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.