We
mined it for oxygen, then Kleo forgot about it. So we drilled this
room ourselves. Right, Fazil?"
Fazil  spoke  eagerly.  "That's   right,   Mr.  Secretary.  We used
hand drills and expansion plastic. See where the rock shattered
and came loose? We hid the chunks in the debris for launch, so
that no one knew. We worked for days and saved the biggest
chunk."
	"Look," Paolo said. He touched the wall, and the stone wrinkled in his hand and came away. In a broken-out rough cavity
the size of a closet, an oblong boulder floated, kept from falling
by a thread. Paolo snapped the thread and pulled the boulder
out. It moved sluggishly; Fazil helped him stop its inertia.
It was a two-ton sculpture of Paolo's head.
"Very fine work," Lindsay said. "May I?" He ran his fingertips
across the slickly polished cheekbone. The eyes, wide and alert,
cored out for pupils, were as big as his outstretched hands.
There was a faint smile on the enormous lips.
	"When they sent us out here, we knew we weren't coming
back," Paolo said. "We'll die here, and why? Not because our
genetics are bad. We're a good line. Mavrides rule." He was
talking faster now, falling into the cadences of Ring Council
slang.
	Fazil nodded silently.
	"It's just bad percentages. Chance. We were burned by chance
before we were twenty years old. You can't edit out chance.
Some of the gene-line are bound to fall so the rest can live. If it
weren't me and Fazil, it would be our crechemates."
	"I understand," Lindsay said.
	"We're young and cheap. They throw us into the enemy's teeth so the ink is black not red. But we're alive, me and Fazil.
There's something inside us. We'll never see ten percent of the
life the others back home will see. But we were here. We're
real."
	"Living is better," Lindsay said.
	"You're a traitor," Paolo said without resentment. "Without a
gene-line you're bloodless, you're just a system."
	"There are more important things than living," Fazil said.
	"If you had enough time you'd outlive this war," Lindsay said.
	Paolo smiled. "This is no war. This is evolution in action. You
think you'll outlive that?"
	Lindsay shrugged. "Maybe. What if aliens come?"
	Paolo looked at him wide-eyed. "You believe in that? The
aliens?"
	"Maybe."
	"You're all right," Paolo said.
	"How can I help you?" Lindsay said.
	"It's the launch ring. We plan to launch this head. An oblique
launch, top velocity, full power, off the plane of the ecliptic.
Maybe somebody sees it someday. Maybe some thing, five hundred million years, no trace of human life, picks it up, my face.
There's no debris off the plane, no collisions, just dead-space
vacuum, perfect. And it's good hard rock. Out this far the sun
could go red giant and barely warm it. It could orbit till white
dwarf stage, maybe till black cinder, till the galaxy bursts or the
Kosmos eats its own tail. My image forever."
	"Only first we have to launch it," said Fazil.
	"The President won't like it," Lindsay said. "The first treaty we
signed said no more launches for the duration. Maybe later,
when our trust is stronger."
	Paolo and Fazil traded glances. Lindsay knew at once that
things were out of hand.
	"Look," he said. "You two are talented. You have a lot of time
on your hands since the launch ring's down. You could do
heads of all of us."
	"No!" Paolo shouted. "It's between us two, that's it."
	"What about you, Fazil? Don't you want one?"
	"We're dead," Fazil said. "This took us two years. There was
only time for one. Chance burned us both. One of us had to
give everything for nothing. So we decided. Show him, Paolo."
	"He shouldn't look," Paolo said sullenly. "He doesn't under-
stand."
	"I want him to know, Paolo." Fazil was stern. "Why I have to
follow, and you get to lead. Show him, Paolo."
	Paolo reached under his poncho and pulled out a hinged box
of clear acrylic. There were two stone cubes in it, black cubes
with white dots on their faces. Dice.
	Lindsay licked his lips. He had seen this in the Ring Council:
endemic gambling. Not just for money, but for the core of
personality. Secret agreements. Dominance games. Sex. The
struggles within gene-lines, between people who knew with flat
certainty that they were equally matched. The dice were quick
and final.
	"I can help you," Lindsay said. "Let's negotiate."
	"We're supposed to be on duty," Paolo said. "Monitoring
radio. We're leaving, Mr. Secretary."
	"I'll come along," Lindsay said.
	The two Shapers resealed the stone lid of their secret work-
shop and scuttled off in the darkness. Lindsay followed as best
he could.
	The Shapers had listening dishes dug in all over the asteroid.
The bowl-shaped impact craters were ready-made for their cam-
ouflaged gridworks of copper mesh. All antennae fed into a
central processor, whose delicate semiconductors were sheltered
in a tough acrylic console. Slots in the console held cassettes of
homemade recording tape, constantly spooling on a dozen different heads. Another cutout on the acrylic deck held a flat liquid crystal display for video copy and a hand-lettered key-
board.
	The two genetics combed the waveband, flickering through a
spectrum of general-issue cartel broadcasts. Most bands were
cypher-static, anonymous blips of cybernetic datapulse. "Here's
something," Paolo said. "Triangulate it, Fazil."
"It's close," Fazil said. "Oh, it's just the madman."
"What?"   Lindsay   said.   A   huge   green   roach   speckled   in lustrous violet flew past with a clatter of wings.
"The one who always wears the spacesuit." The two glanced at
one another. Lindsay read their eyes. They were thinking about
the man's stench.
	"Is he talking?" Lindsay said. "Put him on, please."
"He always talks," Paolo said. "Sings, mostly. He raves into an
open channel."
	"He's in his new spacesuit," Lindsay said urgently. "Put him
on."
	He heard Rep 3. " - granulated like my mother's face. And
sorry not to say goodbye to my friend Mars. Sorry for Carnaval,
too. I'm out kilometers, and that hiss. I thought it was a new
friend, trying to talk. But it's not. It's a little hole in my back,
where I glued the tanks in. Tanks work fine, hole works better.
It's me and my two skins, soon both cold."
"Try and raise him!" Lindsay said.
	"I told you he keeps the channel open. That unit's two hundred years old if it's a day. He can't hear us when he talks."
	"I'm not reeling back in, I'm staying out here." His voice was
fainter. "No air to talk with, and no air to listen. So I'll try and
climb out. Just a zipper. With any luck I can skin out completely." There was a light crackling of static. "Goodbye, Sun.
Goodbye, Stars. Thanks for-"
	The words were lost in a rush of decompression. Then the
crackling of static was back. It went on and on.
	Lindsay thought it through. He spoke quietly. "Was I your
alibi, Paolo?"
	"What?" Paolo was shocked.
	"You sabotaged his suit. And then you carefully weren't here
when we could have helped him."
	Paolo was pale. "We were never near his suit, I swear!"
	"Then why weren't you here at your post?"
	"Kleo set me up!" Paolo shouted, "lan walks point, the dice
said so! I'm supposed to be clean!"
	"Shut up, Paolo." Fazil grabbed his arm.
	Paolo tried to stare him down, then turned to Lindsay. "It's
Kleo and lan. They hate my luck - " Fazil shook him.
	Paolo slapped him hard across the face. Fazil cried out and
threw his arms around Paolo, holding him close.
	Paolo looked stricken. "I was upset," he said. "I lied about
Kleo; she loves all of us. It was an accident. An accident."
	Lindsay left. He scrambled headlong down the tunnels, passing
more wetware and a greenhouse where a blower gusted the
smell of fresh-cut hay.
	He entered a cavern where grow-lights shone dusky red
through a gas-permeable membrane. Nora's room branched off
from the cavern, blocked by the wheezing bulk of her private air
blower. Lindsay squeezed past it on the exhale and slapped the
lights.
	Violet arabesques covered the room's round walls. Nora was
sleeping.
	Her arms, her legs, were gripped in wire. Braces circled her
wrists and elbows, ankles and knees. Black myoelectrodes stud-
ded the muscle groups beneath her naked skin. The arms, the
legs, moved quietly, in unison, side, side, forward, back. A long
carapace knobbed her back, above the branching nerve clumps
of her spine.
	It was a diplomatic training device. A spinal crab. Memory
flashed behind Lindsay's eyes and he went berserk. He jumped
off the wall and rocketed toward her. Her eyes snapped open
blearily as he shouted in fury.
	He seized her neck and jerked it forward, digging his nails into
the rubbery rim where the spinal crab met her skin. He tore at
it savagely. Part of it ripped free. The skin shone red beneath it,
slick with sweat. Lindsay grabbed the left-arm cable and
snapped it loose. He pulled harder; she wheezed as a strap dug
in under her ribs.
	The crab was peeling away. Its underside was ghastly, a
hundred-footed mass of damp translucent tubes, pored with
hair-thin wires. Lindsay ripped again. A cable nexus stretched
and snapped, extruding colored wires.
	He braced his feet against her back and pulled. She gagged and clawed at the strap's buckle; the belt whipped loose, and Lind-
say had the whole thing. With its programming disrupted, it
flopped and curled like a live thing. Lindsay whirled it by the
straps and slammed it into the wall with all his strength. The
interlapping segments of its back split open, their brittle plastic
crackling. He whiplashed it into the stone. Brown lubricant
oozed, then spattered into free-fall drops as he smashed it again.
	He crushed it underfoot, tore at the strap until it gave way. Its
guts showed beneath the plates: lozenge-shaped biochips nested
in multicolored fiberoptics.
	Me slammed it again, more slowly. The fury was leaving him.
He felt cold. His right arm trembled uncontrollably.
	Nora was against the wall, gripping a clothes rack. The sudden
loss of nerve programming left her shaking with palsy.
	"Where's the other one?" Lindsay demanded. "The one for
your face?"
	Her teeth chattered. "I didn't bring it," she said.
Lindsay kicked the crab away. "How long, Nora? How long
have you been under that thing?"
"I wear it every night."
"Every night! My God!"
	"I have to be the best," she said, shaking. She fumbled a
poncho from the rack and ducked her head through the collar.
"But the pain," Lindsay said. "The way it burns!"
Nora smoothed the bright fabric from her shoulders to hips.
"You're one of them," she said.  "The early classmates. The
failures. The defectors."
"What was your class?" Lindsay said.
"Fifth. The last one."
	"I was first," Lindsay said. "The foreign section."
"Then you're not even a Shaper."
"I'm a Concatenate."
	"You're all supposed to be dead." She peeled the crab's
broken braces from her knees and ankles. "I should kill you.
You attacked me. You're a traitor."
	"When I smashed that thing I felt real freedom." He rubbed
his arm absently, marveling. He'd truly lost control. Rebellion
had overwhelmed him. For a moment, sincere human fury had
burned through the training, touched a hot core of genuine
rage. He felt shaken, but more whole, more truly himself, than
he'd been for years.
	"Your kind ruined it for the rest of us," Nora said. "We
diplomats should be on top, coordinating things, making peace.
But they shut down the whole program. We're undependable,
they said. A bad ideology."
	"They want us dead," Lindsay said. "That's why you were
drafted."
	"I wasn't drafted. I volunteered." She tied the poncho's last
hip-lace. "I'll have a hero's welcome if I make it back. That's
the only chance I'll ever have at power in the Rings."
	"There are other powerful places."
	"None that count."
	"Rep Three is dead," Lindsay told her. "Why did you kill
him?"
	"Three reasons," she said. They were past pretense. "It was
easy. It helps our odds against you. And third, he was crazy.
Worse even than the rest of your crew. Too unpredictable. And
too dangerous to let live."
	"He was harmless," Lindsay said. "Not like the two of us." His
eyes filled with tears.
	"If you had my control you wouldn't weep. Not if they tore
your heart out."
	"They already have," Lindsay said. "And yours as well."
"Abelard," she said, "he was a pirate."
"And the rest?"
	"You think they'd weep over us?"
	"No," Lindsay said. "And not much, even over their own. It's
vengeance they'll want. How would you feel if lan disappears
tomorrow? And two months from now you find his bones in the
sludge drain of some fermenter? Or, better yet, if your nerves
are so well steeled, what about yourself? How would power taste
to you if you were retching bloody foam outside some airlock?"
"It's in your hands," she said. "I've told you the truth, as we
agreed between us. It's up to you to control your faction."
"I won't be put in this position," Lindsay said. "I thought we
had an understanding."
	She pointed at the oozing wreckage of her spinal crab. "You
didn't ask my permission to attack me. You saw something you
couldn't bear, and you destroyed it. We did the same."
"I want to talk to Kleo," he said.
	She looked hurt. "That's against our understanding. You talk
through me."
	"This is murder, Nora. I have to see her."
Nora sighed. "She's in her garden. You'll have to put on a
suit."
	"Mine's in the Consensus."
	"We'll use one of lan's, then. Come on." She led him back
into the glowing cavern, then down a long fissured-out mining
vein to lan Mavrides's room.
	The spacesuit maker and graphic artist was awake and work-
ing. He had refused to put his decontamination suit aside and
wore it constantly, a one-man sterile environment.
	lan was point man for the Mavrides Family, a focus for threats
and resentment. Paolo had blurted as much, but Lindsay knew
it already.

(lacking pp 102-103)

	him forward, and put his thumb Jeep into her mouth. She held
it there, then released him. "Tell me what you felt."
	"It was warm," Lindsay said. "Wet. And uncomfortably intimate."
	"That's what sex is like on suppressants," she said. "We have
love in the Family, but not erotics. We're soldiers."
	"You're chemically castrated, then?"
	"You're prejudiced," she said. "You haven't lived it. That's
why the orgy you propose is out of the question."
	"Carnaval isn't an orgy," Lindsay said. "It's a ceremony. It's
trust, it's communion. It holds the group together. Like animals
huddling."
	"It's too much to ask," she said.
	"You don't realize what's at stake. It's not your body they
want. They want to kill you. They hate your sterile guts. You
don't know how I talked, persuaded, coaxed them. . . . Listen,
they use hallucinogens. Your brain turns to pudding in
Carnaval. You don't know what your own hands are, much less
someone else's genitals. . . . You're helpless. Everyone is help-
less, that's the point. No more games, no politics, no ranks and
grudges. No self. When you come out of Carnaval it's like the
first day of Creation. Everyone smiles." Lindsay looked aside,
blinking. "It's real, Nora. It's not their government that sustains
them, that's just the brain. Carnaval is the blood, the spine, the
groin."
	"It's not our way, Abelard."
	"But if you could join us, even once, for a few hours! We'd
dissolve these tensions, truly trust each other. Listen, Nora, sex
is not some handicraft. It's real, it's human, it's one of the last
things we have left. Burn it! What do you have to lose?"
	"It could be an ambush," she said. "You could bend our minds
with drugs and kill us. It's a risk."
	"Of course it is, but there are ways around that." Me locked
eyes with her. "I'm telling you this on the basis of all the trust
we have between us. At least we can give it a trial."
	"I don't like this," Nora said. "I don't like sex. Especially with
the unplanned."
	"It's that or juice your own gene-line," Lindsay said. He pulled
a loaded hypodermic from inside his lapel and attached its
needle. "I have mine ready."
	She looked at it sidelong, then produced her own. "You may
not take well to this, Abelard."
	"What is it?"
	"Suppressant. With phenylxanthine to kick your IQ up. So
you'll see how we feel."
	"This isn't the full Carnaval mixture," Lindsay said. "Just the
aphrodisiacs, half strength, and muscle relaxant. I think you
need it since I smashed the spinal crab. You seem jumpy."
	"You seem to know all too well what I need."
	"That makes two of us." Lindsay pulled aside the loose sleeve
of his wraparound blouse. "This is it, Nora. You could kill me
now and call it allergic reaction, stress, anything." He looked at
the gaudy tattoos on the skin of his arm. "Don't do it."
	She shared his suspicion. "Are you taping this?"
	"I don't allow tapes in my room." Me pulled a pair of elastic
cords from a styrene cabinet and passed her one.
	He tied off his bicep. She did the same. With their sleeves
rolled up, they waited quietly for the veins to swell. It was the
most intimate moment they had ever had together. The thought
aroused him.
	She slipped her hypodermic into the crook of his elbow, and
found the vein by the sudden rosette of blood at the needle's
root. Me did the same. They stared into each other's eyes and
pressed the plungers home.
	The moment passed. Lindsay withdrew the needle and pressed
a sterile plastic dot against her puncture. Then he did his own.
They loosened the cords.
	"Neither of us seems to be dying," she said.
	"It's a good sign," Lindsay said. Me tossed the cords aside. "So
far so good."
	"Oh." She half closed her eyes. "It's hitting me. Oh, Abelard."
	"Mow do you feel?" Me took her shoulder. The nexus of bone
and muscle seemed to soften under his hand. She was breathing
shallowly, lips parted, her eyes dark.
	"Like I'm melting," she said.
	The phenylxanthine hit him first. Me felt like a king. "You
wouldn't hurt me," he said. "We're two of a kind, you and I."
	Me undid the ties and pulled her blouse off, then peeled the
trousers inside out over her feet. Me left the sandals on. Mis
clothes flapped as he threw them off. They spun slowly in
midair.
	Me pulled her close, his eyes blazing.
	"Help me breathe," she whispered. The relaxant had hit her
lungs. Lindsay took her chin in his hands, opened her mouth,
and sealed his lips around it. Me puffed gently and felt her ribs
expand against his chest. Her head lolled back; the muscles of
her neck were like wax. He hooked his legs around hers, from
the inside, and breathed for her.
	She let her arms drift, sluggishly, around his neck. She pulled
her mouth back a fraction of an inch. "Try now."
	He tried to enter her. Despite his own excitement, it was
useless; the aphrodisiacs hadn't hit her yet, and she was dry.
	"Don't hurt me," she said.
	"I want you," Lindsay said. "You belong to me. Not to those
others."
	"Don't say that," she said, her voice slurring. "This is an
experiment."
	"For them, maybe. Not for us." The phenylxanthine had made
him certain, and reckless in his certainty. "The rest don't matter. I'd kill any one of them at a word from you. I love you,
Nora. Tell me you love me."
	"I can't say that." She winced. "You're hurting me."
	"Say you trust me, then."
	"I trust you. There, it's done. Hold still a moment." She
wrapped her legs around him, then rocked her hips from side to
side, settling around him. "This is it, then. Sex."
	"Haven't you had it before?"
	"In the Academy once, on a bet. It wasn't like this."
	"You feel all right?"
	"I'm comfortable. Go ahead, Abelard."
	But now his curiosity was aroused. "Did they give you the
pleasure tap too? I had it once. An interrogation drill."
	"Of course they did. But that was nothing human, just white
ecstasy." She was sweating. "Come on, darling."
	"No, wait a minute." He blinked as she clutched his waist. "I
see what you mean. This is stupid, isn't it? We're friends al-
ready."
	"I want you, Abelard! Come on, finish me!"
	"We've proved our point. Besides, I'm filthy!"
	"I don't care how fucking filthy you are! For God's sake,
hurry!"
	He tried to oblige her, then, and worked away mechanically for
almost a minute. She bit her lip and groaned in anticipation,
rolling her head back. But all the meaning had leached out of it
for him. "I can't go on," he said. "I just don't see why we
should bother."
	"Just let me use you. Come on!"
	He tried to think of something arousing. The usual damp whirl
of his mind's erotic imagery seemed abstract and distant to him,
like something done by another species. He thought of his
ex-wife. Sex with Alexandrina had been something like this, an
act of politeness, an obligation.
	Me held still, letting her slam herself against him. At last a cry
of desperate pleasure escaped her.
	She pulled away, patting sweat from her face and neck with the sleeve of her blouse. She smiled shyly.
	Lindsay shrugged. "I see your point. It's a waste of time. I may have some trouble talking the others into it, but if I can reason
with them. . . ."
	She looked at him hungrily. "I made a mistake. It shouldn't
have been this awful for us. I feel selfish now, since you had
nothing."
	"I feel fine," Lindsay insisted.
	"You said you loved me."
	"That was just hormones talking. Of course I have deep respect for you, a sense of comradeship. . . . I'm sorry I told you that. Forgive me. I didn't mean it, of course."
	"Of course," she said, putting on her blouse.
	"Don't be bitter," Lindsay said. "You should take some of this.
I'm grateful for it. I see it now in a way I never did before.
Love ... it has no substance. It might be right for other people,
other places, another time."
	"Not us."
	"No. I feel bad about it, now. Reducing our negotiations to a
sexual stereotype. You must have found it insulting. And
inconvenient."
	"I feel sick," she said.

ESAIRS XII: 24-2-'17

	"You're okay now, huh?" the President said, wrinkling his pug
nose. "No more of that crap about dryin' up our juice?"
	"No, sir, no." Lindsay shook his head, shivering. "I'm better
now."
	"Good enough. Untie him, Rep Two."
	The woman undid Lindsay's ropes, uncoupling him from the
cavern wall.
	"I lost it," Lindsay said. "I can see that now, but when those
suppressants hit me, everything just went crystal clear. Seam-
less."
	"That's okay for you, but we have marriages," Senator 1 said
sternly. He clutched the hand of Rep 1.
	"I'm sorry," Lindsay said, rubbing his arms. "They're all under
slats, waving whip thin antennae as long as a forearm. Fazil
snatched his hand back with a hiss of disgust. Lindsay made a
quick grab at the roach but missed.
	"Filthy," Fazil muttered. "Help me with the head."
	Lindsay followed him into the workshop. Together, they
heaved and wrestled the massive head out into the corridor. It
was a tight fit in the narrow tunnel. "Maybe we should grease
it," Lindsay said.
	"Paolo's face isn't going into eternity with a snotty nose," said
Fazil. He blew out the candle and resealed the workshop. He
pushed the sculpture ahead of him, toward the launch ring.
Lindsay followed, towing the crate.
	The route was devious, traversing gnawed-out rock veins where the air was stale. The ring's loading dock was near the surface of the asteroid, set in one wall of ESAIRS' major industrial center.
Here, next to the launch ring, they manufactured the decoys.
	The decoy complex was a grapelike cluster of fermentation
bags, connected by flaccid hydraulic tubes, anchored with guy
ropes and ringed by harsh banks of bluish grow-lights. The
cluster hung in midair, its translucent chambers churning sluggishly.
	The complex had not been shut down completely; that would
have killed the wetware. But its production was cut almost to
nothing. The blowpipes had been unplugged from their output
duct into the launch ring. Instead of thin decoy film, they were
producing a thick, colorless froth. The air reeked with the sharp
fever stench of hot plastic.
	The Family's robot was on duty. It stopped in mid-program as
Fazil floated past it, clutching the head. As Lindsay drifted by,
the robot crouched quietly, a powder bellows gripped in its
forward manipulators. Its huge single eye tilted to follow him in
movement, with a ratchetlike clicking.
	The robot was all wires and joints, its six skeletal limbs made
of lightweight foamed metal. It was bigger than Lindsay. Its
brain and motor were shielded in its torso, behind barrel-like
ribs. The forward end held the sensors and two long, jointed
pincer arms. A cross-shaped junction of four swiveling limbs
sprouted from its aft end, set that way for work in free-fall. It
had a rotary spindle tail for drilling.
	The robot lacked the smoothness of a Mech unit, but there was an alarming liveliness about it. It was like an animated skeleton,
a vivisected animal stripped down to jumpy knee-jerk reflex.
	When Lindsay drifted out of range, the robot clicked back into
motion, kicked off a wall, and plugged its bellows into the wet
duct of a fermentation bag.
	Fazil crawled over the head and caught it against the wall.
	The launching ring had an airlock of translucent plastic. Fazil
plucked a tightly wrapped green spacesuit from the wall and
shook it out. He zipped himself into it and unzipped the airlock
wall. He stepped inside.
	Lindsay passed him the crate.
	Fazil zipped the airlock shut and opened the loading chamber.
A curved rectangular section of wall slid up on spring-loaded
exterior hinges. Air gusted out into the vacuum of the launch
ring. The airlock's flimsy walls sucked in, clinging like soap film
to an interior support trellis.
	Five huge roaches and a cloud of smaller ones burst from the
crate's interior, kicking in the vacuum. Fazil shrieked silently
behind his transparent faceplate. He batted around his head as
the roaches convulsed, their paper-thin wings beating in crip-
pled angles. Decompression bloated their abdomens. Froth
oozed from their joints and rumps.
	A roach clung vomiting to the plastic, near Lindsay's face. It
had been eating something within the crate. Something viscous
and red.
	Faint wisps of steam were coming from the crate. Fazil didn't
notice; he was swatting the roaches out into the launch ring.
	Fazil stepped through the hatchway into the ring and pulled
the crate after him. He wrestled it into the launch cage.
	He emerged, then knocked the last of the dead insects through the chamber hatch and locked it shut. A green ready-light came on as the hatch door sealed the circuit. An LED raced through
numbers as launch power hit the magnets.
	Fazil pulled the entrance zipper and air rushed in. The plastic
airlock flapped like a sail. Fazil climbed out, shaking. His
shouts were muffled by the suit. "Did you see that?" He pulled
his own zip down to mid-chest. "What was in there? What were
they eating?"
	"I didn't see them pack the crate," Lindsay said. "Could have
been anything."
	Fazil examined the smeared sleeve of his suit. "Looks like
blood."
	Lindsay leaned closer. "Doesn't smell like blood."
	"This is evidence," Fazil said, tapping the suit.
	Lindsay was thoughtful. The pirates had lied to him. They had
tried to be clever, as clever as the Shapers. They had tried to make someone disappear.  "It might the best, Fazil, if we
launched that suit."
	"Have you seen lan today?" Fazil said.
	"I wasn't looking for him."
	They eyed one another. Lindsay said nothing. Fazil glanced
quickly, warily, over one shoulder at the LED. "It's launched
away," he said.
	"If you'll launch the suit," Lindsay said, "I'll scrub the inside
of the airlock."
	"I'm not launching this suit with the head," Fazil said.
	"You could feed in into one of the chambers," Lindsay said,
pointing. "The fermentation vats." He thought fast. "If you'll do
that, I'll help you set this complex to full capacity. You can
make decoys again." Lindsay pulled another suit from the wall
and shook it out. "We'll launch the head. We'll dump the suit.
We'll do those two things first, and then we'll talk. All right?"
	The moment to attack was when Lindsay had his legs half
trapped in the suit. That moment passed, and once again Lind-
say knew he had bought time.
	He and Fazil manhandled the head into the airlock. Fazil
zipped the lock shut behind the two of them. Lindsay opened
the rectangular hatch.
	Light spilled into the launch ring's glassy interior, gleaming off
its inset copper tracks. The iron bars of the launch cage shone
with a faint rime of condensed steam from the body that had
been within the crate.
	Lindsay stepped into the launch ring. He shoved the head
within the cage and set the clamps.
	Fazil's shadow passed across the light. He was slamming the
hatch. Lindsay wheeled and jumped.
	He got his right arm through. The hatch door bounded off
flesh and bone and Lindsay's suit began at once to fill with
blood.
	Lindsay snarled as he jammed his head and shoulders past the
hatch. He snagged Fazil's leg with his left hand. His fingertips
dug deep into the socket of the Shaper's ankle and he smashed
the man's shin against the sharp edge of the hatch. Bone grated
and Fazil, levered backward, lost his grip.
	Lindsay slithered out into the airlock, still grappling, and
jacked his foot into Fazil's crotch. As Fazil convulsed, Lindsay
seized the man's leg and bent it double, jamming one arm
behind Fazil's knee. He braced himself against the Shaper's
body and yanked upward, wrenching the man's thighbone from
its socket.
	In agony, Fazil scrabbled lor a hold. His hand struck the edge
of the hatch and slammed it shut. The launch ring's circuit
sealed and the ready-light came on.
	Lindsay held the leg and twisted. Two globes of his own blood
floated up within his faceplate. He sneezed, blinded, and Fazil
kicked him in the neck. He lost his grip, and the Shaper attacked.
	He threw his arms around Lindsay's chest with the panic
strength of desperation. Lindsay wheezed, and black uncon-
sciousness loomed close for four loud heartbeats. Then he
kicked wildly, and his foot caught the edge of the airlock's
support trellis.
	They spun, grappling. Lindsay slammed his elbow into the side
of the Shaper's head. The grip loosened. Lindsay swung his free
arm over Fazil's head and seized his neck in a hammerlock.
Fazil squeezed again and Lindsay's ribs bent in the power of his
Shaper-strengthened arms.
	Lindsay locked eyes with him through his blood-spattered
faceplate. Lindsay's face rippled hideously. Fazil went wall-eyed
in terror and tried to claw his way free. Lindsay broke his neck.
	Lindsay was panting. The suits had no air tanks; they were for
brief exposures only. He had to get out into air.
	He turned for the airlock's exit. Kleo was there. Her eyes were
dark with fascination and terror. She held the zipper's outside tag.
	Lindsay stared at her, blinking as a microglobe of blood clung
to his lashes. Kleo pulled her favorite weapon: a needle and thread.
	Lindsay kicked off from Fazil's body. He fumbled for the tag.
With a few deft moves, Kleo sewed the zipper shut.
	Lindsay pulled at it frantically. The slender pink thread was
like steel wire. He shook his head: "No!" Vacuum surrounded
him. He was cut off; the words that had always saved him could
not leap the gap.
	She waited to watch him die. Overhead, the LED raced
through its readout. The lights were dimming. A launch off the
ecliptic required full power.
	Lindsay pulled left-handed at the hatch. There was a faint
vibration through his fingers. He kicked the hatch, savagely,
three times, and something gave. He pulled with all his strength.
The hatch opened, just a finger's width.
	Safety fuses tripped. And all the lights went out.
The hatch opened easily, then. The darkness was total. He didn't know how long it would take the circling launch cage to grate to a stop within the ring. If it were still whirring by at klicks per second, it would shear his arm or leg off as neatly as a laser.
	He couldn't wail long. The air inside the suit was thick with his
own breath and the reek of blood. He made up his mind and
thrust his head into the ring.
	He lived.
	Now he faced another problem. The cage was resting within
the ring, somewhere, blocking it. If he reached it on his way to
the Outside, he would have to turn around, wasting air. Left or
right?
	Left. Breathing shallowly, favoring his arm, he leaped along theinside of the ring. He cradled his arms against his chest, using
his legs, bounding, somersaulting, skidding.
	Three hundred meters-that was half the length of the ring. All
he would have to go. But what if the camouflage plastic was
sealing the ring's launch exit? What if he had already passed the
exit in the blackness, noticing nothing?
	Starlight. Lindsay leaped upward frantically, remembering only
at the last moment to catch himself on the rim. ESAIRS' gravity
was so weak that his leap would have put him into circumsolar
orbit.
	Once again he was outside the asteroid, amid streaks of
charred black and off-white blast sumps.
	He leaped across a buckled crater, almost missing the far rim.
When he grappled along a stretch of pumice, rock powdered
under his fingers and went into slow orbit just above the surface.
	He was gasping when he found the second airlock: plastic film
dappled with camouflage, inset into the surface of ESAIRS where
the Family's first drill had bitten in. He brushed the film aside
and twisted the hatch wheel. His right arm was bleeding steadily. It felt broken again.
	The hatch popped free. He slipped into the airlock and
slammed the outside hatch behind him. Then there was another.
He was panting steadily; each lungful offered less, and he tasted
inhaled blood.
	The second hatch opened. He pulled himself through, and
there was a sudden flurry of movement in darkness. He heard
his suit rip. Cold steel nicked his throat, his legs were seized,
and he screamed as hands in the blackness grabbed his wound-
ed arm and twisted.
	"Talk!"
	"Mr. President!" Lindsay gasped at once. "Mr. President!"
	The knife against his throat drew back. He heard a deafening
buzz-saw grinding, and sparks flew. In the sudden gory light
Lindsay saw the President, the Speaker of the House, the Chief
Justice, and Senator 3.
	The sparks went out. The Speaker had held the blade of her
small power saw against a length of pipe.
	The President ripped the head from Lindsay's suit. "The arm,
the arm," Lindsay yelped. The Chief Justice released it; Senator
3 released his legs. Lindsay breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air.
	"Fucking preemptive strike," the President muttered. "Hate
'em."
	"They tried to kill me," Lindsay said. "The equipment- you
destroyed it? We can leave now?"
	"Something tipped 'em off," the President growled. "We were
in the launch center with Paolo. Learning how to smash the
launch controls. Then Agnes and Nora show up. Supposed to be
sleeping. And all of a sudden, black as fire - "
	"Power blackout," said the Speaker.
	"I yell ambush," said the President. "Only it's black. They
have the advantage: fewer of them, less chance of hitting their
own. So, I go for machinery. Sleeve knife into the circuitry. We
hear Second Senator howl, meat breaks open."
	"Something wet touched my face," the Chief Justice said. His
ancient voice was heavy with doomed satisfaction. "The air was
full of blood."
	"They were armed," the President said. "I caught this in the
scuffle. Feel it, State."
	In the darkness, the President pressed something into Lindsay's left hand. It was the size of his palm -a flattened disk of
dense stone, wrapped in braided thread. Part of it was sticky.
	"Had 'em taped to their ribs, I think. Swinging weapons. Bludgeons. Stranglers. Those threads are thin enough to cut. Opened
my thumb to the bone when I caught it."
	"Where are the rest of us?" Lindsay said.
	"We got a contingency plan. The two Reps were cleaning up
after lan -they're aboard the Consensus now, getting ready to
lift."
	"Why'd you kill Ian?"
	"Kill him?" the Speaker said. "There's no proof. He evap-
orated."
	"The FMD don't take a wound without returning it," the
President said. "We thought we'd be gone by morning, and we
thought, Hah, let 'em think he defected with us! Cute, huh?" He
snorted. "The Senate were with us but two got lost. They'll show
up here, 'cause this is rendezvous. Justices Two and Three are
looting, lifting some of that hot Shaper wetware. Good loot for
us. We figured -we seize the exit. If we have to, we jump to the
Consensus, naked. We could make it with just nosebleeds and
gut ache, hard vacuum thirty seconds."
	Tapping echoed down the corridor. It had crept up imperceptibly under the sound of their voices. It continued with faint,
rhythmic precision, the flat click of plastic against stone.
	"Aw, shit," said the President.
	"I'll go," said the Chief Justice.
	"It's nothing," Senator 3 said. "A blower settling." Lindsay
heard the rattle of her tool belt.
	"I'm gone," the Chief Justice said. Lindsay felt a light movement of air as the old Mechanist floated past him.
	Fifteen seconds passed in darkness. "We need light," the
Speaker hissed. "I'll use the saw and - "
	The tapping stopped. The Chief Justice called out. "I have it!
It's a piece of-"
	A sudden nasty crunch cut him off.
	"Justice!" the President cried. They rushed down the corridor,
bumping and colliding blindly.
	When they reached the spot, the Speaker pulled her saw, and
sparks flew. The noisemaker was a simple flap of stiff plastic,
glued to the mouth of a branching tunnel and tugged by a long
thread. The assassin -Paolo-had waited deep within the tunnel.
When he'd heard the old Mechanist's voice he had fired his
weapon, a slingshot. A heavy stone cube-Paolo's six-sided
die-was half buried in the dead pirate's fractured skull.
	In the brief blazing light of sparks, Lindsay saw the dead man's head covered by a flattened mass of blood, held by surface
tension to the skin around the wound.
	"We could leave," Lindsay said.
	"Not without our own," the President said. "And not leaving
the one who did this. They got only five left."
	"Four," Lindsay said. "I killed Fazil. Three, if I can talk to
Nora."
	"No time for talk," the President said. "You're wounded,
State. Stay here and guard the airlock. When you see the others,
tell 'em we've gone to kill the four."
	Lindsay forced himself to speak. "If Nora surrenders, Mr.
President, I hope that you'll - "
	"Mercy was his job," said the President. Lindsay heard him tug
at the dead judge's body. "You got a weapon, State?"
	"No."
	"Take this, then." Me handed Lindsay the dead man's mechanical arm. "If one of 'em strays by here, kill them with the
old man's fist."
	Lindsay clutched the cabled ridges of the stiff prosthetic wrist.
The others went quickly, with a click, a rustle, and the whisper
of calloused skin against stone. Lindsay floated back up the
tunnel to the airlock, bouncing along the smooth stone with
knees and shoulders, thinking of Nora.
	The old woman wouldn't die, that was the horror of it. If it
had only been as quick and clean as Kleo had said it would.
Nora could have borne it, endured it as she endured all things.
But in the darkness, when she whipped the weighted sash
around the pirate's neck and pulled, it had not been quiet, it
had not been clean.
	The old woman-Judge 2, the pirates called her-her throat
was a mass of cartilage and gristle, tough as wire beneath her
skin's false smoothness. Twice, when Nora thought she was dead
at last, the pirate woman had lurched shudderingly into life
again with a tortured rasp in the darkness. Nora's wrists bled
freely from the old woman's splintered nails. The body stank.
	Nora smelled her own sweat. Her armpits were a tormenting
mass of rashes. She floated quietly in the pitch-black launch
control room, her bare feet perched on the dead woman's
shoulders, one end of the sash in each hand.
	She had not fought well when the pirates had launched their
strike in the sudden blackout. She had hit someone, swinging
her stone bola, but then lost it in the struggle. Agnes had fought
hard and been wounded by the Speaker's handsaw. Paolo had
fought like a champion.
	Kleo murmured a password from the door, and in a few
moments there was light in the room. "I told you they worked,"
Paolo said.
	Kleo held the plastic candle away; the sodium at the lip of the
wick was still sputtering where it had ignited. The waxy plastic
reeked as the wick burned down. "I brought all you made,"
Kleo told Paolo. "You're a bright boy, dear."
	Paolo nodded proudly. "My luck beat this contingency. And
I've killed two."
	"You made the candles," Agnes said. " I said they wouldn't
work." She looked at him adoringly. "You're the one, Paolo.
Give me orders."
	Nora saw the dead pirate's face in candlelight. She unwrapped
the strangling sash and tied it around her waist.
	She felt another siege of weakness. Her eyes filled with tears
and she felt a sudden horror and regret for the woman she had
killed. It was the drugs Abelard had given her. She had been a fool to
take that first injection. Firing up with aphrodisiacs had been a
surrender, not just to the enemy but to those bits and pieces of
temptation and doubt that lurked within her. Throughout her
life, the brighter her convictions had burned, the darker these
shadows had been, flitting, creeping.
	On her own, she might have held her ground. But there was
the fatal example of the other diplomats. The traitors. The
Academy had never officially spoken of them, leaving that to
the covert world of gossip and rumor that boiled unceasingly in
every Shaper colony. The rumors festered in darkness, taking on
all the distorted forms of the forbidden.
	In her own mind, Nora had become a criminal: sexual, ideological, professional. Things had happened to her that she dared
not speak of, even to Kleo. Her Family knew nothing of the
diplomatic training, the burning glare in every muscle, the at-
tack on face and brain that had made her own body into an
alien object before she turned sixteen.
	If it had been anyone but another diplomat, she could have
fought and died with the conviction and serenity that Kleo
showed. But she had faced him now and understood. Abelard
was not as bright as she was, but he was resilient and quick. She
could become what he was. It was the first real alternative she
had ever known.
	"I gave us light," Paolo bragged. He whirled his bola in a
twisting figure-eight, catching the string on his padded forearms.
"I played odds, even the farthest. I beat lan, I beat Fazil, and I
killed two." Sleeve ties flailed at his elbows as he slapped his
chest. "I say ambush, ambush, ambush!" The bola whirled to a
stop, wrapping his arm, and he pulled his slingshot from his
belt.
	"They mustn't escape," Kleo said. Her face was warm and
calm in the candlelight, framed by the fringed gold crown of her
hairnet. "If survivors leave, they'll bring others. We can live,
darlings. They're stupid. And they're split. We've lost two, they
seven." A flicker of pain crossed her face. "The diplomat was
quick, but odds say he died in the launch ring. The others we
can outflank, like the Judges."
	"Where are the two Representatives?" said Agnes. The Speaker's handsaw had slashed her above the left knee; she was pale
but still full of fight. "We have to get the rogue genetic. She's
trouble."
	"What about the wetware?" Nora said. "It'll stale if we stay
powered down. We have to get power back."
	"They'd know we were in the power plant!" Paolo said. "One
could start it, the others wait in ambush! Strike and fall back,
strike and fall back!"
	"First we hide the bodies," Kleo said. She turned, bracing her
feet near the doorway, and tugged hand over hand on a line.
The third Judge appeared, his wrinkled neck almost slashed
through by Kleo's wire-thin garotte. The syringes on his belt
were filled with stolen wetware. Like Judge 2, he had been
caught at his theft.
	Paolo peeled camo plastic from the launch room's secret al-
cove. The bodies of Senators 1 and 2 already floated within it,
killed by Agnes and Paolo. They shoved the other dead inside,
reluctant to touch them. "They'll know they're here," Agnes
said. "They'll smell them." She sneezed violently.
	"They'll think it's themselves," Paolo said, smoothing the filmy
false wall back into place.
	"To the tokamak," Kleo said. "I'll take the candles; Agnes, you
take point."
	"All right." Agnes stripped off her blouse and heavy hairnet.
She attached them together with a few loose stitches. Puffing out
in free-fall, they looked like a human form in the dimness. She
slipped into the narrow corridor, pushing the decoy ahead of
her with her extended arm.
	The others followed, Nora as rear guard.
	At each intersection they halted, listening, smelling. Agnes
would push her clothes ahead, then peer quickly around the lip
of the opening. Kleo would pass her the candle and she would
check for ambushers.
	As they neared the tokamak power plant, Agnes sneezed loudly again. After a moment Nora smelled it as well: an appalling
alien stench. "What is it?" she whispered to Kleo, ahead of her.
	"Fire, I think. Smoke." Kleo was grim. "The Reshaped one is
smart. I think she has gone to the tokamak."
	"Look!" Agnes whispered loudly. From the corridor branching
to their left, a thin gray stream undulated in the candle's light.
Agnes ran her fingers through it, and the smoke broke into
dissipating wisps. Agnes coughed rawly and caught herself
against the wall, her naked ribs heaving silently.
	Kleo blew out the candle. In the darkness they saw a feeble
gleam   reflected  along  the  bends and  curves of the tunnel's
smooth stone.
	"Fire," Kleo said. For the first time, Nora heard fear in her
leader's voice. "I'll go first."
	"No!" Agnes brushed her lips against Kleo's ear and whispered
to her rapidly. The two women embraced, and Agnes sneaked
forward, leaving her clothes and pressing herself against the
tunnel wall. When Nora followed the others she felt Agnes's
smeared sweat cold against the stone.
	Nora peered behind her, guarding their back. Where was
Abelard? He wasn't dead, she thought. If only he were here
now, with his incessant glibness, and his gray eyes glowing with
an animal's determination to survive. . . .
	A sudden sharp clack echoed up the tunnel. A second passed,
Agnes  screamed, and   the  air  filled  with   the sharp metallic
stench of acid. There were howls of pain and hatred, the snap of
Paolo's slingshot. Nora's back and shoulders tightened so suddenly that they cramped in agony and she scrambled head first
down the tunnel, deafened by her own screams.
The rogue genetic whirled in the red gleam of firelight, slashing Agnes across the  face with  the spout of her weapon, a
bellows. The air was full of flying globes of corrosive acid,
drawn from a wetware tank. Steam curled from Agnes's naked
chest. To the side, Kleo grappled, slashing and kicking, with the
stocky Rep 2, whose arm was broken by Paolo's shot. Paolo was
pulling another heavy stone from his belt pouch.
Nora yanked the sash from her waist with a silken hiss and
launched  herself at the enemy Shaper. The woman saw her
coming. She wrapped a leg around Agnes's throat, crushing it,
and swung forward, arms spread to grapple.
	Nora swung her weighted sash at the woman's face. She caught it, grinned with her crooked teeth, and darted a hand at Nora's face, two fingers spread to spear her eyes. Nora twisted and the nails drew blood from her cheeks. She kicked, missed, kicked
with the other leg, felt a sudden searing pain as the combat-
trained pirate sank her fingers into the joint of her knee. She
was strong, with a genetic's smooth, deceptive strength. Nora
fumbled at the other end of the sash and smashed the weight
against the pirate's cheek. Rep 1 grinned and Nora felt some-
thing snap as her kneecap soggily gave way. Suddenly blood
sprayed across her as Paolo's slung shot broke the woman's jaw.
Her mouth hung open, bloody, in the firelight, as the pirate
woman fought with the sudden wild strength of desperation. The
back of her heel slammed bruisingly into Nora's solar plexus as
she launched herself at Paolo. Paolo was ready; his bola
whipped overhand from nowhere with the force of a hatchet,
taking the woman's ear off and slashing deep into her collar-
bone. She faltered and Paolo stamped her body into the wall.
The pirate's head cracked against the stone and Paolo was on
her at once, slashing into her throat with the bola's cord. Be-
hind him Kleo and the other woman struggled in midair, the
pirate flailing with legs and a broken arm as Kleo's braced
thumbs pressed relentlessly into the woman's throat.
Nora, winded by the kick, struggled for breath. Her whole rib
cage locked in a sudden radiating cramp. Somehow she forced a
thin gasp of smoky air into her lungs, wheezed, then breathed
again, feeling as if her chest were full of molten lead. Agnes
died before her eyes, skin steaming from the acid spray.
	Paolo finished the Shaper woman. Kleo was still strangling the
second woman, who had died; Paolo slammed his bola into the
back of the dead woman's head and Kleo released her, yanking
her stiffened hands away. She rubbed them together as if
spreading on lotion, breathing hard. "Put out that fire," she
said.
	Paolo approached the flaming, gluey mass of hay and plastics
carefully. He shrugged out of his heavy blouse, which was
speckled with pinholes of acid, and threw it over the fire as if
trapping an animal. He stamped it vindictively, and there was
darkness. Kleo spat on the sodium tip of another candle, which
sputtered into life.
	"Not good," she said. "I'm hurt. Nora?"
	Nora looked down at her leg, felt it. The kneecap was loose
beneath the skin. There was no pain yet, only a shocked numb-
ness. "My knee," she said, and coughed. "She killed Agnes."
"There's just three left," Kleo said. "The Speaker, her man,
and Senator Three. We have them. My poor precious darlings."
She threw her arms around Paolo, who stiffened at the sudden
gesture but then relaxed, cradling his head in the hollow at
Kleo's neck and shoulder.
	"I'll start the power plant," Nora said. She drifted to the wall
panel and tapped switches for the preliminary sequence.
"Paolo and I will cover the entrances and wait for them," Kleo
said. "Nora, you go to the radio room. Raise the Council, report
in. We'll regroup there." She gave Nora the candle and left.
	Nora stuck the candle above the tokamak's control board and
got it up into stage one. A bluish glow seeped through the
polarized blast shield as magnetic fields uncurled within the
chamber. The tokamak flickered uneasily as it bootstrapped its
way up to fusion velocities. False sunlight flared yellow as the
ion streams collided and burned. The field stabilized, and suddenly all the lights were on.
	Holding it warily, Nora snuffed the candle against the wall.
	Paolo brushed petulantly at the acid blisters on his unprotected hands. "I'm the one, Nora," he said. "The one percent destined for survival."
	"I know that, Paolo."
	"I'll remember you, though. All of you. I loved you, Nora. I
wanted to tell you one more time."
	"It's a privilege to live in your memory, Paolo."
	"Goodbye, Nora."
	"If I ever had luck," Nora said, "it's yours."
	He smiled, hefting his slingshot.
	Nora left. She skidded quickly through the tunnels, holding
one leg stiff. Waves of pain dug into her, knotting her body.
Without the spinal crab, she could no longer stop the cramps.
	The pirates had been through the radio room. They had
smashed about them wildly in the darkness. The transmitters
were saw-torn wreckage; the tabletop console had been
wrenched off and flung aside.
	Fluid leaked from the liquid crystal display. Nora pulled needle and thread from her hairnet and sewed up the gash in the
screen. The CPU was still working; there were signals incoming
from the dishes outside. But the deciphering programs were
down. Ring Council transmissions were gibberish.
	She picked up a general frequency propaganda broadcast. The
slashed television still worked, though it blurred around the
stitches.
	And there it was: the outside world. There was not much to it:
words and pictures, lines on a screen. She ran her fingertips
gently over the scalding pain in her knee.
	She could not believe what the faces on the screen were telling her, what the images showed. It was as if the little screen in its days of darkness had fermented somehow, and the world behind
it was frothing over, all its poisons wetwared into wine. The
faces of the Shaper politicos were alight with astounded triumph.
	She watched the screen, transfixed. The shocked public statements of Mechanist leaders: broken men, frightened women,
their routines and systems stripped away. The Mech armor of
plans and contingencies had been picked off like a scab, showing the raw flesh of their humanity. They gabbled, they scrambled for control, each contradicting the last. Some with tight smiles that looked wired on by surgery, others misty-eyed with secondhand religious awe, gesturing vaguely, their faces bright as children's.
	And the doyens of the Shaper academic-military complex: the
smooth-faced Security types, facile, triumphant, still too pleased
at the amazing coup to show their ingrained suspicion. And the
intelligentsia, dazzled by potential, speculating wildly, their objectivity in rags.
	Then she saw one. There were more, a dozen of them. They
were huge. Their legs alone were as tall as men, enormous
corded masses of muscle, bone, and tendon under slickly polished corrugated hide. Scales. Brown scaled hide showed under
their clothing: they wore skirts, glittering beads on wire. Their
mighty chests were bare, with great keelbone ridges of sternum.
Compared to the treelike legs and the massive jutting tails, their
arms were long and slender, with quick, swollen-tipped fingers
and oddly socketed thumbs. Their heads were huge, the size of
a man's torso, split with great cavernous grins full of thumb-
sized flat peg teeth. They seemed to have no ears, and their
black eyeballs, the size of fists, were shielded under pebbly lids
and grayish nictitating membranes. Ribbed, iridescent frills
draped the backs of their heads.
	There were people talking to them, holding cameras. Shaper
people. They seemed to be hunched in fear before the aliens;
their backs were bent, they shuffled subserviently from one to
another. It was gravity, Nora realized. The aliens used a heavy
gravity
	They were real! They moved with relaxed, ponderous grace.
Some were holding clipboards. Others were talking, with fluted,
birdlike tongues as long as a forearm.
	By size alone they dominated the proceedings. There was nothing formalized or stagy about it; even the solemn narration
could not hide the essential nature of the meeting. The aliens
were not frightened or even much impressed. They had no
bluster, no mystique. They were businesslike. Like tax collectors.
	Paolo burst in suddenly, his eyes wild, his long hair matted
with blood. "Quickly! They're right behind me!" He glanced
around. "Give me that panel cover!"
	"It's over, Paolo!"
	"Not yet!" Paolo snatched the broad console top from midair.
Wiring trailed behind it. lie catapulted across the room and
slammed the console across the tunnel entrance. Placed flat
against it, it formed a crude barricade; Paolo whipped a tube of
epoxy from his belt and glued the console top against the stone.
	There was a gap to one side; Paolo pulled his slingshot and
fired down the corridor. They heard a distant howl. Paolo
jammed his face against the gap and screamed with laughter.
	"The television, Paolo! News from the Council! The siege is
over!"
	"The siege?" Paolo said, glancing back at her. "What the fuck
does that have to do with us?"
	"The siege, the war," she said. "There never was any war, it's
the new party line. There were just . . . misunderstandings. Bottlenecks." Paolo ignored her, staring down the tunnel, readying
another shot. "We were never soldiers. Nobody was ever trying
to kill anyone. The human race is peaceful, Paolo, just-good
trading partners. . . . Aliens are here, Paolo. The aliens."
"Oh, God," Paolo moaned. "I just have to kill two more, that's
all, and I already winged the woman. Just help me kill them
first, then you can tell me anything you want." He pressed his
shoulder against the barricade, waiting for the epoxy to set.
	Nora drifted over him and shouted through one of the con-
sole's instrument holes into the darkness. "Mr. President! This
is the diplomat! I want a parley!"
	There was silence for a moment. Then: "You crazy bitch!
Come out and die!"
	"It's over, Mr. President! The siege is lifted! The System is at
peace, do you understand? Aliens, Mr. President! Aliens have
arrived, they've been here for days already!"
The President laughed. "Sure. Come on out, baby. Send that
little fucker with the slingshot out first." She heard the sudden
whine of the power saw.
	Paolo pushed her aside with a snarl and fired down the hall.
They heard half a dozen sharp clicks as the shot ricocheted far
down the tunnel. The President cawed triumphantly. "We're
gonna eat you," he said, very seriously. "We're gonna eat your
fuckin' livers." He lowered his voice. "Take 'em out, State."
Nora clawed past Paolo and screamed aloud. "Abelard!
Abelard, it's true, I swear it by everything between us! Abelard,
you're not stupid, let us live! I want to live-"
	Paolo clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled her back.
She clung to the barricade, now glued firm, staring down the
hall. A white form was drifting there. A spacesuit. Not a
Mavrides one, but one of the bloated armored ones from the
Red Consensus.
	Paolo's slingshot was useless against the suit. "This is it," he
muttered. "The cusp." He released Nora and pulled a candle
and a flat bladder of liquid from within his blouse. He wrapped
the bladder around the candle, cinching it with a sleeve-tie. He
hefted the bomb. "Now they burn."
	Nora threw her sash around his neck. She put her good knee
into his back and pulled savagely. Paolo made a sound like
broken pipes and kicked away from the entrance. He clawed at
the sash. He was strong. He was the one with luck.
	Nora pulled harder. Abelard was alive. The idea gave her
strength. She pulled harder. Paolo was pulling just as hard. His
fists were locked around the belt's gray fabric so hard that
blood oozed from his nail-cut palms in little crescent blisters.
	There were screams down the hall. Screams and the sound of
the power saw.
	And now the knot that had never left her shoulders had spread
into her arms and Paolo was pulling against muscle that had set
like iron. He was not breathing in the sudden silence that
followed. The wrinkled ridge of the sash had vanished into his
neck. He was dead, still pulling.  She let the ends of the sash slide through her cramped fingers.  Paolo twisted slowly in free-fall, his face blackened, his arms locked in place. He seemed to be strangling himself.
	A gauntleted hand, drenched in blood, came through the crescent hole at the side of the barricade. There was a muffled
buzzing from within the spacesuit. He was trying to talk.
	She rushed to his side. He leaned his head against the outside
of the barricade, shouting within the helmet. "Dead!" he said.
"They're dead!"
	"Take off the helmet," she said.
	He shrugged his right shoulder within the suit. "My arm!" he
said.
	She stuck one hand through the crevice and helped him twist
the helmet off. It popped free with a suck of air and the familiar
reek of his body. There were half-dried scabs of blood under his
nostrils and one in his left ear. He had been decompressed.
	Carefully, she ran her hand across his sweating cheek. "We're
alive, aren't we."
	"They were going to kill you," he said. "I couldn't let them."
	"The same for me." She looked backward at Paolo. "It was like
suicide to kill him. I think I'm dead."
	"No. We belong to each other. Say so, Nora."
	"Yes, we do," she said, and pressed her face blindly against the
gap between them. He kissed her with the bright salt taste of
blood.
	The demolition had been thorough. Kleo had finished the job.
	She had crept out in a spacesuit and soaked the inside of the
Red Consensus with sticky contact venom.
But Lindsay had gone there before her. He had leaped the gap
of naked space, decompressing himself, to get one of the
armored spacesuits. He'd caught Kleo in the control room. In
her thin suit she was no match for him; he'd ripped her suit
open and she'd died of the poison.
	Even the Family's robot had suffered. The two Reps had
lobotomized it while passing through the decoy room. Operations by the launch ring ran at manic speed, the brain-stripped
robot loading ton after ton of carbon ore into the overstuffed
and belching wetware. A frothing mass of plastic output gushed
into the launch ring, which was itself ruined by the skidding
launch cage. But that was the least of their problems.
The worst was sepsis. The organisms brought from the Zaibatsu
wreaked havoc on the delicate biosystems of ESAIRS XII. Kleo's
garden was a leprous parody five weeks after the slaughter.
The attenuated blossoms of the Shaper garden mildewed and
crumbled at the touch of raw humanity. The vegetation took
strange forms as it suffered and contorted, its stems
corkscrewing in rot-dusted perversions of growth. Lindsay visited it daily, and his very presence hastened the corruption. The
place smelled of the Zaibatsu, and his lungs ached with its
nostalgic stench. 
	He had brought it with him. No matter how fast he moved, he
dragged behind him a fatal slipstream of the past.
	He and Nora would never be free of it. It was not just the
contagion, or his useless arm. Nor the galaxy of rashes that
disfigured Nora for days, crusting her perfect skin and filling
her eyes with flinty stoicism. It dated back to the training they
had shared, the damage done to them. It made them partners,
and Lindsay realized that this was the finest thing that life had
ever offered him.
	He thought about death as he watched the Shaper robot at its
task. Ceaselessly, tirelessly, it loaded ore into the distended guts
of the decoy wetware. After the two of them had smothered, this
machine would continue indefinitely in its hyperactive parody
of life. He could have shut it down, but he felt a kinship with it.
Its headlong, blind persistence cheered him somehow. And the
fact that it was pumping tons of frothing plastic into the launch
ring, ruining it, meant that the pirates had won. He could not
bear to rob them of that useless victory.
	As the air grew fouler they were forced to retreat, sealing the
tunnels behind them. They stayed near the last operative industrial gardens, shallowly breathing the hay-scented air, making love and trying to heal each other.
	With Nora, he reentered Shaper life, with its subtleties, its
allusions, its painful brilliance. And slowly, with him, her
sharpest edges were smoothed. She lost the worst kinks, the
hardest knots, the most insupportable levels of stress.
	They turned down the power so that the tunnels grew colder,
retarding the spread of the contagion. At night they clung together for warmth, swaddled in a carpet-sized shroud that Nora
compulsively embroidered.
	She would not give up. She had a core of unnatural energy that Lindsay could not match. For days she had worked on repairs
in the radio room, though she knew it was useless.
	Shaper Ring Security had stopped broadcasting. Their military
outposts had become embarrassments. Mechanists were evacuating them and repatriating their Shaper crews to the Ring Council with exquisite diplomatic courtesy. There had never been any
war. No one was fighting. The cartels were buying out their
pirate clients and hastily pacifying them.
	All this was waiting for them if they could only raise their
voices. But their broadcast equipment was ruined; the circuits
	were irreplaceable, and the two of them were not technicians.
Lindsay had accepted death. No one would come for them;
	they would assume that the outpost was wiped out. Eventually, he thought, someone would check, but not for years.
One night, after making love, Lindsay stayed up, toying with
the dead pirate's mechanical arm. It fascinated him, and it was a
solace; by dying young, he thought, he had at least escaped this.
	His own right arm had lost almost all feeling. The nerves had
deteriorated steadily since the incident with the gun, and his
battle wounds had only hastened it.
"Those damned guns," he said aloud. "Someone will find this
place someday. We ought to tear those fucking guns apart, to
show the world that we had decency. I'd do it but I can't bear to
touch them."
	Nora was drowsy. "So what? They don't work."
"Sure, they're disarmed." That had been one of his triumphs.
	"But they could be armed again. They're evil, darling.  We
should smash them."
"If you  care that much . . ."  Nora's eyes opened.' "Abelard.
What if we fired one?"
"No," he said at once.
"What if we blew up the Consensus with the particle beam?
	Someone would see."
	"See what? That we were criminals?"
	"In the past it would just be dead pirates. Business as usual.
But now it would be a scandal. Someone would have to come
after us. To see that it never happened again."
	"You'd risk this facade of peace that they're showing the
aliens? Just on the chance that someone would rescue us? Fire,
imagine what they'd do to us when they came."
	"What? Kill us? We're dead already. I want us to live."
	"As criminals? Despised by everyone?"
Nora smiled bitterly. "That's nothing new for me."
	"No, Nora. There are limits."
She caressed him. "I understand."
	Two nights later he woke in terror as the asteroid shook. Nora
was gone. At first he thought it was a meteor strike, a rare but
terrifying event. He listened for the hiss of blowout, but the
tunnels were still sound.
	When he saw Nora's face he realized the truth. "You fired the
gun."
	She was shaken. "I cast the Consensus loose before I shot it. I
went out on the surface. There's something weird there,
Abelard. Plastic has been leaking out of the launch ring into
space."
	"I don't want to hear about it."
	"I had to do it. For us. Forgive me, darling. I swear I'll never
deceive you again."
	He brooded. "You think they'll come?"
	"It's a chance. I wanted a chance for us." She was distracted.
"Tons of plastic. Squeezing out like paste. Like a huge worm."
	"An accident," Lindsay said. "We'll have to tell them that it
was an accident."
	"I'll destroy the gun now." She looked at him guiltily.
	"What's done is done." He smiled sadly and reached toward
her. "Let it wait."

ESAIRS XII: 17-7-'17

	Somewhere in his dreams Lindsay heard a repeated pounding.
As always, Nora woke first and was instantly alert. "Noise,
Abelard."
	Lindsay woke painfully, his eyelids gummy. "What is it? A
blowout?"
	She slipped out of the sheets, launching herself off his hip with
one bare foot. She hit the lights. "Get up, darling. Whatever it
is, we're meeting it head on."
	It was not the way Lindsay would have preferred to meet death but he was willing to go along with her. He pulled on drawstring pants and a poncho.
	"There's no breeze," she said as he struggled with a complex
Shaper knot. "It's not decompression."
	"Then it's a rescue! The Mechs!"
	They hurried through darkened tunnels to the airlock. One of their rescuers-he must have been a courageous one -had managed to force his vast bulk through the airlock and into the loading room. He was picking fussily at the huge birdlike toes of his spacesuit as Lindsay peered out of the access tunnel, squinting and shielding his eyes.
	The alien had a powerful searchlight mounted on the nasal
bridge of his cavernous spacesuit helmet. The light gushing from
it was as vivid as a welding torch: harsh and electric blue,
heavily tinged with ultraviolet. The spacesuit was brown and
gray, dotted with input sockets and accordion-ribbed around the
alien's joints.
	The light swept across them and Lindsay squinted, averting his
face. "You may call me the Ensign," the alien said in trade
English. He politely aligned himself with their vertical axis,
stretching overhead to finger-walk along the wall.
	Lindsay put his hand on Nora's forearm. "I'm Abelard," he
said. "This is Nora."
	"How do you do? We want to discuss this property." The alien
reached into a side pocket and pulled out a wad of tissue. He
shook it out with a quick birdlike motion, and it became a
television. He put the screen against the wall. Lindsay, watching
carefully, saw that the television had no scan lines. The image
was formed in millions of tiny colored hexagons.
	The image was ESAIRS XII. Bursting from the launch ring's exit hole was an extruded tube of foamed plastic almost half a
kilometer long. There was a rough knob at the tip of the
wormlike coil. Lindsay realized with instantly smothered shock
that it was Paolo's stone head, neatly framed in the flowerlike
wreckage of the launch cage. The entire mass had been smoothly embedded in the decoy complex's leakage of plastic, then
squeezed out under pressure into a coiling helical arc.
	"I see," Lindsay said.
	"Are you the artist?"
	"Yes,"  Lindsay said.  He pointed at the screen.  "Notice the
	subtle shading effect where our recent blast darkened the sculpture."
	"We noticed the explosion," the alien said. "An unusual artis-
tic technique."
	"We are unusual," Lindsay said. "We are unique."
	"I agree," the Ensign said politely. "We seldom see work on
this scale. Do you accept negotiations for purchase?"
	Lindsay smiled. "Let's talk."


Part Two
COMMUNITY ANARCHY
	
CHAPTER FIVE
	
By fits and starts, the world entered a new age. The aliens
benignly accepted a semidivine mystique. Millennial fervor
swept the System. Detente came into vogue. People began to
speak, for the first time, of the Schismatrix-of a posthuman
solar system, diverse yet unified, where tolerance would rule
and every faction would have a share.
	The aliens-they called themselves the Investors-seemed unlimited in power. They were ancient, so old that they remembered no tradition earlier than starflight. Their mighty starships
ranged a vast economic realm, buying and selling among nine-
teen other intelligent races. Obviously they possessed technologies so potent that, if they chose, they could shatter the narrow
world a hundred times over. Humanity rejoiced that the aliens
seemed so serenely affable. The goods they offered were almost
always harmless, often artworks of vast academic interest and
surprisingly small practicality.
	Human wealth poured into the alien coffers. Tiny embassies
traveled to the stars in Investor ships. They failed to accomplish
much, and they remained tiny, because the Investors charged
fares that were astronomical.
	The Investors recycled the riches they tapped from the human
economy. They bought into human enterprises. With a single
technological novelty from one of their packed holds, the aliens
could transform a flagging industry into a rocketing growth
stock. Factions competed wildly for their favor. And
uncooperative worlds soon learned how easily they could be
outflanked and rendered obsolete.
	Trade flourished in the new Investor Peace. Open warfare
became vulgar, replaced by the polite covertness of rampant
industrial espionage. With each new year, a golden age seemed
just out of reach. And the years passed, and passed.

GOLDREICH -TREMAINE COUNCIL STATE: 3-4-'37

	The crowd pleased Lindsay. People filled the air around him:
colored jackets with a froth of lace, legs in patterned stockings
with sleek five-toed foot-gloves. The air in the theatre lobby
reeked of Shaper perfumes.
	Lindsay lounged against one patterned velvet wall, his jacketed elbow hooked through a mooring-loop. He dressed in the cutting edge of fashion: sea-green brocade jacket, green satin
kneelongs, stockings pinstriped in yellow. His feet were elegantly gloved for free-fall. A gold-chained video monocle gleamed in his waistcoat.  Braids interlaced with yellow cord bound his long, graying
hair.
	Lindsay was fifty-one. Among the Shapers he passed for one
much older-some genetic from the dawn of Shaper history.
There were many such in Goldreich-Tremaine, one of the oldest
Shaper city-states in the Rings of Saturn.
	A Mechanist emerged into the lobby from the theatre. He wore
a ribbed one-piece suit in tasteful mahogany brown. He noticed
Lindsay and kicked off from the doorway, floating toward him.
	Lindsay reached out in friendly fashion and stopped the man's
momentum. Beneath his sleeve, Lindsay's prosthetic right arm
whined slightly with the movement. "Good evening, Mr. Beyer."
	The handsome Mechanist nodded and took a mooring-loop.
"Good evening, Dr. Mavrides. Always a pleasure."
	Beyer was with the Ceres Legation. He was Undersecretary for
Cultural Affairs, a colorless title meant to camouflage his affili-
ation with Mech intelligence.
	"I don't often see you during this day-shift, Mr. Beyer."
	"I'm slumming," Beyer said comfortably. Life in Goldreich-Tremaine ran around the clock; the graveyard shift, from midnight to eight, was the loosest and least policed. A Mechanist could mingle during the graveyard shift without attracting stares.
	"Are you enjoying the play, sir?"
	"A triumph. As good as Ryumin, I'd say. This author -
Fernand Vetterling-his work is new to me."
	"He's a local youngster. One of our best."
	"Ah. One of your protege's. I appreciate his Detentiste sentiments. We're having a little soiree at the Embassy later this
week. I'd like to meet Mr. Vetterling. To express my admiration."
	Lindsay smiled evasively. "You're always welcome at my
home, Mr. Beyer. Nora speaks of you often."
	"How flattering. Colonel-Doctor Mavrides is a charming host-
ess." Beyer hid his disappointment, but his kinesics showed
signs of impatience.
	Beyer wanted to leave, to touch base with some other social
doyen. Lindsay bore him no resentment for it; it was the man's job.
	Lindsay himself held a rank in Security. He was Captain-
Doctor Abelard Mavrides, an instructor in Investor sociology at
Goldreich-Tremaine Kosmosity. Even in these days of the Investor Peace, a rank in Security was mandatory for those in the
Shaper academic-military complex. Lindsay played the game, as
they all did.
	In his role as theatrical manager, Lindsay never alluded to his
rank. But Beyer was well aware of it, and only the grease of
diplomatic politesse allowed them to be friends.
	Beyer's light-blue eyes scanned the crowded lobby, and his
face stiffened. Lindsay followed the man's gaze.
	Beyer had spotted someone. Lindsay sized the man up at once: microphone lip bead, ear-clasp audiophones, clothing that
lacked finesse. A bodyguard. And not a Shaper: the man's hair
was sleeked back with antiseptic oils, and his face lacked Shaper
symmetry.
	Lindsay reached for his video monocle, filled it to his right
eye, and began filming.  Beyer noticed the gesture and smiled with a hint of sourness.
"There are four of them," he said. "Your production has at-
tracted a man of distinction."
	"They look like Concatenates," Lindsay said.
	"A state visit," Beyer said. "He is here incognito. It's the head
of stale from the Mare Sercnitatis Republic. Chairman Philip
Khouri Constantine."
	Lindsay turned aside. "I don't know the gentleman."
	"He is not a friend of Detente," Beyer said. "I know him only
by reputation. I can't introduce you."
	Lindsay moved along the wall, keeping his back to the crowd.
"I must visit my office. Will you join me for a smoke?"
	"Lung-smoking?" Beyer said. "I never acquired the habit."
	"Then you must excuse me." Lindsay fled.
	"After twenty years," said Nora Mavrides. She sat before her
console, her Security jacket thrown carelessly over her shoulders, a black cape over her amber-colored blouse.
	"What's possessed him?" Lindsay demanded. "Isn't the Republic enough for him?"
	Nora thought aloud. "The militants must have brought him
here. They need him to back their cause here in the capital. He
has prestige. And he's no Detentiste."
	"That's plausible," Lindsay said, "but only if you turn it
around. The militants think Constantine is their pet unplanned,
their loyal general, but they don't know his ambitions. Or his
potential. He's manipulated them."
	"Did he see you?"
	"I don't think so. I don't think he would have recognized me if
he had." Lindsay stuck his spoon moodily into a carton of
medicinal yogurt. "My age disguises me."
	"My heart sank when I saw the film from your monocle.
Abelard, these years, they've been so good to us. If he knew
who you were, he could ruin us."
	"Not completely." Lindsay forced himself to eat, grimacing.
The yogurt was a special preparation for non-Shapers whose
intestines had been rendered antiseptic. It was bitter with digestive enzymes. "Constantine could denounce me. But what if he
does? We'd still have the aliens. The Investors don't give a
damn about my genetics, my training. . . . The aliens could be
our refuge."
	"We should attack Constantine. He's a killer."
	"We're not the ones to talk on that score, darling." Lindsay
gripped the carton with his mechanical hand; its thin walls
buckled precisely. "I always meant to avoid him if I could. It
was something I fell into, a roll of the dice. . . ."
	"Don't talk that way. As if it were something we can't help."
	Lindsay drummed his iron fingers. Even the arm was part of
his disguise. The antique prosthetic had once belonged to the
Chief Justice, and Lindsay's affectation of it hinted at great age.
	On the wall of Nora's office, a huge satellite telephoto of the
Saturnian surface crawled slowly, red winds interlacing streams
of muddy gold. "We could leave," Lindsay said. "There are
other Council States. Kirkwood Gap's all right. Cassini-Kluster."
	"And give up everything we've built here?"
	Lindsay watched the screen abstractly. "You're all I want."
	"I want that tenure, Abelard. That Colonel-Professorship. If we
go, what about the children? What about our Clique? They
depend on us."
	"You're right. This is our home."
	"You're making too much of this." Nora said. "He'll return to
the Republic soon. If Goldreich-Tremaine weren't the capital
now, he wouldn't be here."
	Children laughed in the next room; from her console, Nora
turned down the audio. Lindsay said, "There's a horror between
Philip and myself. We know too much about each other."
	"Don't be a fatalist, darling. I'm not going to sit with folded
hands while some unplanned upstart attacks my husband."
	Nora left her console and walked across to him. A centrifugal
half-gravity tugged at her skirt and sleeve laces. Lindsay pulled
her into his lap and ran his human hand across the serpentine
curls of her hair. "Let him be, Nora. Otherwise it will come to
killing again."
	She kissed him. "You were alone in the past. Now you're a
match for him. We have our Midnight Clique. We have the
Mavrides line, the Investors, my rank in Security. We have our
good trust. This life belongs to us."
	
GOLDREICH-TREMAINE COUNCIL STATE: 13-4-'37

	Philip Constantine watched his ship's departure through his
video monocle. The monocle pleased him. He liked its stylish-
ness. Constantine took pains to stay abreast of such develop-
ments. Fashions were powerful manipulants.
	Especially among the Reshaped. Behind his ship, the Friend-
ship Serene, the Goldreich-Tremaine complex spun in
gyroscopic counlerclockwork. Constantine studied the city's image, broadcast to his monocle from a camera mounted on the
ship's hull.
	The orbiting city taught an object lesson in Shaper history.
	Its core was the dark, heavily shielded cylinder that had sheltered the earliest settlers: desperate pioneers, driven to mine the
Rings of Saturn despite their sleets of radiation and complex
electrical storms. The central core of Goldreich-Tremaine was
as dark as a nut, a stubborn acorn that had endured and broken
forth at last into fantastic growth. Hubbed spheres wheeled
about it, radar installations slid with sleek precision on external
tracks, two huge tubed suburbs turned in counterbalanced array
on white ceramic stems. And all about the inner complex was a
lacy network of habitats in free-fall. Outside the bubbled
suburbs-the "subbles" - loomed the immaterial walls of the
Bottle.
	The Friendship Serene hit the flaw in the Bottle. Colored static
raced across Constantine's monocle, and Goldreich-Tremaine
disappeared. It was visible now only by its absence: a lozenge of
dark fog in the white ice-rubble of the Ring. The dark fog was
the Bottle itself: a magnetic tokamak field eight kilometers long,
shielding the Shaper city-state within a fusion-powered web.
	This far from the sun, solar kilowatts were useless. The
Reshaped had their own suns, bright fusion cores in every
Council State: Goldreich-Tremaine, Dermott-Gold-Murray,
Tauri Phase, Kirkwood Gap, Synchronis, Cassini-Kluster,
Encke-Kluster, Skimmers Union, Arsenal. . . . Constantine
knew them all.
	Ghost acceleration wafted across him as the engines cut in.
The Goldreich-Tremaine weather station had cleared them for
launch; there was no chance of a crippling ring-lightning strike.
Background radiation was light. With the new Shaper drives he
faced mere weeks of travel.
	The playwright, Zeuner, entered the cabin and seated himself
beside Constantine. "It's gone," he said.
	"Homesick already, Carl?" Constantine looked up at the larger
man.
	"For Goldreich-Tremaine? Yes. For the people? That's an-
other matter."
	"Someday you'll return in triumph."
	"Very kind of you to say so, your excellency." Zeuner ran one
fawn-colored glove over his chin. Constantine noted that the
Republic's standard bacteria were already spotting the man's
neck.
	"Forget titles of state," Constantine said. "In the Ring Council
it's politesse. In the Republic, it smacks of aristocracy. Our local
form of bad ideology."
	"I see, Dr. Constantine. I'll be more careful in the future."
Zeuner's clean-shaven face had the anonymous beauty of the
Reshaped. He dressed with fussy precision in understated
browns and beiges.
	Constantine tucked the monocle into his copper-threaded velvet waistcoat. Beneath his embroidered linen jacket, his back
had begun to sweat. The skin of his back was peeling where the
rejuvenation virus ate at aging cells. For twenty years the in-
festation had wandered over his body, the first reward for his
loyalty to the Shaper cause. Where the virus had worked, his
olive skin had a child's smoothness.
	Zeuner examined the cabin walls. The heavy insulation was
stitched with pointillistic tapestries depicting the Republic. Orchards spread under bright clouds, sunlight fell with cathedrallike solemnity across golden wheatfields, ultralight aircraft
dipped over stone-walled mansions with red-tiled roofs. The
vistas were as clean as a travel brochure's. Zeuner said, "What's
it really like, your Republic?"
	"A backwater," Constantine said. "An antique. Before our
Revolution, the Republic was rotting. Not just socially. Physically. An ecosystem that large needs total genetic control. But the builders didn't care about the long run. In the long run they
were all dead."
	Constantine steepled his fingers. "Now we inherit their mess.
The Concatenation exiled its visionaries. Their genetics theorists, for instance, who formed the Ring Council. The Concatenates were squeamish. Now they have lost all power. They are
client states."
	"You think we'll win, doctor? The Shapers?"
	"Yes." Constantine gave the man one of his rare smiles.
"Because we understand what this struggle is about. Life. I don't mean that the Mechs will be annihilated. They may totter on for
whole centuries. But they will be cut off. They'll be cybernetic,
not living flesh. That's a dead end, because there's no will
behind it. No imperatives. Only programming. No imagination."
	The playwright nodded. "Sound ideology. Not like what you
hear in Goldreich-Tremaine these days. Detentiste slogans. Unity in diversity, where all the factions form one vast Schismatrix.
Humankind reuniting when faced by aliens."
	Constantine shifted in his chair, surreptitiously rubbing his
back against the cushion. "I've heard that rhetoric. On the stage.
This producer you were mentioning-"
	"Mavrides?" Zeuner was eager. "They're a powerful clan.
Goldreich-Tremaine, Jastrow Station, Kirkwood Gap. They've
never had a genetic on the Council itself, but they share genes
with the Garzas and the Drapers and the Vetterlings. The
Vetterlings have authority."
	"This man is a Mavrides by marriage, you said. A nongenetic."
	"A eunique, you mean? Yes. He's not allowed to contribute his
genes to the line." Zeuner was pleased to tell this bit of scandal.
"He's also an Investor pet. And a cepheid."
"Cepheid? You mean he has a rank in Security?"
"He's Captain-Doctor Abelard Mavrides, C.-Ph.D. It's a low
rank for one so old. He was a sundog once, a cometary miner,
they say. He met the aliens on the rim of the System, wormed
his way into their good graces somehow. . . . They'd been here
only a few months when they brought Mavrides and his wife
into Goldreich-Tremaine in one of their starships. Since then
he's moved from success to success. Corporations hire him as a
go-between with the aliens. He teaches Investor studies and
speaks their language fluently. He's wealthy enough to keep his past obscure."
	"Old-line Shapers guard their privacy closely."
Zeuner brooded. "He's my enemy. He blighted my career."
	Constantine thought it through. He knew more about Mavrides
than Zeuner did. He had recruited Zeuner deliberately, knowing that Mavrides must have enemies, and that finding them was easier than creating them.
	Zeuner was frustrated. His first play had failed; the second was
never produced. He was not privy to the behind-the-scenes
machinations of Mavrides and his Midnight Clique. Zeuner was
harshly anti-Mechanist; his gene-line had suffered cruelly in the
War. The Detentistes rejected him.
	So Constantine had charmed him. He had lured Zeuner to the
Republic with promises of the theatrical archives, a living tradition of drama that Zeuner could study and exploit. The Shaper
was grateful, and because of that gratitude he was Constantine's
pawn.
	Constantine was silent. Mavrides troubled him. Tentacles of
the man's influence had spread throughout Goldreich-Tremaine.
	And the coincidences went beyond chance. They hinted at
deliberate plot.
	A man who chose to call himself Abelard. An impresario of
the theatre. Staging political plays. And his wife was a diplomat.
	At least Constantine knew that Abelard Lindsay was dead. His
agents in the Zaibatsu had taped Lindsay's death at the hands of
the Geisha Bank. Constantine had even spoken to the woman
who had had Lindsay killed, a Shaper renegade called Kitsune.
He had the whole sorry story: Lindsay's involvement with pi-
rates, his desperate murder of the Geisha Bank's former leader.
Lindsay had died horribly.
	But why had Constantine's first assassin never reported back
from the Zaibatsu? He had not thought the man would turn
sundog. Assassins had failsafes implanted; few traitors survived.
	for years Constantine had lived in fear of this lost assassin.
The elite of Ring Council Security assured him that the assassin
was dead. Constantine did not believe them, and had never
trusted them again.
	For years he had worked his way into the mirrored under-
world of Shaper covert action. Assassins and bodyguards-the
two were often one and the same, since they specialized in one
another's tradecraft-these had become his closest allies.
He knew their subterfuges, their fanatic loyalties. He struggled
constantly to win their trust. He sheltered them in his Republic,
hiding them from pacifist persecution. He used his prestige
freely to further their militarist ends.
	Some Shapers still despised him for his unplanned genes; from many others he had won respect. Personal hatreds did not
bother him. But it bothered him that he might be cut short
before he had measured himself against the world. Before he
had satisfied the soaring ambition that had driven him since
childhood.
	Who knew about Lindsay, the only man who had ever been his
friend? When he was young, and weaker, before the armor of
distrust had sealed around him, Lindsay had been his intimate.
Who let this phantom loose, and to what end?

GOLDREICH-TREMAINE COUNCIL STATE: 26-12-'46

Wedding guests surrounded the garden. From his hiding place
behind the boughs of a dwarf magnolia, Lindsay saw his wife
lightly bounding toward him, in half a gravity. Green fronds
brushed at the spreading wings of her headdress. Nora's formal
gown was a dense ocher weave beaded in silver, with openwork
amber sleeves. "You're all right, darling?"
	Lindsay said, "My sleeve hems, burn  it.  I  was dancing and
popped a whole weave loose."
"I saw you leave. Do you need help?"
	"I can get it." Lindsay struggled with the complex interweave.
"I'm slow, but I can do it."
	"Let me help." She stepped to his side, pulled inlaid knitting
needles from her headdress, and tatted his sleeves with a
smooth dexterity he could not hope to match. He sighed and
tucked his own needles carefully back into his braids. "The Regent is asking about you," she said. "The senior genetics are
here."
	"Where'd you put them?"
	"In the veranda discreet. I had to clear out a raft of kids." She
finished the sleeve. "There. Good enough?"
"You're a wonder."
	"No kissing, Abelard. You'll smear your makeup. After the party." She smiled. "You look grand."
	Lindsay ran his mechanical hand over his coils of gray hair.
The steel knuckles glittered with inlaid seed-gems; the wire
tendons sparkled with interwoven strands of fiberoptics. He
wore a formal Goldreich-Tremaine Kosmosity academic's ruffled overvest, its lapels studded with pins of rank. His kneelongs
were a rich coffee-brown. Brown stockings relieved the dignity
of his outfit with a hint of iridescence. "I danced with the
bride," he said. "I think I surprised them a bit."
	"I heard the shouts, dear." She smiled and took his arm,
placing her hand on his sleeve above the steel of his artificial
ulna. They left the garden.
	On the patio outside, the bride and groom were dancing on
the ceiling, heads downward. Their feet darted nimbly in and
out of the dance rig, a broad complex of padded footloops for
use in light gravity. Lindsay watched the bride, feeling a rush of
happiness close to pain.
	Kleo Mavrides. The young bride was the dead woman's clone,
sharing her name and her genes. There were times when Lindsay felt that behind the merry eyes of the younger Kleo there
lurked an older spirit, as a sound might still vibrate in the glass
of a crystal just after it had ceased to ring. He had done what he
could. Since her production, the younger Kleo had been his
special care. He and Nora found satisfaction in these amends. It
was more than penance. They had taken too many pains to call
it simply recompense. It was love.
	The groom danced powerfully; he had the bearlike build of all
the Vetterling genetics. Fernand Vetterling was a gifted man, a
standout even in a society of genius. Lindsay had known the
man for twenty years, as playwright, architect, and Clique mem-
ber. Vetterling's creative energy still filled Lindsay with a kind
of awe, even subdued fear. How long would the marriage last, he
wondered, between Kleo with her fleet graces and the sober
Vetterling, with his mind like a sharp steel ax? It was a marriage
of state as well as a love match. Much capital had been invested
in it, economic and genetic.
	Nora led him on through a crowd of children, who were
lashing speed into whirring gyroscopes with dainty braided
whips. As usual, Paolo Mavrides was winning, his nine-year-old
face alight with preternatural concentration. "Don't hit my wheel, Nora," he said.
	"Paolo's been gambling," said  Randa Velterling, a muscular
six-year-old. She grinned mischievously, showing missing front
teeth.
	"Nyaah," Paolo said, not looking up. "Randa's an informer."
"Play nicely," Nora said. "Don't bother the seniors."
The senior genetics were sitting around the buhl table in Lindsay's veranda, with its Investor centerpiece. They were conversing strictly in Looks, a language which to the untrained eye seemed to consist entirely of sidelong glances. Lindsay, nodding, glanced under the table. Two children were squatting beneath it, playing in tandem with a long loop of string. Using all four hands and their largest toes they had formed a complex rack of angles. "Very nice,"  Lindsay said. "But go play your spiders' games elsewhere."
	"All right," the older child said grudgingly. Careful not to
disturb their structure, they wormed their way toward the open
doorway on their heels and toes, their string-wrapped hands outspread.
	"I gave them some candy," said Dietrich Ross when they had
left. "They said they'd save it for later. Ever hear of kids that
age saving candy for later? What the hell's becoming of the world?"
	Lindsay sat down, opening a pocket mirror. He pulled a powder puff from the pocket of his vest.
	"Sweating like a pig," Ross observed. "You're not the man you
once were, Mavrides."
"You can talk when you've danced four measures, Ross, you
old fraud," Lindsay said.
	"Margaret has a new opinion on your centerpiece," said
Charles Vetterling. The former Regent had gone frankly to seed
since his loss of office; he looked tubby and choleric, his old-
fashioned trimmed hair speckled with white.
Lindsay was interested. "What's that, Madam Chancellor?"
"It's erotica." Chancellor-General Margaret Juliano leaned
over the inlaid table and pointed into the perspex pressure-
dome. Beneath the dome was a complex sculpture. Speculation
had been rife ever since the Investors had first given it to
Lindsay.
	The gift was carved out of water ice and plated in glimmering
frozen ammonia. Machinery beneath the dome maintained it at
40 degrees Kelvin. The sculpture consisted of two oblate lumps
covered in filigree spires of delicate crystalline frost. The tableau
was set on a rippled surface, possibly meant to represent some
unimaginably cold sludge-ocean. Off to one side, poking
through the surface, was a smaller hinged lump that might have
been an elbow.
	"You'll notice there are two of them," the Shaper academic
said. "I believe that the physical goings-on are tastefully concealed beneath the water. The fluid, rather."
	"They don't look much alike," Lindsay said. "It seems more
likely that one is eating the other. If they're alive at all."
	"That's what I said," rasped Sigmund Fetzko. The Mechanist
renegade, by far the oldest of the six of them, lay back in his
chair in exhaustion. Words came to him with difficulty,
propelled by flexing rib-braces beneath his heavy coat. "The
second one has dimples. Shell collapsing. Juice sucked out of
it."
	A Vetterling child came into the room, chasing a runaway
gyroscope. Vetterling Looked at Neville Pongpianskul, changing
the subject. The child left. "It is a good marriage," Pongpianskul
replied. "Mavrides grace with Vetterling determination: a for-
midable match. Mikhaila Vetterling shows promise, I think;
what was her split?"
	Vetterling was smug. "Sixty Vetterling, thirty Mavrides, and ten percent Garza on a general reciprocity deal. But I saw to it that
the Garza genes were close to early-line Vetterling. None of that
new-line Garza tampering. Not till there's proof behind it."
	"Young Adelaide Garza is brilliant," said Margaret Juliano.
"One of my advanced students. The Superbrights are astounding, Regent. A quantum leap." She smoothed the lapel of her
medal-studded overvest with graceful, wrinkled hands.
	"Really?" said Ross. "I was married to the older Adelaide
once."
	"What happened to Adelaide?" said Pongpianskul.
	Ross shrugged. "Faded."
	A faint chill crossed the room. Lindsay changed the subject.
"We're planning a new veranda. Nora needs this one for her
office."
	"She needs a bigger place?" said Pongpianskul.
	Lindsay nodded. "Tenure. And this is our best discreet. Wake-
field Zaibatsu did the debugging. Otherwise we have to have the
debuggers in again; it'll turn the place upside down."
	"Building on credit?" Ross said.
	"Of course." Lindsay smiled.
	"Too flaming much loose credit in G-T these days," Ross said.
	"I don't hold with it."
	"Ah, Ross," Vetterling said, "you haven't changed those digs of
yours in eighty years. A man can't turn sideways in those core
ratholes. Take us Vetterlings, now. The bridegroom just delivered us the specs for a new complex of inflatables."
	"Jerry-built crap," Ross opined. "G-T's too crowded these days
anyway. Too many young sharks. Things smell good now but
there's crash in the air, I can feel it. When it comes, I'll pull up
stakes and head for the cometaries. Been too long since I last
tested my luck."
	Pongpianskul Looked at Lindsay, communicating in the set of
his wrinkled eyelids his amused contempt for Ross's incessant
luck-bragging. Ross had made his big mining strike a century
ago and had never let anyone forget it. Though he incessantly
goaded others on, Ross's own risk-taking was confined almost
entirely to his odd choice of waistcoats.
	"I have a Clique candidate," Vetterling said. "Very polite, very
well-spoken. Carl Zeuner."
	"The playwright?" said Margaret Juliano. "I don't care for his
work."
	"You mean he's not a Detentiste," Vetterling said, "He doesn't
fit your pacifism, Margaret. Mavrides, I believe you know the man."
	"We've met," Lindsay said.
	"Zeuner's a fascist," said Pongpianskul. The topic galvanized
the elderly doctor; he leaned forward intently, knotting his
hands. "He's Philip Constantine's man. He spent years in the
Republic. A playground for Shaper imperialists."
	Vetterling frowned. "Calm yourself, Neville. I know the Con
catenation; I was born there. Constantine's work there should
have been done a hundred years ago."
	"You mean fill his garden world with broken-down assassins?"
	"To bring a new world into the Shaper community - "
	"Nothing but cultural genocide." Pongpianskul had just been
rejuvenated; his lean body quivered with unnatural energy.
Lindsay had never asked what technique he used; it left his skin
smooth but leathery, and of a peculiar dusky color not found in
nature. His knuckles were so heavily wrinkled that they looked
like small rosettes. "The Circumlunar Republic should be left as
a cultural museum. It's good policy. We need variety; not every
society we form can hold together."
	"Neville." Sigmund Fetzko spoke heavily. "You are talking as if you were a boy."
	Pongpianskul leaned back. "I confess I've heen reading my old
speeches since my last rejuve."
"That's what got you purged," Vetterling said.
"My taste for antiquities? My own speeches are antiques by
now. But the issues are still with us, friends. Community and
anarchy. Politics pulls things together; technology blows them
apart.  Little enclaves  like the Republic should be preserved
intact. So that if our own tampering strikes us down, there'll be
someone left to pick up the pieces."
"There's the Earth," said Fetzko.
	"I draw the line at barbarians," Pongpianskul said. He sipped
his drink, a tranquilizer frappe.
	"If you had any guts, Pongpianskul," Ross said, "you'd go to
the Republic and tackle things firsthand."
	Pongpianskul sniffed. "I'll wager I could gather damning evidence there."
	"Nonsense," said Vetterling.
	"A wager?" Ross looked from one to the other. "Let me be
arbiter, then. Doctor, if you could find evidence that would
offend my hardened sensibilities, we would all agree that right is
on your side."
	Pongpianskul hesitated. "It's been so long since I ..."
Ross laughed. "Afraid? Better hang back and cultivate your
mystique, then. You need a facade of mystery. Otherwise the
young sharks will have you for breakfast."
	"There were breakfasters after the purge," Pongpianskul said.
"They couldn't digest me."
	"That was two centuries back," Ross taunted. "I recall a certain episode-what was it-immortality from kelp?"
	"What?" Pongpianskul blinked. Then the memory seemed to
ooze up within him, buried under decades. "Kelp," he said.
" 'The earth-ocean wonder plant.'" He was quoting himself.
" 'You wonder, friends, why your catalytic balances vary. . . .
The answer is kelp, the sea-born wonder plant, now genetically
altered to grow and flourish in the primeval brine from which
blood itself derives. . . .' My God, I'd forgotten entirely."
	"He sold kelp pills," Ross confided. "Had a little dig in some
inflatable slum, radiation so hard you could poach an egg against the bulkhead."
	"Placebos," Pongpianskul said. "Goldreich-Tremaine was full
of old unplanned types then. Miners, refugees cooked by radi-
ation. It was before the Bottle shielded us. If they looked hope-
less I used to slip a little painkiller into the mix."
	"You don't get as old as we are without artifice," Lindsay said.
	Vetterling snorted. "Don't start reminiscing, Mavrides. I want
to know what my angle is, Ross. What are my winnings once
Pongpianskul fails?"
	"My domicile," Pongpianskul said. "In the Fitzgerald Wheel."
	Vetterling's eyes widened. "Against?"
	"Against your public denunciation of Constantine and Zeuner.
And the expenses of the trip."
	"Your beautiful place," Margaret Juliano told Pongpianskul.
"How can you part with it, Neville?"
	Pongpianskul shrugged. "If the future belongs to Constantine's
friends then I don't care to live here."
	"Don't forget you've just had a treatment," Vetterling said
uncomfortably. "You're acting rashly. I hate to turn a man out
of his digs. We can put the bet off until - "
	"Off," Pongpianskul said. "That's our curse; there's always
time for everything. While those younger than ourselves tear
into every year as if there were no yesterday. . . . No, I'm
settled, Regent." He extended his leathery hand to Vetterling.
	"Fire!" Vetterling said. He took Pongpianskul's thin hand in
his heavy one. "Sealed, then. The four of you are witnesses."
	"I'll take the next ship out," said Pongpianskul. He stood up,
his verdigris-colored eyes gleaming feverishly. "I must make
arrangements. A delightful little fete, Mavrides."
	Lindsay was startled. "Oh. Thank you, sir. The robot has your
hat, I think."
	"I must thank my hostess." Pongpianskul left.
	"He's cracked," Vetterling said. "That new treatment's un-
hinged him. Poor Pongpianskul never was very stable."
	"What treatment is he using?" Fetzko wheezed. "He seems so
energetic."
	Ross smiled. "An unproven one. He can't afford a registered
treatment. I hear he's made an arrangement with a wealthier
man to serve as test subject; they split the cost."
	Lindsay Looked at Ross. Ross hid his expression by biting into
a canape.
	"A risk," said Fetzko. "That's why the young ones bear us. So
that we can take their risks. And weed out. Bad treatments.
With our casualties."
	"Could've been worse," Ross said. "He could have fallen for
one of those skin-virus scams. He'd be peeling like a snake right now, hah!"
	Young Paolo Mavrides stepped through the soundproof field in
the doorway. "Nora says come see Kleo and Mr. Vetterling off."
	"Thank you, Paolo." Juliano and the Regent Vetterling headed
	
	for the doorway, small-talking about construction costs. Fetzko
tottered after them, his legs buzzing audibly. Ross took Lindsay
by the arm.
	"A moment, Abelard."
"Yes, Arts-Lieutenant?"
	"It's not Security business, Abelard. You won't tell Juliano that
I put Pongpianskul up to it?"
	"The unproven treatment, you mean? No. It was cruel,
though."
	Ross smirked. "Look, I almost married Margaret a few decades
back, and from what Neville tells me my marrying days may be
back any day now. . . . Listen, Mavrides. It hasn't escaped me
the way you've been looking these past few years. Frankly,
you're in decay."
	Lindsay touched his graying hair. "You're not the first to say
so."
	"It's not a money problem?"
	"No." He sighed. "I don't want my genetics inspected. There
are loo many Security groups watching, and frankly I'm not all I
seem. . . ."
	"Who the hell is, at this age? Listen, Mavrides: I figured it was
something like that, you being eunique. That's my point: I've
gotten wind of something, very quiet, very confidential. It costs
but there's no questions asked, no records: operations take
place in a discreet. Out in one of the dogtowns."
	"I see," Lindsay said. "Risky."
	Ross shrugged. "You know I don't get along with the rest of
my gene-line. They won't give me their records; I have to handle
my own research. Can't we work out something?"
	"Possibly. I have no secrets from my wife. May she know?"
	"Surely, surely. . . . You'll do it?"
	"I'll be in touch." Lindsay put his prosthetic arm on Ross's
shoulder; Ross shuddered, just a little.
	The wedding couple had made it as far as the alcove, where
they had bogged down in a crowd of well-wishers and hat-
fetching junior genetics. Lindsay embraced Kleo, and took
Fernand Vetterling's arm left-handed. "You'll take good care of
my sib, Fernand? You know she's very young."
	Fernand met his eyes. "She's life and breath to me, friend."
	"That's the spirit. We'll put the new play off awhile. Love is
more important."
	Nora kissed Fernand, smearing his makeup. Back within the
domicile the younger set were hitting full stride. The dancing
across the ceiling footloops had degenerated into a near brawl,
where young Shapers, screaming with laughter, struggled to
shove one another off the crowded dance rig. Several had fallen
already and were clinging to others, dangling loosely in the half gravity.
	High spirits, Lindsay thought. Soon many of these would be
married as well; few would find the convenient meshing of love
and politics that Fernand had. They were pawns in the dynastic
games of their seniors, where money and genetics set the rules.
	He looked over the crowd with the close judgment that thirty
years of Shaper audiences had taught him. Some were hidden by
the trees of the garden, a central rectangle of lush greenery
surrounded by tessellated patio floors. Four Mavrides children
were tormenting one of the serving robots, which wouldn't spill
its drinks though they tugged it and tripped it up. Lindsay
leaped upward in the mild gravity to look past the garden.
	An argument was brewing on the other side: half a dozen
Shapers surrounding a man in black coveralls. Trouble. Lindsay
walked to the garden roofway and leaped up onto the ceiling.
He pulled himself across the pathway with the ease of long
habit, clinging deftly to knobs and foot-niches. He was forced to
pause as a pack of three children raced past and over him,
giggling excitedly. His sleeve lace came loose again.
	Lindsay dropped to the floor on the other side. "Burn the
sleeves," he muttered. By now everyone looked a little unraveled. He made his way toward the cluster of debaters.
	A young Mechanist stood at the circle's center, wearing well-
cut satin overalls with black frogging and a suggestion of Shaper
lace at the throat. Lindsay recognized him: a disciple of
Ryumin's, come in with the latest Kabuki Intrasolar tour. He
called himself Wells.
	Wells had a brash, sundoggish look: short matted hair, shifty
eyes, a wide free-fall stance. He had the Kabuki mask logo on
his coverall's shoulders. He looked drunk.
	"It's an open-and-shut case," Wells insisted loudly. "When
they used the Investors as a pretext to stop the war, that was one
thing. But those of us who've known the aliens since we were
children can recognize the truth. They're not saints. They have
played on us for profit."
	The group had not yet noticed Lindsay. He hung back, judging
their kinesics. This was grim: the Shapers were Afriel, Besetzny,
Warden, Parr, and Leng: his graduate class in alien linguistics.
They listened to the Mechanist with polite contempt. Obviously
they had not bothered to tell him who they were, though their
predoctoral overvests marked their rank clearly.
	"You don't feel they bear any credit for detente?" This was
Simon Afriel, a cold and practiced young militant already making his mark in the Shaper academic-military complex. He had
confessed once to Lindsay that he had his sights set on an alien
diplomatic assignment. So did they all: surely, out of nineteen
known alien races, there would be one with which the Shapers
could establish strong rapport. And the diplomat who returned
sane from that assignment would have the world at his feet.
	"I'm an ardent Detentiste," said Wells. "I just want humanity
to share the profit from it. For thirty years the Investors have
bought and sold us. Do we have their secrets? Their stardrive?
Their history? No. Instead they fob us off with toys and expen-
sive joyrides to the stars. These scaly con artists have preyed on
human weakness and division. I'm not alone in thinking this.
There's a new generation in the Cartels these days-"
	"What's the point?" This was Besetzny, a wealthy young woman who already spoke eight languages as well as Investor. She
was the picture of young Shaper glamour in her slashed cordless
sleeves and winged velvet headdress. "In the Cartels you're
outnumbered by your old. They'll deal with us as they always
have; that's their routine. Without the Investors to shield us-"
	"That's just it, doctor-designate." Wells was not as drunk as he looked. "There are hundreds of us who long to see the Rings for
what they are. You're not without your admirers, you know. We
have third-hand Ring fashions, fourth-hand Ring art, passed
around secretly. It's pathetic! We have so much to offer each
other, . . . But the Investors have squeezed everything they can
from the status quo. Already they've begun abetting warmongers: cut down Ring-Cartel interflights, encouraged bidding
wars. . . . You know, the mere fact that I've come here is
enough to brand me for life, possibly even as an agent for Ring
Security: a bacillus, I think you call them? I'll never set foot in a
Cartel again without eyes watching me- "
	Afriel lifted his voice. "Good evening, Captain-Doctor." He
had spotted Lindsay.
	Making the best of it, Lindsay ambled forward. "Good evening,
doctors-designate. Mr. Wells. I trust you're not embittering
yourselves with youthful cynicism. This is a happy time. . . ."
	But now Wells was nervous. All Mechanists were terrified of
agents of Ring Security, not realizing that the academic-military
complex permeated Shaper life so thoroughly that a quarter of
the population was Security in one form or another. Besetzny,
	Afriel, and Parr, for instance, all ardent leaders in Goldreich-
Tremaine paramilitary youth, were much more of a threat to
Wells than Lindsay, with his reluctant captaincy. Wells, though,
was galvanized with distrust. He mumbled pleasantries until
Lindsay walked away.
	The worst of it was that Wells was right. The Shaper students
knew it. But they were not about to jeopardize their hard-won
doctorates by publicly agreeing with a naive Mech. No one
would have Ring Council clearance to visit other stars without
an impeccable ideology.
	Of course the Investors were profiteers. Their arrival had not
brought the millennium humankind had expected. The Investors
were not even particularly intelligent. They made up for that
with a cast-iron gall and a magpie's lust for shiny loot. They
were simply too greedy to become confused. They knew what
they wanted, and that was their critical advantage.
	They had been painted much larger than life. Lindsay had
done as much himself, when he and Nora had parlayed their
asteroid deathtrap into three months of language lessons and a
free ride to the Ring Council. With his instant notoriety as a
friend to aliens, Lindsay had done his best to inflate the Investor mystique. He was as guilty of the fraud as anyone.
	He had even defrauded the Investors. The Investors' name for
him was still a rasp and whistle meaning "Artist." Lindsay still
had friends among the Investors: or, at least, beings whom he
felt sure he could amuse.
	Investors had a sense of something close to humor, a certain
sadistic enjoyment in a sharp deal. That sculpture they had
given him, which rested in a place of honor in his home, might
well be two frost-eaten chunks of alien dung.
	God only knew to what befuddled alien they had sold his own
piece of found art. It was only to be expected that a young man
like Wells would demand the truth and spread it. Not knowing
the consequences of his action, or even caring; simply too young
to live a lie. Well, the falsehoods would hold up awhile longer.
Despite the new generation bred in the Investor Peace, who
struggled to rip aside the veil, not knowing that it was the very
canvas on which their world was painted.
	Lindsay looked for his wife. She was in her office, closeted
with her conspirator's crew of trained diplomats. Colonel-
Professor Nora Mavrides cast a large shadow in Goldreich-
Tremaine. Sooner or later every diplomat in the capital had
drifted into it. She was the best known of her class's loyalists
and served as their champion.
	Lindsay hid within the comfort of his own mystique. As far as
he knew, he was the last survivor of the foreign section. If other
non-Shaper diplomats survived, it was not by advertising them-
selves.
	He entered the room briefly for politeness' sake, but as usual
their smooth kinesics made him nervous. He left for the smok-
ing room, where two stagedoor hangers-on were being intro-
duced to the modish vice by the cast of Vetterling's Shepherd
Moons.
	Here Lindsay sank at once into his role as impresario. They
believed in what they saw of him: an older man, a bit slow,
perhaps, without the fire of genius others had, but generous and
with a tang of mystery. With that mystery came glamour; Doctor
Abelard Mavrides had set his share of trends.
	He drifted from one conversation to another: genetic marriage-
politics, Ring Security intrigues, city rivalries, academic doc-
trines, day-shift clashes, artistic cliques-threads all of a single
fabric. The sheen of it, the smooth brilliance of its social design,
had lulled him into routine. Fie wondered sometimes about the
placidity he felt. How much of it was age, the mellowness of
decay? Lindsay was sixty-one.
	The wedding party was ending. Actors left to rehearse, seniors
crept to their antique warrens, the hordes of children scampered
to the creches of their gene-lines. Lindsay and Nora retired at
last to their bedroom. Nora was bright-eyed, a little tipsy. She
sat on the edge of their bed, unloosing the clasp at the back of
her formal dress. She pulled it forward and the whole complex
fretwork hissed loose across her back, in a web of strings.
	Nora had had her first rejuvenation twenty years ago, at thirty-
eight, and a second at fifty. The skin of her shoulders was
glassily smooth in the bedside lamp's roseate light. Lindsay
reached into his bedside table's upper drawer and took his old
video monocle from its padded box. Nora pulled her slim arms
from the gown's beaded sleeves and reached up to unwire her
hat. Lindsay began filming.
	"You're not undressing?" She turned. "Abelard, what are you
doing?"
	"I want to remember you like this," he said. "This perfect
moment."
	She laughed and threw the headdress aside. With a few deft
movements she yanked the jeweled pins from her hair and
tossed loose a surge of dark braids. Lindsay was aroused. He put
the monocle aside and slid out of his clothes.
They made slow, comfortable love. Lindsay, though, had felt
the sting of mortality that night, and it put the spur into him.
Passion seized him; he made love with ardent urgency, and she
responded. He climaxed hard, looking throughout the heart-
beats of orgasm at his own iron hand on her sleek shoulder. He
lay gasping, his heart beating loud in his ears. After a moment
he moved aside. She sighed, stretched, and laughed.
"Wonderful," she said. "I'm happy, Abelard."
	"I love you, darling," he said. "You're my life."
	She leaned up on one elbow. "You're all right, sweetheart?"
	Lindsay's eyes were slinging. "I was talking with Dietrich Ross
tonight," he said carefully, "He has a rejuving program he wants
me to try."
	"Oh," she said, delighted. "Good news."
	"It's risky."
	"Listen, darling, being old is risky. The rest of it is just a
matter of tactics. All you need is some minor decatabolism; any
lab can handle that. You don't need anything ambitious. That
can wait another twenty years."
	"It'll mean dropping my mask to someone. Ross says this lot is
discreet, but I don't trust Ross. Vetterling and Pongpianskul had
a peculiar scene tonight. Ross abetted them."
	She unraveled one of her braids. "You're not old, darling, and
you've been pretending it loo long. Your history won't be a
problem much longer. The diplomats are winning their rights
back, and you're a Mavrides now. Regent Vetterling's
unplanned, and no one thinks less of him."
	"Of course they do."
	"Maybe a little. That's not it, though. That's not why you've
put this off. Your eyes look puffy, Abelard. Have you been
taking your antioxidants?"
	Lindsay was silent a moment. He sat up in bed, propping
himself up with his untiring prosthetic arm. "It's my mortality,"
he said. "It meant so much to me once. It's all I have left of my
old life, my old convictions. . . ."
	"But you're not slaying the same by letting yourself age. You
should stay young if you want to preserve your old feelings."
	"There's only one way to do that. Vera Kelland's way."
	Her hands stopped with the braid half-twisted. "I'm sorry,"
Lindsay said. "But it's there somewhere: the shadow.... I'm
afraid, Nora. If I'm young again it will change things. All these
years that there's been such joy for us ... I froze here, lying in
the shadows, safe with you, and happy. To be young again, to
take this risk -I'll be out in the open. Eyes will be watching."
	She caressed his check. "Darling, I'll watch over you. I'll
protect you. No one alive will hurt you without coming through
me first."
	"I know that, and I'm glad for it, but I can't shake off this
feeling. Is it just guilt? Guilt, that life has been good to us, that
we've had love while those others died like rats in a corner?"
His voice trembled; he looked at the sienna weave of the bed-
spread in the lamp's mild glow. "How long can the Peace go
on? The old despise us while the young see through us. Things
must change, and how could they be better? It can only be
worse for us. . . . Sweetheart. . . ." He met her eyes. "I remember the days when we had nothing, not even the air to breathe,
and the rot crept in all around us. Everything we've gained
since then has been sheer profit to us, but it's not been
real . . . What's between us two is real, that's all. Tell me that if
this all collapses, you'll still be with me. . . ."
	She took his hands, curling the iron one over her own. "What's
brought this on? Is it Constantine?"
	"Vetterling wants to bring one of Constantine's men into the
Clique."
	"Burn him, I knew that despot came into this somehow. He's
what frightens you, isn't he? Stirring up old tragedies. ... I feel
better now that I know who I'm facing!"
	"It's not just him, darling. Listen: Goldreich-Tremaine can't
stay on top forever. The Investor Peace is crumbling; it'll be
open struggle again between Shaper and Mechanist. The military wing is bound to reassert itself. We'll lose the
capitalship-"
	"This is pure alarm, Abelard. We haven't lost anything yet.
The Detentistes in G-T have never been stronger. My
diplomats-"
	"I know you're strong. You'll win, I think. But if you don't, if
we have to sundog it-"
	"Sundog? We're not refugees, darling, we're Mavrides genetics,
with offices, property, tenure! This is our fortress! We can't just
abandon this, when it's given us so much. . . . You'll feel different after the treatment. When your youth is back you'll see
things differently."
	"I know," Lindsay said. "And it scares me."
	"I love you, Abelard. Tell me you'll call Ross tomorrow."
	"Oh, no," Lindsay said. "It would be a bad mistake to seem
too eager."
	"When, then?"
	"Oh, a few more years; that's nothing by Ross's standards. . ."
	"But Abelard ... it hurts me, watching age cut into you. It's
gone far enough.  It's just not reasonable. . . ."  Her eyes filled
with tears. Lindsay  was startled  and  alarmed. "Don't cry, Nora.  You'll hurt yourself." He put his arms around her.
	She embraced him. "Can't we keep what we have? You've
made me doubt myself."
	"I'm a fool," Lindsay said. "I'm in good shape, there's no need
to be rash. I'm sorry I've said all this." Her eyes were dry again. "I'll win. We'll win. We'll be young and strong together. You'll see."

GOLDREICH-TREMAINE COUNCIL STATE: 16-4-'53

	Lindsay had put off this meeting as long as possible.  Now
antioxidants and his special diet were no longer enough. He was
sixty-eight.
	The demoralization clinic was in the outskirts of Goldreich-
Tremaine, part of the growing cluster of inflatable subbles. The
tube-linked bubbles could mushroom or vanish overnight, a
perfect habitat for Black Medicals and other dubious enclaves.
	Mechanists lurked here, hunting Shaper life-extension while
evading Shaper law. Supply and demand had conjured up corruption, while Goldreich-Tremaine grew lax with success. The capital had overreached itself, and cracks in the economy were papered over with black money.
	Fear had driven Lindsay to this point: fear that things might
fall apart and find him weak. Ross had promised him anonymity. He would be in and out in a hurry, two days at the most.
	"I don't want anything major," Lindsay told the old woman.
"Just a decatabolism."
	"Did you bring your gene line records?"
	"No."
	"That complicates matters." The black-market demortalist
looked at him with an oddly girlish lilt of the head. "Genetics
determine the nature of the side-effects. Is that natural aging or
cumulative damage?"
	"It's natural."
	"Then we can try something less fine-tuned. Hormonals with a
deoxidation flush for free radicals. Quick and dirty. But it'll
bring your sparkle back."
	Lindsay thought of Pongpianskul and his leathery skin. "What
treatment do you use yourself?"
	"That's confidential."
	"How old are you?"
	The woman smiled. "You shouldn't pry, friend. The less we
know about each other, the better."
	Lindsay gave her a Look. She failed to catch it. He Looked
again. She didn't know the language.
	He crawled with unease. "I can't go through with this," he said.
"I find you too hard to trust." Lindsay floated toward the
bubble's exit, away from its free-fall core of hospital scanners
and samplers.
	"Is our price too high, Dr. Abelard Mavrides?" the woman
called out.
	His mind raced as his worst fears were realized. He turned,
determined to face her down. "Someone has misled you."
	"We have our own intelligence."
	He studied her kinesics warily. The wrinkles of her face were
very slightly wrong, not matching the muscles beneath the skin.
"You're young," he said. "You only look old."
	"Then we share one fraud. For you, that's only one of many."
	"Ross told me you were dependable," he said. "Why risk your
situation by annoying me?"
	"We want the truth."
	He stared. "How ambitious. Try the scientific method. And in
the meantime, let's talk sense."
	The young woman smoothed her medical tunic with wrinkled
hands. "Pretend I'm a theatre audience, Dr. Mavrides. Tell me
about your ideology."
	"I don't have one."
	"What about the Investor Peace? All those Detentiste plays?
Did you think you would heal the Schism with this Investor
fraud?"
	"You're younger than I thought," he said. "If you ask me that,
you must have never seen the war."
	She glared at him. "We were raised in the Peace! Children,
told from the creche that love and reason would sweep the war
aside! But we read history. Not Juliano's version but the bitter
truth. Do you know what happens to groups whose innovations
fail? At best they're shuffled off to some wretched outpost. At
worst they're hunted down, picked off, turned against each
other-"
	The truth of it stung him. "But some live!"
	The girl laughed. "You're unplanned, so why should you care
for us? Stupidity is life and breath to you."
	"You're one of Margaret Juliano's people," he said. "The
	Superbrights." He stared at her. He had never met a
Superbright before. They were supposed to be closely sheltered,
constantly under study.
	"Margaret Juliano," she said. "From your Midnight Clique.
She helped design us. She's a Detentiste! When the Peace falls,
we'll fall with her! They're always prying at us, spying, looking
for flaws. . . ." Her eyes were wild in the wrinkled face. "Do you
realize the potential we have? There are no rules, no souls, no
limits! But dogmas hedge us in. False wars and stupid loyalties.
The heaped-up garbage of the Schismatrix. Others wallow in it,
hiding from total freedom! But we want all the truth, without
conditions. We take our reality raw. We want all eyes open,
always: and if it takes a cataclysm, then we have a thousand
ready. . . ."
	"No, wait," Lindsay said. The girl was a Superbright; she could
he no more than thirty. It appalled him to see her so fanatic, so
willing to repeat his errors: his, and Vera's. "You're too young
for absolutes. For God's sake, no pure gestures. Give it fifty
years first. Give it a hundred! You have all the time you want!"
	"We don't think the way they want us to," the girl said. "And
they'll kill us for it. But not until we've pried the worldskull
open and put our needles in."
	"Wait," Lindsay said. "Maybe the Peace is doomed. But you
can save yourselves. You're clever. You can - "
	"Life's a joke, friend. Death's the punch line." She raised her
hand and vanished.
	Lindsay gasped. "What have you - ?" He stopped suddenly. His own voice sounded odd to him. The room's acoustics seemed
different. The machines, however, were producing the same
quiet hums and subdued beeps.
	He approached the machines. "Hello? Young girl. Let's talk
first. Believe me, I can understand." His voice had changed; it
had lost the subtle raspincss of age. He touched his throat
left-handed. His chin had a heavy growth of beard. Shocked, he
tugged at it. It was his own hair.
He floated closer to the machines, touched one. It rustled
beneath his hand. He seized it in a fury; it crumpled at once,
showing a flimsy lathwork of cellulose and plastic. He tore into
the next machine. Another mockup. In the center of the complex was a child's tape recorder, humming and beeping faithfully. He snatched it up left-handed and was suddenly aware of his left arm: a lingering soreness in the muscle.
	He tore off his shirt and jacket. His stomach was taut, flat; the
graying hair on his chest had been painstakingly depilated.
	Again he felt his face. He had never worn a beard, but it felt
like two weeks' growth, at least.
	The girl must have drugged him on the spot. Then someone
had given him a cell-wash, reversed catabolism, reset the
Hayflick limit on his skin and major organs, at the same time
exercising his unconscious body to restore muscle tone. Then,
when all was done, replaced him in the same position and
somehow restored him to instant awareness.
	Delayed shock struck him; the world seemed to shimmer.
Compared to this, almost anything was easier to doubt: his
name, his business here, his life. They left me the beard as a
calendar, he thought dazedly. Unless that too was fraud.
	He took a deep breath. His lungs felt tight, stretched. They had stripped them of the tar from smoking.
	"Oh God," he said aloud. "Nora." By now she would be past
panic: she would be full of reckless hatred for whoever had
taken him. He hurried at once to the bubble's exit.
	The grapelike cluster of cheap inflatables was hooked to an
interurban tube-road. He floated at once down the lacquered
corridor and emerged through a filament doorway into the
swollen transparent nexus of crossroads. Below was Goldreich-
Tremaine, with its Besetzny and Patterson Wheels spinning in
slow majesty; with the moleculelike links and knobs of other
suburbs shining purple, gold, and green, surrounding the city
like beaded yarn. At least he was still in G-T. He headed at
once for home.

GOLDREICH-TREMAINE COUNCIL STATE: 18-9-'53

	The chaos repulsed Constantine. Evacuations were untidy affairs. The docking port was littered with trash: clothing, ship
schedules, inhaler wrappers, propaganda leaflets. Baggage limits
were growing stricter by the hour. Not far away four Shapers
were pulling items from their overweight luggage and spitefully
smashing them against the walls and mooring-benches.
	Long lines waited at the interaction terminals. The overloaded
terminals were charging by the second. Some of the refugees
were finding that it cost more money to sell their faltering
stocks than the stocks themselves were worth.
	A synthetic voice on the address system announced the next
flight to Skimmers Union. Instant pandemonium swept the port.
Constantine smiled. His own craft, the Friendship Serene, had
that destination. Unlike the others, his berth was secure. Not
simply in the ship but in the new capital as well.
Goldreich-Tremaine had overreached itself. It had leaned too
heavily on the mystique of its capitalship. When that was gone,
seized  by militants in  a  rival  city, G-T's web of credit had
nothing to sustain it.
	He liked Skimmers Union. It floated in circumtitanian orbit,
above the bloody glimmer of the clouds of Titan. In Skimmers
Union the source of the city's wealth was always reassuringly
close: the inexhaustible mass of rich organics that choked the
Titanian sky. Fusion-powered dredges punched through its at-
mosphere, sweeping up organics by the hundreds of tons. Methane, ethane, acetylene, cyanogen: a planetary feedstock for the
Union's polymer factories.
	Passengers were disembarking; a handful compared to those
leaving, and not a savory handful. A group in baggy uniforms
floated past customs. Sundogs, clearly, and not even Shaper
sundogs: their skins shone with antiseptic oils.
	Constantine's bodyguards murmured to one another in his
earpiece, sizing up the latest arrivals. The four guards were
unhappy with Constantine's reluctance to leave. Constantine's
many local enemies were close to desperation as Goldreich-
Tremaine's banks neared collapse. The guards were keyed to a
fever pitch.
	But Constantine lingered. He had defeated the Shapers on
their own ground, and the pleasure of it was intense. He lived
for moments like this one. He was perhaps the only calm man
in a crowd of close to two thousand. Never had he felt so utterly
in control.
	His enemies had been crippled by their underestimation. They
had taken his measure and erred completely. Constantine him-
self did not know that measure; that was the pang that drove
him on.
	He considered his enemies, one by one. The militants had
chosen him to attack the Midnight Clique, and his success had
been thorough and impressive. Regent Charles Vetterling had
been the first to fall. Vetterling fancied himself a survivor.
Encouraged by Carl Zeuner, he had thrown in his lot with the
militants. The power of the Midnight Clique was broken from
within. It splintered into warring camps. Those who held their
ground were denounced by others more desperate.
	The Mechanist defector, Sigmund Fetzko, had "faded." These
clays, those calling his residence received only ingenious delays
and temporizing from his household's expert system. Fetzko's
image lived; the man himself was dead, and too polite to admit it.
	Neville Pongpianskul was dead, assassinated in the Republic at
Constantine's order.
	Chancellor-General Margaret Juliano had simply vanished.
Some enemy of her own had finished her. This still puzzled
Constantine; on the day of her disappearance he had received a
large crate, anonymously. Cautiously opened by bodyguards, it
had revealed a block of ice with her name elegantly chiseled on
its surface: Margaret Juliano, on ice. She had not been seen
since.
	Colonel-Professor Nora Mavrides had drastically overplayed
her hand. Her husband, the false Lindsay, had disappeared, and
she had accused Constantine of kidnapping him. When her
husband returned again, with a wild tale about Superbright
renegades and black market clinics, she was disgraced.
	Constantine was still not sure what had happened. The most
likely explanation was that Nora Mavrides had been double-
crossed by her burnt-out little cadre of diplomats. Probably they
had seen what was coming and set up their one-time protectress,
hoping that the new Skimmers Union regime would thank them
for it. If so, they were grossly mistaken.
	Constantine looked about the cavernous station, adjusting his
videoshades for closeups. Amid the fretting Shapers in their
overelaborate finery was a growing minority of others. An imported cargo of sundogs. Here and there shabbily clad ideological derelicts, their faces wreathed in smiles, were comparing
lace-sleeved garments to their torsos or lurking with predatory
nonchalance beside evacuees lightening their luggage.
	"Vermin," Constantine said. The sight depressed him.
"Gentlemen, it's time we moved on."
	The guards led him across the chained-off entry to a private
ramp padded in velcro. Constantine's clingtight boots crunched
and shredded across the fabric.
	He floated down the free-fall embarkation tube to the airlock
of the Friendship Serene. Once inside he took his favorite acceleration chair and plugged in on video to enjoy the takeoff.
	Within the port's skeletal gantryways, the smaller ships queued up for embarkation tubes, dwarfed by the stylized bulk of an
Investor starship. Constantine craned his neck, causing the hull
cameras of the Friendship Serene to swivel in slaved obedience.
"Is that Investor ship still here?" he said aloud. He smiled. "Do
you suppose they're hunting bargains?"
	He lifted his videoshades. Within the ship's cabin his guards
clustered around an overhead tank, huffing tranquilizer gas
from breathing masks. One looked up, red-eyed. "May we go
into suspension now, sir?"
	Constantine nodded sourly. Since the war had started up again, his guards had lost all sense of humor.

AN INVESTOR TRADE SHIP: 22-9-'53

Nora looked up at her husband, who sprawled above her in a
towering chair. His face was hidden by a dark beard and opaque
wraparound sunshades. His hair was close-cropped and he wore
a Mech jumpsuit. His old, scarred diplomatic bag rested on the
scratchy plush of the deck. He was taking it with him. He meant
to defect.
	The heavy gravity of the Investor ship weighed on both of them like iron. "Stop pacing, Nora," he said. "You'll only exhaust
yourself."
	"I'll rest later," she said. Tension knotted her neck and shoulders.
	"Rest now. Take the other chair. If you'll close your eyes,
sleep a little ... in almost no time-"
	"I'm not going with you." She pulled off her own sunshades
and rubbed the bridge of her nose. The light in the cabin was
the light Investors favored: a searing blaze of blue-white radiance, drenched in ultraviolet.
	She hated that light. Somehow she had always resented the
Investors for robbing her Family's deaths of meaning. And the
three months she'd once spent in a ship like this one had been
the eeriest time of her life. Lindsay had been quick, adaptable,
the consummate sundog, as willing to deal with the aliens as he
was with anyone. She'd wondered at it then. And now they had
come full circle.
	He said, "You came this far. You wouldn't have, if you didn't
want to come with me. I know you, Nora. You're still the same,
even if I've changed."
	"I came because I wanted to be with you for every moment
that I could." She fought down the tears, her face frozen. The
sensation was horrifying, a black nausea. Too many tears, she
thought, had been pushed away for too long. The day would
come when she would choke on them.
	Constantine used every weakness in Goldreich-Tremaine, she
thought. And my special weakness was this man. When Abelard
came back from the rejuvenation clinic, three weeks late and so
changed that the household robots wouldn't let him in ... But
even that was not so bad as the days without him, hunting for
him, finding that the black-market subble he'd gone to had been
deflated and put away, wondering what furtive Star Chamber
was picking him to shreds. . . .
	"This is my fault," she said. "I accused Constantine with no
proof, and he humiliated me. Next time I'll know better."
	"Constantine had nothing to do with it," he said. "I know what
I saw in that clinic. They were Superbrights."
	"I can't believe in the Cataclysts," she said. "Those
Superbrights are watched like jewels; they don't have room for
wild conspiracies. What you saw was a fraud; the whole thing
was staged to draw me out. And I fell for it."
	"Don't be proud, Nora. It's blinded you. The Cataclysts
abducted me, and you won't even admit they exist. You can't
win, because you can't bring back the past. Let it go, and come
with me."
	"When I see what Constantine did to the Clique-"
	"It's not your fault! My God, aren't there disasters enough
without your heaping them all on your own shoulders?
Goldreich-Tremaine is through! We have to live now! I told you
years ago that it couldn't last, and now it's over!" He flung his
arms wide. The left one, tugged by gravity, fell limply; the other
whirred with smooth precision through a powered arc.
	They had been over this a hundred times, and she saw that his nerves were frayed. Under the influence of the treatment his
hard-won patience had vanished in a blaze of false youth. He
was shouting at her. "You're not God! You're not history!
You're not the Ring Council! Don't flatter yourself! You're
nothing now, you're a target, a scapegoat! Run, Nora! Sundog
it!"
	"The Mavrides clan needs me," she said.
	"They're better off without you. You're an embarrassment to
them now, we both are-"
	"And the children?"
	He was silent a moment. "I'm sorry for them, more sorry than
I can say, but they're adults now and they can take their own
chances. They're not the problem here, we are! If we make
things easy for the enemy, just slip away, evaporate, we'll be
forgotten. We can wait it out."
	"And give the fascists their way in everything? The assassins,
the killers? How long before the Belt fills up again with Shaper
agents, and little wars blaze up in every corner?"
	"And who'll stop that? You?"
	"What about you, Abelard? Dressed as a stinking Mechanist
with stolen Shaper data in that bag! Do you ever think of
anyone's life but your own? Why in God's name don't you
stand up for the helpless instead of betraying them? Do you
think it's easier for me without you? I'll go on fighting, but
without you there'll be no heart in me."
	He groaned. "Listen. I was a sundog before I met you, you
know just how little I had. ... I don't want that emptiness, no
one caring, no one knowing . . . And another betrayal on my
conscience. . . . Nora, we had almost forty years! This place was
good to us, but it's falling apart on its own! Good times will
come again. We have all the time there is! You wanted more
life, and I went out and got it for you. Now you want me to
throw it away. I won't be a martyr, Nora. Not for anyone."
	"You always talked about mortality," she said. "You're different now."
	"If I changed it was because you wanted me to."
	"Not like this. Not treason."
	"We'll die for nothing."
	"Like the others," she said, regretting it at once. And there it
was before them: the old guilt in all its stark intimacy. Those
others, to whom duty was more than life. Those they had
abandoned, those they had killed in the Shaper outpost. That
was the crime the two of them had struggled to efface, the crime
that had bound them together. "Well, that's what you're asking,
isn't it? To betray my own people again, for you!"
	There. She had said it. Now there was no going back. She
waited in pain for the words that would free her from him.
	"You were my people," he said. "I should have known I would
never have one for long. I'm a sundog, and it's my way, not
yours. I knew you wouldn't come." He leaned his head against
the bare fingers of his artificial arm. Piercing highlights glinted
off the harsh iron. "Stay and fight, then. You could win, I
think."
	It was the first time he had lied to her. "But I can win," she
said. "It won't be easy, we won't have all we had, but we're not
beaten yet. Stay, Abelard, please. Please! I need you. Ask me for
anything except to give up fighting."
	I can't ask you to change," her husband said. "People only
change if you give them time. Someday this thing that's haunted
us will wear away, if we both live. I think the love is stronger
than the guilt. If it is, and someday you feel your obligations no
longer need you, then come after me. Find me. . . ."
	"I will   I promise it. Abelard. ... If I'm killed like the others
and you live on safely then say you won't forget me "
"Never. I swear it by everything we had between us "
"Goodbye, then." She climbed up into the huge Investor chair
to kiss him. She felt his steel hand go around her wrist like a
manacle. She kissed him lightly. Then she tugged, and he let go.
	
CHAPTER SIX

AN INVESTOR TRADE SHIP: 29-9-'53
Lindsay lay on the floor of his cavernous stateroom, breathing
deeply. The ozone-charged air of the Investor ship stung his
nose, which was sunburned despite his oils. The stateroom walls
were blackened metal, studded with armored orifices. From one
of them a freshet of distilled water trickled, cascading limply in
the heavy gravity.
	This stateroom had seen a lot of use. Faint scratches
cuneiformed the floor and walls, almost to the ceiling. Humans
were not the only passengers to pay Investor fare.
	If modern Shaper exosociology was right, the Investors them-
selves were not the first owners of these starships. Covered in
vainglorious mosaics and metal bas-reliefs, each Investor craft
looked unique. But close analysis showed the underlying basic
structure: blunt hexagons at bow and stern, with six long rectangular sides. Current thought held that the Investors had bought,
found, or stolen them.
	The ship's Ensign had given him a pallet, a broad flat mattress
patterned in brown-and-white hexagons, built for Investors. Its
surface was as harsh as burlap. It smelted faintly of Investor scale-oil.
	Lindsay had tested the metal wall of his stateroom, wondering
about the scratches. Though it felt faintly grainy, the steel zips
of his foot-gloves slid on it like glass. Still, it might be softer
	under extremes of temperature and pressure. A very large taloned beast afloat in a pool of high-pressure liquid ethane, for
	instance, might have scratched the walls in an attempt to burrow
out.
	The gravity was painful, but the stateroom lights had been
turned down. The cabin was huge and unfurnished; his scattering of clothes on magnetic hooks seemed like pathetic scraps.
	It was odd of the Investors to leave a room empty, even if it
doubled as a zoo. Lindsay lay quietly, trying to catch his breath,
thinking about it.
	The armored hatchway rang, then shunted open. Lindsay
levered himself up with the artificial arm, the only limb not sore
from gravity. He smiled. "Yes, Ensign? News?"
	The Ensign entered the room. He was small for an Ensign, a
mere forearm's length taller than Lindsay himself, and his wiry
build was accented by his birdlike habit of ducking his head. He
looked more like a crewman than an Ensign. Lindsay studied
him thoughtfully.
	Academics still speculated about the Investor ranking system.
The Ship's Commanders were always female, the only females
aboard ship. They were twice the size of crewmen, massively
built. With their size went a sluggish calm, a laconic assumption
of power. Ensigns were second in command, as combination
diplomats and ministers. The rest of the crew formed an adoring
male harem. The scampering crewmen with their bead-bright
eyes weighed three times as much as a man, but around their
monstrous commanders they almost seemed to flutter.
	The frills were the central kinesic display. The reptilian Investors had long ribbed frills behind their heads, rainbow-tinted
translucent skin netted with blood vessels. Frills had evolved for
temperature control; they could be spread to absorb sunlight or
opened in shade to dispel heat. In civilized Investor life they
were a relic, like the human eyebrow, which had evolved to
deflect sweat. Like the eyebrow, their social use was now paramount.
	The Ensign's frill bothered Lindsay. It flickered too much.
Rapid flickering was usually interpreted as a sign of amusement.
In human beings, bad laughter kinesics were a sign of deep
stress. Lindsay, despite his professional interest, had no desire to

	be the first to witness an Investor's hysteria. He hoped it was
simply a repulsive mannerism. This ship was new to the Solar
System and its crew was unused to humanity.
	"No news, Artist," the Ensign said in pained trade English. "A
further discussion of payment."
	"Good business," Lindsay said in Investor. His throat ached
from the high-pitched fluting, but he preferred it to the Ensign's
eerie attempts to master human language.
	This Ensign was not like the first he had met. That Investor
had been smooth and urbane, his vocabulary heavy with glib
cliches gleaned from human video broadcasts. This new Ensign
was visibly struggling.
	Clearly the Investors had sent in their best to make first
contact. After thirty-seven years, it seemed that the Solar System
was now considered safe for Investor fringe elements. "Our
Commander wants you on tape," the Ensign said in English.
	Lindsay reached automatically for the thin chain around his
neck. His video monocle, with its treasured film of Nora, hung
there. "I have a tape which is mostly blank. I can't surrender it,
but-"
	"Our Commander is very fond of her tape. Her tape has many
other images but not one of your species. She will study it."
	"I'd like another audience with the Commander," Lindsay
said. "The first was so brief. I will gladly submit to the tape. You
have your camera?"
	The Ensign blinked, the lucid nictitating membrane flickering
upward over his dark, bulging eyeball. The dimness of the room
seemed to upset him. "I have the tape." He opened his over-
the-shoulder valise and produced a flat round canister. He
grasped the canister with two of his huge toes and set it on the
black gunmetal floor. "You will open the canister. You will then
make amusing and characteristic movements of your species,
which the tape will see. Continue to do this until the tape
understands you."
	Lindsay wobbled his jaw from side to side in imitation of the
Investor nod. The Investor seemed satisfied. "Language is not
necessary. The tape does not hear sound." The Investor turned
to the door. "I will return for the tape in two of your hours."
	Left alone, Lindsay studied the canister. The ridged and gilded
metal lop was as wide as both outstretched hands. Before opening it he waited a moment, savoring his disgust. It was as much self-directed as aimed at his hosts.
	The Investors had not asked to be deified; they had merely
pursued their own gain. They had been aware of mankind for centuries. They were much older than mankind, but they had
thoughtfully refrained from interfering until they saw that they
could wring a decent profit from the species. Seen from an
Investor's viewpoint, their actions were straightforward.
	Lindsay opened the canister. A spool of iron-gray tape nestled
inside, with ten centimeters of off-white leader. Lindsay put the
lid aside-the thin metal was heavy as lead in the Investor
gravity-and then froze.
	The tape rustled in its box. The leader end flicked upward,
twisting, and the whole length of it began to uncoil. It rose,
whipping and rippling, faint sheens of random color coiling
along its length. Within seconds it had formed an open cloud of
bright ribbon, supporting itself on a stiff, half-flattened
latticework.
	Lindsay, still kneeling and moving only his eyes, watched cautiously. The white end-piece was the tape creature's head, he
realized. The head moved on a long craned loop, scanning the
room for movement.
	The tape creature stirred restlessly, stretching itself in a loose-
looped open mass of rolling corkscrews. At its loosest, it was a
bloated, giddy yarnball as tall as a man, its stiffened support-
loops thinly hissing across the floor.
	He'd thought it was machinery at first. Dangerous machinery,
because the edges of the warping tape were as thin as razors.
But there was an unplanned, organic ease to its coiling.
He had not yet moved. It didn't seem able to see him.
He shook his head sharply, and the heavy sunshades on his
forehead flew across the room. The tape's head darted after
them at once.
	The mimicry started from the tail. The tape shrank, crumpling
like packing tissue, sketching the sunshades' form in tightly
crinkled ribbon. Before it had quite completed the job, the tape
seemed to lose interest. It hesitated, watching the inert
sunglasses, then fell apart in a loose, whipping mass.
	Briefly it mimicked Lindsay's crouching form, looping itself
into a gappy man-sized sculpture of rustling tape. Its tinted
ribbon quickly matched the rust-on-black tinge of his coveralls.
Then the tape head looked elsewhere and it flew to pieces, its
colors racing fretfully.
	It flickered as Lindsay watched. Its white head scanned slowly,
almost surreptitiously. It flashed muddy brown, the color of
Investor hide. Slowly, a memory, either biological or cybernetic,
took hold of it. It began to bunch and crumple into a new form.
The image of a small Investor took shape. Lindsay was thrilled.
	No human being had ever seen an infant Investor, and they
were supposedly very rare. But soon Lindsay could tell from the
proportions that the tape was modeling an adult female. The
tape was too small to form a full-scale replica, but the accuracy
of the knee-high model astonished him. Tiny blisters on the
ribbon reproduced the hard, pebbly skin of the skull and neck;
the tiny eyes, two tinted bumps, seemed full of expression.
	Lindsay felt a chill. He recognized the individual. And the
expression was one of dull animal pain.
	The tape was mimicking the Investor Commander. She was
gasping, her barrel-like ribs heaving. She squatted awkwardly,
one clawed hand spread across each upthrust knee. The mouth
opened in spasms, showing poorly mimicked peg teeth and the
hollow paper-thin walls of the model's head.
	The ship's Commander was sick. No one had ever seen an
Investor ill. The strangeness of it, Lindsay thought, must have
stuck in the tape's memory. This opportunity was not to be
missed. With glacial slowness Lindsay unsnapped his coverall
and exposed the video monocle on its chain. He began filming.
	The scaled belly tightened and two edges of tape opened at the base of the model's heavy tail. A rounded white mass with the
gleam of dampness appeared, a lightly wrapped oblong of tape:
an egg.
	It was a slow process, a painful one. The egg was leathery; the contractions of the oviduct were compressing it. At last it was
free, though still connected to the tape's parent body by a
transparent length of ribbon. The Investor captain's image
turned, shuffling, then bent to examine the egg with a sick, rapt
intensity. Slowly her huge hand stretched out, scratched the egg,
sniffed the fingers. Her frill began to rise stiffly, engorged with
blood. Her arms trembled.
	She attacked her egg. She bit savagely into the narrow end,
shearing into the leathery shell with the badly mimicked teeth.
Yellow ribbon showed, a cheeselike yolk.
	She feasted, the taped arms flushing yellow with slime. The
frill jutted behind her head, stiff with fury. The furtive nastiness
of her crime was unmistakable; it crossed the barrier of species
easily. As easily as wealth.
	Lindsay put his monocle away. The tape, attracted by the
movement, unlaced its head and lifted it blankly. Lindsay waved
his arms at it and the model fell into tangles. He stood up and
began to shuffle back and forth in the heavy gravity. It watched
him, coiling and flickering.

DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 10-10-'53

Lindsay lurched clown the entry ramp, his scuffed foot-gloves
skidding. After the blaze aboard the starship the disembarkation
mall seemed murky, subaqueous. Dizziness seized him. He
might have managed free-fall, but the Dembowska asteroid's
feeble gravity made his stomach lurch.
	The lobby was sprinkled with travelers from the other Mechanist cartels. He'd never seen so many Mechs in one place, and
despite himself the sight alarmed him. Ahead, luggage and pas-
sengers entered the scanning racks of customs. Beyond them
loomed the glass fronts of the Dembowska duty-free shops.
	Lindsay shuddered suddenly. He had never felt air so cold. An
icy draft seeped through his thin coveralls and the flexible fabric
of his foot-gloves. His breath was steaming. Dazed, he headed
for the customs.
	A young woman waited just before it, poised easily on one
booted foot. She wore dark tights and a fur-collared jacket.
"Captain-Doctor?" she said.
	Lindsay stopped with difficulty, gripping the carpet with his
toes.
	"The bag, please?" Lindsay handed her his ancient diplomatic
bag, crammed with data lifted from Kosmosity files. She took
his arm in a friendly fashion, leading him through an unmarked
door past the customs scanners. "I'm Policewife Greta Beatty.
Your liaison." They went down a flight of stairs to an office. She
handed the bag to a woman in uniform and accepted a stamped
envelope in return.
	She led him out onto a lower floor of the duty-free mall,
prying open the envelope with her lacquered nails. "This holds
your new papers," she said. She handed him a credit card. "You
are now Auditor Andrew Beta Milosz. Welcome to Dembowska
Cartel."
	"Thank you, Policewife."
	"Greta will do. May I call you Andrew?"
	"Call me Beta," Lindsay said. "Who picked the name?"
	"His parents. Andrew Milosz died recently, in Bettina Cartel.
But you won't find his death in the records; his next of kin sold
his identity to the Dembowska Harem Police. All identifying
marks in his records have been erased and replaced with yours.
Officially, he emigrated here." She smiled. "I'm here to help
you over the transition. To keep you happy."
	"I'm freezing," Lindsay said.
	"We'll see to that at once." She led him past the frosted glass
into one of the duty-free shops, a clothier's. When they
reemerged Lindsay wore new coveralls, of thicker quilted fabric
with inset vertical puckers at wrists and ankles. The tasteful
charcoal gray matched his new fur-lined velcro boots. Gloves
were clipped to the vest pocket of his flared fuzzplastic jacket.
He sported a microphone boutonniere in one creamtone lapel.
	"Now your hair," said Greta Beatty. She carried his new zip-up
wardrobe bag. "It's in an awful state."
	"It was gray," Lindsay said. "The roots grew in black. So I
shaved it off. Since then it's been on its own." He looked at her
levelly.
	"You want to keep the beard?"
	"Yes."
	"Whatever makes you happy."
	After ten minutes under the stylers Lindsay's hair was brushed
back from his forehead and temples in slickly brilliantined
curves. The beard was trimmed.
	Lindsay had been watching his companion's kinesics. There
was a calmness, a quietude about her movements that belied her
youth. Lindsay felt strained, hypertensive, but Greta's smooth
cheerfulness was beginning to affect him through kinesic con-
tamination. He found himself smiling involuntarily.
	"Hungry yet?"
	"Yes."
	"We'll go to the Periscope. You look fine, Beta. You'll get the
hang of Dembowska gravity in no time. Stick close by me." She
wrapped her arm around his. "I like your antique arm."
	"You're staying with me?"
	"As long as you like."
	"I see. And if I suggest you leave?"
	"Do you really think you'll be better off for that?"
	Lindsay considered this. "No. Forgive me, Policewife." He felt
touchy, obscurely annoyed. His new identity bothered him. He
had never had one forced on him before. His old training urged
him to lake on local coloration, but the years had calcified him.
	Greta led him down two flights of stirruped escalators, deeper
into the asteroid. The floor and walls were of scuffed and
ancient metal, lined with new velcro. The crowd moved in
stately, shredding leaps. Overhead, citizens in a hurry flung
themselves along with ceiling loops. They followed a very old
Dembowskan who was making good time along the wall in a
velcro-wheeled prosthetic chair. "We'll have a little something
to eat," Greta Beatty said. "You'll feel better."
	He considered mimicking her kinesics. He was a little rusty but
he thought he could manage it. It might be the smartest thing: to
match her easy affability with his own. He didn't want to. He hurt too much.
	"Greta, this easy generosity surprises me. Why are you this
way?"
	"A policewife? Oh, I wasn't involved in security at first. I was a
Carnassus wife, a strictly erotic relationship. Promotion came
later. I'm not in espionage. I just do liaison work."
	"Many others before me?"
	"A few. Sundogs mostly. Not ranking Shaper academics."
	"You've seen Michael Carnassus?"
	She smiled distantly. "Only in the flesh. We're almost there.
Harem Police have reserved tables. You'll want one of the
windows, I'm sure."
	The dim intimacy of the Periscope, to Lindsay's light-blasted
eyes, seemed impossibly gloomy. Steam rose off the food on the
tables. He put on his left glove. He had never been anywhere so
cold.
	Cool blue light poured through the bulging, concave windows.
Lindsay glanced through the metaglass briefly, saw a rocky cav-
ern half full of water. An observation sphere the size of a house
was anchored to the cavern's ceiling. Beside it was a bank of
blue spotlights, mounted across the ceiling on arching rails.
Lindsay set his boots into the stirrups of a low-grav chair. The
seat warmed beneath him; its padded saddle was wired with
heating elements.
	Greta smiled at him across the table, her blue eyes huge in the dimness. It was a friendly smile without flirtation in it; without,
in fact, any subterranean elements at all. No fear, no shyness;
nothing but a well-balanced hint of mild benevolence. Her
blonde hair was parted in the middle and fell in modish
Dembowska fashion to smooth, blunt-cut edges along her ears
and cheekbones. The hair looked very clean. He had an abstract
urge to run his hand across it, the way he might run his fingers
over the spine of a book.
	The fiery letters of the menu appeared in the table's dark
surface. Lindsay put his gloved hand on the tabletop. Its surface
was sticky with adhesive polymers. He pulled his fingers back;
the glue held him at first, then released its grip sharply, leaving
no trace. He looked at the menu. "No prices."
	"The Harem Police will pick it up. We wouldn't want you
getting a bad opinion of our cuisine." She nodded across the
restaurant. 'That gentleman in the biocuirass, at the table to
your right -that's Lewis Martinez, with his wife, Lydia. He
heads Martinez Corp, his rank is Comptroller. They say she was
born on Earth."
	"She looks well-preserved." Lindsay stared with frank curiosity
at the sinister pair, whose skill as industrial spies was a byword
in Shaper Security circles. They were speaking quietly between
courses, smiling at one another with unfeigned affection. Lind-
say felt a stab of pain.
	Greta was still talking. "The man with the tabletop servo is
Coordinator Brandt. . . . The group by the next window are
Kabuki Intrasolar types. The one in the silly jacket is
	Wells. . . ."
	"Does Ryumin ever dine here?"
"Oh . . . no." She smiled briefly. "He transmits in different
circles."
	Lindsay rubbed his bearded chin. "He's well, I hope."
She was polite. "I'm not the one to judge. He seems happy. Let
me order for you." She punched in orders on the table's key-
board wing.
"Why is it so cold?"
	"History. Fashion. Dembowska's an old colony; it suffered an
ecobreakdown. There are places where I can show you layers of
flashfrozen mold still peeling off the walls. The worst rots have
adjusted to a narrow range in temperature. When it's this cold
they're dormant. That's not the only reason, though." She gestured at the window. "That has its influence." Lindsay looked out. "The swimming pool?" Greta laughed politely. "That's the Extraterrarium, Bela."
"Burn me!" Lindsay stared outward.
	The rough-hewn cavity was slopping over with a turgid, rusttinged liquid. He'd thought it was water at first. "That's where
they    keep    the    monsters," he said.  "That observation globe-that's the Carnassus Palace, isn't it?"
"Of course."
"It's quite small."
	"It's an exact replica of the observatory of the Chaikin Expedition.  Of course it's not large.  Imagine what the Investors
charged them to ship it to the stars. Carnassus lives very modestly, Bela. It's not like Ring Security told you."
	Every diplomatic instinct held Lindsay back. With an effort, he
broke them. "But he has two hundred wives."
	"Think of us as a psychiatric staff.  Auditor. Marriage to Carnassus is an arrangement of rank. Dembowska depends on
him, and he depends on us." Lindsay said, "Could I meet Carnassus?"
	"That would he up to the Chief of Police. But what's the
point? The man can barely speak. It's not like they say in the
Rings. Carnassus is a very dazed, very gentle person, who was
terribly wounded. When his embassy was failing, he took an
experimental drug, PDKL-Ninety-five. It was supposed to help
him grasp alien modes of thought, but it shattered him. He was
a brave man. We feel pity for him. The sexual aspect is a very
minor part of it."
	Lindsay considered this. "I see. With two hundred others,
some of them favorites, presumably, it must be a rather rare
role. . . . Once a year, perhaps?"
	She was calm. "Not quite that rare, but you've grasped the
basics. I won't disguise the truth, Bela. Carnassus is not our
ruler; he's our resource. The Harem rules Dembowska because
we surround him and we're the only ones he'll talk to." She
smiled. "It's not a matriarchy. We're not mothers. We're the
police."
	Lindsay looked out the window. A drip fell and rippled. It was
liquid ethane. Just beyond the insulated metaglass the sluggish
pond was at an instantly lethal 180 degrees below zero Celsius.
A man in that reddish pool would freeze in seconds into a
bloated mass of rock. The grayish stones of the shores, Lindsay
realized suddenly, were water ice.
	Something was emerging onto the shoreline. In the dim bluish
light, the ethane's surface was pierced by what appeared to be a
rack of broken twigs. Even in the feeble gravity the creature's
movements were glacial. Lindsay pointed.
	"A sea scorpion," Greta said. "Eurypteroid, to give it its for-
mal name. It's attacking that lump on the shoreline. That black
slime is vegetation." More of the predator slid with paralytic
slowness from the thin liquid. The twigs were now revealed as
interlocking basketlike foreclaws that meshed together like
saberteeth. "Its prey is gathering energy to leap. That will take a
while. By the standards of this ecosystem, this is a lightning
attack. Look at the size of its cephalothorax, Bela."
	The sea scorpion had heaved its broad, platelike prosoma out
of the water; this crablike head-body was half a meter across.
Behind the lozenge-shaped compound eyes was the creature's
long, tapering abdomen, plated in overlapping horizontal ridges.
"It's three meters long," Greta said as a servo delivered the first
course. "Longer if you count the tailspike. A nice size for an invertebrate. Have some soup."
	"I'm watching this." The extended claws were closing on the
prey with the slow deliberation of a hydraulic door. Suddenly
the prey-creature flopped wobblingly into the air and landed in
the pool with a splash.
	"It jumps fast!" Lindsay said.
	"There's only one speed for jumping." Greta Beatty smiled.
"That's physics. Eat something. Have a breadstick." Lindsay
could not tear his eyes from the eurypteroid, which lay with its
claw-teeth intermeshed, inert and apparently exhausted. "I pity
it," he said.
	Greta was patient. "It came here as an egg, Bela. It didn't get
that large eating breadsticks. Carnassus takes good care of them.
He was the embassy's exobiologist."
	Lindsay tried some soup with the sliding trap-bowl of his
low-gravity spoon. "You seem to share his expertise."
	"Everyone in Dembowska takes an interest. in the
Extraterrarium. Local pride. Of course, the tourist trade isn't
what it was, since the Investor Peace collapsed. We make up for
it with refugees."
	Lindsay stared moodily into the pool. The food was excellent,
but his appetite was off. The eurypteroid stirred feebly. He
thought of the sculpture the Investors had given him and wondered what its droppings looked like.
	A burst of laughter came from Wells's table. "I want a word
with Wells," Lindsay said.
	"Leave it to me," she said. "Wells has Shaper contacts. Word
might leak back to the Ring Council." She looked grave. "You
wouldn't want to risk your cover before it's well established."
	"You don't trust Wells?"
	She shrugged. "That's not your worry." A new course arrived,
borne by a squeaking, velcro-footed robot. "I love the antique
servos here, don't you?" She squirted heavy cream sauce over a
meat pastry and gave him the plate. "You're under stress, Bela.
You need food. Sleep. A sauna. The good things in life. You
look edgy. Relax."
	"I live on the edge," Lindsay said.
	"Not now. You live with me. Eat something so I'll know you
feel safe."
To please her, Lindsay bit reluctantly into the pastry. It was
delicious. Appetite flooded back into him. "I have things to do," he said, stifling the urge to wolf it down.
"Think you'll do them better without food and sleep?"
"I suppose you have a point." He looked up; she handed him
the sauce bulb. As he squeezed on more sauce she passed him a
slotted wineglass. "Try the local claret." He sampled it. It was as
good as vintage Synchronis, from the Rings. "Someone stole this
technology," he said.
	"You aren't the first defector. Things are calmer here." She
pointed out the window. "Look at that xiphosuran." A lumpy
crab was sculling across the pool with intolerable sluggish calm.
"It has a lesson for you."
	Lindsay stared quietly, thinking.
	Greta's domicile was seven levels down. A silver-plated house-
hold servo took Lindsay's wardrobe bag. Greta's parlor had a
baroque furred couch with sliding stirrups and two anchored
chairs upholstered in burgundy velvet. An adhesive coffee table
held a flip-top inhaler case and a rack of cassettes.
	The bathroom had a sauna compartment and a fold-out suction toilet with a heated elastic rim. The overhead light glowed
pink with infrared heat. Standing on the icy tiles, Lindsay
dropped his glove. It fell slowly, at a pronounced slant. The
room's verticals didn't match the local gravity. This keen touch
of avant-garde interior design filled Lindsay with sudden nausea.
He leaped up and clung to the ceiling, closing his eyes until the
dizziness passed.
	Greta called through the door. "You want a sauna?"
	"Anything to get warm."
	"The controls are on the left."
	Lindsay stripped, gasping as the freezing metal of his artificial
arm brushed his bare ribs. He held the arm well away as he
stepped into the blizzard of steam. In the low gravity the air was
thick with flying water. Coughing, he groped for the breathing
mask. It was pure oxygen; in moments he felt like a hero. He
twisted the controls recklessly, biting back a scream as he was
pelted with a sudden sandblast of powdered snow. He twisted
back and let himself cook in wet heat, then stepped out. The
sauna cycled through the boiling point, sterilizing itself.
	He turbaned his damp hair, absently knotting the towel's ends
in a Goldreich-Tremaine flourish. He found pajamas his size in
the cabinet; royal blue with matching fur-lined mukluks.
	Outside, Greta had changed from her fur jacket and tights into
a quilted nightrobe with a flaring collar. For the first time he
noticed her forearms, both heavily overlayed with Mechanist
implants. The right one held some kind of weapon: a series of
short parallel tubes mounted above the wrist. There was no sign
of a trigger; it probably worked by nerve interaction. From
inside the other sleeve he caught a red flicker of readouts from
a biomonitor.
	Mechs cherished a fanatic interest in biofeedback. It was part
of most Mech programs for longevity. He hadn't thought of
Greta as a Mechanist. Despite himself, the sight shocked him.
	"You're not sleepy?"
	He yawned. "A little."
	She raised her right arm above her head, absently. A remote
control unit leaped across the room into her hand, and she
turned on the videowall. It showed an overhead view of the
Extralerrarium, taken through one of the monitors in the
Carnassus Palace.
	Lindsay joined her on the couch, tucking his mukluks into the
healed stirrups. "Not that," he said, shivering. She touched a
button; the videowall blurred and resolved into the Saturnian
surface, crawling in red and amber. Nostalgia flooded him. He
turned his face away.
	She switched scenes. A craggy landscape appeared; enormous
pits next to a blasted, flaking area cut by two huge crevasses.
"This is erotica," she said. "Skin at twenty thousand times life
size. One of my favorites." She touched buttons and the video
raced across the ominous landscape, pulling to a stop by the
root of a gigantic scaled spar. "Sec those domes?"
	"Yes."
	"Those are bacteria. This is a Mechanist, you see."
	"You?"
	She smiled. "This is often the hardest part for a Shaper. You
can't stay sterile here; we depend on these little creatures. We
don't have your internal alterations. We don't want them. You'll
have to crawl like the rest of us." She look his left hand. Her
hand was warm and faintly moist. "This is contamination. Is it
so bad?"
	"No."
	"Better to get it over with all at once. Do you agree?"
	He nodded. She put her hand on the back of his neck and
kissed him warmly, her mouth open. Lindsay touched his flannel sleeve to his lips. "That was more than a medical action," he
said.
	She pulled the knotted towel from his head and tossed it to the household servo. "Nights are cold in Dembowska. A bed is
warmer with two."
	"I have a wife."
	"Monogamy? How quaint." She smiled sympathetically. "Face
facts, Bela. Defection broke your contract with the Mavrides
gene-line. You're a nonperson now. Except to us."
	Lindsay brooded.  An image surged up within him: Nora, curled alone in their bed, her eyes wide, her mind racing as her
enemies closed in. He shook his head.
	Calmly, Greta smoothed his hair. "If you tried a little, you'd
recover your appetite. Still, it's wise not to rush things."
	She showed the polite disappointment that a hostess might
show to a guest who refused dessert. He felt tired. Despite his
renewed youth he ached from the Investor gravity.
	"I'll show you the bedroom." It was lined in dark fur. The
bed's canopy was an overhead videoceiling. The massive head-
board was equipped with the latest in slumber technology. He
recognized an encephalogram, monitoring jacks for artificial
body parts, fluorographs for midnight blood fractionation.
	He climbed into the bed, kicking off his mukluks. The sheets
rippled, swaddling over him. "Sleep well," Greta said, leaving.
Something touched the top of his head; above him the canopy
flickered gently into life, sketching out brain rhythms. The
waves were complex and annotated cryptically. One of the wave
functions was outlined in roseate pink. As he looked at it,
relaxing, it began to grow. He intuited suddenly what went on
inside his mind to make it larger. He gave in to it and was
suddenly asleep.
	When he woke next morning Greta was sleeping peacefully
beside him, an alarm tiara clamped to her forehead, tied in to
the house security. He climbed out of bed. His skin itched
ferociously. His tongue felt furred. He was beginning to crawl.
	
DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 24-10-'53

	"I never thought I'd see you this way, Fyodor." On Greta's
parlor wall across the room from Lindsay, Ryumin's video-
manicured face glowed with bogus health. It was a good replica,
but to Lindsay's trained eye it was clearly computer-generated;
its perfection was frightening. The lips moved accurately with
Ryumin's words, but its little idiosyncracies of movement were
eerily off-key. "How long have you been a wirehead?"
	"Ten years or so. Time alters under the wires. You know, I
can't remember offhand where I left my brain. Someplace un-
likely, I'm sure." Ryumin smiled. "It must be in Dembowska
Cartel, or there'd be a transmission lag."
	"I want to talk privately. How many people do you suppose
are listening in on us?"
	"Just the police," Ryumin assured him. "You're in a Harem
safehouse; their calls are routed directly through the Chief's
databanks. In Dembowska this is as private as it gets. Especially
for someone whose past is as dubious as yours, Mr. Dze."
	Lindsay dabbed at his nose with a kerchief. The new bacteria
had hit his sinuses badly; they had already been weakened by
the Investors' ozone-charged air. "Things were different in the
Zaibatsu. When we were face to face."
	"The wires bring changes," Ryumin said. "It all becomes a
matter of input, you see. Systems. Data. We tend toward solipsism; it comes with the territory. Please don't resent it if I doubt you."	"How long have you been in Dembowska?"
"Since the Peace began to crumble. I needed a haven. This is
the best available."
	"So your travels are over, old man?"
	"Yes and no, Mr. Dze. With the loss of mobility comes extension of the senses. If I want I can switch out to a probe in
Mercurian orbit. Or in the winds of Jupiter. I often do, in fact.
Suddenly I'm there, just as fully as I'm ever anywhere these
days. The mind isn't what you think, Mr. Dze. When you grip it
with wires, it tends to flow. Data seem to bubble up from some
deep layer of the mind. This is not exactly living, but it has advantages."
	"You've given up Kabuki Intrasolar?"
	"With the war heating up, the theatre's glory days are over for
a while. The Network takes up most of my time."
	"Journalism?"
	"Yes. We wireheads-or, rather, Senior Mechanists, to give us
a name not tainted by Shaper propaganda -we have our own
modes of dataflow. News networks. At its most intense it approaches telepathy. I'm the local stringer for Ceres Datacom
Network. I hold citizenship in it, though legally speaking it's
sometimes more convenient to be treated as wholly owned depreciable hardware. Our life is information -even money is
information. Our money and our life are one and the same."
	The Mechanist's synthesized voice was calm, detached, but
Lindsay felt alarm. "Are you in danger, old man? Is it some-
thing I can help?"
	"My boy," Ryumin said, "there's a whole world behind this
screen. The lines have blurred so much that mere matters of life
and death have to take a back seat. There are those among us
whose brains broke down years ago: they totter along on invest-
ments and programmed routines. If the fleshies knew, they'd
declare them legally dead. But we're not telling." He smiled.
	"Think of us as angels, Mr. Dze. Spirits on the wires. Sometimes it's easier that way."
	"I'm a stranger here. I'd hoped you could help me, as you did
once. I need advice. I need your wisdom."
	Ryumin sighed precisely. "I knew a Dze once when we were
both rogues. I trusted him; I admired his daring. We were men
together. That's no longer the case."
	Lindsay blew his nose. With a shudder of deep loathing he
handed the soiled kerchief to the household servo. "I would
have dared anything then. I was ready to die, but I didn't. I kept
looking. And I found someone. I had a wife, and there was no
pretense between us. We were happy together."
	"I'm glad for you, Mr. Dze."
	"When danger crowded in on us I broke and ran. Now after
almost forty years I'm a sundog again."
	"Forty years is a human lifetime, Mr. Dze. Don't force yourself
to be human. A time comes when you have to give that up."
	Lindsay looked at his prosthetic arm, flexed the fingers slowly.
"I still love her. It was the war that parted us. If there were
peace again - "
	"Those are Detentiste sentiments. They're out of fashion."
	"Have you given up hope, Ryumin?"
	"I'm loo old for passion," Ryumin said. "Don't ask me to take
risks. Leave me to my data streams, Mr. Dze, or whoever you
are. I'm what I am. There's no going back, no starting over.
That's a game for those who still have flesh. Those who can
heal."
	"I'm sorry," Lindsay said, "but I need allies. Knowledge is
power, and I know things others don't. I mean to fight. Not
against my enemies. Against the circumstances. Against history.
I want my wife back, Ryumin. My Shaper wife. I want her back
free and clear, without the shadows on her. If you won't help
me, who will?"
	Ryumin hesitated. "I have a friend," he said at last. "His name
is Wells."

DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 31-10-'53

Before the advent of humankind, the Asteroid Belt had arranged itself through the physics of rubble. Fragments were distributed in powers of ten. For every asteroid there were ten others a third its size, from Ceres at a thousand kilometers down to the literal trillions of uncharted boulders following spacetime  potentials at  relative speeds of five kilometers per second.
	Dembowska was of the third rank, two hundred kilometers
across. Like other circumsolar bodies, it had paid its homage to
the laws of chance. In the time of the dinosaurs, something large
had hit Dembowska. The visitor was there and gone in a split
second, leaving chunks of its impact-melted pyroxene embedded
in the crust as it flew apart in gouts of fire. At the point of
impact, Dembowska's silicate matrix had shattered, opening a
ragged vertical crevasse twenty kilometers down to the asteroid's
nickel-iron core.
	Now most of the core was gone, devoured by ever-hungry
industry. Dembowska Cartel lived within the crevasse, long plazas dropping level after level into the fading gravity, the gradient
shifting until what were formerly walls became floors, until walls
and floors vanished altogether into the closest thing to free-fall.
At the crevasse's base the world expanded into an enormous
cavernous dugout, Dembowska's hollow heart, where genera-
lions of mining drones had gnawed at the metal and the ores
that held it.
	The hole was too large for air. They treated it as space. Within
the free-fall vacuum at the asteroid's core were the new heavy
industries: the cryonics factories, where hints and memories
teased from the blasted mind of Michael Carnassus were translated into a steady rise of Dembowska Cartel slock on the market monitors of a hundred worlds.
	Trade secrets were secure within Dembowska's bowels, snug
beneath kilometers of rock. Life had forced itself like putty into
the fracture in this minor planet: dug out its inert heart and
filled it with engines.
	Seen from the industrial core, the bottom of the crevasse was
the top layer of the outside world. Here Wells had his offices;
where twenty-four-hour crews of his employees monitored the
datapulses of the Union of Cartels, under the quasinational
aegis of Ceres Datacom Network.
	The offices were walled in velcro and video, the glowing walls
with their ceaseless murmur of news acting as work partitions.
Bits of hard copy were velcro-clipped underfoot and overhead;
reporters in headsets spoke over audiolines or tapped energetically at keyboards. They looked young; there was a calculated extravagance in their dress. Over the mumble of narrative, the smooth rattle of printouts, the whir of booted datatapes, came faint background music: the brittle keening of synthesizers. The cold air smelled of roses.
	A secretary announced them. His hair crisped out from under
a loose Mech beret. Its puffiness suggested possible cranial taps.
He wore a patriotic lapel tag, showing the wide-eyed face of
Michael Carnassus.
	Wells's office was more secure than the rest. His videowalls
formed a surging mosaic of headlines, interlocking rectangles of
data that could be frozen and expanded at will. He wore quilted
coveralls with Shaper lace at the throat; the gray fabric was
overprinted with stylized eurypteroids in darker gray. His stylish
gloves were overlaid with circuit-laden control rings.
	"Welcome to CDN, Auditor Milosz. You too, Policewife. May
I offer you hot tea?"
	Lindsay accepted the warm bulb gratefully. The tea was synthetic but good. Greta took the bulb but drank nothing. She
watched Wells with calm wariness.
	Wells touched a switch on the sticky surface of his free-fall
desk. A large goose-necked lamp swiveled on its coiled neck
with subtle, reptilian grace and stared at Lindsay. There were
human eyes within the hood, embedded in a smooth matrix of
dark flesh. The eyes blinked and shifted from Lindsay to Greta
Beatty. Greta bowed her head in recognition.
	"This is a monitor outlet for the Chief of Police," Wells told
him. "She prefers to see things with her own eyes, when they
have as much importance as you claim your news does." He
turned to Greta. "The situation is under control, Policewife."
The accordioned door shunted open behind her.
	Tight-lipped, she bowed again to the lamp, shot a quick look at Lindsay, and kicked her way off the wall and out the door. It
slid shut.
	"How'd you get stuck with the Zen nun?" Wells said.
	"I beg your pardon?" said Lindsay.
	"Beatty. She hasn't told you about her cult affiliation? Zen
Serotonin?"
	"No." Lindsay hesitated. "She seems very self-possessed."
	"Odd.I understand the cult is well established in your
homeworld. Bettina, wasn't it?"
	Lindsay locked eyes with him. "You know me, Wells. Think
back. Goldreich Tremaine."
	Wells smirked one-sidedly and squeezed his bulb of tea, firing
an amber stream into his mouth. His teeth were strong and
square, and the effect was alarmingly feral. "I thought you had a
Shaper look about you. If you're a Cataclyst, don't try anything
desperate under the eyes of the Chief of Police."
	"I was a Cataclyst victim," Lindsay said. "They put me on ice
for a month. It broke me out of my routines. And then I
defected." He pulled the glove from his right hand.
	Wells recognized the antique prosthetic. "Captain-Doctor
Mavrides. This is an unexpected pleasure. Rumor said you were
hopelessly insane. Frankly, the news had pleased me. Abelard
Mavrides, the Investor pet. What's become of your jewels and
cables, Captain-Doctor?"
	"I travel light these days."
	"No more plays?" Wells opened a drawer in his desk and
pulled out a humidor. He offered Lindsay a cigarette. Lindsay
took it gratefully. "The theatre's out of fashion," he said. They
lit up. Lindsay coughed helplessly.
	"I must have annoyed you at that wedding party, doctor. When I came in to recruit your students."
	"They were the ideologues, Wells, not me.  I was afraid for
you."
	"You needn't have been." Wells blew smoke and smiled.
"Your student Besetzny is one of ours now."
	"A Detentiste?"
	"Our thinking's progressed since then, doctor. The old categories, Mechanist and Shaper-they're a bit outmoded these
days, aren't they? Life moves in clades." He smiled. "A clade is
a daughter species, a related descendant. It's happened to other
successful animals, and now it's humanity's turn. The factions
still struggle, but the categories are breaking up. No faction can
claim the one true destiny for mankind. Mankind no longer
exists."
	"You're talking Cataclysm."
	"There are others just as crazy. Those who hold power in the
Cartels, in the Ring Council. Blinding the Schismatrix with
hatred is easier than accepting our potentials. Our missions to
the aliens have failed because we can't even deal with the
strangers who share our own ancestry. We are breaking up into
clades. We have to let go and reunite on a more basic level."
	"If humankind flics to pieces, what could possibly unite it?"
	Wells glanced at his videowall and froze a piece of news with
his finger ring. "Have you ever heard of Prigoginic Levels of
Complexity?"
	Lindsay's heart sank. "I've never been one for metaphysics,
Wells. Your religious beliefs are your own business. I had a
woman who loved me and a safe place to sleep. The rest is abstract."
	Wells examined his wall. Print blurred by, discussing a scandalous defection on Ceres. "Oh yes, your Colonel-Professor. I can't help you with that. You need a kidnapper to spirit her out. You
won't find one here. You should try Ceres or Bettina."
	"My wife's a stubborn woman. Like you, she has ideals. Only
peace can reunite us. And there's only one source of peace in
our world. That's the Investors."
	Wells laughed shortly. "Still the same line, Captain-Doctor?"
Suddenly he spoke in halting Investor. "The value of your
argument has depreciated."
	"They have their weaknesses, Wells." His voice rose. "Do you
think I'm any less desperate than the Cataclysts? Ask your
friend Ryumin if I know weakness when I see it, or if I lack the
will to exploit it. The Investor Peace: yes, I had a hand in that.
It gave me what I wanted. I was a whole man. You can't know
what that meant to me-" He broke off, sweating even in the
cold.
	Wells looked shocked. Lindsay realized suddenly that his out-
burst had broken every diplomatic rule. The thought filled him
with savage satisfaction. "You know the truth, Wells. We've
been Investor pawns for years. It's time we turned the chess-
board around."
	"You mean to attack the Investors?" Wells said.
	"What else, fool? What choice do we have?"
	A woman's voice came from the base of the lamp. "Abelard
Mavrides, you are under arrest."
	The elevator car hissed shut behind them. False gravity hit as
they accelerated upward. "Put your hands against the wall,
please," Greta said politely. "Move your feet backward."
	Lindsay complied, saying nothing. The old-fashioned elevator
clacked noisily on rails up the vertical wall of the Dembowska
Crevasse. Two kilometers passed. Greta sighed. "You must have
done something drastic."
	"That's not your worry," Lindsay said.
	"To go by the book, I ought to cut the cables on your iron
arm. But I'll let it go. This is my fault too, I think. If I'd made
you feel more at home you wouldn't have been so fanatic."
	"No weapons in my arm," Lindsay said. "Surely you examined
it while I slept."
	"I don't understand this hard suspicion, Bela. Have I mis-
treated you somehow?"
	"Tell me about Zen Serotonin, Greta."
	She straightened slightly. "I'm not ashamed of belonging to the Nonmovement. I would have told you, but we don't proselytize.
We win over by example."
	"Very laudable, I'm sure."
	She frowned. "In your case I should have made an exception.
I'm sorry for your pain. I knew pain once." Lindsay said noth-
ing. "I was born on Themis," she said. "I knew some Cataclysts
there, one of the Mechanist factions. They were ice assassins.
The military found one of their cryocells, where they were
enlightening one of my teachers with a one-way ticket to the
future. I didn't wait for arrest. I ran to Dembowska.
	"When I got here the Harem drafted me. I found out I had to
whore to Carnassus. I didn't take to it. But then I found Zen
	Serotonin."
	"Serotonin's a brain chemical," Lindsay said.
	"It's a philosophy," she said. "The Shapers, the Mechanists-those aren't philosophies, they're technologies made into
politics. The technologies are at the core of it. Science lore the
human race to bits. When anarchy hit, people struggled for
community. The politicians chose enemies so that they could
bind their followers with hate and terror. Community isn't
enough when a thousand new ways of life beckon from every
circuit and test tube. Without hatred there is no Ring Council,
no Union of Cartels. No conformity without the whip."
	"Life moves in clades," Lindsay murmured.
	"That's Wells with his mishmash of physics and ethics. What
we need is nonmovemenl, calmness, clarity." She stretched out
her left arm. "This monitor drip-feeds into my arm. Fear means
nothing to me. With this, there's nothing I can't face and analyze. With Zen Serotonin you see life in the light of reason.  People turn to us, especially in crisis. Every day the
Nonmovement wins more adherents."
	Lindsay thought of the brainwaves he had seen in his safehouse
bed. "You're in a permanent alpha stale, then."
	"Of course."
	"Do you ever dream?"
	"We have our vision. We can see the new technologies that
disrupt human life. We throw ourselves into those currents.
Perhaps each one of us is no more than a particle. But together
we form a sediment that slows the flow. Many innovators are
profoundly unhappy. After Zen Serotonin they lose their neurotic urge to meddle."
	Lindsay smiled grimly. "It was no accident that you were
assigned my case."
	"You are a profoundly unhappy man. It's brought this trouble
on you. The Nonmovement has a strong voice in the Harem.
	Join us. We can save you."
	"I had happiness once, Greta. You'll never know it."
"Violent emotion isn't our forte, Bela. We're trying to save the
human race."
"Good luck," Lindsay said. They had reached the end of the
line.
	The old acromegalic stepped back to admire his handiwork.
"Strap is all right, sundog? You can breathe?"
	Lindsay nodded. The kill-clamp dug painfully into the base of
his skull.
	"Ft reads the backbrain," the giant said. Growth hormones had
distorted his jaw; he had a bulldog's underbite and his voice was
slurred. "Remember to shuffle. No sudden movements. Don't
think about moving fast, and your head will stay whole."
	"How long have you been in this business?" Lindsay said.
	"Long enough."
	"Are you part of the Harem?"
	The giant glared. "Sure, I fuck Carnassus, what do you think?"
His enormous hand grasped Lindsay's entire face. "You ever see
your own eyeball? Maybe I pull one out. The Chief can graft
you a new one."
	Lindsay flinched. The giant grinned, revealing poorly spaced
teeth. "I see your type before. You are a Shaper antibiotic. Your
type tricked me once. Maybe you think you can trick the clamp.
Maybe you think you can kill the Chief without moving. Keep
in mind you must get by me on the way out." He gripped the
top of Lindsay's head and lifted him off the velcro. "Or maybe
you think I'm stupid."
	Lindsay spoke in trade Japanese. "Save it for the whores,
yakuza. Or maybe your excellency would care to take this
clamp off and go hand to hand."
	The giant laughed, startled, and set Lindsay down carefully.
"Sorry, friend. Didn't know you were one of our own."
	Lindsay stepped through the airlock. Inside, the air was at
blood heat. It reeked of perfumed sweat and the odor of violets.
The brittle whine of a synthesizer broke off suddenly.
	The room was full of flesh. It was made of it: satiny brown
skin, broken here and there by rugs of lustrous black hair and
mauve flashes of mucus membrane. Everything was involuted,
curved: armchair lounges, a rounded mass like a bed of flesh,
studded with mauve holes. Blood thrummed through a pipe-
sized artery beneath his feet.
	Another hooded lamp-device swiveled up on a sleek-skinned
elbowed hinge. Dark eyes observed him. A mouth opened in the
sleek  rump of a footstool beside him. "Take off those velcro
boots, darling. They itch."
	Lindsay sat down. "It's you, Kitsune."
	"You knew when you saw my eyes in Wells's office," the voice
purred from the wall.
	"Not till I saw your bodyguard, really. It's been a long time.
Sorry about the boots." He sat and pulled them off carefully,
masking his shudder at the sensual warmth of the fleshy arm-
chair. "Where are you?"
	"All around you. I have eyes and ears everywhere."
	"Where's your body?"
	"I had it scrapped."
	Lindsay was sweating. After four weeks in the Dembowska
chill, the heated air was stifling. "You knew it was me?"
	"You're the only one I cared to keep who ever left me, darling.
I wasn't likely to forget."
	"You've done well, Kitsune," Lindsay said, masking his terror
under a sudden onrush of half-forgotten discipline. "Thank you
for killing the antibiotic."
	"It was easy," she said. "I pretended he was you." She hesitated. "The Geisha Bank believed your deception. It was
thoughtful of you to take the yarite's head."
	"I wanted to make you a parting gift," Lindsay said carefully,
"of absolute power." He looked at the sleek masses of flesh.
There was no face anywhere. From the walls and floors came
the syncopated muffled thumping of half a dozen hearts.
	"Were you upset because I wanted power more than you?"
	His mind raced. "You've gained in wisdom since those days.
Yes, I admit it. The day would have come when you chose
between me and your ambitions. And I knew which one you'd
choose. Was I wrong to leave?"
	There was silence for a moment; then several of the mouths in
	the room laughed. "You could make anything plausible, darling.
That was your gift. No, I've had many favorites since then. You
were a good weapon, but I've had others. I forgive you."
"Thank you, Kitsune."
	"You may consider yourself no longer under arrest."
"You're very generous."
"Now, what's  this  craziness  about  the   Investors?   Don't  you know how the System depends on them now? Any faction that
crosses the Investors might as well cut their own throats."
"I  had  in   mind something more subtle.  I thought we might persuade them to cross themselves."
"Meaning?"
	"Blackmail."
	Some of the mouths laughed uneasily. "In what form, darling?"
	"Sexual perversion."
	The eyes swiveled up on their organic mounting. Lindsay saw
the wideness of their pupils, his first kinesic clue, and knew he
had struck home. "You have the evidence?"
	"I'd hand it over at once," Lindsay said, "but this clamp
constrains me."
	"Take it off. I've neutralized it."
	Lindsay unbuckled the kill-clamp and set it gently on the
chair's quivering arm. He walked toward the bed in his socks.
He produced the videomonocle from within his shirt.
	Dark eyes opened within the headboard. A pair of sleek arms
emerged through soft furred slots. An arm took the monocle
and placed it over one eye. Lindsay said, "I've set it to the
beginning of the sequence."
	"But that's not the beginning of the tape."
	"The first part is-"
	"Yes," she said icily. "I see. Your wife?"
	"Yes."
	"No matter. If she'd come with you, things might have been
different. But now she's crossed Constantine."
	"You know him?"
	"Of course. He crowded the Zaibatsu with the victims of his
purge. The Shapers are proud, in the Ring Council. They'll
never believe an unplanned can match them scheme for scheme.
Your wife is a dead woman."
	"There might be-"
	"Forget it. You had your years of peace. The next are his. Ah."
She hesitated. "This was taken aboard an Investor starship? The
one that brought you here?"
	"Yes. I filmed it myself."
	"Ahh." The moan was purely sensual. One of the room's huge
hearts was under the bed; its pulse had speeded. "It's their
queen, their captain. Oh, these Investor women and their harem
rule, what a pleasure it is to have beaten one. The filthy crea-
ture. Oh, what a joy you are, Lin Dze, Mavrides, Milosz."
	Lindsay said, "My name is Abelard Malcolm Tyler Lindsay."
	"I know. Constantine told me. And I convinced him you were
dead."
	"Thank you, Kitsune."
	"What do names mean to us? They call me the Chief of Police.
The control is what matters, darling, not the front. You fooled
the Shapers in the Ring Council. The Mechanists were my prey.
	I moved to the Cartels. I watched, I waited. Then one day I
found Carnassus. The last survivor of his mission."
	She laughed lightly, the high-pitched skipping laugh he once
had known so well. "The Mechs sent out their best. But they
were too strong, too stiff, too brittle. The strangeness of it broke
them, and the isolation. Carnassus had to kill the other two, and
he still wakes up screaming because of it. Yes, even in this
room. His company was bankrupted. I bought him, and all his
strange booty, from the wreckage."
	"In the Rings they say he rules here."
	"Of course they do; that's what I told them. Carnassus belongs to me. My surgeons have been at him. There's not a neuron in him that pleasure hasn't blasted. Life is simple for him, a
constant dream of flesh."
	Lindsay looked about the room. "And you're his favorite."
	"Would I tolerate anything else, darling?"
	"You don't mind that other wives practice Zen Serotonin?"
	"I don't care what they think or claim they think. They obey
me. I'm not concerned with ideology. What concerns me is the
future."
	"Oh?"
	"The day will come when we've squeezed everything we can
out of Carnassus. And cryonic products will lose their novelty as
the technology spreads."
	"That might take years."
	"It all takes years," she said. "And it's a question of years. The
ship you arrived on has left circumsolar space."
	"You're sure?" Lindsay said, stricken.
	"That's what my databanks tell me. Who knows when they'll
return?"
	"It doesn't matter," Lindsay said. "I can wait."
	"Twenty years? Thirty?"
	"Whatever it takes," Lindsay said, though the thought suffocated him.
	"By then Carnassus will be useless. I'll need a new front. And
what could be belter than an Investor Oueen? It's a risk worth
taking. You'll work on it for me. You and Wells."
	"Of course, Kitsune."
	"You'll have the support you need. But don't squander a
kilowatt of it trying to save that woman."
	"I'll try to think only of the future."
	"Carnassus and I will need a safehouse. That will be your
priority."
	"Depend on it," said Lindsay, Carnassus and I,'he thought.

DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 14-2-'58

Lindsay studied the latest papers from the peer review commit-
tee. He paged through the data expertly, devouring the abstracts,
screen-scanning through paragraphs, highlighting the worst ex-
cesses of technical jargon. He worked with driven efficiency.
	The credit went to Wells. Wells had placed him in the department chairmanship at the Kosmosity; Wells had put the editorship of the Journal of Exoarchosaurian Studies into his hands.
	Routine had seized Lindsay. He welcomed the distractions of
administration and research, which robbed him of the leisure
necessary for pain. Within his office in the Crevasse, in an exurb
of the newly completed Kosmosity, he wheeled in his low-grav
swivel chair, chasing rumors, coaxing, bribing, trading information. Already the Journal was the largest unclassified databank
on the Investors, and its restricted files mushroomed with speculation and espionage. Lindsay was at its core, working with the stamina of youth and the patience of age.
	In the five years since Lindsay's arrival in Dembowska, he had
watched Wells move from strength to strength. In the absence of
a state ideology, the influence of Wells and his Carbon Clique
spread throughout the colony, encompassing art, the media, and
academic life.
	Ambition was an endemic vice among Wells and his group.
Lindsay had joined the Clique without much enthusiasm. With
proximity, though, he had picked up their plans as if they were
local bacteria. And their fashions as well: his hair was slickly
brilliantined and his mustache was nicked for a paste-on micro-
phone lip bead. He wore video-control rings on the wrinkled
fingers of his left hand.
	Work ate the years. Once time had seemed solid to him, dense as lead. Now it flowed through his hands. Lindsay saw that his
perception of time was slowly coming to match that of the
senior Shapers he'd known in Goldreich-Tremaine. To the truly
old, time was as thin as air, a keening and destructive wind that
erased their pasts and attacked their memories. Time was accelerating. Nothing could slow it down for him but death. He
tasted this truth, and it was bitter as amphetamine.
	He returned his attention to the paper; a reassessment of a
celebrated Investor scale fragment found among the effects of a
failed Mechanist interstellar embassy. Few bits of matter had
ever been analyzed so exhaustively. The paper, "Proximo-Distal
Gradients in Epidermal Cell Adhesiveness," came from a Shaper defector in Diotima Cartel.
	His desk rang. His visitor had arrived.
	The unobtrusive guard systems in Lindsay's office showed
Wells's characteristic touch. The visitor had been issued a stylish coronet, which had evolved from the much clumsier kill clamp. A tiny red light, unseen by the guest himself, glowed on
the man's forehead. It denoted the potential impact site for
armaments, decently concealed in the ceiling.
"Professor Milosz?" The visitor's dress was odd. He wore a
white formal suit with a ring-shaped open collar and accordioned elbows and knees.
"You're Dr. Morrissey? From the Concatenation?"
"From  the  Mare Serenitatis  Republic,"  the man  said. "Dr.
Pongpianskul sent me."
"Pongpianskul is dead," Lindsay said.
	"So they said." Morrissey nodded. "Killed on Chairman Con-
stantine's orders. But the doctor had friends in the Republic. So
many that he now controls the nation. His title is Warden, and
the nation is reborn as the Neotenic Cultural Republic. I am the
harbinger of the Revolution." He hesitated. "Maybe I should let
Dr. Pongpianskul tell it."
Lindsay was stunned. "Perhaps you should."
The man produced a videolablet and plugged it into his brief
case. He handed Lindsay the tablet, which flickered into life. It
showed a face: Pongpianskul's.  Pongpianskul brushed at his
braids, disheveling them with leathery, wrinkled hands.
"Abelard, how are you?"
"Neville. You're alive?"
	"I'm still a tenant of the flesh, yes. Morrissey's briefcase is
programmed with an interactive expert system. It ought to carry
out a decent conversation with you, in my absence."
Morrissey cleared his throat. "These machines are new to me. I
think, though, that I should let the two of you speak privately."
"That might be best."
"I'll wait in the lobby."
	Lindsay watched the man's retreating back. Morrissey's clothes amazed him. Lindsay had forgotten that he'd ever dressed like that, in the Republic.
	He studied the tablet's screen. "You look well, Neville."
	"Thank you. Ross arranged my last rejuvenation. By the
Cataclysts. The same group that treated you, Mavrides."
	"Treated me? They put me on ice."
	"On ice? That's odd. The Cataclysts woke me up. I never felt
so alive as when I was here in the Republic, pretending to be
dead. It's been a long ten years, Abelard. Eleven, whatever."
Pongpianskul shrugged.
	Lindsay Looked at the tablet. The image made no response to
the Look, and the charm faded. Lindsay spoke slowly. "So
you've attacked the Republic? Through the Cataclyst terror
networks?"
	The tablet smiled Pongpianskul's smile. "The Cataclysts had
their part in it, I admit. You would have appreciated this,
Mavrides. I played off the youth element. There was a political
group called the Preservationists, dating-oh, forty or fifty years
back. Constantine used them to seize power, but they detested
the Shapers as much as they did the Mechs. What they wanted,
really, was a human life, droll as that might seem. Now there's a
new generation of them, raised under Shaper influence and
hating it. But thanks to Shaper breeding policies, the young
hold a majority."
	Pongpianskul laughed. "Constantine used the Republic as a
storehouse for Shaper militants. He made things here a muddle
of subterfuge. When the war heated up, the militants rushed
back to the Ring Council and Cataclyst Superbrights hid here
instead. Constantine spent too much time in the Rings, and lost
touch. . . . The Cataclysts like my notion of a cultural preserve.
It's all down in the new Constitution. My messenger will give
you a copy."
	"Thank you."
	"Things haven't gone well with the rest of the Midnight Clique.
. . . It's been too long since we've talked. I tracked you down
through your ex-wife."
	"Alexandrina?"
	"What?" The programmed system was confused; the persona
flickered for a second's fraction. "It took some doing. Nora's
under close surveillance."
	"Just a moment." Lindsay rose from his chair and poured
himself a drink. A cascade of memories from the Republic had
rushed through him, and he'd thought automatically of his first
wife, Alexandrina Tyler. But of course she was not in the
Republic. She had been a victim of Constantine's purge,
shipped out to the Zaibatsu.
	He returned to the screen. It said, "Ross left for the cometaries when G-T crumbled. Fetzko has faded. Vetterling's in Skimmers Union, sucking up to the fascists. Ice assassins took Margaret Juliano. She's still awaiting the thaw. I have power here,
Mavrides. But that can't make up for what we lost."
	"How is Nora?" Lindsay said.
	The false Pongpianskul looked grave. "She fights Constantine
where he's strongest. If it weren't for her my coup here would
have failed; she distracted him. . . . I'd hoped I could lure her
here, and you as well. She was always so good to us. Our
premier hostess."
	"She wouldn't come?"
	"She has remarried."
	The slotted glass broke in Lindsay's iron hand. Blobs of liqueur drifted toward the floor.
	"For political reasons," the screen continued. "She needs every
ally she can find. Having you join me would have been difficult
in any case. No one over sixty is allowed in the Neotenic
Cultural Republic. Except for myself and my officers."
	Lindsay yanked the cord from the tablet. He helped the small
office servo pick up the shards of glass.
	When he called Morrissey in again, much later, the man was
diffident. "Are you quite through, sir? I've been instructed to
erase the tablet."
"It was kind of you to bring it." Lindsay gestured at a chair.
	"Thank you for waiting so long."
	Morrissey wiped the construct's memory and put the tablet in
his briefcase. He studied Lindsay's face. "I hope I haven't
brought bad news."
	"It's astonishing,"  Lindsay  said.  "Maybe  we  should  have a
drink to celebrate."
	A shadow crossed Morrissey's face.
	"Forgive me," Lindsay said. "Perhaps I was tactless." He put
the bottle away. There was not much left.
	"I'm sixty years old," Morrissey said. He sat uncomfortably.
"So they ousted me. They were polite about it." He smiled
painfully. "I was a Preservationist once. I was eighteen in the
first Revolution. It's ironic, isn't it? Now I'm a sundog."
	Lindsay said carefully, "I'm not without power here. And not
without funds. Dembowska handles many refugees. I can find
you room."
	"You're very kind." Morrissey's face was stiff. "I worked as a
biologist, on  the nation's ecological  troubles. Dr. Constantine
trained me. But I'm afraid I'm very much behind the times."
"That can be remedied."
"I've brought an article for your Journal."
"Ah. You have an interest in Investors, Dr. Morrissey?"
"Yes. I hope my piece meets your standards."
Lindsay forced a smile. "We'll work on it together."


SKIMMERS UNION COUNCIL STATE: 13-5-'75

He could feel it coining on, creeping across the back of his head
in a zone of quivering subepidermal tightness. A fugue state.
The scene before him trembled slightly, the crowds below his
private box blurring in a frieze of packed heads against dark
finery, the rounded stage with actors in costume, dark red,
gleaming, a gesture. It slowed -it froze:
	Fear ... no, not even that, exactly ... a certain sadness now
that the die was cast. The waiting was the hell of it ... He had
waited sixty years to resume his old contacts, the wirehead
Radical Old of the Republic. . . . Now the wirehead leaders, like
him, had worked their way to power in the worlds outside. Sixty
years was nothing to a mind on the wires . . . time meant nothing ... fugue states. . . . They still remembered him quite well,
their friend, Philip Khouri Constantine. . . .
	It was he who had sprung them loose, purging the middle-aged aristocrats to finance the wirehead defections. . . . Memories
went back; they were data, that was all, just as fresh on reels
somewhere as the enemy Margaret Juliano was on her bed of
Cataclyst ice. . . . Even amid fugue the surge of satisfaction was
quick and sharp enough to penetrate into consciousness from
his backbrain. .. . That unique sense of warmth that came only
from the downfall of a rival. . . .
	Now, trailing sluggishly behind his racing thoughts, the slow-
motion blooming of a light tingle of fear. . . . Nora Everett, the
wife of Abelard Mavrides. . . . She had hurt him seventeen years
ago with the coup in the Republic, though he was able to
entangle her in charges of treason. . . . The tinpot Republic was
of no concern to him now, its willfully ignorant child-citizens
flying kites and eating apples under the crazed charlatan gaze of
Dr. Pongpianskul. ... No problem there, the future would ig-
nore them, they were living fossils, harmless in themselves. . . .
	But the Cataclysts . . . the fear was resolving itself now, beginning to flower, its first dim shades of backbrain unease taking
on emotional substance now, uncoiling through his conscious-
ness like a drop of ink streaming into a glass of water. . . . He
would see to his emotions later when the fugue was over; now
he was struggling to shut his eyes . . . focus was lost, dim tear-
blur over frozen performers; his eyelids were dropping with
nightmare sluggishness, nerve impulses confused by the racing
fugue-consciousness. . . . The Cataclysts, though. . . . They took
it all as an enormous joke, enjoyed hiding in the Republic
disguised as plebes and farmers, the huge panorama interior of
the cylindrical world as weird to them as a trace dose of their
favorite drug, PDKL-95. . . . The Cataclyst mind-set fed on correspondences and poetic justice, a trip to the human past in the
Neotenic Republic the inverse of an ice assassination, with its
one-way ticket to the future. . . .
	The fugue was about to break. He felt a strange cracking
sensation of psychic upheaval, mental crust giving way before
the upsurge. In the last microseconds of fugue an eidetic flash
seized him, surveyor photos from the surface of Titan, red
volcanic shelves of heavy hydrocarbon split by ammonia lava,
bursting from the depths . . . from Titan, far below their orbit,
prime wall-decor in Skimmers Union. . . .
	Gone. Constantine leaned forward in his box seat, clearing his
throat. Delayed fear swept over him; he pushed it brusquely
away, had a light sniff of acetaminophen to avert migraine. He
glanced at his wristwatch through damp lashes. Four seconds of
fugue.
	He wiped his eyes, became aware of his wife sitting beside him, her finely chiseled Shaper face a study in surprise. Was she
aware that he had been sitting rapt for four seconds with his
eyes showing only a rim of white? No. She thought he was
touched by the play, was startled to see this excess of emotion in
her iron-hard husband. Constantine favored her with a smile.
Her color heightened; she leaned forward in her seat, her jeweled hands in her lap, studying the play alertly. Later she would
try to discuss it with him. Natalie Constantine was young and
bright, the scion of a military gene-line. She had grown used to
his demands.
	Not like his first wife, the treasonous bitch. . . . He had left the
old aristocrat in the Republic, having nurtured her vicious
streak patiently until his own coup allowed him to turn it
against her peers. Now rumor said she was Pongpianskul's lover,
won over by fraudulent Shaper charm and degraded senile
intimacy. No matter, no matter. Long years had taken the sting
from it; tonight's stroke, if it came, was more important than
any circumlunar moondock.
	His nine-year-old daughter, Vera, leaned in her seat to whisper to Natalie. Constantine gazed at the child he had built. Half her genetics were Vera Kelland's, drawn from skin flakes he had
taken before the woman's suicide. For years he had treasured
the stolen genes, and when the time was ripe he had brought
them to flower in this child. She was his favorite, the first of his
progeny. When he thought how his own failure might doom her,
he felt the fear again, sharper than before, because it was not for
himself.
	An extravagant gesture from the stage caught his attention, a
brief flurry of stilted action as the deranged Superbright villain
clutched his head and fell. Constantine surreptitiously scratched
his ankle with the sole of his foot-glove. Over the years his skin
virus had improved, limited to dry outbreaks of shingles at his
extremities.
	The play was one of Zeuner's, and it bored him. Skimmers
Union had caught the habit from Goldreich-Tremaine, bolstered
by dramatists fleeing the crippled ex-capital. But the modern
theatre was lifeless. Fernand Vetterling, for instance, author of
The White Periapsis and The Technical Advisor, languished in
sullen silence with his disgraced Mavrides wife. Other artists
with Detentiste leanings now paid for their indiscretion with
fines or house arrest. Some had defected, others had "gone
undertime" to join the Cataclyst action brigades in the graveyard
dayshifts.
	But the Cataclysts were losing cohesion, becoming mere terror-
ists. Their Superbright elite was under severe attack. The pogrom on the Superbrights was increasingly thorough as hysteria mounted. Their promoters and educators were now political 	nonpersons, many having fallen to the twisted vengeance of the Superbrights themselves.
	The Superbrights were too brilliant for community; they de-
manded the world-shattering anarchy of supermen. That could
not be tolerated. And Constantine had served that intolerance.
Life had never looked better for him: high office, his own
Constantine gene line, a free hand for anti-Mech adventurism,
and his own barbed nets poised for disloyalty.
	And tonight he had risked it all. Would his news ever come?
How would he hear it? From his bodyguards, through the
earpiece? Through the stolen Mech implants in his own brain,
that opened internal channels to the thin data-whispers of the
wireheads? Or-
	Something was happening. The banner-waving choreography
on the curved stage disintegrated in sudden confusion, the colored corporate logos and gene-line insignia slowing and tangling. The dancers fell back in chaos in response to shouted orders. Someone was floating to the edge of the podium. It was the wretched Charles Vetterling, his aged face bloated with triumph and a lackey's self-importance.
	This was it. Vetterling was shouting. The play's leading man
gave him a throat mike. Vetterling's voice roared suddenly in
thudding feedback.
	". . . of the War! Mech markets are in panic! The asteroid
Nysa has declared for the Ring Council! I repeat, the Nysa
Cartel has abandoned the Mechanist Union! They have asked
for admittance as a Ring Council Treaty State! The Council is
meeting. . . ." His words were drowned in the roar from the
audience, the clatter of buckles as they unstrapped from their
scats and rose in confusion. Vetterling struggled with the mike.
Patches of his words broke the din. ". . . capitulation . . . through banks in Skimmers Union . . . industrial ... new victory!"
	It started among the actors. The leading man was pointing
above the heads of the audience at Constantine's box, shouting
fiercely at the rest of the cast. One of the women began applauding. Then it spread. The whole cast was applauding, their faces alight. Vetterling heard them behind him, turned to look. He grasped things at once, and a stiff smile spread over his face. He pointed dramatically. "Constantine!" he shouted. "Ladies and gentlemen, the Chancellor-General!"
	Constantine rose to his feet, gripping the iron banister behind
the transparent shield. When they saw him the crowd exploded,
a free-fall maelstrom of shouts and applause. They knew it was
his triumph. The joy of it overwhelmed them, the brief bright
release from the dark tension of the War. If he'd failed, they
would have hounded him to death with the same passion. But
that dark knowledge had been blasted by victory. Because he'd
won, now the risk he'd run only sharpened his delight.
	He turned to his wife. Her eyes brimmed over with tears of
pride. Slowly, not leaving the banister, he extended his hand to
her. When their fingers touched he read her face. He saw the
truth there. From this night on his dominion over her was total.
	She took her place beside him. Vera tugged his sleeve, her eyes wide. He lifted her up, cradling her in his left arm. His lips
touched her ear. "Remember this," he whispered fiercely.
	The anarchic shouts died down as another rhythm spread. It
was the rhythm of applause, the long, cadenced, ritual applause
that followed every session of the Ring Council itself, ageless,
solemn, overwhelming applause, applause that brooked no dissent. The music of power. Constantine raised his wife's hand above their heads and closed his eyes.
	It was the happiest moment of his life.

DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 15-5-'75

Lindsay was playing keyboards for the sake of his new arm. It
was much more advanced than his old one, and the fine discrimination of its nerve signals confused him. As he ran through
the composition, one of Kitsune's, he felt each key click down
with a brief muddled sensation of sharp heat.
	He rested, rubbing his hands together. A pins-and-needles
tingling ran up the wires. The new hand was densely
honeycombed with fingertip sensors. They were much more
responsive than his old arm's feedback pads.
	The change had jarred him. He looked about his desolate
apartment. In twenty-two years it had never been anything more
to him than a place to camp. The apartment's fashions, its
ribbed wallpaper and skeletal chairs, were two decades out of
dale. Only the security systems, Wells's latest, had any touch of
the mode.
	Lindsay himself had gone stale. At ninety, grooves marked his
eyes and mouth from decades of habitual expression. His hair
and beard were sprinkled with gray.
	He was improving at the keyboards. He had attacked the
problem of music with his usual inhuman steadiness. For years
he had worked hard enough to kill himself, but modern
biomonitoring technique saw each breakdown coming and averted it months ahead of time. The bed took care of that, feeding
him subterranean flashes of intense and blurry dream that left
him each morning blank and empty with perfect mental health.
	Eighteen years had passed since his wife's remarriage. The
pain of it had never fully hit him. He'd known her present
husband briefly in the Council: Graham Everett, a colorless
Detentiste with powerful clan connections. Nora used Everett's
influence to parry the attacks of militants. It was sad: Lindsay
didn't remember the man well enough to hate him.
	Warnings cut short his playing. Someone had arrived at his
entry hall. The scanners there assured him that the visitor, a
woman, bore only harmless Mechanist implants: plaque-scraping
arterial microbots, old-fashioned teflon kneecaps, plastic knuckles, a porous drug duct in the crook of the left elbow. Much of her hair was artificial, implanted strands of shining optical fibers.
	He had his household servo escort the woman in. She had the
strange complexion common to many older Mechanist women,
smooth unblemished skin like a perfectly form-fitted paper
mask. Her red hair was shot through with copper highlights
from the fiberoptics. She wore a sleeveless gray suit, furred vest,
and elbow-length white thermal gloves. "Auditor Milosz?"
	She had a Concatenate accent. He ushered her to the couch.
She sat gracefully, her movements honed to precision by age.
"Yes, madam. What may I do for you?"
	"Forgive me for intruding, Auditor. My name is Tyler. I'm a
clerk with Limonov Cryonics. But my business here is personal.
I've come to ask your help. I've heard of your friendship with
Neville Pongpianskul."
	"You're Alexandrina Tyler," Lindsay realized aloud. "From
Mare Serenitatis. The Republic."
	She looked surprised and lifted her thin, arched brows. "You
already know my case, Auditor?"
	"You" -Lindsay sal down in the stirruped chair- "would like
a drink, perhaps?" She was his first wife. From some deeply
buried level of reflex he felt the stirrings of a long-dead persona,
the brittle layer of false kinesics he had put between them in
their marriage. Alexandrina Tyler, his wife, his mother's cousin.
	"No, thank you," she said. She adjusted the fabric over her
knees. She'd always had trouble with her knees; she'd had the
teflon put in in the Republic.
	Her familiar gesture brought it all back to him: the marriage
politics of the Republic's aristocrats. She had been fifty years his
senior, their marriage a stifling net of strained politeness and
grim rebellion. Lindsay was ninety now, older than she had
been at their marriage. With a flood of new perspective, he
could taste the long-forgotten pain that he had caused her.
	"I was born in the Republic," she said. "I lost my citizenship in
the Shaper purges, almost fifty years ago. I loved the Republic,
Auditor. I've never forgotten it. ... I came from one of the
privileged families, but I thought, perhaps now, since the new
regime there has settled, surely that's all a dead issue?"
	"You were Abelard Lindsay's wife."
	Her eyes widened. "So you do know my case. You know I've
applied to emigrate? I had no response from the Pongpianskul
government. I've come to ask for your help, Auditor. I'm not a
member of your Carbon Clique, but I know their power. You
have influence that works around the laws."
	"Life must have been difficult for you, madam. Thrown out
without resources into the Schismatrix."
	She blinked, china-white lids falling over her eyes like paper
shutters. "Things were not so bad once I'd reached the cartels.
But I can't pretend I've known happiness. I haven't forgotten
home. The trees. The gardens."
	Lindsay knotted his hands, ignoring the tingle of confused
sensation from his right. "I can't encourage false hopes, madam.
Neotenic law is very strict. The Republic has no interest in those
our age, those who are estranged in any way from the raw state
of humanity. It's true that I've handled some matters for the
Neotenic government. Those involve the resettlement of
Neotenic citizens who reach the age of sixty. 'Dying out into the
world,' they call it. The flow of emigration is strictly one-way.
I'm very sorry."
	She was silent a moment. "You know the Republic well, Auditor?" Her voice told him that she had accepted defeat. Now she
was hunting for memories.
	"Well enough to know that the wife of Abelard Lindsay has
been defamed. Your late husband is regarded there as a
Preservationist martyr. They portray you as a Mechanist collaborator, driving Lindsay into exile and death."
	"How terrible." Her eyes filled with tears; she stood up in
agitation. "I'm very sorry. May I use your biomonitor?"
	"Tears don't alarm me, madam," Lindsay said gently. "I am
not a Zen Serotonist."
	"My husband," she said. "He was such a bright boy; we
thought we'd done well when we scholarshipped him to the
Shapers. I never understood what they did to him, but it was
horrible. I tried to make our marriage work, but he was so
clever, so smooth and plausible, that he could twist anything I
said or did to serve some other purpose. He terrified the others.
They swore he would rip our world apart. We should never have
sent him to the Shapers."
	"I'm sure it seemed a wise decision at the time," Lindsay said.
"The Republic was already in the Mechanist orbit, and they
wanted to redress the balance."
	"Then they shouldn't have done it to my cousin's son. There
were plenty of plebes to send out, people like Constantine." She
put one wrinkled knuckle to her lips. "I'm sorry. That's aristocratic prejudice. Forgive me, Auditor, I'm distraught."
	"I understand," Lindsay said. "To those our age, old memories
can come with unexpected force. I'm very sorry, madam. You
have been treated unjustly."
	"Thank you, sir." She accepted a tissue from the household
servo. "Your sympathy touches me deeply." She dabbed at her
eyes with precise, birdlike movements. "I almost feel that I
know you."
	"A trick of memory," Lindsay said. "I was married once to a
woman much like you."
	A slow Look passed between them. A great deal was said,
below the level of words. The truth surfaced briefly, was ac-
knowledged, and then vanished beneath the necessity for subterfuge.
	"This wife," she said. Her face was flushed. "She did not
accompany you on your journey here."
	"Marriage in Dembowska is a different situation," Lindsay
said.
	"I was married here. A five-year contract marriage. Polygamous. It expired last year."
	"You are currently unattached?"
	She nodded. Lindsay gestured about the room with a whir of
his right arm. "Myself as well. You can see the state of my
domestic affairs. My career has made my life rather arid."
	She smiled tentatively.
	"Would you be interested in  the management of my house
hold? An  Assistant Auditorship would pay rather better than
your current position, I think."
	"I'm sure it would."
	"Shall we say, a six-month probationary period against a five
year joint management contract, standard terms, monogamous?
I can have my office print out a contract by tomorrow morning."
	"This is quite sudden."
	"Nonsense, Alexandrina. At our age, if we put things off, we
never accomplish anything. What's five years to us? We have
reached the age of discretion."
	"May I have that drink?" she said. "It's bad for my maintenance program, but I think I need it." She looked at him
nervously, a ghost of strained intimacy waking behind her eyes.
	He looked at her smooth paper skin, the brittle precision of
her hair. He realized that his gesture of atonement would add
another rote to his life, a new form of routine. He restrained a
sigh. "I look to you to set our sexuality clause."

SKIMMERS UNION COUNCIL STATE: 23-6-'83

Constantine looked into the tank. Behind the glass window,
below the surface of the water, was the waterlogged head of Paolo Mavrides. The dark, curled hair, a major trait of the Mavrides gene-line, floated soggily around the young man's neck and shoulders. The eyes were open, greenish and blood-shot. Injections had paralyzed his optic nerve. A spinal clamp left him able to feel but not to move. Blind and deaf, numbed by the blood-warmed water, Paolo Mavrides had been in sensory isolation for two weeks.
	A tracheal plug fed him oxygen. Intravenous taps kept him
from starving.
	Constantine touched a black rocker switch on the welded tank,
and the jury-rigged speakers came alive. The young assassin was
talking to himself, some mumbled litany in different voices.
Constantine spoke into the microphone. "Paolo."
	"I'm busy," Paolo said. "Come back later."
	Constantine chuckled. "Very well." He tapped against the microphone to make the sound of a switch closing.
	"No, wail!" Paolo said at once. Constantine smiled at the trace
of panic. "Never mind, the performance is ruined anyway.
Vetterling's Shepherd Moons."
	"Hasn't had a performance in years," Constantine said. "You
must have been a mere child then."
	"I memorized it when I was nine."
	"I'm impressed by your resourcefulness. Still, the Cataclysts
believe in that, don't they? Testing the inner world of the
will. . . You've been in there quite a while. Quite a while."
	There was silence. Constantine waited. "How long?" Mavrides
burst out.
	"Almost forty-eight hours."
	Mavrides laughed shortly.
	Constantine joined in. "Of course we know that isn't so. No,
it's been almost a year. You'd be surprised how thin you look."
	"You should try it sometime. Might help your skin problems."
	"Those are the least of my difficulties, young man. I made a
tactical error when I chose the best security possible. It made
me a challenge. You'd be surprised how many fools have had
this tank before you. You made a mistake, young Paolo."
	"Tell me something," Paolo said. "Why do you sound like
God?"
	"That's a technical artifact. My voice has a direct feed to your
inner ear. That's why you can't hear your own voice. I'm reading it off the nerves to your larynx."
	"I see," Paolo said. "Wirehead work."
	"Nothing irreversible. Tell me about yourself, Paolo. What was
your brigade?"
	"I'm no Cataclyst."
	"I have your weapon here." Constantine pulled a small timer-
vial from his tailored linen jacket and rolled it between his
fingers. "Standard Cataclyst issue. What is it? PDKL-Ninety-
five?"
	Paolo said nothing.
	"Perhaps you know the drug as 'Shatter,' " Constantine said.
	Paolo laughed. "I know better than to try to re-form your
mind. If I could have entered the same room with you I would
have set it for five seconds and we would have both died."
	"An aerosol toxin, is it? How rash."
	"There are more important things than living, plebe."
	"What a quaint insult. I see you've researched my past. Haven't heard the like in years. Next you'll be saying I'm unplanned."
	"No need. Your wife tells us that much."
	"I beg your pardon?"
	"Natalie Constantine, your wife. Hver hear of her? She doesn't
take neglect easily. She's become the prime whore of Skimmers
Union."
	"How distressing."
	"How do you think I planned to enter your house? Your wife's
a slut. She begs me for it."
	Constantine laughed. "You'd like me to strike you, wouldn't
you? The pain would give you something to hold on to. No, you
should have stayed in Goldreich-Tremaine, young man. In those
empty halls and broken-down offices. I'm afraid you've begun
to bore me."
	"Let me tell you what I regret, before you go. I regret that I set my sights so low. I've had time to think, recently." Hollow
laughter. "I fell for your image, your propaganda line. The Nysa
asteroid, for instance. It seemed so grand at first. The Ring
Council didn't know that Nysa Cartel was a dumping ground for
burnt-out wireheads from the moondocks. You were still sucking up to aristocrats from the Republic. With all your rank you're still a cheap informer, Constantine. And a fucking lackey."
	Constantine felt a quiver of familiar tension across the back of
his head. He touched the plug there and reached in his pocket
for the inhaler. No use going into fugue when the boy was
starling to babble, at the point of breaking. "Go on," he said.
	"The great things you claim you've done are all facades and
frauds. You've never built anything of your own. You're small,
Constantine. Very small. I know a man who could hide ten of
you under his thumbnail."
	"Who?" Constantine said. "Your friend Vetterling?"
	"Poor Fernand, your victim? Yes, of course he's a thousand
times your size, but that's hardly fair, is it? You never had an
atom of artistic talent. No, I mean in your own skill. Politics.
Espionage."
	"Some Cataclyst, then." Constantine was bored.
	"No. Abelard Lindsay."
	It hit him then. A lightning stroke of migraine raced across his
left frontal lobe. The surface of the tank came toward him in
slow motion as he fell, a frozen icescape of dull metallic glitter,
and he struggled to get his hands up, nerve impulses locked in a
high-speed fugue that seemed to last a month. When he came
to, his cheek pressed against the cold metal, Mavrides was still
babbling. ". . . the whole story from Nora. While you were here
holding treason trials for artists, Lindsay was scoring the biggest
coup in history. An Investor defector. ... He has an Investor
defector, a starship Queen. In the palm of his hand."
	Constantine cleared his throat. "I heard that news. Mech pro-
paganda. It's a farce."
	Mavrides laughed hysterically. "You're burned! You're a
fucking footnote. Lindsay led the revolution in your nation
while you were still swatting bugs in the germs and muck and
plotting to seize his credit. You're microscopic! I shouldn't have
bothered to kill you, but I've never had any luck."
	"Lindsay's dead. He's been dead sixty years."
	"Sure, plebe. That's what he wanted you to think." The laughter from the speakers was metallic, drawn straight from the
nerve. "I lived in his house, fool. He loved me."
	Constantine opened the tank. He twisted the timer on the vial
and dropped it into the water, then slammed the tank shut. He
turned and walked away. As he reached the doorway he heard a
sudden frenzied splashing as the toxin hit.

CZARINA-KLUSTER PEOPLE'S CORPORATE REPUBLIC: 3-1-'84

The long bright line of welded radiance was the cleanest thing
he had ever seen. Lindsay floated in an observation bubble,
watching construction robots crawl in vacuum. The Mechanist
engines had the long sharp noses of weevils, their white-hot
welding tips casting long shadows across the blackened hull of
the Czarina's Palace.
	They were building a full-sized replica of an Investor starship,
a starship without engines, a hulk that would never move under
its own power. And black, with no trace of the gaudy arabesques
and inlays of a true Investor craft. The other Investors had
insisted on it: condemned their pervert Queen to this dark and
mocking prison.
	After years of research, Lindsay had pieced out the truth about
the Commander's crime.
	Queens intromitted their eggs into the womblike pouches of
their males. The males fertilized the eggs and brought them to
term within the pouch. The neuter Ensigns controlled ovulation
through a complex hormonal pseudo-copulation.
	The criminal Queen had killed her Ensign in a fit of passion
and set up a common male in his place. But without a true
Ensign, the cycles of her sexuality had become distorted. Lindsay's evidence showed her destroying one of her malformed eggs. To an Investor, it was worse than perversion, worse even than murder: it was bad for business.
	Lindsay had presented his evidence in a way that pierced to
the core of Investor ethics. Embarrassment was not an emotion
native to Investors. They had been stunned. But Lindsay was
quick with his remedy: exile. Behind it was the implied threat to
spread the evidence, to play out the details of the scandal to
every Investor ship and every human faction.
	It was bad enough that a select group of wealthy Queens and
Ensigns had been apprised of the shocking news. That the
impressionable males should learn of it was unthinkable. A
bargain was struck.
	The Queen never knew what had betrayed her. The approach
to her had been even more subtle, stretching Lindsay's talents to
the utmost. A timely gift of jewels had helped, distracting her
with that overwhelming avidity that was the very breath of life to
Investors. Business had been poor on her ship, with its debased
crew and wretched eunuch Ensign.
	Lindsay came armed with charts from Wells, statistics predicting the wealth to be wrung from a city-state independent of
faction. Their exponential curves rose to a clean rake-off of
breathtaking riches. He told her that he knew nothing of her
disgrace; only that her own species was eager to condemn her.
With a large enough hoard, he hinted, she might buy her way
back into their good graces.
	Patiently, fluently, he helped her see that this was her best
chance. What could she accomplish alone, without crew, with-
out Ensign? Why not accept the industrious aid of the small
polite strangers? The social instincts of the tiny gregarious
mammals drove them to consider her their Queen, in truth, and
themselves her subjects. Already a Board of Advisors awaited
her whims, each one fluent in Investor and begging leave to
heap her with wealth.
	Greed would only have taken her so far. It was fear that broke
her to his will: fear of the small soft-skinned alien with dark
plastic over his pulpy eyes and his answers for everything. He
seemed to know her own people better than she did herself.
	The announcement had come a week later, and with it a
sudden hemorrhage of capital to the newborn place of exile.
They called the Queen "Czarina," a nickname given by Ryumin.
And her city was Czarina-Kluster: in four months already a
boom town, accreting out of nothing on the inner edge of the
Belt. The Czarina-Kluster People's Corporate Republic had
leaped into sudden concrete existence out of raw potential, in
what Wells called a "Prigoginic leap," a "mergence into a higher
level of complexity." Now the Board of Advisors was deluged
with business, comlines frantic with would-be defectors maneuvering for asylum and a fresh start. The presence of an Investor cast an enormous shadow, a wall of prestige that no Mechanist or Shaper dared to challenge.
	Makeshift squatter's digs crowded the Queen's raw Palace: nets of tough Shaper bubble suburbs, "subbles"; sleazy pirate craft
copulating in a daisy-chain of accordioned attack tunnels; rough
blown-out honeycombs of Mechanist nickel-iron, towed into
place; limpetlike construction huts clinging to the skeletal girders of an urban complex scarcely off the drawing board. This city would be a metropolis, a circumsolar free port, the ultimate sundog zone. He had brought it into being. But it was not for him.
	"A sight to stir the blood, friend." Lindsay looked to his right.
The man once called Wells had arrived in the observation
bubble. In the weeks of preparation Wells had vanished into a
carefully prepared false identity. He was now Wellspring, two
hundred years old, born on Earth, a man of mystery, a maneuverer par excellence, a visionary, even a prophet. Nothing less would do. A coup this size demanded legendry. It demanded fraud.
	Lindsay nodded. "Things progress."
	"This is where the real work starts. I'm not too happy with that Board of Advisors. They seem a bit too stiff, too Mechanist.
Some of them have ambition. They'll have to be watched."
	"Of course."
	"You wouldn't consider the job? The Coordinator's post is
open for you. You're the man for it."
	"I like the shadows, Wellspring. A role your size is too close to
the footlights for me."
	Wellspring hesitated. "I have trouble enough with the philosophy. The myth may be too much for me. I need you and your
shadows."
	Lindsay looked away, watching two construction robots follow
a seam to meet in a white-hot kiss of their welding-beaks. "My wife is dead," he said.
	"Alexandrina? I'm sorry. This is a shock."
	Lindsay winced.  "No, not her.  Nora. Nora Mavrides.  Nora
	Everett."
	"Ah," Wellspring said. "When did you get the news?"
	"I told her," Lindsay said, "that I had a place for us. You
remember I mentioned to you that there might be a Ring Council breakaway."
	"Yes."
	"It was as quiet as I could make it, but not quiet enough.
Constantine got word somehow, exposed the breakaway. She
was indicted for treason. The trial would have implicated the
rest of her clan. So she chose suicide."
	"She was courageous."
	"It was the only thing to do."
	"One supposes so."
	"She still loved me, Wellspring. She was going to join me here.  She was trying to do it when he killed her."
	"I recognize your grief," Wellspring said. "But life is long. You
mustn't be blinded to your ultimate aims."
	Lindsay was grim. "You know I don't follow that post-
Cataclyst line."
	"Posthumanist," Wellspring insisted. "Are you on the side of
life, or aren't you? If you're not, then you'll let the pain over-
whelm you. You'll go against Constantine and die as Nora did.
Accept her death, and stay with us. The future belongs to
Posthumanism, Lindsay. Not to nation-states, not to factions. It
belongs to life, and life moves in clades."
	"I've heard your spiel before, Wellspring. If we embrace the
loss of our humanity then it means worse differences, worse
struggle, worse war."
	"Not if the new clades can reach accord as cognitive systems
on the Fourth Prigoginic Level of Complexity."
	Lindsay, despairing, was silent. Finally he said, "I wish you the
best of luck here, sincerely. Protect the damaged, if you can.
Maybe it'll come to something."
	"There's a universe of potential, Lindsay, think of that. No
rules, no limits."
	"Not while he lives. Forgive me."
	"You'll have to do that for yourself."

AN INVESTOR TRADE SHIP: 14-2-'86

	"This is not the sort of transaction we prefer," the Investor said.
	"Have we met before, Ensign?" said Lindsay.
	"No. I knew one of your students once. Captain-Doctor Simon
Afriel. A very accomplished gentleman."
	"I remember Simon well."
	"He died on embassy." The Investor stared, his dark eyeballs
gleaming with hostility above the white rims of his nictitating
membranes. "A pity. I always enjoyed his conversation. Still, he
had that urge to meddle, to tamper. You call it curiosity. An
urge to value useless data. A being with such a handicap runs a
great many unnecessary risks."
	"Without a doubt," Lindsay agreed. He had not heard of
Afriel's death. The knowledge filled him with bitter pleasure:
another fanatic gone, another gifted life wasted. . . .
	"Hatred is an easier motive to fathom. Strange that you should fall prey to it, Artist. It makes me doubt my judgment of your
species."
	"I regret being a source of confusion. Chancellor-General Constantine might explain it better."
	"I'll speak to him. He and his party have just come aboard. He
is not a fit model, though, for a judgment on human nature.
Our scanning reveals that he favors severe alterations."
	Many did these days, Lindsay thought. Even the very young.
As if the existence of the Neotenic Republic, with its forced
humanity, freed the other factions from a stifling pretense. "You
find this odd in a spacegoing race?"
	"No. Not at all. That's why there are so few of them left."
	"Nineteen," Lindsay said.
	"Yes. The number of vanished races within our trading realm
is larger by an order of magnitude. Their artifacts persist,
though, such as the one we plan to lease to you presently." The
Investor showed his striated, peglike teeth, a sign of distaste and
reluctance. "We'd hoped for truly long-term trade with your
species, but we cannot dissuade you from aiming for break-
throughs in questions of metaphysics. We will soon have to put
your solar system under quarantine for fear of being caught in
your transmutations. In the meantime we must abandon a few
scruples to make our local investments worthwhile."
	"You alarm me," Lindsay said. He had heard this before:
vague warnings from the Investors, intended to freeze humanity
at its current level of development. It amused him that Investors
should preach Preservationism. "Surely the War is a greater threat."
	"No," the Investor said. "We ourselves presented you with
evidence. Our interstellar drive showed you that space-time is
not what you thought. You must be aware of this, Artist. Consider recent breakthroughs in the mathematical treatment of what you call Hilbert space and the ur-space of the precontinuum. They can't have escaped your attention."
	"Mathematics isn't my forte," Lindsay said.
	"Nor ours. We only know that these discoveries are danger
signs of an imminent transition to another mode of being."
	"Imminent?"
	"Yes. A matter of mere centuries."
	Centuries, Lindsay thought. It was easy to forget how old the
Investors were. Their deep disinterest in change gave them a
wide but shallow field of view. They had no interest in their
own history, no urge to contrast their own lives with those of
their dead, because there was no assumption that their lives or
motives varied in even the slightest degree. They had vague
legends and garbled technical readouts concerning particularly
prized objects of booty, but even these fragments of history were
lost in a jackdaw scramble of loot.
	"Not all the extinct races made the transition," the Ensign said, "and those who invented the Arena probably died violently. We
have no data on that: only technical data on their modes of
perception, allowing us to make the Arena comprehensible to
the human nervous system. In this we had the assistance of the
Department of Neurology from the Kosmosity of the Nysa Corporate Treaty State."
	Constantine's recruits, Lindsay thought. The Nysa rogue
wireheads, Mechanist defectors to the Shaper cause, combining
Mech techniques with the fascist structure of the Shaper
academic-military complex. "The very men -the very beings,
rather, for the job."
	"So said the Chancellor-General. His party has assembled now.
Shall we join them?"
	Constantine's group mingled with Lindsay's in one of the cavernous lounges of the Investor ship. The lounge was crowded
with towering rococo furniture: dizzyingly overdecorated settees
and slablike tables, supported on curved legs crusted with
ribbed domes and stylized scrolls. It was all far too large to be
of any conventional use to the score of human visitors, who
crouched under the furniture warily, careful not to touch any-
thing. Lindsay saw as he entered the lounge that the alien
furnishings had been sprayed with a thick protective lacquer to
guard them from oxygen.
	He had never seen any of the young Constantine genetics.
Constantine had brought ten of them: five women, five men.
The Constantine siblings were taller than Constantine and had
lighter hair, clearly a percentage cut from some other gene-line.
	They had that peculiar Shaper magnetism, an acrobatic
smoothness and fluidity. Yet something in the set of their shoulders, their slim, dexterous hands, kinesically displayed Con-
stantine's genetic heritage. They wore outlandish finery: round
velvet hats, ruby earrings, and gold-laced brocade coats. They
dressed for the sake of Investors, who appreciated a prosperous
look in their customers.
	One woman had her back to Lindsay, examining the towering
legs of the furniture. The others stood calmly, trading meaning-
less pleasantries with Lindsay's people, a motley group of academics and Investor specialists on leave from Czarina-Kluster.
His wife Alexandrina was among them; she was talking to Constantine himself, with her usual perfect good breeding. Nothing
showed that all of them were seconds at a duel, witnesses
present to assure fairness.
	It had been a two-year struggle, a matter of prolonged and
delicate negotiation, to arrange a meeting between himself and
Constantine. At last they had settled on the Investor starship as
a suitable battleground, one where treachery would be
counterproductive. The Arena itself had remained in Investor
hands; the Nysa technicians had worked on data freely available
to both parties. The costs were split equitably, with Constantine
assuming most of the financing, on an option against possible
technological spinoffs. Lindsay had received data through a
double-blind in Czarina-Kluster and Dembowska, to confuse
possible assassins. Constantine, to his credit, had sent no one.
	The mechanics of their duel had been fraught with difficulty.
Varying proposals had been debated by an ever-widening circle
of those in the know. Physical combat was rejected at once as
beneath the dignity of the estranged parties. Those familiar with
the social gambling of the Shaper underworld favored a form of
gambling for suicide. An appeal to chance, though, presumed
equality between the parties, which neither was willing to grant.
	A proper duel should assure the triumph of the better man. It
was argued that this required a test of alertness, will, and mental
flexibility, qualities central to modern life. Objective tests were
possible, but it was difficult to ensure that one party would not
prepare himself ahead of time or influence the judges. Various
forms of direct mind-to-mind struggle existed among the
wirehead community, but these often lasted for decades and
involved radical alteration of the faculties. They decided to
consult the Investors.
	At first the Investors had difficulty grasping the concept. Later,
characteristically, they suggested economic warfare, with each
party granted a stake and offered the opportunity to increase it.
After a stated period the poorer man was to be executed.
	This was not satisfactory. Another Investor suggestion involved attempts by both parties to read the "literature of the
(untranslatable)," but it was suggested that the survivor might
repeat something of what he had read and become a hazard to
the rest of humanity. At this point the Arena was rediscovered
in one of the booty-crammed holds of an Investor craft present
in circumsolar space.
	Study quickly showed the Arena's advantages. Alien forms of
experience challenged even the finest members of society: the
emissaries to alien worlds. The extremely high casualty rate
among this group proved that the Arena would be a test in
itself. Within the Arena's simulated environment, the duelists
would battle in two alien bodies of guaranteed equality, thus
ensuring that victory would go to the superior strategist.
	Constantine stood beneath one of the towering tables, sipping a self-chilling silver goblet of distilled water. Like his gaudily clad
congenetics, he wore soft lace-cuffed trousers and a gold threaded coat, its high collar studded with insignias of rank. His round, delicate eyes gleamed black with soft antiglare lenses.  His face, like Lindsay's, was creased where years of habitual expression had worked their way into the muscles.
	Lindsay wore a dun-brown jumpsuit without markings. His
face was oiled against the blue-white glare, and he wore dark
sunshades.
	He crossed the room to join Constantine. A hush fell, but
Constantine gestured urbanely, and his fellow genetics picked
up the tag-ends of their conversations.
	"Hello, cousin," Constantine said.
	Lindsay nodded. "A fine group of congenetics, Philip. Con-
gratulations on your siblings."
	"Good sound stock," Constantine agreed. "They handle the
gravity well." He looked pointedly at Lindsay's wife, who had
shuffled tactfully toward another group, visibly troubled by pain
in her knees.
	"I spent a lot of time on gene politics," Lindsay said. "In
retrospect it seems like an aristocratic fetish."
	Constantine's lids narrowed over the black adhesive lenses. "A
little more work on the Mavrides production run might have
been in order."
	Lindsay felt a surge of cold fury. "Their loyalties betrayed
them."
	Constantine sighed. "The irony hasn't escaped me, Abelard. If
you had only maintained your pledged faith to Vera Kelland
years ago, none of these aberrations would have occurred."
	"Aberrations?" Lindsay smiled icily. "Decent of you to mop
up after me, cousin. To tie up my loose ends."
	"Small wonder, when you left so many pernicious ones." Con-
stantine sipped his water. "Appeasement policy, for instance.
Detente. It was typical of you to fast-talk a population into
disaster and then sundog off when it came to the crunch."
	Lindsay showed interest. "Is that the new party line? To blame
me for the Investor Peace? How flattering. But is it wise to bring
up the past? Why remind them that you lost the Republic?"
	Constantine's knuckles whitened on the goblet. "I see that
you're still an antiquarian. Odd that you should embrace Wellspring and his cadre of anarchists."
	Lindsay nodded. "I know that you'll attack Czarina-Kluster if
you have the chance. Your hypocrisy astounds me. You're no
Shaper. Not only are you unplanned, but your use of Mech
techniques is notorious. You're a living demonstration of the
power of detente. You seize advantage wherever you find it but
deny it to anyone else."
	Constantine smiled. "I'm no Shaper. I'm their guardian. It's
been my fate, and I've accepted it. I've been alone all my life,
except for you and Vera. We were fools then."
	"I was the fool," Lindsay said. "I killed Vera for nothing. You
killed her to prove your own power."
	"The price was bitter, but the proof was worth it. I've made
amends since then." He drained his goblet and stretched out his arm.
	Vera Kelland took the cup. Around her neck she wore the
gold filigree locket she had worn in the crash, the locket that
was meant to guarantee his death.
	Lindsay was dumbstruck. He had not seen the girl's face when
her back was turned.
	She did not meet his eyes.
	Lindsay stared at her in icy fascination. The resemblance was
strong but not perfect. The girl turned and left. Lindsay forced
the words. "She's not a full clone."
	"Of course not, Vera Kelland was unplanned."
	"You used her genetics."
	"Do I hear envy, cousin? Are you claiming her cells loved you
and not me?" Constantine laughed.
	Lindsay tore his gaze from the woman. Her grace and beauty
wounded him. He felt shell-shocked, panicky. "What will hap-
pen to her, when you die here?"
	Constantine smiled quietly. "Why not mull that over, while we
fight?"
	"I'll make you a pledge," Lindsay said. "I swear that if I win
I'll spare your congenetics in the years to come."
	"My people are loyal to the Ring Council. Your Czarina-
Kluster rabble are their enemies. They're bound to come in
conflict."
	"Surely that will be grim enough without our adding to it."
	"You're naive, Abelard. Czarina-Kluster must fall."
	Lindsay looked aside, studying Constantine's group. "They
don't look stupid, Philip. I wonder if they won't rejoice at your
death. They might be swept away in the general celebration."
	"Idle speculation always bores me," Constantine said.
	Lindsay glared. "Then it's time we put the matter to the
proof."
	Heavy curtains were spread over one of the huge alien tables,
falling to the floor. Beneath the table's sheltering expanse the
blazing light was dimmer, and a pair of supportive waterbeds
were brought in to combat Investor gravity.
	The Arena itself was tiny, a fist-sized dodecahedron, its triangular sides so glossily black that they shimmered with faint
pastels. Wire trailed from metal-bound sockets in two opposing
poles of the structure. The wires led to two goggle-equipped
helmets with flexible neck extensions. The helmets had the
blunt utilitarian look of Mechanist manufacture.
	Constantine won the toss and took the right-hand helmet. He
produced a flat curved lozenge of beige plastic from his gold-
threaded coat and hooked an elastic strap to its anchor loops.
"A spatial analyzer," he explained. "One of my routines.
Permitted?"
	"Yes." Lindsay pulled a flesh-colored strip of dotted adhesive
disks from his breast pocket. "PDKL Ninety-five," he said. "In
doses of two hundred micrograms."
	Constantine stared. " 'Shatter.' From the Cataclysts?"
	"No," Lindsay said. "This was part of the stock of Michael
Carnassus. It's original Mechanist issue, for the embassies.
Interested?"
	"No," Constantine said. He looked shaken. "I protest. I came
here to fight Abelard Lindsay, not a shattered personality."
	"That scarcely matters now, does it? This is to the death,
Constantine. My humanity would only get in the way."
	Constantine shrugged. "Then I win, no matter what."
	Constantine attached the spatial analyzer, fitting its custom-
made curves against the back of his skull. Its microprongs slid
smoothly into the jacks connected to his right hemisphere. With
its use, space would assume a fantastic solidity, movement
would show with superhuman clarity. Constantine lifted the
helmet and caught a glimpse of his own sleeve. Lindsay saw him
hesitate, studying the fabric's complex interwoven topology. He
seemed fascinated. Then he shuddered briefly and slid his head
within the helmet.
	Lindsay pressed the first dosage against his wrist and donned
his headpiece. He felt the adhesive eye-cusps grip his sockets,
then a wash of numbness as local anesthetics took effect and
threads of stiffened biogel slid over the eyeballs to penetrate his
optic nerves. He heard a faint annihilating ringing as other
threads wormed past his eardrums into predetermined
chemotactic contact with his neurons.
	They both lay back on their waterbeds, waiting as the helmets'
neck units soaked through predrilled microholes in the seventh
cervical vertebra. The microthreads grew their way harmlessly
through the myclin casings of the spinal axons in a self-
replicating gelatin web.
	Lindsay floated quietly. The PDKL was taking hold. As the
spinal cutoff proceeded he felt his body dissolving like wax,
each sensory clump of muscle sending a final warm glow of
sensation as the neck unit shut it off, a last twinge of humanity
too thin to be called pain. The Shatter helped him forget. By
rendering everything novel, it was intended to rob everything of
novelty. While it broke up preconceptions, it heightened the
powers of comprehension so drastically that entire intuitive
philosophies boiled up from a single moment of insight.
	It was dark. His mouth tasted of cobwebs. He felt a brief wave
of vertigo and terror before the Shatter aborted it, leaving him
suddenly stranded in an emotional no-man's-land where his fear
transmuted itself bizarrely into a crushing sense of physical
weight.
	He was crouching next to the base of a titanic wall. Before him, dim sheens of radiance gleamed from a colossal arch. Beside it,
jutting balustrades of icy stone were shrouded in thin webs of
sagging dust-covered cable. He reached out to touch the wall
and noted with dulled surprise that his arm had transmuted
itself into a pallid claw. The arm was jointed in pale armor. It
had two elbows.
	He began crawling up the wall. Gravity accompanied him.
Looking out with new perspective he saw that bridges had
transformed themselves into curved columns; loops of sagging
cable were now vicious, stiffened arcs.
	Everything was old. Something behind his eyes was opening.
He could see time lying on the world like a sheen, a frozen blur
of movement chopped out of context and painted onto the
surface of the cold stone like alien shellac. Walls became floors,
balustrades cold barricades. He realized then that he had too
many legs. There were legs where his ribs should have been and
the crawling feeling in his stomach was a literal crawling: the
sensations from his guts were transmuted into the movement of
his second pair of limbs.
	He struggled to look at himself. He could not curl forward, but
his back arched with fantastic ease and his lidless eyes gazed at
armored plates thick with intersegmental fur. A pair of wrinkled
organs protruded on stalks from his back: he brushed his muzzle against them and suddenly, dizzyingly, he smelted yellow. He
tried to scream, then. He had nothing to scream with.
	He flopped back against the cold rock. Instinct seized him, and
he scuttled headlong across acres of porous gritty stone toward
the safe darkness of a huge jutting cornice and a racklike
checkerboard of rust eaten bars. Proportion left him as he
crouched there, wobbling in a hideous burst of intuition, and he
realized that he was tiny, infinitesimal, that the titanic mortared
blocks that dwarfed him must themselves be small, so small
that . . .
	He jabbed at the porous stone with a raking flex of his
foreclaw. It was solid, solid with a weary durability that had
waited out uncaring eons, painted with the feeble dust of huge
groaning machinery run past the point of uselessness into an
utter exhaustion of grit.
	He could smell the age of it, even feel it as a kind of pressure,
a kind of dread. It was massive, unyielding, and he thought
suddenly of water. Water moving at high speed was as hard as
steel. His mind rocketed off, then, and he thought of the identity of speed and substance, the kinetic energy of atoms giving form to hard stone, stone which was empty space. It was all abstract structure, ageless form, level after level, emptiness permeated by disturbances of emptiness, waves, quanta. He became aware of fine detail within the stone, the surface suddenly no more than frozen smoke, a hard fog petrified by captive eons. Below the surface a finer level, detail on obsessive detail in an ever-recessive web. . . .
	He was attacked. The enemy was on him. He felt a sudden
ghastly rending as claws tore into him from above, the alien pain
garbled in translation, cramming his brain with black nausea
and dread. He flopped in death-stricken convulsion, his face
slid apart in a nightmare extrusion of razored mandibles, and he
caught a leg and sheared it off at the joint; he smelled hot
hunger and pain and the bright hot radiance of his own juices
bursting, and then the cold, the seeping, the bright spark fading
to become one with the old stone and the age and the dark. . . .
	The exterior microphones of his helmet caught Constantine's
voice and fed it through his nerves. "Abelard."
	Lindsay's throat was full of rust. "I hear you."
	"You're alive?"
	The nerve block in his neck half dissolved and he felt his own
body, as insubstantial as warm gas. He groped for the strip of
dermadisks beside his hand: the perforated plastic felt as thin as
ribbon. He peeled off another disk with his fingers and pressed
it raggedly against the base of his thumb. "We must try again."
	"What did you see, Abelard? I must know."
	"Halls. Walls. Dark stones."
	"And gulfs? Black gulfs of nothing, bigger than God?"
	"I can't talk." The other dose was hitting him, language was
collapsing, a tangle of irrelevant assumptions shattered by sudden doubt, wads of grammar mashed beneath the impact of the drug. 	"Again."
	He was back. He could feel the enemy now, sense his presence as a weak distant tingling. The light was clearer, gigantic radiant washes seeping through masses of stone so rotten with age that they were thin as cloth. Fastidiously, he ran his foreclaws
through the polyps around his mouth, cleansing them of damp
grime. He felt a sense of hunger so overwhelming that the scales
equalized, and he realized that the urge to live and kill was as
huge as the vaults around him.
	He found the enemy crouched within a cul-de-sac between a
harsh decaying bridge and its supporting beams. He smelled the
fear.
	The enemy's position was wrong. The enemy clung to the wall
in a false perspective, perceiving the endless horizon as a shattering abyss. The gulf below was an eternal one, a chaos of walls, chambers, landings, self-replicating, built from nothing, a terrifying ramification of infinity.
	He attacked, biting deep into the back plates, the taste of hot
ooze driving him into frenzy. The enemy slashed back, digging,
pushing, pale claws scraping the rock. His jaws ripped free from
the enemy's back. The enemy struggled to push him away, to
shove him backward into the horizon. For a moment he was
gripped by the enemy's own perspective. He knew suddenly that
if he fell he would fall forever. Into the abyss, plunging into his
own terror and defeat, endlessly, through the self spinning labyrinth, mind frozen in boundless anguish, a maze of unending experience, unending fright, implacable walls, halls, steps, ramps, crypts, vaults, passages, always icy, always out of reach.
	He skidded back. The enemy was desperate, scrabbling convulsively, galvanized with pain. His own claws were slipping. The
stone was rejecting him, becoming slicker. Suddenly the break-
through came, and he saw the world for what it was. His claws
slid in, then, with phantom case, stone slipping aside like smoke.
	Then he was anchored. The enemy pushed at him helplessly,
uselessly. He tasted the sudden gush of despair as the enemy
turned to flee.
	He ran him down at once, caught him, and rended him. A
miasma of dust and terror burst from the enemy's flesh. He
ripped him free from the wall, held him out in an orgasm of
hatred and victory-and flung him into the gulf.


Part Three
MOVING IN CLADES


CHAPTER EIGHT

THE NEOTENIC CULTURAL REPUBLIC: 17-6-'91

The dreams were pleasant, dreams of warmth and light, an animal's
life, an eternal present.
	Consciousness returned in tingling pain, like blood seeping into a leg long numbed. He struggled to unify himself, to assume the
burden of being Lindsay again, and the pain of it made him claw the
grass, spattering his naked skin with dirt.
	Chaos roared around him: reality in its rawest form, a buzzing, blinding confusion. He sprawled on his back in the grass, gasping. Above him the world swam into focus: green light, white light, a brown framework of branches. Solidity returned to the world. He saw a living spray of branching leaves and twigs: a form of such
fantastic beauty that he was overwhelmed with awe. He heaved
himself over and slithered toward the tree's rough trunk, hauling
his naked flesh through the sleek grass. He threw his arms around
the tree and pressed his bearded cheek against the bark.
	Ecstasy seized him. He pressed his face against the tree, sobbing in frenzy, torn with deep visionary rapture. As his mind coalesced he burned with insight, a smoldering oneness with this living being.  Helpless joy pervaded him as he joined its serene integration.
	When he called for help, two young Shapers wearing hospital
whites answered his broken cries. Taking his arms, they helped him
stagger across the lawn through the arched stone doorway of the
clinic.
	Lindsay was afflicted by language. His thoughts were clear, but the words wouldn't come. He recognized the building. It was the
mansion of the Tyler clan. He was back in the Republic. He wanted
to speak to the orderlies, ask them how he had returned, but his
brain couldn't shuffle his vocabulary into order. The words waited
agonizingly on the tip of his tongue, just past his reach.
	They took him down an entry hall crowded with blueprints and
glass-topped exhibits. The left wing of the mansion, with its suite of
bedrooms, had been stripped down to the polished wood and filled
with medical equipment. Lindsay stared helplessly into the face of
the man on his left. He had the smooth grace of a Shaper and the
riveting eyes of a Superbright.
	"You are- " Lindsay burst out suddenly.
	"Relax, friend. You're safe. The doctor's on her way." Smiling, he draped Lindsay in a broad-sleeved hospital gown, tying it behind
him in an easy flurry of knots. They seated him under an overhead
cerebral scanner. The second orderly handed him an inhaler.
	"Whiff up on this, cousin. It's tagged glucose. Radioactive. For the scanner." The Superbright whacked the curved white dome of the
machine affectionately. "We've got to look you over. I mean right
down to the core."
	Lindsay sniffed obediently at the inhaler. It smelled sweet. The
scanner whirred down its upright track-stand to settle around the
top of his head.
	A woman entered the room. She carried a wooden instrument
case and wore a loose medical tunic, short skirt, and muddied
plastic boots." Has he spoken?" she said.
	Lindsay recognized her gene-line. "Juliano," he said with difficulty.
	She smiled at him. She opened her wooden case with a squeak of antique hinges. "Yes, Abelard," she said. She gave him a Look.
	"Margaret Juliano," Lindsay said. He could not interpret the
Look, and the inability filled him with a sudden reviving trickle of
energy and fear. "The Cataclysts, Margaret. They put you on ice."
	"That's right." She reached inside the case and produced a dark
candy in a little creased paper tray. "Have a chocolate?"
	Lindsay's mouth flooded with saliva. "Please," he said reflexively.
	She popped the candy into his mouth. It was cloyingly sweet. He chewed it reluctantly.
	"Scarper," Juliano told the two technicians. "I'll handle this." The two Superbrights left, grinning.
	Lindsay swallowed.
	"Another?" she said.
	"Never much canned -never much cared for candy," Lindsay said.
	"That's a good sign," she said, closing the box. She examined the scanner's screen and pulled a light-pen from the cluster of loose
blonde hair at her ear. "Those chocolates were the center of your
life for the last five years."
	The shock was bad, but he had known it was coming. His throat felt dry. "Five years?"
	"You're lucky to have any you left," she said. "It's been a long
treatment: restoring a brain altered by heavy dosage of PDKL
Ninety-five. Complicated by changes in your spatial perception,
caused by the Arena artifact. It's been a real challenge. Expensive,
too." She studied the screen, nibbling the end of her light-pen. "But
that's all right. Your friend Wellspring footed the bills."
	She had changed so much that it dizzied him. It was hard to
reconcile the disciplined pacifist of the Midnight Clique, Margaret
Juliano of Goldreich-Tremaine, with this calm, careless woman
with grass stains on her knees and loose, dirty hair.
	"Don't try to talk too much at first," she said. "Your right
hemisphere is handling language functions through the
commissure. We can expect neologisms, poverty of speech, a
private idiolect . . . don't be alarmed." She circled something on
the display screen and pressed a control key: cross-sections of his
brain snuffled past in bright false-color blues and oranges.
	"How many people in this room?" she said.
	"You and I," Lindsay said.
	"No sense of someone behind you, to your left?"
	Lindsay twisted to look, scraping his forehead painfully on an
inner node of the scanner. "No."
	"Good. The commissure approach was the right one, then. In
split-brain cases we sometimes get a fragmentation of conscious-
ness, a ghost image overlooking the perceptual self. Let me know if
you feel anything of the sort."
	"No. But outside I felt-" He wanted to tell her about the moment when waking had come suddenly, his long epiphanic insight into self and life. The vision still blazed within him, but the vocabulary
was completely beyond him. He knew suddenly that he would never he able to tell anyone the full truth. It was not something that
words could hold.
	"Don't struggle," she said. "Let it come easily. There's plenty of time."
	"My arm," Lindsay said suddenly. He realized with confusion that his right arm, the metal one, had turned to flesh. He raised the left one. It was metal. Horror overloaded him. He had turned inside
out!
	"Careful," she said. "You may have some trouble with space
perceptions, left and right. It's an artifact of the commissural dominance. And you've had a new rejuvenation. We've done a lot
of work on you in the past five years. Just to mark time."
	The careless ease of it stunned him. "Are you God?" Lindsay said.
	She shrugged. "There've been breakthroughs, Abelard. A lot has changed. Socially, politically, medically-all the same thing nowadays, I know, but think of it as spontaneous self-organization, a
social Prigoginic Leap to a new level of complexity-"
	"Oh, no," Lindsay said.
	She tapped the scanner, and it whirred upward off his head. She sat before him in an antique wooden office chair, curling one leg
beneath her. "Sure you don't want a chocolate?"
	"No!"
	"I'll have one, then." She pulled a candy from the case and bit into it, chewing happily. "They're good." She spoke unaffectedly, her
mouth full. "This is one of the good limes, Abelard. It's why they
thawed me out, I think."
	"You changed."
	"Ice assassination docs that. They were right, the Cataclysts. Right to put me out. I was calcifying. One moment I was floating through the math hall at the Kosmosity, printouts in my hand, on my way to the office, mind full of little problems, worries, schedules. . . . I was dizzy for a moment. I looked around, and everything was gone.
Deserted. Trashed. The printouts were crumbling in my hands,
clothes full of dust,Goldreich-Tremaine in ruins, computers down,
classes all gone. . . . The world leaped thirty years in a moment; it
was total Cataclysm. For three days I chased down news, trying to
find our Clique, learning I was history, and then it came over me in
a wave. I 'preeked,' Abelard. My preconceptions shattered. The
world didn't need me, and everything I'd thought was important
was gone. My life was totally futile. And totally free."
	"Free," Lindsay said, tasting the word. "Constantine," he said
suddenly. "My enemy."
	"He's dead, so to speak," Margaret Juliano said, "but it's a
question of definition. I have the scans on his condition from his
congenetics. The damage is very severe. He fell into a protracted
fugue state and suffered an accelerated consciousness that must
have lasted for subjective centuries. His consciousness could not
maintain itself on the data it received from the Arena device. It
lasted so long that his personality was abraded away. Speaking
metaphorically, he forgot himself to pieces."
	"They told you that? His siblings?"
	"Times have changed, Abelard. Detente is back. The Constantine gene-line is in trouble, and we paid them well for the information. Skimmers Union lost the capitalship. Jastrow Station is the capital now, and it's full of Zen Serotonists. They hate excitement."
	The news thrilled Lindsay. "Five years," he said. He stood up in agitation. "Well, what's five years to me?" He tried to pace about
the room, swinging dizzily. The left-right hemispheric confusion
made him clumsy. He drew himself up and tried to get a grip on his
kinesics.  He failed.
	He turned on Juliano. "My training. My kinesics."
She nodded. "Yes. When we went in we noticed the remnants of it.
Early Shaper psychotechnic conditioning. Very clumsy by modern
standards. It interfered with your recovery. So, over the years, we
chased it down and extinguished it bit by bit."
"You mean it's gone?"
	"Oh, yes. We had enough cerebral dichotomy to deal with without your training giving you dual modes of thought. 'Hypocrisy as a second state of consciousness' and all that." She sniffed. "It was a
bad idea to begin with."
	Lindsay sagged back into the scanning chair. "But all my life.
. . . And now you took it away. With feck - " He closed his eyes,
struggled for the word. "With technology."  She took another candy. "So what?" she said indistinctly, munching. "Technology put it there in the first place. You have your self back. What more do you want?"
	Alexandrina Tyler came through the open doorway with a swish of heavy fabric. She wore the finery of her girlhood: a puffed, floor-length skirt and a stiff cream-colored jacket with embroidered
input jacks and a round neck-circling collar. She looked at the
floor. "Margaret," she said. "Your feet."
	Juliano looked absently at the dried mud flaking from her boots.
"Oh, dear. Sorry."
	The sudden juxtaposition of the two women filled Lindsay with
vertigo. A confused wash of tainted deja vu bubbled up from some
drugged cerebral recess, and for a moment he thought he would
pass out. When he revived he could feel that he had improved, as if
some paralyzing sludge had trickled out of his head, leaving light
and space. "Alexandrina," he said, feeling feebler yet somehow
more real. "You've been time? All this here?"
	"Abelard," she said, surprised. "You're talking."
	"Trying to."
	"I heard you were better," she said. "So I brought you clothes.
From the Museum wardrobe." She showed him a plastic-wrapped
suit, an antique. "You see? This is actually one of your own suits
from seventy-five years ago. One of the looters saved it when the
Lindsay Mansion was sacked. Try it on, dear."
	Lindsay touched the suit's stiff, age-worn fabric. "A museum
piece," he said.
	"Well, of course."
	Margaret Juliano Looked at Alexandrina. "Maybe he'd be more
comfortable dressed as an orderly. He could fade into the back-
ground. Take on local color."
	"No," Lindsay said. "All right. I'll wear it."
	"Alexandrina's been looking forward to this," Juliano confided as he struggled into the suit's trousers, ramming his bare feet past the wire-stiffened accordioned knees. "Every day she's come to feed
you Tyler apples."
	"I brought you here after the duel," Alexandrina said. "Our
marriage expired, but I run the Museum now. I have a post here."
She smiled. "They sacked the mansions, but the family orchards are
still standing. Your Grandaunt Marietta always swore by the family's apples."
	A seam gave way in the shoulder as Lindsay pulled on the shirt.
	"You wolfed clown those apples, seeds, stems, and all," Juliano told him. "It was a wonder."
	"You're home, Alexa," Lindsay said. It was what she had wanted.
He was glad for her.
	"This was the Tyler house," Alexandrina said. "The left wing and the grounds are for the clinic; that's Margaret's work. I'm the
Curator. I run the rest. I've gathered up all the mementos of our old
way of life-all that was spared by Constantine's reeducation
squads." She helped him pull the spacesuit-collared formal jacket
over his head. "Come on, I'll show you."
Juliano kicked off her boots and stood in her rumpled socks. "I'llcome along. I want to judge his reactions."
	The main ballroom had become an exhibit hall, with glass-fronted displays and portraits of early clan founders. An antique pedal-driven ultralight aircraft hung from the ceiling. Five Shapers
marveled over a case full of crude assembly tools from the
circumlunar's construction. The Shapers' chic low-gravity clothing
sagged grotesquely in the Republic's centrifugal spin. Alexandrina
took his arm and whispered, "The floor looks nice, doesn't it? I
refinished it myself. We don't allow robots here."
	Lindsay glanced at one wall and was paralyzed at the sight of his own clan's founder, Malcolm Lindsay. As a child, the dead pioneer's face, leering in ancestral wisdom from the tops of dressers
and bookshelves, had filled him with dread. Now he realized with a
painful leap of insight how young the man had been. Dead at
seventy. The whole habitat had been slammed up in frantic haste by
people scarcely more than children. He began laughing hysterically. "It's a joke!" he shouted. The laughter was melting his head, breaking up a logjam of thought in little stabbing pangs.
	Alexandrina glanced anxiously at the bemused Shapers.
"Maybe this was too early for him, Margaret."
	Juliano laughed. "He's right. It is a joke. Ask the Cataclysts." She took Lindsay's arm. "Come on, Abelard. We'll go outside."
	"It's a joke," Lindsay said. His tongue was loose now and the
words gushed free. "This is unbelievable. These poor fools had no
idea. I low could they? They were dead before they had a chance to 
see! What's five years to us, what's ten, a hundred - "
	"You're babbling, dear." Juliano walked him down the hall and
through the mortared stone archway into dappled sunlight and
grass. "Watch where you step," she said. "We have other patients
Not housebroken." Reside the high moss-crusted walls a nude
young woman was tearing single-mindedly at the grass, pausing to
suck grime from her fingers.
	Lindsay was horrified. He seemed to taste the grit on his own
tongue. "We'll go outside the grounds," Margaret said.
"Pongpianskul won't mind."
	"He's letting you stay here, is he? That woman's a Shaper. A
Cataclyst? He owed a debt to the Cataclysts. You're taking care of
them for him."
	"Try not to talk too much, dear. You might hurt something." She opened the iron gateway. "They like it here, the Cataclysts. Something about the view."
	"Oh, my God," Lindsay said.
	The Republic had run wild. The overarching trees on the Museum grounds had hid the lull panorama from him. Now it loomed over and around him in its full five-kilometer range, a stunning expanse of ridged and tangled green, three long panels glowing in triple-crossed shafts of mirror-reflected sunlight. He'd forgotten how
bright the sun was in circumlunar space.
	"The trees," he gasped. "My God, look at them!"
	"They've been growing ever since you left," Juliano said.
"Come with me. I want to show you another project."
	Lindsay looked up through reflex toward his own former home.
Seen from above, the sprawling mansion grounds bordered what
had once been a lively tangle of cheap low-class restaurants. Those
were in decline, and the Lindsay home was in ruin. He could see
yawning holes in the red-tiled roofs of fused lunar slate. The private
landing pad atop the mansion's four-story tower was swamped in
ivy.
	At the northern end of the world, up its sloping walls, a crew of ant-sized workmen lore languidly at the skeletal remains of one of
the wirehead hospitals. Shoals of clouds hid the old power grid and
the area that had once been the Sours. "It smells different," Lindsay
realized. He stumbled on the bicycle path beside the Museum's
walls and was forced to watch his feet. They were filthy. "I need a
bath," he said.
	"Either you crawl or you don't, right? If you've got skin bacteria, what's a little dirt? I like it. "She smiled. "It's big here, isn't it? Sure, Goldreich-Tremaine's ten times this size, but nothing this open. A big risky world."
	"I'm glad Alexandrina found her way back," Lindsay said. Their
marriage had been a success, because it had gotten her what she
wanted most. At last he had made amends. It had always been a
strain. Now he was free.
	The Republic had changed so much that it filled him with weird
exaltation. Yes, big, he thought, but nowhere near big enough. He
felt a sense of impatience with it, a fierce longing to grab hold of
something, something huge and basic. He had slept for five years.
Now he felt every hour of that long rest pressing in on him with
uncontainable reviving energy. His knees buckled, and Juliano
caught him with her Shaper-strengthened arms.
"Easy," she said.
	"I'm all right."  They crossed the openwork bridge over the blazing expanse of metaglass that separated two land panels. Lindsay saw the former site of the Sours beneath a raft of clouds. The once-foul morass had become an oasis of vegetation so blindingly green that it seemed to shine even in the clouds' shadow. A tall gangling boy in baggy clothing was running headlong beside the woven-wire fence surrounding the Sours, tugging a large box kite into flight.
	"You're not the first I've cured," Juliano said as they walked
toward it. "I always said my Superbright students had promise.
Some of them work here. A pilot project. I want to show you what
they've done. They've been tackling botany from a perspective of
	Prigoginic complexity theory. New species, advanced chlorophylls, good solid constructive work."
	"Wait," said Lindsay. "I want to talk to this youngster." He had
noticed the boy's kite. Its elaborate paint job showed a nude man
crammed stiflingly within the rigid planes of the box kite's lifting
surfaces.
	A woman in mud-smeared corduroy leaned over the woven fence, waving a pair of shears. "Margaret! Come see!"
	"I'll be back for you," Juliano said. "Don't go away."
	Lindsay ambled unsteadily to where the boy stood, expertly
managing his kite. "Hello, old cousin," the boy said. "Got any
tapes?"
	"What kind?"
	"Video, audio, anything from the Ring Council. That's where
you're from, right?"
	Lindsay reached automatically for his training, for the easy network of spontaneous lies that would show the boy a plausible
image. His mind was blank. He gaped. Time was passing. He
blurted the first thing that came into his head. "I'm a sundog. From
Czarina-Kluster."
	"Really? Posthumanism! Prigoginic levels of complexity! Fractal
scales, bedrock of space-time, precontinuum ur-space! Have I got it
right?"
	"I like your kite," Lindsay hedged.
	"Old Cataclyst logo," the boy said. "We get a lot of old Cataclysts around here. The kite gets their attention. First time I've caught a Cicada, though."
	Cicada, Lindsay thought. A citizen of C-K. Wellspring had always been fond of slang. "You're a local?"
	"That's right. My name's Abelard. Abelard Gomez."
	"Abelard.That name's not too common."
	The boy laughed. "Maybe not in C-K. But every fifth kid in the
Republic's named Abelard. After Abelard Lindsay, the big historical cheese. You must have heard of him." The boy hesitated. "He
used to dress like you. I've seen pictures."
	Lindsay looked at the boy's own clothes. Young Gomez wore a
faked-up low-grav outfit which sagged dreadfully. "I can tell I'm
out of date," Lindsay said. "They make a big deal out of this
Lindsay fellow, do they?"
	"You don't know the half of it," Gomez said. "Take school.
School's completely antique here. They make us read Lindsay's
book. Shakespeare, it's called. Translated into modern English by
Abelard Lindsay."
	"Is it that bad?" Lindsay said, tingling with deja vu.
	"You're lucky, old man. You don't have to read it. I've looked
	through the whole thing. Not one word in there about spontaneous self-organization."
	Lindsay nodded. "That's a shame."
	"Everybody's old in that book. I don't mean fake-old like the
Preservationists here. Or weird-old like old Pong."
	"You mean Pongpianskul?" Lindsay said.
	"The Warden, yeah. No, I mean everybody's used up too fast. All burnt up and cramped and sick. It's depressing."
	Lindsay nodded. Things had come full circle, he decided. "You
resent the control on your life," he speculated. "You and your
friends are radicals. You want things changed."
	"Not really," the boy said. "They only have me for sixty years. I've got hundreds, cousin. I mean to do big things. It's going to take a lot of time. I mean big things. Huge. Not like those little dried-up
people in the past."
	"What kinds of things?"
	"Life-spreading. Planet-ripping. World-building.  Terraforming."
	"I see," Lindsay said. Me was startled to see so much self-
possession in one so young. It must be the Cataclyst influence.
They'd always favored wild schemes, huge lunacies that in the end
boiled down to nothing. "And will that make you happy?"
	The boy looked suspicious. "Are you one of those Zen
Serotonists? 'Happy.' What kind of scam is that? Burn happiness,
cousin. This is the Kosmos talking. Are you on the side of life, or
aren't you?"
	Lindsay smiled. "Is this political? I don't trust politics."
	"Politics? I'm talking biology. Things that live and grow. Organisms. Integrated forms."
	"Where do people come in?"
	The boy waved his hand irritably and caught the kite as it swooped.
"Never mind them. I'm talking basic loyalties now. Like that tree.  Are you on its side, against the inorganic?"
	His recent epiphany was still fresh in Lindsay's mind. The boy's
question was genuine. "Yes," he said. "I am."
	"You see the point of terraforming, then."
	"Terraforming," Lindsay said slowly. "I've seen theories. Speculations. And I suppose that it's possible. But what does it have to do with us?"
	"A true commitment to the side of Life demands the moral act of Creation," Gomez said promptly.
	"Someone's been teaching you slogans," Lindsay said. He smiled.
"Planets are real places, not just grids on a drawing board. The effort would be titanic. All out of human scale."
	The boy was impatient. "How big are you? Are you bigger than
something inert?"
	"But it would take centuries-"
	"You think that tree would hesitate? How much time do you have, anyway?"
	Lindsay laughed helplessly.
	"Fine, then. Are you going to live a squished-down little human life, or are you going to go for the potential?"
	"At my age," Lindsay said, "if I were human I'd already be dead."
	"Now you're talking. You're as big as your dreams. That's what
they say in C-K, right? No rules, no limits. Look at the Mechs and
Shapers." The boy was contemptuous. "All the power in the world,
and they're chasing each other's tails. Burn their wars and midget
ideologies. Posthumanity's bigger than that. Ask the people in
there." The boy waved one hand at the woven-wire enclosure.
"Ecosystem design. Rebuilding life for new conditions. A little
biochemistry, a little statistical physics, you can pick it up here and
there, that's where the excitement is. If Abelard Lindsay was alive
today that's the sort of thing he'd be working on."
	The irony of it stung Lindsay. At Gomez's age, he'd never had any sense, either. He felt a sudden alarm for the boy, an urge to protect him from the disaster that his rhetoric would surely earn him.
"You think so?"
	"Sure. They say he was a hot Preservationist type, but he
sundogged off when the getting was good, didn't he? You didn't see
him hanging around here to 'die of old age.' Nobody really does
anyway."
	"Not even here? In the home of Preservationism?"
	"Of course not. Everyone here over forty's on the black market
for life extension. When they turn sixty they scarper for Czarina-
Kluster. The Cicadas don't care about your history or your genes.
They take all clades. Dreams matter more."
	Dreams, Lindsay thought. Dreams of Preservationism, turned
into a black-market scrabble for immortality. The dream of Investor Peace had rusted and collapsed. The dream of terraforming still
had a shine on it. Young Gomez could not know that it too would
surely tarnish.
	But somehow, Lindsay thought, you had to dream or die. And
with new life pouring through him, he knew which choice was his.
	Margaret Juliano leaned over the fence. "Abelard! Abelard, over here! You need a look at this."
	The boy, startled, began reeling in his kite hand over hand.
"Now this is luck! That old psychotech wants to show me something in the compound."
	"Go to it," Lindsay said. "You tell her that I said to show you
anything you like, understand? And tell her that I've gone off for a
little talk with Pongpianskul. All right,cousin?"
	The hoy nodded slowly. "Thanks, old Cicada. You're one of us."
	Pongpianskul's office was a paper wasteland. Musty cloth-bound hooks of Concatenate law were heaped beside his wooden desk; schedules and production graphs were pinned up at random on the room's ancient paneling. A tortoiseshell cat yawned in one corner
and sharpened its claws in the carpet. Lindsay, whose experience
with cats was limited, watched it guardedly.
	Pongpianskul wore a suit similar to Lindsay's but newer and
obviously hand-stitched. He had lost hair since his days in
Goldreich-Tremaine, and light gleamed dully on the dusky skin of
his scalp. Me swept a sheaf of records from the desk and paper-
clipped them with skinny, wrinkled fingers.
	"Papers," he muttered. "Trying to take everything off computers these days. Don't trust 'em. You use computers and there's always some Mech ready to step in with new software. Thin edge of the wedge, Mavrides. Lindsay, I mean."
"Lindsay is better."
	"You must admit it's hard keeping track of you. It was a fine scam you pulled, passing yourself off as a senior genetic in the Rings." He Looked at Lindsay. Lindsay caught part of the Look. The experience of age made up somewhat for his loss of kinesic training.
Pongpianskul said, "How long has it been since we last talked?"
"Hmm. What year is this?"
	Pongpianskul frowned. "No matter. You were in Dembowska
then, anyway. Things aren't so bad here under Neotenic aegis, eh,
Mavrides, you admit? Gone a bit to rack and ruin, but all the better
for the tourist trade; those Ring Council types eat it up with a spoon.
Tell the truth, we had logo into the old Lindsay mansion and bash it
about a bit, make it more romantic. Had some mice installed. You
know mice? Bred 'em back to the wild state from lab specimens.
You know their eyes weren't pink in the wild? Funny look in those
eyes, reminds me of a wife of mine."
	Pongpianskul opened one of the drawers in his cavernous desk
and tossed in his sheaf of clipped papers. He pulled out a crumbling
wad of graphs and started. "What's this? Should have been done
weeks ago. No matter. Where were we? Oh, yes, wives. I married
Alexandrina, by the way. Alexa's a fine Preservationist. Couldn't
risk her slipping away."
	"You did well," Lindsay said. His marriage contract had expired; her new marriage was a sound political move. It did not occur to him to feel jealousy; that had not been in the contract. He was glad that she had secured her position.
	"Can't have too many wives, it's what life's all about. Take
Georgiana for instance, Constantine's first wife. Talked her into a
trace of Shatter, no more than twenty mikes, I swear, and it
improved her disposition no end. Now she's as sweet as the day is
long." He looked at Lindsay seriously. "Can't have too many
oldsters around, though. Disturbs the ideology. Bad enough with
those pesky Cataclysts and their posthuman schemes. Keep 'em
behind wire, in quarantine. Even then kids keep sneaking in."
	"It's kind of you to allow them here."
	"I need the foreign exchange. C-K finances their research. But
they won't amount to much. Those Superbrights can't concentrate
on anything for long." He snorted, then snatched up a bill of lading.
"I need the money. Look at these carbon-dioxide imports. It's the
damn trees, gobbling it up." He sighed. "I need those trees, though.
Their mass helps with the orbital dynamics. These circumlunar
orbits are hell."
	"I'm glad matters are in good hands."
	Pongpianskul smiled sadly. "I suppose. Things never work out the way you plan them. Good thing, though, or the Mechs would have
taken over long ago." The cat jumped into Pongpianskul's lap, and
he scratched its chin. The animal emitted a rumbling sound that
Lindsay found oddly soothing. "This is my cat, Saturn," the old
Shaper said. "Say hello to Lindsay, Saturn."The cat ignored him.
	"I had no idea you liked animals."
	"Couldn't stand him at first. Hair just pours off the little beast.
Gets into everything. Dirty as a hog, too. liver seen a hog, by the
way? I had a few imported. Incredible creatures, the tourists just
marvel."
	"I must have a look before I leave."
	"Animals in the air these days. Not literally, I mean, though we did have some trouble with loose hogs running off to the free-fall zone.  No, I mean this biomorality from Czarina-Kluster. Another
Cataclyst fad."
	"You think so?"
	"Well," the Warden mused, "maybe not. You start trifling with
ecology and it's hard to find a place to stop. I've had a slip of this
cat's skin shipped off to the Ring Council. Have to clone off a whole
gene-line of them. Because of the mice, you know. Little vermin are
over running everything."
	"A planet might be better," Lindsay said. "More space."
	"I don't hold with messing with gravity wells," Pongpianskul said.
	"It's just more room for error. Don't tell me you've fallen for that,
Mavrides."
	"The world needs dreams," Lindsay said.
	"You're not going to start on about levels of complexity, I hope."
	Lindsay smiled. "No."
	"Good. When you came in here unwashed and with no shoes on, I concluded the worst."
	"They say the hogs and I had a lot in common," Lindsay said.
	Pongpianskul stared, then laughed. "Haw. Haw. Glad to see you're
not standing on your dignity. Too much dignity cripples a man.
Fanatics never laugh. I hope you can still laugh when you're
breaking worlds to the leash."
	"Surely someone will get a good chuckle out of it."
	"Well, you'll need your humor, friend. Because these things never work out as you plan. Reality's a horde of mice, nibbling away in the basement of your dreams. . . . You know what I wanted here, don't you? A preserve for humanity and the human way of life, that's
what. Instead I've ended up with a huge stage set full of tourist shills
and Cataclyst fry-brains."
	"It was worth a try," Lindsay said.
	"That's it, break an old man's heart," Pongpianskul said. "A
consoling lie wouldn't have hurt."
	"Sorry," Lindsay said. "I've lost the skill."
	"Better get it back in a hurry, then. It's still a wide wicked
Schismatrix out there, detente or no detente." Pongpianskul
brooded. "Those fools in Czarina-Kluster. Selling out to aliens.
What's to become of the world? I hear some idiot wants to sell
Jupiter."
	"I beg your pardon?"
	"Yes, sell it off to some group of intelligent gasbags. A scandal, isn't it? Some people will do anything to suck up to aliens. Oh, sorry, no offense." He Looked at Lindsay and saw that he was not
insulted. "It won't come to anything. Alien embassies never do.
Luckily, aliens all seem to have a lot more sense than we do, with
the possible exception of the Investors. Investors, indeed. Just a
bunch of interstellar pests and nosey-parkers. . . . If aliens show up
in force I swear I'll put the whole Republic under the tightest
quarantine this side of a Ring Council session. I'll wait till society
disintegrates totally. I'll be faded by then, but the locals can move
out to pick up the pieces. They'll see then that there was sense in my
little game preserve after all."
	"I see. Hedging humanity's bets. You were always a clever gambler, Neville."
	The Shaper was pleased. He sneezed loudly, and the startled cat leaped from his lap across the desk, clawing papers.   Sorry,   he
said "Bacteria and cat hairs, never got used to them.
 "I have a favor to ask," Lindsay said. "I'm leaving for Czarina-
Kluster and would like to take one of the locals with me
	"Someone 'dying into the world?' You always handled that well in Dembowska. Certainly."
	"No, a youngster."
	"Out of the question. A terrible precedent. Wait a moment. Is it Abelard Gomez?"
	"The very same."
	"I see That boy troubles me. He has Constantine blood, did you know? I've been watching the local genetics. Genius turns up in
that line like a bad roll of the dice."
	"I'm doing you a favor, then."
	"I suppose so. Sorry to see you go, Abelard, but with your current ideological cast you're a bad influence. You're a culture hero here, you know." 
"I'm through with the old dreams. My energy s back, and there s a new dream loose in Czarina-Kluster. Even if I can't believe it. At least I can help those who do."  He stood  up   stepping back
prudently as the cat inspected his ankles. "Good luck with the
mice, Neville."
"You too, Abelard."


CHAPTER NINE

CZARINA-KLUSTER PEOPLE'S CORPORATE REPUBLIC: 15-12-'91

The engines of wealth were at full throttle. A torrent of riches
was drowning the world. The exponential curves of growth hit
with their always deceptive speed, a counterintuitive quickness
that stunned the unwary and dazzled the alert.
	The circumsolar population stood at 3.2 billion. It had doubled
every twenty years and would double again. The four hundred
major Mechanist asteroids roiled in a tidal wave of production
from an estimated 8 billion self-replicating mining robots and
forty thousand full scale automated factories. The Shaper worlds
measured wealth differently, dwarfed by a staggering 20 billion
tons of productive biomass.
	The primal measurement of Circumsolar Kilobytes soared to
an astronomical figure best estimated as 9.45 x 1018. World
information, estimating only that available in fully open
databanks and not counting the huge empires of restricted data,
totalled 2.3 x 10 27 bits, the equivalent of 150 full-length books
for every star in every galaxy in the visible universe.
	Stern social measures had to be adopted to keep entire populations from disintegrating in an orgy of plenty.
Megawatts of energy sufficient to run entire Council States
were joyfully squandered on high-speed transorbital liners.
These spacecraft, large enough to provide every comfort to
hundreds of passengers, assumed the dignity of nation-stales and
suffered their own population booms.
	None of these material advances matched the social impact of
the progress of the sciences. Breakthroughs in statistical physics
proved the objective existence of the four Prigoginic Levels of
Complexity and postulated the existence of a fifth. The age of
the cosmos was calculated to an accuracy value of plus or minus
four years, and rarefied attempts were under way to estimate the
"quasi-time" consumed by the precontinuum ur-space.
Slower-than-light interstellar travel became physically possible,
and  five expeditions were launched, manned  by star-peering
low-mass wireheads. Ultra-long baseline interferometry, beamed
from radiotelescopes aboard the wirehead starships, established
hard parallaxes for most stars in the Orion Arm of the Galaxy.
Examinations of the Perseus and Centaurus Arms showed troubling patches where patterns of stars appeared to have an ominous regularity.
	New studies of the galaxies of the Local Supercluster led to
refinements in the Hubble Constant. Minor discrepancies caused
some visionaries to conclude that the expansion of the universe
had been subjected to crude tampering.
	Knowledge was power. And in seizing knowledge, humanity
had gripped a power as bright and angry as a live wire. At stake
were issues vaster than any before: the prospects were more
dazzling, the potentials sharper, and the implications more stag-
gering than anything ever faced by humanity or its successors.
Yet the human mind still had its own resources. The gifts for
survival were not found only in the sharp perceptions of the
Shapers, with their arsenals of brain-stretching biochemicals, or
the cybernetic advances of the Mechanists and the relentless
logic of their artificial intelligences. The world was kept intact
by the fantastic predilection of the human mind for boredom.
Mankind had always been surrounded by the miraculous.
Nothing much had ever come of it. Under the shadow of cosmic
revelations, life still swathed itself in comforting routine. The
breakaway factions were much more bizarre than ever before,
but people had grown used to this, and their horror had
lessened.  Frankly antihuman clades like the Spectral
Intelligents, the Lobsters, and the Blood Bathers were somehow
incorporated into the repertoire of possibility and even made
into jokes.
	And yet the strain was everywhere. The new multiple humanities hurtled blindly toward their unknown destinations, and the vertigo of acceleration struck deep. Old preconceptions were in
tatters, old loyalties were obsolete. Whole societies were para-
lyzed by the mind blasting vistas of absolute possibility.
The   strain   took   different   forms.   For  the   Cataclysts,   those
Superbrights who had been the first to feel it, it was a frenzied
embrace of the Infinite, careless of consequences. Even self-
destruction eased the unspoken pain. The Zen Serotonists aban-
doned the potential for the pale bliss of calm and quiet. For
others the strain was never explicit: just a tingling of unease at
the borders of sleep, or sudden frantic tears when the mind's
inhibitions crumbled from drink or drugs.
For Abelard Lindsay the current manifestation involved sitting
strapped to a table in the Bistro Marineris, a Czarina-Kluster
bar. The Bistro Marineris was a free-fall inflatable sphere at the
junction of four long tubeways, a way station amid the sprawling
nexus of habitats that made up the campus of Czarina-Kluster
Kosmosity-Metasystems.
	Lindsay was waiting for Wellspring. He leaned on the dome-
shaped table, pressing the sticktite elbow patches of his aca-
demic jacket against its velcro top.
	Lindsay was a hundred and six years old. His latest rejuvena-
tion had not erased all outward signs of age. Crow's feet webbed
his gray eyes, and creases drooped from his nose to the corners
of his mouth. Overdeveloped facial muscle ridged his dark,
mobile eyebrows. He had a short beard, and jewel-headed pins
held his long hair, streaked with white. One hand was heavily
wrinkled, its pale skin like waxed parchment. The metal hand
was honeycombed with sensor grids.
	He watched the walls. The owner of the Marineris had
opaqued the inner surface of the Bistro and turned it into a
planetarium. All around Lindsay and the dozen other customers
spread the racked and desolate landscape of Mars, relayed live
from the Martian surface in painfully vivid 360-degree color.
	For months the sturdy robot surveyor had been picking its way
along the rim of the Valles Marineris, sending its broadcasts.
Lindsay sat with his back to the mighty chasm: its titanic scale
and air of desolate, lifeless age had painful associations for him.
The rubble and foothills projected on the rounded wall before
him, huge upthrust blocks and wind-carved yardangs, struck
him as an implied reproach. It was new to him to have a sense
of responsibility for a planet. After three months in C-K, he was
still trying the dream on for size.
	Three Kosmosity academics unbuckled themselves and kicked
off from a nearby table. As they left, one noticed Lindsay,
started, and came his way. "Pardon me, sir. I believe I know
you. Professor Bela Milosz, am I right?"
	The stranger had that vaguely supercilious air common to
many Shaper defectors, a sense of misplaced fanaticism spinning
its wheels. "I've gone by that name, yes."
	"I'm Yevgeny Navarre."
	The name struck a distant echo. "The membrane chemistry
specialist? This is an unexpected pleasure." Lindsay had known
Navarre in Dembowska, but only through video correspon-
dence. In person, Navarre seemed arid and colorless. As an
annoying corollary, Lindsay realized that he himself had been
arid and colorless during those years. "Please join me, Professor
Navarre."
	Navarre strapped in. "Kind of you to remember my article for
your Journal," he said. " 'Surfactant Vesicles in Exoarchosauri-
an Colloidal Catalysis.' One of my first."
	Navarre exuded well-bred satisfaction and signaled the bistro's
servo, which ambled up on multiple plastic legs. The trendy
servo was a faithful miniature of the Mars surveyor. Lindsay
ordered a liqueur for politeness' sake.
	"How long have you been in C-K, Professor Milosz? Your
musculature tells me that you've been in heavy gravity. Investor
business?"
	The heavy spin of the Republic had marked Lindsay. He
smiled cryptically. "I'm not free to speak."
	"I see." Navarre offered him the grave, confidential look of a
fellow man-of-the-world. "I'm pleased to find you here in the
Kosmosity's neighborhood. Are you planning to join our fac-
ulty?"
	"Yes."
	"A stellar addition to our Investor researchers."
	"Frankly, Professor Navarre, Investor studies have lost their
novelty for me. I plan to specialize in terraforming studies."
	Navarre smiled incredulously. "Oh dear. I'm sure you can do
much better than that."
	"Oh?" Lindsay leaned forward in a brief burst of crudely
imitative kinesics. His whole facility was gone. The reflex em-
barrassed him, and he resolved for the hundredth time to give it
up.
	Navarre said, "The terraforming section's crawling with post-
	Cataclyst lunatics. You were always a very sound man. Thor-
ough. A good organizer. I'd hate to see you drift into the wrong
circles."
	"I see. What brought you to C-Kluster, Professor?"
"Well," said Navarre, "the Jastrow Station labs and I had some
differences about patenting. Membrane technology, you see. A
technique for producing artificial Investor hide, a very fashion-
able item here; you'll notice for instance that young lady's
boots?" A Cicada student in a beaded skirt and bright face paint
was sipping a frappe against the desolate backdrop of shattered
red terrain. Her boots were miniature Investor feet, toes, claws,
and all. Behind her the landscape lurched suddenly as the
surveyor moved on. Lindsay grasped the table in vertigo.
	Navarre swayed slightly and said, "Czarina-Kluster is more
friendly to the entrepreneur. I was taken off the dogs after only
eight months."
	"Congratulations," Lindsay said.
	The Queen's Advisors kept most immigrants under the surveil-
lance dogs for a full two years. Out in the fringe dogtowns there
were whole environments where reality was nailed down by
camera and everyone was tagged ceaselessly by videodogs.
Widespread taps and monitors were part of public life in
Czarina-Kluster. But full citizens could escape surveillance in
the discreets, C-K's lush citadels of privacy.
	Lindsay sipped his drink. "To prevent confusion, I should tell
you that these clays I use the name Lindsay."
"What? Like Wellspring?"
"I beg your pardon?"
	"You weren't aware of Wellspring's true identity?"
"Why, no," Lindsay said. "I understood the records were lost
on Earth, where he was born."
	Navarre laughed delightedly.  "The truth is an open secret
among Cicada inner circles.  It's the talk of the discreets.
Wellspring is a Concatenate. His true name is Abelard Malcolm
Tyler Lindsay."
"You astonish me."
	"Wellspring plays a very deep game. The Terran business is
only a camouflage."
"How odd."
	"Speak of the devil," Navarre said. A noisy crowd burst from
the tubeway entrance to Lindsay's left. Wellspring had arrived
with a claque of Cicada disciples, a dozen students fresh from
some party, flush faced and shouting with laughter. The young
Cicadas were a bustle of blues and greens in long, flowing
overcoats, slash-cuffed trousers, and glimmering reptile-scaled
waistcoats.
	Wellspring spotted Lindsay and approached in free-fall. His
mane of matted black hair was held by a copper-and-platinum
coronet. Over his foliage-printed green coat he wore a tape-
deck armband, which emitted a loud quasi-music of rustling
boughs and the cries of animals.
	"Lindsay!" he shouted. "Lindsay! Good to have you back." He
embraced Lindsay roughly and strapped himself to a chair.
Wellspring looked drunk. His face was flushed, he had pulled
his collar open, and something was crawling in his beard, a
small population of what appeared to be iron fleas.
	"How was your trip?" Lindsay said.
	"The Ring Council is dull! Sorry I wasn't here to meet you."
He signaled the servo. "What are you drinking? Fantastic
chasm, the Marineris, isn't it? Even the tributaries are the size
of the Grand Canyon in Azirona." He pointed past Lindsay's
shoulder at a gap between towering canyon walls, where icy
winds kicked up thin puffs of ocher dust. "Imagine a cataract
there, pealing out in a thunderband of rainbows! A sight to stir
the soul to the roots of its complexity."
	"Surely," Navarre said, smiling slightly.
	Wellspring turned to Lindsay. "I have a little spiritual drill for
doubters like Ycvgeny. Every day he should recite to himself,
'Centuries . . . centuries . . . centuries.' "
	"I'm a pragmatic man," Navarre said, catching Lindsay's eye
and lifting one eyebrow significantly. "Life is lived day to day,
not in centuries. Enthusiasms don't last that long. Flesh and
blood can't bear it." He addressed Wellspring. "Your ambitions
are bigger than life."
	"Of course. They must he. They encompass it."
	"The Queen's Advisors are more practical." Navarre watched
Wellspring with half-contemptuous suspicion.
	The Queen's Advisors had risen to authority since the early
days of C-K. Rather than fighting them for power, Wellspring
had stepped aside. Now, while the Queen's Advisors struggled
with day-to-day rule in the Czarina's Palace, Wellspring chose to
frequent the dogtowns and discreets. Often he vanished for
months, to reappear with shadowy posthumans and bizarre re-
cruits from the fringes of society. These actions clearly baffled
Navarre.
	"I want tenure," Lindsay told Wellspring. "Nothing political."
	"I'm sure we could see to that."
	Lindsay glanced about him. It came to him in a burst of
conviction. "I don't like Mars."
	Wellspring looked grave. "You realize that an entire future
destiny might accrete around this momentary utterance? It's
from just such nuclei of free will that the future grows, in
smooth determinism."
	Lindsay smiled. "It's too dry," he said. The crowd gasped and
shouted as the surveyor scuttled rapidly down a treacherous
slope, sending the world reeling. "And it moves too much."
	Wellspring was troubled. As he adjusted his collar, Lindsay
noted the faint bruise of teethmarks on the skin of his neck. He
turned down the forest soundtrack on his armband. "One world
at a time seems wisest, don't you think?"
Navarre laughed incredulously.
	Lindsay ignored him, gazing over Wellspring's shoulder at his
claque of followers. A young Shaper in a fuzz-elbowed academic
jacket was burying his elegant face in the floating red-blonde
curls of a tigerish young woman. She tilted her head back,
laughing in delight, and Lindsay saw, half eclipsed behind her,
the stricken face of Abelard Gomez. There were two surveil-
lance dogs with Gomez, crouched on the wall behind him, their
metal ribs gleaming, their glassy camera faces taping up his life.
Pity struck Lindsay, and a sadness for the transient nature of
eternal human verities.
	Wellspring plunged into impassioned argument, sweeping aside Navarre's wry comments in a torrent of rhetoric. Wellspring
waxed eloquent about asteroids; chunks of ice the size of cities,
to be dropped in searing arcs onto the surface of Mars, blasting
out damp oases in a crust-ripping megatonnage. Creeks would
appear at first, then lakes, as steam and volatiles peeled into the
starved air and the polar ice caps dissolved into vaporized
carbon dioxide. Crater oases would be manned by teams of
scientists, biosculpting whole ecosystems into being. For the first
time, humanity would be bigger than life: a living world would
owe its existence to humankind, and not vice versa. Wellspring
saw it as a moral obligation, a repayment of debt. The cost was
irrelevant. Money was symbolic. Life was the real.
	Navarre broke in. "But it's the human element that must
defeat you. Where's the appeal to greed? That's where you
erred before. You could have run Czarina-Kluster. Instead you
let your control slip, and now the Queen's Advisors, those
Mechanist"-Navarre stopped short, noticing the dogs accom-
panying Gomez-"gentlemen, are running things with their cus-
tomary efficiency. But politics aside, this nonsense is ruining
	C-K's ability to do decent science! Real research, that is; the
kind that brings new patents to armor C-K against its enemies.
Terraforming squanders our resources, while Mech and Shaper
militants scheme relentlessly against us. Yes, I admit your
dreams are pretty. Yes, they even serve a social use as a rela-
tively harmless state ideology. But in the end they'll collapse
and take C-K with them."
	Wellspring's eyes glittered. "You're overworked, Yevgeny. You
need a new perspective. Take ten years off, and see if time
won't change your mind."
	Navarre flushed angrily. He turned to Lindsay. "You see?
Cataclysm! That remark meant ice assassination, you heard him
allude to it! Come, Milosz, surely you can't hold with these
boondoggles!"
	Lindsay said nothing. There had been a time when he might
have twisted the conversation to his advantage. But now his skill
was gone. And he no longer wanted it.
	Words were useless. Me had grown impatient with words. They could no longer hold him.  Suddenly he knew he had to step outside the rules.  He floated out of his chair and began stripping off his clothes.
	Navarre left at once, insulted and flustered. Lindsay's clothes
drifted off in free-fall, his jacket and trousers pinwheeling slowly
over other tables. The customers ducked, laughing. Soon he was
naked. The crowd's nervous laughter died down into puzzled
unease. They moved away from Gomez's dogs and muttered
together in disconcerted awe.
	Lindsay ignored them. He folded his legs in midair and gazed
at the wall. Wellspring's students deserted the bar, mumbling
excuses and glancing back over their shoulders. Even Wellspring
was nonplused. When Wellspring left he took the last of the
crowd with him.
	Lindsay was left alone with the bar servo, young Gomez, and
his dogs.
	Gomez edged closer. "Czarina-Kluster isn't like I'd thought it
was, in the Republic."
	Lindsay meditated on the landscape.
	"They put these dogs on me. Because supposedly I might be
dangerous. You don't mind the dogs, do you? . . . No, I see that
you don't." Gomez sighed tremulously. "After three months, the
others still keep me at arm's length. They won't initiate me into
their Clique. You saw the girl, didn't you? Melanie Omaha, Dr.
Omaha from the Kosmosity? Fire, she's fantastic, isn't she? But
she doesn't care for men under the dogs; who would, knowing
	Security's watching? I'd give my right arm for ten minutes in a
discreet with her. Oh, sorry." He looked in embarrassment at
Lindsay's mechanical arm.
	Gomez wiped red streaks of facepaint from his cheeks. "You
remember me telling you about Abelard Lindsay? Well, rumor
says you're him. And I think I believe it. You are Lindsay.
You're him."
	Lindsay drew a deeper breath.
	"I understand," Gomez said. "You're telling me that it doesn't
matter. The only thing that matters is the Cause. But listen to
this!" He pulled a notebook from inside his willow-printed coat.
He read loudly, desperately. " 'A dissipative self-organizing sys-
tem evolves along a coherent sequence of space-time structures.
We may distinguish between four different dimensional frame-
works: autopoiesis, ontogeny, phylogeny, anagenesis.'" He
crumpled the paper in anguish. "And this is from my poetry
class!"
	There was a moment's silence. Then Gomez burst out: "Maybe
it's the secret of life! But if it is, can we bear it? Can we meet
the goals we set ourselves? Over centuries? What about the
simple things? How can I find any joy in a single day when the
specters of these centuries loom over me. . . . It's all too huge,
yes, even you . . . You! You, who brought me here. Why didn't
you tell me you were Wellspring's friend? Was it modesty? But
you're Lindsay! Lindsay himself! I didn't believe it at first.
When I decided it was true, it terrified me. Like hearing your
own shadow speak to you."
	Gomez hesitated. "All these years you've hidden. But you're
coming into the Schismatrix openly now, aren't you? You've
come out to do greatness, to dazzle the world. . . . It's frighten-
ing to see you in the open. Like seeing the bones of mathemat-
ics under the flesh of the world. But even if the principles are
true, then what about the flesh? We are the flesh! What about
the flesh?"
	Lindsay had nothing to tell him.
	"I know what you're thinking," Gomez said at last. " 'Love has
broken his heart; it's an old story. Only time can bring him to a
better sense of himself.' That's what you're thinking, isn't it? ...
Of course it is."
	When Gomez spoke again he was cairn, meditative. "Now I
begin to see. It isn't something that words can capture, is it? It
can only be grasped all at once. Someday I'll have it entirely.
Someday when these dogs are long gone. Someday when even
Melanie Omaha is only a memory to me." He was sad but
exalted. "I heard them talking as you made your-uh, gesture.
These so-called sophisticates, these proud Cicadas. They may
have the jargon, but the wisdom is yours." Gomez was radiant.
"Thank you, sir."
	Lindsay waited until Gomez had left. Then he could not hold
it back any longer. He thought he would never stop laughing.

CHAPTER TEN

DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 21-2-'01

Despite her role in its foundation, Kitsune had never visited
Czarina-Kluster. Like Wellspring, Kitsune had held great power
in C-K's pioneer days; unlike him, she had not released it
gracefully. While Wellspring had retreated from day-to-day gov-
ernment and pursued his strategy of rule-by-fashion, Kitsune
had blatantly challenged the Queen's Advisors.
	In the years while Lindsay recuperated, she had had some
success. She announced plans to move to C-K, but as years
passed she refused to disturb her routines, and her power de-
cayed. It had led to a break, and the destinies of C-K and
Dembowska had radically diverged.
	Disquieting stories of her transformations had reached Lindsay
in C-K. Rumor said she had embraced new technologies, ex-
ploiting the laxity that had come with detente. Dembowska was
still a member of the Mechanist Union of Cartels but was
constantly on the verge of expulsion, tolerated only as a
clearinghouse for Ring Council defectors.
	Even the Ring Council was appalled by Dembowska's emer-
gent technology of flesh. In the hands of the Zen Serotonists,
the Ring Council struggled for stability; as a result, it was falling
behind. The cutting edge of genetics technology had been seized
by the wild-eyed black surgeons of the cometaries and the
Uranian rings, mushrooming post human clades like the
Metropolarity, the Blood Bathers, and the Endosymbiotics.
They had discarded humanity like a caul. Disintegrating
microfactions surrounded the Schismatrix like a haze of superheated plasma.
	The march of science had become a headlong stampede. The
Mechanists and Shapers had become like two opposing armies,
whose rank and file, scattering into swamps and thickets, ignore
the orders of their aging generals. The emergent philosophies of
the age-Posthumanism, Zen Serotonin, Galacticism -were like
signal bonfires lit to attract stragglers. Deserters' philosophies.
	Lindsay's fire burned brightly, and its glow attracted many.
They called Lindsay's group the Lifesiders Clique.
	Czarina-Kluster's cliques had the power of minor factions in
their own right. The cliques formed a shadow government in
C-K, a moral parallel to the distracted formal rule of the
Queen's Advisors. Clique elites moved behind the scenes, imi-
tating their paragon Wellspring in deliberate webs of self-spun
obfuscation. The forms of power and its realities had been
gently disentangled. The social arbiters of the Polycarbon
Clique, the Lifesiders, or the Green Camarilla could work won-
ders with a dropped hint or a lifted eyebrow.
	It followed, then, that groups considering defection to C-K
consulted the Cicada cliques before formally requesting asylum.
Normally this was Wellspring's domain.
	In the latest case, however, Wellspring was absent on one of his many recruiting trips. Lindsay, knowing the nature of the case,
had agreed to meet the representative of the breakaway group
on neutral ground in Dembowska.
	His entourage consisted of his chief lieutenant, Gomez; three
of his postdoctoral students; and a diplomatic observer from the
Queen's Advisors.
	Dembowska had changed. When they debarked into customs
amid the sparse crowd from the liner, Lindsay was struck by the
warmth. The air was at blood heat and smelled faintly of
Kitsune's skin. The smell brought seeping memory with it. Lind-
say's smile was melancholy. The memories were eighty-five
years old, as thin as paper; they seemed to have happened to
someone else.
	Lindsay's Lifesiders checked their luggage. Two of the
graduate students, Mechanist types, murmured first impressions
into their lip mikes. Other passengers waited at the scanning
booths.
	Two Dembowska agents approached their group. Lindsay
stepped forward in the faint gravity. "Harem police?" he said.
	"Wallchildren," said the first of the pair, a male. He wore a
thin, sleeveless kimono; his bare arms were covered with author-
ity tattoos. His face seemed familiar. Lindsay recognized the
genetics of Michael Carnassus. He turned to the other, a woman, and saw Kitsune, younger, her hair shorn, her dark arms
stenciled in white ink.
	"I'm Colonel Martin Dembowska, and this is my Wallsister,
Captain Murasaki Dembowska."
	"I'm Chancellor Lindsay. These are cliquemembers Abelard
Gomez, Jane Murray, Glen Szilard, Colin Szilard, Emma Meyer, and Undersecretary Fidel Nakamura, our diplomatic observer." The Cicadas bowed, each in turn.
	"I hope you weren't distressed by the bacterial change aboard
ship," Murasaki said. She had Kitsune's voice.
	"A minor inconvenience."
	"We are forced to take great care with the Wallmother's skin
bacteria," the Colonel explained. "There is a considerable acre-
age involved. I'm sure you understand."
	"Could you offer us exact figures?" asked one of the Szilard
brothers, with a Mechanist's dry craving for hard data. "Reports
in Czarina-Kluster are clouded."
	"At last report the Wallmother massed four hundred thousand,
eight hundred and twelve tons." The Colonel was proud. "Have
you anything to declare? No? Then follow me."
	They followed the Dembowskan into a confidential clearance
office, where they left their luggage and were provided with
sterilized guest's kimonos. They floated barefoot into the hot air
of Dembowska's first mall.
	The cavernous duty-free shopping area was paved, walled, and ceilinged in flesh. The Cicadas padded along reluctantly, their
toes just brushing the resilient skin. They looked with hidden
longing at the shops, safe islands of stone and metal. Lindsay
had schooled them to be tactful and was proud of their masked
reactions.
	Even Lindsay felt a qualm when they entered the first long
tunnel; its round, gulletlike design tapped a deep well of unease.
The party boarded an openwork sled, propelled by peristaltic
twitches from the sinewed tracks beneath it.
	The slick wall was studded periodically by sphinctered plugs
for predigested pap. Light glowed gently from translucent bladders swollen with white phosphorescence. Gomez, at Lindsay's
elbow, studied the architecture with a trancelike intensity. His
attention was sharpened to a cutting edge by a drug known in
Cicada circles as "Green Rapture."
	"They've gone for broke," Gomez, said softly. "Could there be
personality behind this? It must take half a ton of backbrain to
manage all this meat." His eyes narrowed. "Imagine how it must
feel."
	The Carnassus clone, in the sled's first compartment, touched
the controls. A seam parted wetly in the floor, pitching the sled
into vertical free-fall. They catapulted down a multitrack eleva-
tor shaft, broken periodically by dizzying vistas of plazas and
suburbs.
	Shops and offices flashed past, embedded in billows of dark
satiny skin. The heat and smell of perfumed flesh were everywhere: intimacy on an industrial scale. The crowds were sparse.  Many were young children, running naked.  The sled  braked  to a  halt. The group disembarked onto a furred landing. Gomez nudged Lindsay as the empty sled slid back up the rails. "The walls have ears, Chancellor."  They did, and eyes as well.
	There was something in the air on this level. The perfume was
particularly heady. Gomez grew heavy-lidded suddenly, and the
Szilard brothers, who had donned headband cameras, took
them off to dab at sweat. Jane Murray and Emma Meyer,
puzzled by something they couldn't define, looked about suspiciously. As the two Dembowskans led them off the landing and into the fleshy depths, Lindsay placed it suddenly: sex pheromones. The architecture was aroused. The group followed a low-grav footpath: toughened skin
marked with the massive whorls of endless fingerprints. The
ceiling overhead was a waving carpet of lustrous black hair, for
traveling hand-over-hand.
	This level was clearly a showpiece; the former buildings had
been stripped down to mere frameworks, trellises for flesh.
Voluptuous organics rose at every side, euclidean corners
scrapped for smooth maternal curves. Structures flowed up from
the floor to merge in swan's-neck arches into the lustrous ceiling. Buildings were dimpled, hollowed, the sleek pink of
sphinctered doors sliding imperceptibly into skin lightly stippled
with down.
	They stopped on the furred lawn of an elaborate, massive
edifice, its dark walls gleaming with ivory mosaic. "Your hostel," the Colonel announced. The building's double doors yawned open on muscular, jawlike hinges. Jane Murray hesitated as the others entered; she took Lindsay's arm. "That ivory in the walls-it's teeth." She had gone pale under the cool blues and aquamarines of her Cicada face paint.
	"Female pheromones in the air," Lindsay said. "They're making you uneasy. It's backbrain response, doctor."
	"Jealous of the walls." The postanthropologist smiled. "This
place feels like a gigantic discreet."
	Despite her bravado, Lindsay saw her fright. She would have
preferred even the most notorious of Cicada discreets, with their
clandestine games, to this dubious lodging. They stepped inside.
	Murasaki addressed the group. "You'll be sharing the hostel
with two groups of commercial agents from Diotima and
Themis, but you'll have a wing of your own. This way, please."
	They followed her along a walkway of flat ivory implants. One
of Dembowska's myriad of hearts, an industrial-scale blood-
pumping station, thudded behind the ribs of the ceiling. Its
double beat set the rhythm to light musical warbling from a
wall-set larynx.
	Their quarters were a biomechanical mix. Market monitors
glowed in the walls, tracing the rise and fall of prominent
Mechanist stocks. The furniture was a series of tasteful lumps
and hummocks: curved beds of flesh, dressed modestly in iris-
printed bedclothes.
	The extensive suite was divided by tattooed membranous
screens. The Colonel tapped one membrane divider. It wrinkled
into the ceiling like an eyelid. He gestured politely at one of the
beds. "These furnishings are exemplars of our Wallmother's
erototechnology. They exist for your comfort and pleasure. I
must inform you, though, that our Wallmother reserves the right
to fecundity."
	Emma Meyer, who had settled cautiously onto one of the beds, stood up. "I beg your pardon?"
	The Colonel frowned. "Male ejaculations become the property
of the recipient. This is an ancient feminine principle."
	"Oh. I see."
	Murasaki pursed her lips. "You consider this odd, doctor?"
	"Not at all," Meyer said winningly. "It makes perfect sense."
	The Dembowskan girl pressed on. "Any children sired by the
men of your group will be full citizens. All Wallchildren are
equally beloved. I happen to be a perfect clone, but I've won my
post by merit, in the Mother's love. Isn't that so, Martin?"
	The Colonel had a firmer grasp of diplomatic niceties. He
nodded shortly. "The water of the baths is sterile and contains a
minimum of dissolved organics. It may be drunk freely. The
plumbing is genitourinary technology, but it is not waste fluid."
	Gomez oozed charm. "As a biological designer, I'm delighted
by your ingenious architecture. Not merely by its technical
adroitness but by its fine aesthetics." He hesitated. "Is there
time for a bath before the luggage arrives?"
	The Cicadas needed baths. The bacterial changeover had not
quite settled in, and the blood heat of the Dembowskan air
made them itch.
	Lindsay withdrew to one end of the suite and lowered the
membrane wall.
	At once his tempo changed. Without his young followers, he
moved at his own pace.
	He didn't need to bathe. His aged skin could no longer sup-
port a large population of bacteria.
	He sat on the edge of the bed. He was tired. Without volition,
his eyes glazed over. A long moment passed in which he was
simply empty, thinking nothing at all.
	At last, blinking, he came back to himself. He reached reflex-
ively into his jacket pocket and produced an enameled inhaler.
Two long whiffs of Green Rapture brought interest back into
the world. He looked slowly about him and was surprised to see
a blue kimono against the wall. Murasaki was wearing it. Her
body was camouflaged almost perfectly against the background
of skin.
"Captain   Murasaki,"  he said.  "I  didn't  notice  you.  Forgive me."
	"I was - " She'd been standing there in polite silence. She was flustered by his reputation. "I was ordered to - " She gestured at the door, a pucker in the wall.
	"You want to take me somewhere?" he said. "My companions
can manage without me. I'm at your disposal."
	He followed the girl into the ivory and fur of the hall.
	In the lobby she stopped and ran her hand along the smooth
flesh of the wall. A hole sphinctered open beside her feet, and
the two of them dropped gently down one floor.
	Below the hostel was a maintenance area. He heard a steady
rushing of arteries and an occasional bowel like gurgle from the
naked walls. Biomonitors flickered, set in puckered rims of flesh.
	"This is a health center," Murasaki explained. "The Wallmother's health, I mean. She has a mind-link here. She can speak to you here, through me. You mustn't be alarmed." She turned her back  to him  and  lifted  the dark  fringe of hair at her neck,
showing him the stippled interlink at the base of her skull.
Green Rapture washed gently over Lindsay, a tingling wave of
curiosity. Green  Rapture was the ultimate antiboredom drug,
the biochemical  basis of wonder boiled down to its complex
essence. With enough Green Rapture a man could find a wealth
of interest in the lines of his own hands. Lindsay smiled with
unfeigned delight. "Marvelous," he said. Murasaki hesitated and looked at him quizzically.
"You mustn't mind if I stare," Lindsay said. "You remind me
so of your mother."
"You're really him, Chancellor? Abelard Lindsay, who was my
mother's lover?"
	"Kitsune and I have always been friends."
"Am I much like she was?"
"Clones are their own people." He spoke soothingly. "In the
	Ring Council, I had a family once.  My congenetics-my
children -were clones. And I loved them."
	"You mustn't think I'm a mere piece of the Wall," Murasaki
said. "The Wall cells are chromosomally depauperate. Chimeric
blastomas. The Wall is not as fully human as Kitsune's original
flesh. Or mine." She looked searchingly into his eyes. "You
don't mind talking to me first? I'm not boring you?"
	"Impossible," Lindsay said.
	"We Wallchildren have had trouble before. Some foreigners
treat us as monsters." She sighed, relaxing. "The truth is, we're
really rather dull."
	He was sympathetic. "You find it so?"
	"It's not like Czarina-Kluster. Things are exciting there, aren't
they? Always something happening. Pirates. Posthumanists. Defectors. Investors. I see tapes from there sometimes. I'd love to
have clothes like that."
	Lindsay smiled. "Clothes look better at a distance, my dear.
Cicadas dress for social status. It can take hours."
	"You're only prejudiced, Chancellor Lindsay. You invented
social stripping!"
	Lindsay winced. Was he always to be dogged by this cliche?
	"I saw it in a play," the girl confessed. "Goldreich Intrasolar
came through on tour. They showed Fernand Vetterling's Pity
For the Vermin. The hero strips at the climax."
	Lindsay felt chagrin. Vetterling's plays had lost all punch since
he had become a Zen Serotonist. Lindsay would have told the
girl as much, but he felt too much shadowy guilt at the tragic
course of Vetterling's career. Because of politics, Vetterling had
spent years as a nonperson. Lindsay could not blame the drama-
tist for choosing peace at any price. "Stripping's bad form, these
days," he said. "It's lost all meaning. People do it just to punctuate a conversation."
	"I thought it was marvelous. Though nudity doesn't mean
much in Dembowska. ... I shouldn't tell you about plays.
Didn't you start Kabuki Intrasolar?"
	"That was Fyodor Ryumin," Lindsay said.
	"Who's he?"
	"A brilliant playwright. He died some years ago."
	"Was he very old?"
	"Extremely. More so even than me."
	"Oh, I'm sorry." He had embarrassed her. "I'll be going now.
You and the Wallmother must have a lot to discuss." She
pressed her hand against the wall behind her, then turned to
him again. "Thank you for indulging me. It was a very great
privilege." A fleshy tentacle extruded from the wall behind her.
The splayed clump at the tentacle's end grasped the back of her
neck. She lifted her hair aside and adjusted the plug. Her face went slack.
	Her knees buckled and she fell slowly in the feeble gravity.
Kitsune came on line and caught her before she hit the floor.
The body trembled briefly in a palsy of feedback; then Kitsune
stretched it and ran her hands along the arms. The face set
itself; the body was all grace, electric with an old and ferocious
vitality. Only the eyes were dead.
	"Hello, Kitsune."
	"Do you like this body, darling?" She stretched luxuriously.
"Nothing brings memory back like being in a young woman.
What do you call yourself these days?"
	"Abelard Lindsay. Chancellor of Czarina-Kluster Kosmosity-
Metasystems, Jovian Systems Division."
	"And Arbiter of the Lifesiders Clique?"
	Lindsay smiled. "Positions in social clubs have no legal validity, Kitsune."
	"It's a position strong enough to bring a defector here, all the
way from Skimmers Union. . . . She says her name is Vera
Constantine. And that name means enough to you to bring you
here?"
	Lindsay shrugged. "You see me, Kitsune."
	"The daughter of your old enemy? And the congenetic of a
long-dead woman whose name escapes me?"
	"Vera Kelland."
	
	"How well you remember it. Better than you remember our
	own relationship?"
"We've had more than one, Kitsune. I remember our youth in
	the Zaibatsu, though not as well as I would like. And I remember my thirty years here in Dembowska, when I held you at
arm's length because your form repulsed me and I missed my wife."
"You could not have resisted me in any form, if t had pressed.
	In those years I only teased you."
	"I've changed since then. These days I'm pressed by other
things."
	"But now I have a better form. Like the old one." She
shrugged the girl's body out of its kimono. "Shall we have a go,
for old times' sake?"
	Lindsay approached the body and ran his wrinkled hand lingeringly along the long flank. "It's very beautiful," he said.
	"It's yours," she said. "Enjoy yourself."
	Lindsay sighed. He ran his fingers over the splayed tentacular
clump at the back of the girl's neck. "In my duel with Constantine, I had something like this installed. The wires lose a lot in translation. You can't feel it like this, Kitsune. Not like you did then."
	"Then?" She laughed aloud. The mouth opened, but the face
scarcely moved. "I left those limits behind so long ago that I've
forgotten them."
	"It's all right, Kitsune. I can't feel it in the same way any more, either." He stepped back and sat on the floor. "If it's any
consolation, I still feel something for you. Despite all times and
changes. I don't have a name for it. But then what we had
between us never had a name."
	She picked up the sleeveless kimono. "People who waste time
naming never have time for living."
	They passed a few moments in companionable silence. She put
the robe on and sat before him. "How is Michael Carnassus?" he said at last.
	"Michael is well. With each rejuvenation we repair a little
more Shatter damage. He leaves his Extraterrarium for longer
and longer times, these days. He feels safe in my corridors. He
can speak now."
	"I'm glad for that."
	"He loves me, I think."
	"Well, that's not to be despised."
	"Sometimes, when I think of how much profit I made from
him, I have a strange warm feeling. I never had a better bargain.
	He was so wonderfully malleable. . . . Even though he's useless now, I still feel real satisfaction when I look at him. I've decided that I'll never throw him away."
	"Very good."
	"For a Mechanist, he was bright, in his day. An ambassador to
aliens; he had to be one of the best. He has many children
here-congenetics-they are all very satisfactory."
	"I noticed that when I met Colonel Martin Dembowska. A
very capable officer."
	"You think so, truly?"
	Lindsay looked judicious. "Well, young, of course. But that
can't be helped."
	"No. And this one, this chatterbox" -the body pointed a finger
at its own chest-"is even younger. Only nineteen. But my
Wallchildren must grow up quickly. I mean to make
Dembowska my genetic nest. All others must go. And that
includes your Shaper friend from Skimmers Union."
	"I'll take her off your hands at your convenience."
	"It's a trap, Abelard. Constantine's children have no reason to
love you. Don't trust her. Like Carnassus, she has been with
aliens. They left their mark on her."
	"I must confess I'm curious." He smiled. "I suppose it's the drugs."
"Drugs? It can't be vasopressin, your old favorite. Or you'd
have a better memory."
	"Green Rapture, Kitsune. I have certain long term plans. . . .
Green Rapture keeps my interest up."
	"Your terraforming."
	"Yes. It's a problem of time and scale, you see. Long term
fanaticism is hard work. Without Green Rapture, the mind
gnaws away at the fantastic until it becomes the commonplace."
	"I see," she said. "Your fantastic, and my ecstatic. . . . Child-
birth is a wonderful thing."
	"To bring new life into the world ... it is the mystery. Truly a
	Prigoginic event."
	"You must be tired, darling. I've reduced you to Cicada platitudes."
	"I'm sorry." He smiled. "It comes with the territory."
	"You and Wellspring have a clever front. You're both great
talkers. I'm sure you can lecture for hours. Or days. But centuries?"
	Lindsay laughed. "It seems like a joke sometimes, doesn't it?
Two sundogs embracing the ultimate. Wellspring believes, I
think. As for me, I do my best."
	"Maybe he thinks you believe."
	"Maybe he does. Maybe I do." Lindsay tugged a long lock of
hair through his iron fingers. "As dreams go, Posthumanism has
merits. The existence of the Four Levels of Complexity has been
proven mathematically. I've seen the equations."
	"Spare me, darling. Surely we're not so old that we have to
discuss equations."
	The words bypassed him. Under the influence of Green Rapture, his brain succumbed momentarily to the lure of mathematics, that purest of intellectual pleasures. In his normal state of mind, despite years of study, he found the formulas painful, a
brain-numbing mass of symbols. In Rapture he could grasp
them, though afterward he remembered only the white joy of
comprehension. The feeling was close to faith.
	A long moment passed. He snapped out of it. "I'm sorry,
Kitsune. You were saying?"
	"Do you remember, Abelard. . . . Once I told you that ecstasy
was better than being God."
	"I remember."
	"I was wrong, darling. Being God is better."
	Vera Constantine's quarters were a measure of Kitsune's distrust. The young Shaper clanswoman had been under house
arrest for weeks. Her lodging was a three-room cell of stone and
iron, outside Kitsune's world-consuming embrace.
	She sat at an inset Market monitor, studying the flow of transaction in a three-dimensional grid. She had never dealt in the
Market before, but Abelard Gomez, a kindly young Cicada, had
given her a financial stake to pass the time. Knowing no better,
she applied to the flow of the Market the principles of atmospheric dynamics she'd learned on Fomalhaut IV. Oddly, it
seemed to be working. She was clearly gaining.
	The door unsealed and shunted open. An old man stepped in,
tall and thin in muted Cicada garb: a long coat, dark slash-
cuffed trousers, jeweled rings worn over white gloves. His lined
face was bearded, and a silvered coronet of patterned leaves
accented his white-streaked, shoulder-length hair. Vera rose
from her stirrup-chair and bowed, imitating the Cicada flourish.
"Chancellor, welcome."
	Lindsay's eyes searched the cell, his sinewy brows knitting in
puzzlement. He seemed wary, not of her but of something in the
room. Then she felt it herself, and knew that the Presence had
returned. Despite herself, knowing it was useless, she looked for
it quickly. Something flickered in the corner of her eye as it escaped her vision.
	Lindsay smiled at her. Then he continued to scan the room.
She didn't want to tell him about the Presence. After a while he
would give up looking for it, just as all the others did. "Thank
you," he said belatedly. "I trust you're well, Captain-Doctor."
"Your friends, Doctor Gomez and Undersecretary Nakamura,
have been most attentive. Thank you for the tapes and gifts."
"It was nothing," Lindsay said.
	She feared suddenly that she was disappointing him. He had
not seen her in the fifteen years since the duel. She had been
very young then -only twenty. She still had the Kelland cheek-
bones and pointed chin, but time had changed her, and her
genotype was not pure. She was not Vera Kelland's clone.
	Her sleeveless kimono mercilessly showed the changes brought by her years as an alien emissary. Two circulatory ducts dented the flesh of her neck, and her skin still had a peculiar waxiness.  Inside the Embassy at Fomalhaut, she had lived in water for years.
	Lindsay's gray eyes would not stop wandering. She was con-
vinced that he could feel the Presence, sense its pervasive eeriness. Sooner or later he would attribute that feeling to her, and
then her chance to win his favor would be gone. He spoke
abstractedly.  "I'm sorry that matters can't be resolved more
quickly. ... In matters of defection it's best not to be rash."
She thought she heard a veiled reference to the fate of Nora
Mavrides. That chilled her. "I see your point, Chancellor." Vera
had no official backing by the Constantine clan, for they could
not risk denunciation within the Ring Council. Life was hard in
Skimmers Union these days: with the loss of the capitalship had
come a vicious struggle for the remaining scraps of power and a
hunt for scapegoats. Constantine clan members were prominent
victims.  Once, she had been the favorite of their clan founder, showered with gifts and Constantine's strained affection.
	But her clan had made too many bad gambles. Philip Constantine had risked their future on the chance to kill Lindsay
and had failed. The clan had invested heavily in Vera's ambassadorship, but she had returned without the riches they'd expected. And she had changed in a way that alarmed them. Now,
she was expendable.
	As the clan's power dwindled, they had lived in terror of
Lindsay. He had survived the duel and returned more powerful
than ever. He seemed unstoppable, bigger than life. But the
attack they'd expected had never come, and it occurred to them
that he had weaknesses. Through her, they hoped to prey on his
emotions, on the love or guilt he felt for Vera Kelland. It was
the latest and most desperate of gambles. With luck they might
win sanctuary. Or vengeance. Or both.
	"Why come to me?" he said. "There arc other places. Life as a
Mechanist is not so bad as the Ring Council paints it."
	"The Mechs would turn us against our own people. They
would break up our clan. No, Czarina-Kluster is best. There's
sanctuary in the shadow of your Queen. But not if you work
against us."
	"I see," Lindsay said. He smiled. "My friends don't trust you.
We have very little to gain, you see. C-K already swarms with
defectors. Your clan does not share our Posthuman ideology.
Worse yet, there are many in C-K who hate the name Con-
stantine. Former Detentistes, Cataclysts, and so on. . . . You
understand the difficulties."
	"Those days are behind us, Chancellor. We mean no harm to
anyone."
	Lindsay closed his eyes. "We could babble reassurances until
the sun expands," he said -he seemed to be quoting
someone-"and never convince each other. Either we trust each
other or we don't."
	His bluntness filled her with misgivings. She was at a loss. The
silence stretched uncomfortably. "I have a present for you," she
said. "An ancient heirloom." She crossed the narrow cell to lift
a rectangular wire cage, shrouded in peach-colored velvet. She
lifted the cage cover and showed him the clan treasure, an
albino laboratory rat. It ran back and forth through its cage,
mincing along with bizarre, repetitive precision. "It is one of the
first creatures ever to attain physical immortality. An ancient
lab specimen. It is over three hundred years old."
	Lindsay said, "You're very generous." He lifted the cage and
examined it. Within it, the rat, its capacity to learn completely
exhausted by age, had been reduced to absolute rote behavior.
The twitchings of its muzzle, even the movement of its eyes,
were utterly stereotyped.
	The old man watched it searchingly. She knew he would get no response. There was nothing in the rat's jellied pink eyes, not
even the dimmest flicker of animal awareness. "Has it ever been
out of the cage?" he said.
	"Not in centuries. Chancellor. It's too valuable."
	Lindsay opened the cage. Its routines shattered, the rat cowered beside the steel tube of its water drip, its sinewy furred
limbs trembling.
	Lindsay wiggled his gloved fingers beside the entrance. "Don't
be afraid," he told the rat seriously. "There's a whole world out
here."
	Some ancient, corroded reflex kicked over in the rat's head.
With a squeal it launched itself across the cage at Lindsay's
hand, clawing and biting in convulsive fury. Vera gasped and
leaped forward, shocked at his action, appalled by the rat's
response. Lindsay gestured her back and lifted his hand, watching in pity as the rat attacked him. Beneath his torn right glove, hard prosthetic fingers gleamed with black and copper gridwork.
	Me grasped the squirming animal with gentle firmness, watching to see that it did not crack its teeth. "Prison has set its
mind," he said. "It will take a long time to melt the bars behind
its eyes." Me smiled. "Luckily, time is in great supply."
	The rat stopped struggling. It panted in the throes of some
rodent epiphany. Lindsay set it gently on the tablelop beside the
Market monitor. It struggled to its pink feet and began to pace
in agitation, turning in its tracks at the former limits of its cage.
	"It can't change," Vera told him. "Its capacities are exhausted."
	"Nonsense," Lindsay said. "Me merely needs to make a
Prigoginic leap to a new level of behavior." The calm assertion
of his ideology frightened her. Something must have shown in
her face. Me tugged the torn glove from his hand. "Hope is our
duty," he said. "You must always hope."
	"For years we hoped we could heal Philip Constantine," Vera
said. "Now we know better. We are ready to trade him to you
for our own safe-conduct."
	Lindsay looked at her seriously. "This is cruelty," he said.
	"He was your enemy," she said. "We wanted to make
amends."
	"For me, you are that chance."
	It was working. Me still remembered Vera Kelland.
	"Don't deceive yourself," he said. "I don't offer true recompense. Czarina-Kluster must fall someday. Nations don't last in
this era. Only people last, only plans and hopes. ... I can only
offer you what I have. I don't have safety. I have freedom."
	"Posthumanism," she said. "It's your state ideology. Of course
we'll adapt."
	"I thought you had your own convictions, Vera. You're a
Galaclicist."
	She ran her fingers lightly, absently, over one of the gill scams
in her neck. "I learned my politics in the observation sphere. In
Fomalhaut. The Embassy." She hesitated. "Life there changed
me more than you could know. There are things I can't ex-
plain."
	'There's something in this room," he said.
	She was stunned. "Yes," she blurted. "You felt it? Not many do."
	"What is it? Something from the Fomalhaut aliens? The
gasbags?"
	"They know nothing about it."
	"But you do," he said. "Tell me."
	She was in too far to back out. She spoke reluctantly. "I first
noticed it in the Embassy. The Embassy floats in the atmosphere of Fomalhaut Four, a gas-giant planet, like Jupiter. . . .
We had to live in water there to survive the gravity. We were
thrown together, Mechanists and Shapers; we shared the Em-
bassy, there was no choice. Everything was changed; we
changed. . . . The Investors came to take a Mechanist contingent
back to the Schismatrix. I think the Presence was aboard the
Investor ship. Since then the Presence has been with me."
	"Is it real?" said Lindsay.
	"I think so. Sometimes I almost see it. A kind of flickering. A
mirror-colored thing."
	"What did the Investors say?"
	"They denied everything. They said I was deluded." She hesitated. "And they weren't the last to say so." She regretted
confessing it at once. But the burden had eased. She looked at
him, daring to hope.
	"An alien, then," Lindsay said. "Not one of the nineteen
known species."
	"You believe me," she said. "You think that it's really here."
	"We must believe each other," Lindsay said. "Life is better
that way." He looked about the narrow room carefully, as if
testing his eyes. "I'd like to lure it into the open."
	"It won't come out," the girl said. "Believe me, I've begged it
many times."
	"We mustn't try it here," Lindsay said. "Any manifestation
would alarm Kitsune. She feels secure in this world. We must
consider her feelings."
	His sincerity startled her. It hadn't occurred to her that her
captor might have feelings, or that anyone might relate, in a
personal way, to that titanic mass of flesh.
	He picked up the rat, which began squealing loudly, with
desperate energy. Me examined it with such guileless interest that, before she could help herself, she felt a stab of pity for him, an urge to protect him. The feeling surprised and warmed her.
	He said, "We'll be leaving soon. You'll be coming with us." Me
put the rat in the pocket of his long coat. It rested there quietly.
	The history of the Schismatrix was one long racking chronicle
of change. The population had reached nine billion. Within the
Ring Council, power had slipped from the narcotized hands of
the Zen Serotonists. After forty years of their reign, new Shaper
ideologues embraced the aggressive schemes of visionary
Galacticism.
	The new creed had spread slowly. It was born in the inter-
stellar embassies, where ambassadors broke human limits in
their struggle to grasp alien ways of life. Now the Galacticist
prophets stood ready to abandon humanity entirely, to achieve a
Galactic consciousness where mere loyalty to species was obsolete.
	Once again detente had shattered. The Mechanists and Shapers fought in bitter rivalry for the favor of aliens. Of the nine
teen alien races, only five had shown even the vaguest interest
in a closer relationship with humankind. The Chondrule Cloud
Processors were willing to move in, but only if Venus could be
atomized for easier digestion. The Nerve Coral Aquatics ex-
pressed mild interest in invading the Earth, but this would mean
breaking the sacred tradition of Interdict. The Culture Ghosts
were willing to join with anyone who could endure them, but
their hideous effects on the Schismatric diplomatic corps had
made them objects of genuine horror.
	The gasbags of Fomalhaut offered most. It had taken many
decades to master their "language," which was best expressed as
complex unstable states of atmospheric dynamics. Once true
contact had been established, progress was rapid. Fomalhaut
was an enormous star with a huge asteroid belt rich in heavy
metals.
	The asteroid belt was useless to the gasbags, who disliked space travel. They were, however, interested in Jupiter and planned to seed it with aerial krill. The Investors were willing to handle
transportation, though even their huge ships could carry only a
handful of surgically deflated gasbags per trip.
	Controversy had raged for decades. The Mechanists had their
own   Galacticist   faction,   who   struggled   to   grasp   the   mind
shattering physics of the sinister Hijack Boosters. The Boosters,
like   the   Investors,  possessed   a   technique  of  faster-than-light
travel. The Investors were willing to sell their secret, but only at
a crippling price. The Hijack Boosters mocked mankind but were occasionally indiscreet.
	An advance into the galactic arm seemed inevitable. One of
two strategies would succeed: that of the Shapers, with their
diplomatic negotiation, or of the Mechanists, who directly at-
tacked the problem of starflight. Only a major faction could
succeed; the minor breakaway groups lacked the wealth, the
skilled population, the diplomatic pull. A new, uneasy polarity
took shape.
	In the meantime, gasbag larvae in their egg-shaped spacecraft painstakingly inspected circumsolar space. Small groups of
Shapers and Mechanist renegades mapped the riches of
Fomalhaut. One solar system would never again be enough.
	The breakdown of detente aroused old hatreds. Brushfire war-
fare flourished, unrestrained by the faltering Investors. Bizarre
new factions sprang up, led by returned diplomats. Their re-
cruits loomed at the edges of society: the Carnivores, the Viral
Army, the Coronaspherics.
	History's kaleidoscope worked its permutations, its pace ever
faster, approaching some unknown crescendo. Patterns changed
and warped and flew apart, each chip of light a human life.

CZARINA-KLUSTER PEOPLE'S CORPORATE REPUBLIC: 13-1-'54

After seventy years of wealth and stability, disaster was loose in
Czarina-Kluster. The elite of the Lifesiders Clique met in secret
council, to wrestle with crisis.
	Aquamarine Discreet was a Lifesider citadel, and its security
was absolute. Mosaic blowups of the Jovian moon, Europa,
covered the discreet's walls: bright grooved terrain in ice-white
and dusky orange, interior seas in blue and indigo. Over the
burnished conference table hung a Europan orrery, where jeweled spacecraft representing Lifesider satellites ticked quietly on orbits of silver wire.
	Chancellor Abelard Gomez, a vigorous eighty-five-year-old,
had taken over management of the Clique's affairs. His chief
compatriots were Professor Glen Szilard, Queen's Advisor Fidel
Nakamura, and Gomez's current wife, Project Manager Jane
Murray. At the far end of the table sat Chancellor Emeritus
Abelard Lindsay. The old visionary's lined face showed the quizzical smile associated with a heavy dosage of Green Rapture.
Gomez rapped the table, bringing the meeting to order. They
fell silent, except for the loud chattering of the ancient rat on Lindsay's shoulder. "Sorry," Lindsay murmured. He put the rat
in his pocket.
	Gomez took control. "Fidel, your report?"
"It's true, Chancellor. The Queen has vanished."
The others groaned. Gomez spoke sharply. "Defected or kidnapped?"
Nakamura wiped his brow. "Wellspring took her; only he can answer that. My fellow Advisors are in uproar. The Coordinator is calling out the dogs.  He's even brought the tigers out of mothballs. They want Wellspring for high treason. They won't rest until they have him."
	"Or until C-K collapses around them," Gomez said. Gloom
settled over the chamber. "Tigers," Gomez said. "Tigers are
huge machines; they could shred through the walls of this discreet like paper. We mustn't meet again until we have armed ourselves and established secure perimeters."
	Szilard spoke up. "Our dogs have this suburb's exits
monitored. I stand ready to carry out loyalty tests. We can purge
the suburb of unfriendly ideologues and make this our bastion
as the Kluster dissolves."
	"That's harsh," Jane Murray said.
	"It's us or them," Szilard said. "Once the news spreads, the
other factions will be holding kangaroo courts, seizing
strongholds, stripping dissidents of property. Anarchy is coming.
We must defend ourselves."
	"What about our allies?" Gomez said.
	Nakamura spoke. "According to our Polycarbon Clique con-
tacts, the announcement of Wellspring's coup d'etat will co-
incide with the first asteroid impact on Mars, in the morning of
4-14-'54. . . . C-K will disintegrate within weeks. Most Czarina-
Kluster refugees will flee to Martian orbit. Wellspring holds the
Queen there. He will rule. The new Terraforming-Kluster will
have a much stronger Posthuman ideology."
	"The Mechs and Shapers will tear C-K apart," Jane Murray
said. "And our philosophy profits by the destruction. . . : This is
high treason, friends. I feel sick."
	"People outlive nations," Lindsay said gently. He was breathing with inhuman regularity: a Mechanist biocuirass managed
his internal organs. "C-K is doomed. No number of dogs or
purges can hold it, without the Queen. We're finished here."
	
	"The Chancellor Emeritus is right," Gomez told them. "Where
will we go? We must decide. Do we join the Polycarbon Clique
around Mars, to live in the Queen's shadow? Or do we make
our move to CircumEuropan orbit and put our own plans into
effect?"
	"I say Mars," Nakamura said. "In today's climate
Posthumanism needs all the help it can get. The Cause demands
solidarity."
	"Solidarity? Fluidarity, rather," Lindsay said. He sat upright
with an effort. "What's one Queen, more or less? There are
always more aliens. Posthumanism must find its own orbit
someday . . . why not now?"
	While the others argued, Gomez looked moodily, through half-
shut eyes, at his old mentor. The remnants of old pain gnawed
at him. Me could not forget his long marriage to Lindsay's
favorite, Vera Constantine. There had been too many shadows
between himself and Vera.
	Once they had put the shadows aside. That was when she'd
confessed to Gomez that she had meant to kill Lindsay. Lindsay
had made no move to defend himself, and there had been many
opportunities, but the lime had never quite been right. And
years passed. And convictions faltered and became buried in
routines and practicalities. The day came when she knew she
could not go through with it. She had confessed it to Gomez,
because she trusted him. And they had loved each other.
Gomez led her away from vengeance. She embraced
Posthumanism. Even her clan had been won over. The Con-
stantine clan were now the Lifesiders' pioneers, working around
Europa.
	But Gomez himself had not escaped the years. Time had a way of making passion into work. He had what he wanted. He had
his dream. He had to live it and breathe it and do its budget.
And he had lost Vera, for there had been one shadow left.
Vera had never been entirely sane. For years she had quietly
insisted that an alien Presence followed and watched her. It
seemed to come and go with her mood swings; for days she
would be cheerful, convinced that it was "off somewhere"; then
he would find her moody and withdrawn, convinced that it was
back.
	Lindsay condoned her illness and claimed to believe her.
Gomez too believed in the Presence: he believed it was the
reflection of his wife's estrangement from reality. It was not for
nothing that she had called it "a mirror-colored thing. . . ."
Something that could not be pinned down, an incarnation of
unverifiable fluidity. . . . When Gomez got to the point where he
himself could feel it, even sense it flickering at the corners of
his vision, he knew things had gone too far. Their divorce had
been amiable, full of cool politeness.
	He wondered sometimes if Lindsay had planned it all. Lindsay
knew the trap that was human joy, and the strength that came
from clawing free of it. Scalded by pain, Gomez had won that
strength. . . . Szilard was reeling off facts and figures about the
state of CircumEuropa. The future Lifesiders habitat was being
blown into shape around the Jovian moon, an orbiting froth of
hard-set angles, walls, bubbled topologies.
	The flourishing Constantine clan was snaking plumbing
through the walls already and booting up the life-support sys-
tem. But an attempt by the Lifesiders to move there en masse,
in their thousands, would stretch resources to the limit.
	Their relations with the gasbag colony on Jupiter were good;
they had the expertise of Vera and her cadre of trainees. But the
Jovian aliens could not protect them from other human factions.
They had no such ambition and no prestige to match that of the
Cicada Queen.
	Jane Murray presented things from a Project perspective. The
surface of Europa was the bleakest of prospects: a vacuum
seared wasteland of smooth water ice, so cold that blood and
bone would crack like glass, bathed in deadly Jovian radiation.
Rut there were fissures in that ice, dark streaks thousands of
kilometers long. . . . Tidal cracks. For beneath the moon's crust
was molten ice, a planet-girdling lava ocean of liquid water. The
constant tidal energy of Jupiter, Ganymede, and lo warmed
Europa's ocean to blood heat. Beneath the lacelike web of
fractures, a sterile ocean washed a bed of geothermal rock.
	For years the Lifesiders had planned a series of massive disasters for the inorganic. It would start with algae. They had
already bred forms that could survive in the peculiar mix of
salts and sulfurs native to Europan seas. The algae could cluster
around fresh cracks where light seeped through, feasting on the
strands of heavy hydrocarbons bobbing aimlessly within the
sterile sea. Fish would be next; small ones at first, bred from the
half-dozen species of commercial fish mankind had brought into
space. Ocean arthropods such as "crabs" and "shrimp," known
only from ancient textbooks, could be mimicked through skilled
manipulation of the genes of insects.
	Fault-lines could be shattered from orbit by dropped projectiles, leaving light flooded patches of pack ice. They could experiment on a dozen cracks at once, adapting rival ecosystems
through trial and error.
	It would take centuries. Once again, Gomez took the burden
of the years upon himself. "Biodesign is still in its infancy," he
said. "We must face facts. At least, with the Queen, the Martian
Kluster will have wealth and safety for us. There, at least, our
only enemies will be the years."
	Lindsay lurched forward abruptly and slammed his iron fist
into the. table. "We must act now! This is the moment of crux,
when a single act can crystallize our future. We have our choice:
routines or miracles. Demand the miraculous!"
	Gomez was stunned. "It's Europa, then, Chancellor?" he said.
"Wellspring's plans seem safer."
	"Safer?" Lindsay laughed. "Czarina-Kluster seemed safe. But
the Cause moved on, and the Queen moved with it, when
Wellspring took her. The abstract dream will flourish, but the
tangible city will fall. Those who can't dream will die with it.
The discreets will be thick with the blood of suicides.
Wellspring himself may be killed. Mech agents will annex whole
suburbs, Shapers will absorb whole banks and industries. The
routines that seemed so solid here will melt like tears. ... If we
embrace them, we melt with them."
	"Then what must we do?"
	"Wellspring is not the only one whose crimes are secret and
ambitious. And he's not the last to vanish."
	"You're leaving us, Chancellor?"
	"You must handle distress and disaster yourselves. I'm past
any use in that capacity."
	The others looked stricken. Gomez rallied himself. "The
Chancellor Emeritus is right," he said. "I was about to suggest
something similar. Our enemies will focus attacks on the
Clique's Arbiter; it might be best if he were hidden."
	The others protested automatically; Lindsay overruled them.
"There can't always be Queens and Wellsprings. You must trust in your own strength. I trust in it."
	"Where will you go, Chancellor?"
	"Where I'm least expected." He smiled. "This isn't my first
crisis. I've seen many. And when they hit, I always ran. I've
preached to you for years, asked you to dedicate your lives. . . .
And always I knew that this moment would come. I never knew
what I would do when the dream faced its crisis. Would I
sundog it as I always have, or would I commit myself? The
moment's here. I must defy my past, just as you must. I know
how to get you your miracle. And I swear to you, I will."
	A sudden dread struck Gomez. He had not seen such resolution in Lindsay for years. It occurred to him suddenly that
Lindsay meant to die. He did not know Lindsay's plans, but he
realized now that they would be the crux of the old man's life. It
would be like him to exit at the climax, to fade into the shadows
while some unknown glory still shone. "Chancellor," he said,
"when may we expect your return?"
	"Before I die, we'll be Europa's angels. And I'll see you in
Paradise." Lindsay cycled open the scaled door of the discreet;
outside, the free-fall corridors were a burst of sudden crowd
noise. The door thunked shut. He was gone. Thick silence fell.
	The old man's absence left a hollowness behind. The others sat silently, savoring the sense of loss. They looked at one another.
Then, as one, they looked to Gomez. The moment passed; the
uneasiness dissolved. Gomez smiled. "Well," he said. "It's miracles, then."
	Lindsay's rat leaped spryly onto the table. "He's left it be-
hind," Jane Murray said. She stroked its fur, and it chittered
loudly.
	"The rat will come to order," Gomez said. He rapped the
table, and they set to work.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CIRCUMTERRAN ORBIT: 14-4-'54

Three of them waited within the spacecraft: Lindsay, Vera Constantine, and their Lobster navigator, who was known simply as
Pilot.
	"Final approach," Pilot said. His beautiful synthesized voice
emerged from a vocoder unit hooked to his throat.
	Strapped in before his control board, the Lobster was a chunk
of shadow. Me was sealed within a matte-black permanent
spacesuit, knobbed with lumps of internal machinery and dotted
with shiny gold input jacks. Lobsters were creatures of the
vacuum, faceless posthumans, their eyes and ears wired to sensors woven through the suits. Pilot never ate. Me never drank.
The routines of his body were subsumed within the life-
supporting rhythms of his suit.
	Pilot did not like being within this spacecraft; Lobsters had a
horror of enclosed spaces. Pilot, though, had put up with the
discomfort for the thrill of the crime.
	Now that they were dropping from orbit, the drugged calm of
weeks of travel had broken. Lindsay had never seen Vera so
animated. Her open delight filled him with pleasure.
	And she had reason for gladness. The Presence was gone. She
had not felt it since the three of them had been scaled within
the spacecraft. They'd come so far since then that she believed
she had escaped it for good. She found as much happiness in
this relief as in the fulfillment of their long conspiracy.
	Lindsay was happy for her. Me had never had true proof of the
objective existence of the Presence, but he had agreed to believe
in it for her. And similarly, she had never doubted him. It was a
contract and a trust between them. Me knew she might have
killed him, but that trust had saved his life. Long years since
then had only strengthened it.
	"Looks good," the Lobster sang. The spacecraft began to buck
as it hit the entrance window of the Earth's atmosphere. The
Lobster emitted a burst of static, then said, "Air. I hate air. I
hate it already."
	"Steady," Lindsay said. He tightened the straps of his chair and unfolded his videoscreens.
	They were coming in over the continent once known as Africa.
Its outlines had been radically changed by the rising seas: archipelagos of drowned hills trailed clouds above a soup of weed-
choked ocean. Along the dark shore, rivers poured gray topsoil
into water streaked reel with algal blooms.
	The white-hot flare of entry heat obscured his vision, flickering
over the diamond-hard hull lens of the forward scanner. Lindsay leaned back in his seat.
	It was an odd ship, an uncomfortable one, not of human
manufacture. The egg-shaped hull had the off-white sheen of
stabilized metallic hydrogen, built only by gasbags. Its naked
interior floor and ceiling bore the rounded, scalloped segmentation marks of its former pilot, a gasbag grub. The spacefaring
grub had been packed within the hull as tightly as expanding
dough.
	One of the gasbags had alluded to the astronaut's death in a
"conversation" with Vera Constantine. With its keen sensitivity
to magnetic flux, the unlucky grub had perceived a solar flare
whose shape and substance it found somehow blasphemous. It
had expired in despair.
	Lindsay had been looking for just such a chance. When Vera
told him of the accident, Lindsay acted at once, lie recruited
the Lobsters through their business contact in Czarina-Kluster, a
Lobster they called "the Modem."
	A complex deal was worked out, in utter secrecy, with the
anarchic Lobsters. One of their lacy, airless spacecraft used
Vera's coordinates to track down the dead grub. Lindsay allowed them to dissect it and appropriate its alien engines. In
return they outfitted the emptied shell for a furtive attempt to
break the Interdict with Earth.
	The Interdict had never applied to the gasbags. They had
insisted on exploring the entire solar system, and had granted
equal rights to the pioneers in Fomalhaut. Their surveying craft
had often studied the Earth. They made no attempt to contact
the local primitives. They had satisfied themselves that the plan-
et was harmless and had returned in utter disinterest.
With his two companions, Lindsay had assumed his ultimate
disguise. Me was passing himself off as an alien, in an attempt to
deceive the entire Schismatrix.
	Excitement and triumph had stripped decades from Lindsay.
He had turned up his chest cuirass so that his heart could labor
in time with his feelings. The forearm monitor embedded in his
arm glowed amber with adrenaline.
	The spacecraft skipped above the bloated South Atlantic and
sank deep within the atmosphere at the twilight line. Deceleration pressed Lindsay into the straps of his skeletal chair.
The Lobsters had clone a quick, primitive job. The three-man
crew was crammed into a ribbed lozenge four meters across. It
held two air-frames, a recycler, and three acceleration couches,
of black elastic webbing over iron frames epoxied to the floor.
The rest of the craft was taken up by engines and a garagelike
specimen hold. In the hold crouched a surveyor robot, one of
the Europan submarine probes.
	The dead astronaut's former orifices had been stripped of
tissue and outfitted with cameras and scanning systems. The
specimen hold had a hatchway installed, but there was no room
for an airlock in the crew's compartment. The three of them
had been welded in.
	Pilot hadn't liked it. Pilot could be trusted, though. He cared
nothing for Europa or their plans, but he relished the chance to
count coup on the ancestral gravity well. He had been everywhere, from the turbulent fringes of the solar corona to the cometary Oort Cloud at the edge of circumsolar space. He was not human, but for the time being he was one of them.  The scanners began to clear. Deceleration faded into the heavy tug of Earth gravity. Lindsay slumped in his seat, wheezing as the cuirass pumped his lungs. "Look what this muck is doing to the stars," Pilot complained melodiously.
	Vera reached beside her chair and unfolded her tight-packed
accordioned screens. She straightened the videoboard with a
pop and smoothed out the creases. "Look, Abelard. There's so
much air above us that it's binning the stars. Think how much
air. It's fantastic."
	Lindsay stirred himself and examined the view from the aft
camera. Behind them, a wall of thunderheads towered to the
limits of the troposphere. Black roots furred with rain rose to
white anvil heads glowing in the last of twilight. This was one
outstretched arm of the storm zone of permanent tempests that
girdled the planet's equator.
	He expanded the aft view to fill the whole videoboard. What
he saw awed him. "Look aft at the storm clouds," he said.
"Huge streaks of fire are leaping out of them. What could be
burning?"
	"Chunks of vegetation?" Vera said.
	"Wait. No. It's lightning," Lindsay said. "As in the old phrase,
'thunder and lightning.'" He stared in utter fascination.
	"Lightning bolts are supposed to be red, with jagged edges,"
Vera said. "These are like thin white branches."
	"The disaster must have changed their form," Lindsay said.
	The storm vanished over the horizon. "Coastline coming up,"
Pilot said.
	Sunset fell; they switched to infrareds. "This is part of America," Lindsay concluded. "It was called Mexico, or possibly
Texico. The coastline looked different before the ice caps melted. I don't recognize any of this."
	Pilot struggled with the controls. Vera said, "We're going faster
than the movement of sound in this atmosphere. Slow down.
Pilot."
	"Muck," Pilot complained. "Do you really want to see this?
What if the locals see us?"
	"They're primitives, they don't have infrareds," Vera said.
	"You mean they use only the visible spectrum?" Now Pilot
himself was stunned.
	They studied the landscape below: knots of dense scrubland,
shining in the false black-and-white of infrared. The wilderness
was striped occasionally by half-obscured dark streaks.
"Tectonic faults?" Vera said.
	"Roads," Lindsay said. He explained about low-friction surfaces for ground travel in gravity. They had not seen any cities
as yet, though there had been suggestive patches here and there
where the rioting vegetation seemed thinner.
	Pilot took them lower. They pored over the growth at high
magnification. "Weeds," Lindsay concluded. "Since the disaster
all ecological stability has collapsed. . . . Adventitious species
have moved in. This was probably all cropland once."
	"It's ugly," Vera said.
"Systems in collapse often are."
	"High-energy flux ahead," Pilot said. The spacecraft dipped
and hovered over a ridge.
	Wildfire swept the hillsides, whole kilometers of orange glow
in the darkness. Roaring updrafts flung up flakes of glowing ash,
reverse cascades of stripped-off leaves and branches. Behind the
wall of fire were the twisted, glowing skeletons of weeds grown
large as trees, their smoldering trunks thick bundles of woody
filaments. They said nothing, stirred to the core by the wonder
of it. "Sundog plants," Lindsay said at last.
"What?"
	"The weeds arc like sundogs. They thrive on disaster. They
move in anywhere where systems break down. After this disaster
the plants that grow fastest on scorched earth will thrive. . . ."
"More weeds," Vera concluded.
	"Yes." They left the fire behind and cruised past the foothills.
Lindsay tapped one of the algae frames and ate a mouthful of
green paste.
"Aircraft," Pilot said.
	For a moment Lindsay thought he was seeing a mutant gasbag, some bizarre example of parallel evolution. Then he realized it was a flying machine: some kind of blimp or zeppelin. Long
seamed ridges of sewn balloon skin supported a skeletal gondola. A thin skein of flexible solar-power disks dotted the craft's skin, dappling over its back, fading to a white underbelly. Long
mooring lines trailed from its nose, like drooping antennae.
They approached cautiously and saw its mooring-ground: a
city.
	A gridwork of streets split a checkerboard of white stone
shelters. The houses were marshaled around a looming central
core: a four-sided masonry pyramid. The zeppelin was moored
to the pyramid's apex. The whole city was hemmed in by a high
rectangular wall; outside, agriculture fields glowed a ghastly
white, manured with ashes.
	A ceremony was progressing. A pyre blazed at the masonry
plaza at the pyramid's foot. The city's population was drawn up
in ranks. They numbered less than two thousand. Their clothing
was bleached by the infrared glow of their body heat. "What is
it?" said Vera. "Why don't they move?"
	"A funeral, I think," Lindsay said.
	"What's the pyramid, then? A mausoleum? An indoctrination
center?"
	"Both, maybe. . . . Do you see the cable system? The mausoleum has an information line, the only one in the village.
Whoever lives there holds all links to the outside world." Lindsay thought suddenly of the domed stronghold of the Nephrine
Black Medicals in the circumlunar Zaibatsu. He hadn't thought
of it for years, but he remembered the psychic atmosphere
within it, the sense of paranoid isolation, of fanaticism slowly
drifting past the limits through lack of variety. A world gone
stale. "Stability," he said. "The Terrans wanted stability, that's
why they set up the Interdict. They didn't want technology to
break them into pieces, as it's done to us. They blamed technology for the disasters. The war plagues, the carbon dioxide that
melted the ice caps. . . . They can't forget their dead."
	"Surely the whole world isn't like this," Vera said.
	"It has to be. Anywhere there is variety there is the risk of
change. Change that can't be tolerated."
	"But they have telephones. Aircraft."
	"Enforcement technology," Lindsay said.
	On their way to the Pacific they saw two more settlements,
separated by miles of festering wilderness. The cities were as
identical as circuit chips. They crouched unnaturally on the
landscape; they could have been stamped out from some hydraulic press and dropped from the air.
	Pilot pointed out more of the bloated aircraft. Their full significance became clear to Lindsay. The flying machines were
like plague vectors, carrying the ideological virus of some cal-
cifying cultural disease. The pyramids towered in the heart of
every city, enormous, dwarfing all hope, the strangling monuments of the legions of the dead.
	Tears came to him. He wept quietly, holding nothing back. He
mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that
the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from
their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final
purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute.
	They slipped beneath the ocean south of the rocky island
chain of Baja California. Pilot opened the hatchway, flooding
the cargo hold with water, and they began at once to sink.
	They were in search of the world's largest single ecosystem, the only biome man had never touched.
	The surface waters had not escaped. Over the drowned lands
of the continental margins, rafts of rotting moss and algae, the
ocean's equivalents of weeds, festered in choking profusion. But
the abyssal depths were undisturbed. In the crushing blackness
of the abyss, larger in area than all the continents combined,
conditions scarcely varied from pole to pole. The denizens of
this vast realm were poorly known. No human being had ever
invented a way to wring advantage from them.
	But in the Schismatrix, man's successors were more clever. The resemblance of this realm to the dark oceans of Europa had not
escaped Lindsay. For decades he had searched the ancient
databanks for scraps of knowledge. The surviving records of
abyssal life were almost useless, dating back to the dawn of
biology. But even these crude hints lured Lindsay with their
potential for sudden miracle. Europa too had the gloominess,
the depths. And the vast drowned ranges of volcanic rifts, oozing geothermal energy.
	The abyss had oases. It had always had them. The knowledge
had lit a slow, subterranean fire in his imagination. Life:
untouched, primeval life, swarmed in boiling splendor at the
fiery edges of the Earth's tectonic plates.
	An entire ecosystem, older than mankind, clustered there in all its miraculous richness. Life that could be seized, that could be
Europa's.
	At first he had rejected the idea. The Interdict was sacred: as
old as the unspoken guilt of ancestral spacefarers, who had
deserted Earth as disaster loomed. In their desertion, they had
robbed the planet of the very expertise that might have saved it.
Over centuries of life in space, that guilt had sunk into a
darkened region of cultural awareness, surfacing only as caricature, as ritual denial and deliberate ignorance.
The parting had come with hatred: with those in space condemned as antihuman thieves, and Earth's emergency government denounced as fascist barbarism. Hatred made things easier: easier for those in space to shrug off all responsibility, easier for Earth to starve its myriad cultures down to a single gray regime of penance and pointless stability.
	But life moved in clades. Lindsay knew it as a fact. A successful species always burst into a joyous wave of daughter species, of hopeful monsters that rendered their ancestors obsolete.
Denying change meant denying life.
	By this token he knew that humanity on Earth had become a
relict.
	In the long term, the vast biological timescape that had become Lindsay's obsession, rust ate anything that failed to move.
Earth's future did not belong to humanity but to the monstrous
weeds, grown strange and woody, and whatever small fleet creatures leaped and bred among them. And Lindsay felt justice in it.
	They sank into darkness.
	Pressure meant nothing to their alien hull. The gasbags flourished at extremes of pressure that made Earth's oceans seem as
thin as plasma. Pilot switched controls over to the water jets
epoxied to the hull. Me kicked in aperture radar, and their
videoboards lit up with the clean green contour lines of the
abyssal floor.
	Lindsay's heart leaped as he saw the familiar geology. "Just
like Europa," Vera murmured. They were floating over an ex-
tended tension fault, where volcanic basalt had snapped and
rifted, harsh blocks jutting upward, the cracked primeval violence untouched by wind or rain. Rectilinear mountains, lightly dusted with organic ooze, dropped in breathtaking precipitious cliffs, where contour lines crowded together like the teeth of a comb.
	But here the rift was dead. They saw no sign of thermal energy.
"Follow the fault," Lindsay said. "Look for hot spots." He had
lived too long for impatience, even now.
	"Shall I kick in the main engines?" Pilot said.
	"And make the water boil for miles around? We're deep, Pilot.
That water is like steel."
	"Is it?" Pilot made an electronic churring noise. "Well, I'd
rather have no stars at all than blurry ones."
	They followed the rift for hours without finding a lava seep.
Vera slept; Lindsay dozed briefly, an old man's cat-sleep. Pilot,
who slept only on formal occasions, woke them. "A hot spot,"
he said.
	Lindsay examined his board. Infrareds showed sluggish heat
from deep within the interior of a jutting cliff. The cliff was
extremely odd: a long, tilted plane of euclidian smoothness,
rising abruptly from an oozy badlands of jumbled terrain. An
angular foothill at the base of the cliff lay strangely distorted,
almost crumpled, atop a dome-shaped rise of lava.
	"Send out the drone," he said.
	Vera pulled the robot's controls from under her seat and
slipped on a pair of eyephones. The robot sculled easily out to
the anomalous cliff, its lights blazing. Lindsay switched his
board over to the robot's optics.
	The tilted cliff was painted. There were white stripes on it,
long peeling dashes, some kind of dividing line. "It's a wreck,"
he said suddenly. "It's manmade."
	"Can't be," Vera said. "It's the size of a major spacecraft.
There'd be room in it for thousands."
	But then she found something that settled it. A machine was
lashed to the smooth clifflike deck of the enormous ship. Centuries had corroded it, but its winged outlines were clear. "It's
an aircraft," Pilot said. "It had jets. This was some kind of
watery spaceport. Airport, rather."
	"A ratfish!" Lindsay exulted. "After it, Vera!"
	The surveyor lunged after the abyssal creature. The long-tailed, blunt-headed fish, the size of a man's forearm, darted for safety along the broad deck of the aircraft carrier. It vanished through a ruptured crevice in the multistory wreckage of the control
tower. The robot pulled up short. "Wait," Vera said. "If this is a
ship, where did the heat come from?"
	Pilot examined his instruments. "It's radioactive heat," he said.
"Is that unusual?"
	"Fission power," Lindsay said. "It must have sunk with an
atomic pile on board." Common decency forbade him to mention the possibility of atomic weapons.
	Vera said, "My instruments show dissolved organics. Creatures
are huddling up around the pile for warmth." She tore at an
ancient bulkhead with the pressure-toughened arms of the
drone. The corroded alloy burst easily, gushing rust. "Should I
go after it?"
	"No," Lindsay said. "I want the primeval."
	She returned the drone to its hold. They sputtered onward.
	Time passed; terrain scrolled by with a slowness he would have
once found dreadful. Lindsay found himself thinking again of
Czarina-Kluster. Sometimes it troubled him that the despair, the
suffering there, meant so little to him. C-K was dying, its elegance dissolving into squalor, its delicate, sophisticated balance
ripped apart, pieces flung like seeds throughout the Schismatrix.
Was it evil of him to accept the flower's death, in hope of seeds?
	He could not think it was. Human time meant nothing to him
any longer. He wanted only for his will to leave its mark, to cast
its light down those long eons, in a world awakened, a planet
brought to irrevocable life. And then . . . then he could let go.
	"Here," Pilot said.
	They had found it. The craft descended.
	Life rose all around them: a jungle in defiance of the sun. In
the robot's lights the steep, abrasive valley walls flushed in a
vivid panoply of color: scarlet, chalk-white, sulfur-gold,
obsidian. Like stands of bamboo, tubeworms swayed on the
hillsides, taller than a man. The rocks were thick with clams,
their white shells yawning to show flesh as red as blood. Purple
sponges pulsed, abyssal corals spread black branching thickets,
their thin arms jeweled with polyps.
	The water of life gushed from the depths of the valley. Chimneys slimed with metal oxides spewed hot clouds of energized
sulfur. The sea floor boiled, wobbling bubbles of steam glinting
through a haze of bacteria. The bacteria were central. They were
the food chain's fundamental link. Through chemosynthesis,
they drew energy from the sulfur itself, scorning the sun to
thrive on the heat of the Earth.
	Within the warmth and darkness, the valley seethed with life.
The rock itself seemed to live, festooned with porous knobs and
slimed crevasses, red-black tubes of cold lava-stone coiling like
snakes, phallic chimneys of precipitated minerals gleaming
copper-green with verdigris. Pale crabs with legs as long as a
man's arm kicked daintily across the slopes. Jet-black abyssal
fish, grown fat on unexpected bounty, moved with slick langour
through the clustered stalks of the tubeworms. Bright yellow
jellies, like severed flowerheads, floated in thick eddies of bacterial soup.
	"Everything," Lindsay breathed. "I want it all."
	Vera pulled away her eyephones; her eyes were flooded with
tears. She slumped back in the seat, shaking. "I can't see," she
said, her voice hoarse. She handed him the control box. "Please
... it should be yours, Abelard."
	Lindsay strapped on the phones, slipped his fingers into the
control slots. Suddenly he was amid it all, the scanners turning
with the movements of his head. He extended the sampling
arms, extruding the delicate clockwork of the genetics needles.
He advanced on the nearest stand of tubeworms. Above the
serried white columns of their wrist-thick trunks, their foliage
was rank upon waving rank of arm-long feathered red fronds,
sweeping with feminine elegance, combing life from the water.
Their white stems clustered with sheltered creatures: barnacles,
tiny crabs, fringed worms in sea-green and electric blue, round
comb jellies glinting in faint pastels.
	A predator emerged from the jungle, flowing sinously around
the trunks: a jet-black abyssal fish, leg-sized and flattened like
an eel, its sides studded with serried dots of phosphorescence. It
approached fearlessly, fascinated by the light. Gills pulsed be-
hind its huge-eyed head and it opened a pale, glowing mouth
bristling with fangs. "So," Lindsay addressed it. "You were
pressed past the limits, forced into the abyss where nothing
grows. But see what you've found. The fat of the system, sundog.
Welcome to Paradise." As he spoke he moved the arm toward
it; the long needle leaped out, touched it, and withdrew. The
fish glowed out in sudden gold and green and flashed away.
	He moved to the forest, touching everything he could see,
sampling bacteria with gentle suction fillers. In half an hour he
had filled all his sample capsules and turned back to the ship
for more.
	Then he saw something detach itself from the hull of the ship.
At first he thought it a trick of the light, a ripple of pure
reflection. Then he saw it moving toward him, wobbling, flutter-
ing, shapeless, and formless, a jellied mirror, fluid in a silver
bag. He heard Vera cry out.
	He wrenched his hands from the controls and tore away the
eyephones. She was bent over the videoboard, staring. "The
Presence! You see it? The Presence!"
	It was swimming, with an amoebalike rippling and stretching,
deeper into the grove. Lindsay quickly jammed on the
eyephones and took up the controls, following it with the robot's lights. Its formless surface threw washes of reflected brilliance over the clams and coral. Lindsay said, "You see it, Pilot?"
	Pilot turned the spacecraft to follow it with tracking systems.
"I see something. ... It reflects in every wavelength. What a
strange creature. Take a sample of it, Lindsay."
	"It's not native. It came with us. I saw it attached to the hull."
	"To the hull? It survived raw space? And entry heat? And the
pressure of this water? It can't be."
	"No?"
	"No," the Lobster said. "Because if it was real, I couldn't bear
not to be it."
	"It's showing itself," Vera exulted. "Because of where we are!
You see? You see?" She laughed. "It's dancing!"
	The thing floated smoothly above one of the smoking chimneys, flattening itself to bathe in the searing updraft of unthinkable pressure and heat. Hot bubbles seethed beneath it, sliding with frictionless ease off its mirrored undersurface. As they
watched, it drew itself together into a rippling globe. Then,
liquescing with sudden speed, it poured itself through a thumb-
sized crevice into the core of the heat vent. It vanished at once.
	"I didn't see that," the Lobster insisted. "I didn't see it vanish
into the bowels of the Earth. Should we leave now? I mean,
maybe we should try to get away from it."
	"No," Vera said.
	"You're right," Pilot quavered. "That might make it mad."
	Vera marveled, "Did you see it? It was enjoying this! Even it
knows. It knows this is Paradise!" She was trembling. "Abelard,
someday, in Europa, this will all be ours, we can touch it, feel it,
breathe the water, smell it, taste it! I want it! I want to be out
there, like the Presence is. . . ." She was breathing hard, her
face radiant. "Abelard ... if it weren't for you I'd have never
known this. . . . Thank you. Thank you, too. Pilot."
	"Right, yes, surely," Pilot fluted uneasily. "Lindsay, the drone.
Should you bring it in?"
	Lindsay smiled. "Don't be afraid, Pilot. It's done you a favor.
You've seen the potential. Now you'll have something to aim
for."
	"But think of the power it must have. It's like a god. . . ."
	"Then it's in good company, with us."
	Lindsay guided the drone into the specimen hold and unloaded the genetic capsules into their pressure racks. He reloaded its arms and returned to work.
	The Presence emerged, ballooning suddenly from a second
chimney, beside the drone. It drifted toward him, watching. Me
waved a claw, but it made no response and soon drifted out of
the drone's lights into darkness and invisibility.
	The creatures showed no fear of the drone. Vera took over,
gently parting the supple stems of the tubeworms to harvest
everything she could find. The drone walked the length of the
valley oasis, probing the oo7.e, prying into crevices.
	They had a stroke of luck where a new hot spring had broken
open, parboiling a colony of creatures clustered above it on an
overhang. They used the dead as bait to attract scavengers; they
opened them to sample gut bacteria and the agents of decay.
	Their sample could not be complete; the oasis was far too rich
for that. But their success was still entire. No creature born to
the seas of Earth could live, unaltered, in Europa's alien waters.
That was the task of Europa's angels, the Lifesiders, who would
inherit this genetic treasure, tease it apart, and rebuild new
creatures for the new conditions. The living beings here would
be models, archetypes in a new Creation, where art and purpose
would take the place of a billion years of evolution.
	As they packed the robot away for the last time and lifted ship, they saw no sign of the Presence. But Lindsay had no doubt that
it was with them.
	He was tired as they ascended slowly toward the surface. More
than his Shaper favorite or the armored Mechanist, he felt the
burden of his hubris heavy on him. Who was he to have done
these things? The light had drawn him, and he had grown
toward it as a tree might grow, spreading blind leaves toward an
unknown radiance. Now he had come to his life's fruition, and
he was glad of it. But a tree dies when its roots are cut, and
	Lindsay knew his roots were his humanity. He was a thing of
flesh and blood, of life and death, not an Immanent Will.
	A tree drew strength from light, but it was not light itself. And
life was a process of changing, but it was not change itself. That
was what death was for.
	When they saw sunlight flooding just below the surface, Pilot
yowled in electronic glee and kicked in the main engines. Steam
blasted out in an explosive cratering rosette as the sea recoiled.
They broke Mach 1 in seconds. As acceleration crushed them
into their seats, Vera strained to see her videoboard and
screamed. "The sky! Blue sky! A wall above the world! Pilot,
give us space!"
	Below them, the sea absorbed the shock, as it did all things.
And they were gone.

THE NEOTENIC CULTURAL REPUBLIC: 8-8-'86

Life moved in clades.
	Terraform-Kluster loomed over Mars, shattering red monotony
with white steam, green growth, blue nascent seas.
	On Venus, death's back was broken, as honest clouds threw
lace across the searing, acid-bitten sky.
	Ice ships with freshly minted creatures from the labs splashed
into Europa, dissolving deep within blood-warm abysses.
	On Jupiter the Great Red Spot was breaking up, sloughing off
strange blooming clouds of red krill, tiny creatures gathered into
shoals and herds bigger than Earth.
	At the Neotenic Cultural Republic, Abelard Lindsay decamped
from a monstrous spacecraft.
	In the free-fall zone he moved easily, with the unconscious
grace of extreme age.
	But as he moved down the slope inside the cylindrical world,
past the hotels and low-grav tourist shops, he leaned more and
more heavily on the squat head of his robot companion. The
two of them reached level ground, a loamy wilderness with
solemn, ancient ranks of trees. The tub-shaped robot nurse
nicked a quick blood sample from the nerveless flesh of Lindsay's leg. As they shuffled along the leaf-strewn footpath, the machine fractionated the blood and mumbled over its data.
	The Republic had become a place of towering gloom, silence
broken by birdcalls, a canopy of foliage cracking mirrored sun-
light into dappled shards. Local Neotenics in studiedly antique
clothing lounged on lichen-eaten stone benches, while their
charges, senile Shapers and obsolescent Mechs, tottered marveling through the woods.
	Lindsay paused, gasping as the cuirass pumped his chest beneath his dark blue coal. The baggy legs of his trousers and his
sturdy orthopedic shoes hid the prosthetic framework strapped
to his wasted legs. Overhead, at the core of the world, an
ultralight aircraft spewed a long trail of gray cremated powder
over the rich green treetops.
	No one approached him. The embroidered squids and angler
fish on his coat-sleeves identified him as a CircumEuropan, but
he had come incognito.
	Catching his breath, Lindsay walked on toward the Tyler mansion and his meeting with Constantine.
	The mansion had expanded. Beyond its ivy shrouded walls,
other estates had sprung up, a complex of asylums and retirement wards. Over the years, despite the Preservationists, the outside world had seeped in irresistibly. The Republic's premier industries were hospitals and funerals; rehabilitation for those who could make it, a quiet transition for those who could not.
	Lindsay crossed the courtyard of the first hospital. A group of
Blood Bathers basked in the sun, waiting with animal patience
for their skins to grow again. Beyond that estate was a second,
where two young Patternists were surrounded by guards. They
scratched at the dirt with twigs, their lopsided heads almost
touching. Lindsay saw one of them look up for a moment: the
boy's cold eyes had the chilly logic of utter paranoia.
	Neatly dressed Neotenic attendants ushered Lindsay through
the gates of the Tyler estate. Margaret Juliano had been dead
for years. Lindsay recognized the new Director as one of her
Superbright students.
	The Superbrighl met him on the lawn. The man's face had the
quiet self-possession of Zen Serotonin. "I've cleared your visit
with Warden Pongpianskul," he said.
	"That was thoughtful," Lindsay said. Neville Pongpianskul was
dead, but it was not polite to refer to the fact. Following Ring
Council ritual, Pongpianskul had "faded," leaving behind him a
programmed web of speeches, announcements, taped appear-
ances, and random telephone calls. The Neotenics had never
bothered to replace him as Warden. It saved a lot of trouble all
around.
	"May I show you through the Museum, sir?" the Superbrighl
asked. "Our late Curator, Alexandrina Tyler, left an unmatched
collection of Lindsaiana."
	"Later, perhaps. Is Chancellor-General Constantine receiving
visitors?"
	Constantine was in the rose garden, lying in a lounge chair
beside a beehive, staring up into the sun with flat plastic eyes.
The years had not been kind to him, despite the best of care.
Long years in natural gravity had left his body knotted with
muscle, strange knobs and bulges over his delicate bones.
	There was no ultraviolet in the mirrored sunlight of the Re-
public, but nevertheless Constantine had tanned, his ancient,
naked skin taking on mottled birthmark tinges of purple and
blue. He had lost most of his hair, and there were dimpled
callosities at strategic points on his skull. The treatments had
been thorough and exhaustive. And at last they had succeeded.
	Constantine turned as Lindsay creaked carefully toward him.
The pupils of his plastic eyes were of different sizes; they irised
visibly, struggling for focus. "Abelard? It's you?"
	"Yes, Philip." The robot sank down beside the lounge chair;
Lindsay sat comfortably on its soft, pulpy head.
	"So. Mow was your trip?"
	"It's an old ship," Lindsay said. "A bit like a flying geriatrics
ward. They were having a revival of Vetterling's The While Periapsis."
	"Hmm. Not his best work."
	"You always had good taste, Philip."
	Constantine sat up in his chair. "Should I call for a robe? I've
looked better, I know."
	Lindsay spread his hands. "If you could see beneath this suit.
... I haven't wasted much money on rejuvenation lately. I'm
going for total transformation when I return. It's Europa for me.
Philip. The seas."
	"Sundogging out from under human limitations?"
	"Yes, you could say that. . . . I've brought the plans with me."
Lindsay reached inside his coat and produced a brochure. "I
want you to look at them with me."
	"All right. To please you." Constantine accepted the pamphlet.
The center pages showed an Angel's portrait: an aquatic
posthuman. The skin was smooth and black and slick. The legs
and pelvic girdle were gone; the spine extended to long muscular flukes. Scarlet gills trailed from the neck. The ribcage was
black openwork, gushing white, feathery nets packed with symbiotic bacteria.
	The long black arms were dotted with phosphorescent patches, in red and blue and green, keyed into the nervous system.
Along the ribs and flukes were two long lateral lines. The
nerve-packed stripes housed a new aquatic sense that could feel
the water's trembling, like touch at a distance. The nose led to
lunglike sacs packed with chemosensitive cells. The lidless eyes
were huge, and the skull had been rebuilt to accommodate
them.
	Constantine moved the brochure before his eyes, struggling to
focus. "Very elegant," he said at last. "No intestines."
	"Yes. The white nets filter sulfur for bacteria. Each Angel is
self-sufficient, drawing life, warmth, everything from the water."
	"I see," Constantine said. "Community with anarchy. ... Do
they speak?"
	Lindsay leaned forward, pointing to the phosphorescent lights.
"They glow."
	"And do they reproduce?"
	"There are genetics labs. Aquatic ones. Children can be created. But these creatures can last out centuries."
	"But where's the sin, Abelard? The lies, the jealousy, the
struggle for power?" He smiled. "I suppose they can commit
gauche acts of ecosystem design."
	"They don't lack ingenuity, Philip. I'm sure they can find
crimes if they try hard enough. But they're not like we were.
They're not forced to it."
	"Forced to it. ..." A bee landed on Constantine's face. He
brushed it gently away. He said, "I went to see the impact site
last month." He meant the spot where Vera Kelland had
crashed. "There are trees there that look as old as the world."
	"It's been a long time."
	"I don't know what I expected. . . . Some kind of golden glow,
perhaps, some shimmer to show where my heart was buried. But
we're small creatures, and the Kosmos doesn't care. There was
no sign of it." He sighed. "I wanted to measure myself against
the world. So I killed the thing that might have held me back."
	"We were different people then."
	"No. I thought I could make myself different. ... I thought
that with you dead, you and Vera, I'd be a clean slate, a
machine for pure ambition. ... A bullet fired into the head of
history. ... I tried to seize power over love. I wanted everything
bound in iron. And I tried to bind it. But the iron broke first."
	"I understand," Lindsay told him. "I've also learned the power
of plans. My life's ambition awaits me in Europa." He took the
brochure. "It could be yours, too. If you want it."
	"I told you in my message that I was ready for death," Con
stantine said. "You always want to sidestep things, Abelard. We
go back a long way together, too far for words like 'friend' or
'enemy.' ... I don't know what to call you, but I know you. I
know you better than anyone, better than you know yourself.
When you face the consummation, you'll step aside. I know you
will. You'll never see Europa."
	Lindsay bowed his head.
	"It has to end, Abelard. I measured myself against the world,
that was why I lived. And I cast a large shadow. Didn't I?"
	"Yes, Philip." Lindsay's voice was choked. "Even when I hated
you most, I was proud of you."
	"But to measure myself against life and death, as if I could go
on forever. . . . There's no dignity in that. What are we to life?
We're only sparks."
	"Sparks that start a bonfire, maybe."
	"Yes. Europa is your bonfire, and I envy you that. But if you
go to Europa you will lose yourself in it. And you couldn't bear
that."
	"But you could do it, Philip. It could be yours. Your people
will be there. The Constantine clan."
	"My people. Yes. You co-opted them."
	"I needed them. I needed your genius. . . . And they came to
me willingly."
	"Yes. . . . Death defeats us in the end. But our children are our
revenge against it." He smiled. "I tried not to love them. I
wanted them to be like me, all steel and edge. But I loved them
anyway . . . not because they were like me, but because they
were different. And the one most different, I loved the best."
	"Vera."
	"Yes. I created her from the samples I stole here, in the
Republic. Flakes of skin. Genetics from the ones I loved. . . ."
Me looked at Lindsay pleadingly. "What can you tell me of her,
Abelard? How is your daughter?"
	"My daughter. . . ."
	"Yes. You and Vera were a splendid pair. ... It seemed a
shame that death should make you barren. I loved Vera too; I
wanted to guard her child, and the child of the man she chose.
So I created your daughter. Was I wrong to do it?"
	"No," Lindsay said. "Life is better."
	"I gave her everything I could. How is she?"
	Lindsay felt dizzy. Beneath him, the robot slid a needle into
his unfeeling leg. "She's in the labs now. She is going through
the transformation."
	"Ah. Good. She makes her own choices. As we all must."
Constantine reached beneath his lounge chair. "I have poison
here. The attendants gave it to me. They grant us the right to
die."
	Lindsay nodded in distraction as the drugs calmed his
pounding heart. "Yes," he said. "We all deserve that right."
	"We could walk out to the impact site together, you and I. And
drink the poison. There's enough for two." Constantine smiled.
"It would be good to have company."
	"No, Philip. Not yet. I'm sorry."
	"Still no commitment, Abelard?" Constantine showed him a
glass vial filled with brown liquid. "It's just as well. I have
trouble walking. I have trouble with all dimensions,
since . . . since the Arena. That's why they gave me new eyes,
"The eyes see dimensions for me." He twisted the top from the
vial with gnarled fingers. "I see life for what it is now. That's
why I know I must do this." He put the poison to his lips, and
drank it down. "Give me your hands."
	Lindsay reached out. Constantine gripped his hands. "Both of
them are metal now?"
	"I'm sorry, Philip."
	"No matter. All our beautiful machines . . ." Constantine shuddered briefly. "Bear with me, this won't take long."
	"I'm here, Philip."
	"Abelard . . . I'm sorry. For Nora. For the cruelly. . . ."
	"Philip, it doesn't ... I forgive. . . ." It was too late. The man
had died.

CIRCUMEUROPA: 25-12-'86

What was left of life in CircumEuropa was clustered in the labs.
When Lindsay disembarked, he found customs deserted.
CircumEuropa was through; imports no longer mattered.
	He followed a snaking hallway through translucent tilted walls
of membrane. The corridors glimmered, painted with all the
blue-green tints of seawater. They were almost deserted.
	Lindsay glimpsed occasional sundogs and squatters, come for
junk and loot. A party of them waved politely as they sawed
noisily through a hard-set wall. An Investor ship had docked as
well, but there was no sign of its crew.
	The movement was all outwards. Giant ice ships, hulled in
crystal, were arcing down to the planet's surface, for gentle
splashdowns through the new crevasses. Vera, his daughter, was
aboard one of them. She had already gone.
	The population had shrunk to a final handful, the last for the
transformation. CircumEuropa had dwindled to a series of labs,
where the last transformees floated in smoky Europan seawater.
Lindsay paused outside an airlock, watching the activity within,
through a hall-mounted monitor. Transformed surgeons were
assisting at the birth of Angels, tracking the growth of new
nerves through the altered flesh. Their glowing arms flickered
rapidly in conversation.
	He had only to don an aqualung, step through that airlock into
blood-warm water, and join the others. Vera had done it. So
had Gomez and the rest. They would greet him joyfully. There
would be no pain, It would be easy.  The past hung balanced on the moment. He could not do it.  He turned away.
	Then he sensed it. "You're here," he said. "Show yourself."
The Presence flowed down  from  the tilted, sea-green membrane of the wall. A puddle of mirrors trickled across the floor,
seeping into shape.
	Lindsay watched it in wonder. The Presence had its own gravity; it clung to the floor as if pulled there. It warped and
rippled, taking form to please him. It became a small, fleet
thing, poised on four legs, crouching like an animal. Like a
weasel, he thought. Like a fox.
	"She's gone," Lindsay told it. "And you let her go."
"Relax, citizen," the fox told him. Its voice had no echo; it
made no sound. "It's not my business to hold on to things."
"Europe's not to your taste?"
	"Aw, hell," it said. "I'm sure it's fabulous there, but I've seen
the real thing, remember? On Earth. What about you, sundog? I
don't see you going for it."
	"I'm old," Lindsay said. "They're young. It should be their
world. They don't need me."
	The creature stretched, rippling. "I thought you'd say as much.  What do you say, then? Now that you have a chance for, ah,
reflection?"
	Lindsay smiled, seeing his own warped face across the shining
film of the Presence. "I'm at loose ends."
	"Oh, very good." There was laughter in the unheard voice. "I
suppose you'll be dying now."
	"Should I?" He hesitated. "It might be premature."
	"It might," the Presence agreed. "You'll stay here a few more
centuries, then? And await the final transcendance?"
	"The Fifth Prigoginic Level of Complexity?"
	"You could call it that. The words don't matter. It's as far
beyond Life as Life is from inert matter. I've seen it happen,
many times before. I can feel it moving here, I can smell it in
the wind. People . . . creatures, beings, they're all people to
me . . . they ask the Final Questions. And they get the Final
Answers, and then it's goodbye. It's the Godhead, or as close as
makes no difference to the likes of you and me. Maybe that's
what you want, sundog? The Absolute?"
	"The Absolute," Lindsay mused. "The Final Answers. . . .
What are your answers, then, friend?"
	"My answers? I don't have 'em. I don't care what goes on
beneath this skin, I want only to see, only to feel. Origins and
destinies, predictions and memories, lives and deaths, I sidestep
those. I'm too slick for time to grip, you get me, sundog?"
	"What do you want then. Presence?"
	"I want what I already have! Eternal wonder, eternally
fulfilled. . . . Not the eternal, even, just the Indefinite, that's
where all beauty is. . . . I'll wait out the heat-death of the Universe to see what happens next! And in the meantime, isn't it something, all of it?"
	"Yes," Lindsay said. His heart was hammering in his chest. His
robot nurse reached for him with a needle-load of soothing
chemicals; he turned it off, then laughed and stretched. "It's all
very much something."
	"I had a fine time here," the Presence said. "It's quite a place
you have here, around this little sun."
	"Thank you."
	"Hey, the thanks are all yours, citizen. But there are other
places waiting." The Presence hesitated. "You want to come along?"
	"Yes!"
	"Then hold me."
	He stretched his arms out toward it. It came over him in a
silver wave. Stellar cold, a melting, a release.
	And all things were fresh and new.
	He saw his clothes floating within the hallway. His arms drifted
out of the sleeves, prosthetics trailing leashes of expensive circuitry. Atop its clean white ladder of vertebrae, his empty skull sank grinning into the collar of his coat.
	An Investor appeared at the end of the hall, bounding along in
free-fall. Reflexively, Lindsay smeared himself out of sight
against the wall. The Investor's frill lifted; it pawed with magpie
attraction through the tangle of bones, stuffing items of interest
into a swollen bag.
	"They're always around to pick up the pieces," the Presence
commented. "They're useful to us. You'll see."
	Lindsay perceived his new self. "I don't have any hands," he said.
	"You won't need 'em." The Presence laughed. "C'mon, we'll
follow him. They'll be going someplace soon."
	They trailed the Investor down the hall. "Where?" Lindsay
said.
	"It doesn't matter. Somewhere wonderful."