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,