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