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