Schismatrix plus (23 page)

"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 expensive 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, doctorsdesignate. 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 themselves.

He entered the room briefly for politeness' sake, but as usual their smooth kinesics made him nervous. He left for the smoking room, where two stagedoor hangers-on were being introduced 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 doctrines, 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. He 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 heartbeats 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 stinging. "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 too long. Your history won't be a problem much longer. The diplomats are winning their rights back, and you're a Mavrides now. Regent Vetter-ling'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 staying 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 cheek. "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 bedspread 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 demortalization 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 deca-tabolism."

"Did you bring your gene-line records?"

"No."

"That complicates matters." The black-market demortalist looked at him with an oddly girlish tilt 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.