Tauri Phase, Kirkwood Gap, Synchronis, Cassini-Kluster,
Encke-Kluster, Skimmers Union, Arsenal. . . . Constantine
knew them all.
Ghost acceleration wafted across him as the engines cut in.
The Goldreich-Tremaine weather station had cleared them for
launch; there was no chance of a crippling ring-lightning strike.
Background radiation was light. With the new Shaper drives he
faced mere weeks of travel.
The playwright, Zeuner, entered the cabin and seated himself
beside Constantine. "It's gone," he said.
"Homesick already, Carl?" Constantine looked up at the larger
man.
"For Goldreich-Tremaine? Yes. For the people? That's an-
other matter."
"Someday you'll return in triumph."
"Very kind of you to say so, your excellency." Zeuner ran one
fawn-colored glove over his chin. Constantine noted that the
Republic's standard bacteria were already spotting the man's
neck.
"Forget titles of state," Constantine said. "In the Ring Council
it's politesse. In the Republic, it smacks of aristocracy. Our local
form of bad ideology."
"I see, Dr. Constantine. I'll be more careful in the future."
Zeuner's clean-shaven face had the anonymous beauty of the
Reshaped. He dressed with fussy precision in understated
browns and beiges.
Constantine tucked the monocle into his copper-threaded velvet waistcoat. Beneath his embroidered linen jacket, his back
had begun to sweat. The skin of his back was peeling where the
rejuvenation virus ate at aging cells. For twenty years the in-
festation had wandered over his body, the first reward for his
loyalty to the Shaper cause. Where the virus had worked, his
olive skin had a child's smoothness.
Zeuner examined the cabin walls. The heavy insulation was
stitched with pointillistic tapestries depicting the Republic. Orchards spread under bright clouds, sunlight fell with cathedrallike solemnity across golden wheatfields, ultralight aircraft
dipped over stone-walled mansions with red-tiled roofs. The
vistas were as clean as a travel brochure's. Zeuner said, "What's
it really like, your Republic?"
"A backwater," Constantine said. "An antique. Before our
Revolution, the Republic was rotting. Not just socially. Physically. An ecosystem that large needs total genetic control. But the builders didn't care about the long run. In the long run they
were all dead."
Constantine steepled his fingers. "Now we inherit their mess.
The Concatenation exiled its visionaries. Their genetics theorists, for instance, who formed the Ring Council. The Concatenates were squeamish. Now they have lost all power. They are
client states."
"You think we'll win, doctor? The Shapers?"
"Yes." Constantine gave the man one of his rare smiles.
"Because we understand what this struggle is about. Life. I don't mean that the Mechs will be annihilated. They may totter on for
whole centuries. But they will be cut off. They'll be cybernetic,
not living flesh. That's a dead end, because there's no will
behind it. No imperatives. Only programming. No imagination."
The playwright nodded. "Sound ideology. Not like what you
hear in Goldreich-Tremaine these days. Detentiste slogans. Unity in diversity, where all the factions form one vast Schismatrix.
Humankind reuniting when faced by aliens."
Constantine shifted in his chair, surreptitiously rubbing his
back against the cushion. "I've heard that rhetoric. On the stage.
This producer you were mentioning-"
"Mavrides?" Zeuner was eager. "They're a powerful clan.
Goldreich-Tremaine, Jastrow Station, Kirkwood Gap. They've
never had a genetic on the Council itself, but they share genes
with the Garzas and the Drapers and the Vetterlings. The
Vetterlings have authority."
"This man is a Mavrides by marriage, you said. A nongenetic."
"A eunique, you mean? Yes. He's not allowed to contribute his
genes to the line." Zeuner was pleased to tell this bit of scandal.
"He's also an Investor pet. And a cepheid."
"Cepheid? You mean he has a rank in Security?"
"He's Captain-Doctor Abelard Mavrides, C.-Ph.D. It's a low
rank for one so old. He was a sundog once, a cometary miner,
they say. He met the aliens on the rim of the System, wormed
his way into their good graces somehow. . . . They'd been here
only a few months when they brought Mavrides and his wife
into Goldreich-Tremaine in one of their starships. Since then
he's moved from success to success. Corporations hire him as a
go-between with the aliens. He teaches Investor studies and
speaks their language fluently. He's wealthy enough to keep his past obscure."
"Old-line Shapers guard their privacy closely."
Zeuner brooded. "He's my enemy. He blighted my career."
Constantine thought it through. He knew more about Mavrides
than Zeuner did. He had recruited Zeuner deliberately, knowing that Mavrides must have enemies, and that finding them was easier than creating them.
Zeuner was frustrated. His first play had failed; the second was
never produced. He was not privy to the behind-the-scenes
machinations of Mavrides and his Midnight Clique. Zeuner was
harshly anti-Mechanist; his gene-line had suffered cruelly in the
War. The Detentistes rejected him.
So Constantine had charmed him. He had lured Zeuner to the
Republic with promises of the theatrical archives, a living tradition of drama that Zeuner could study and exploit. The Shaper
was grateful, and because of that gratitude he was Constantine's
pawn.
Constantine was silent. Mavrides troubled him. Tentacles of
the man's influence had spread throughout Goldreich-Tremaine.
And the coincidences went beyond chance. They hinted at
deliberate plot.
A man who chose to call himself Abelard. An impresario of
the theatre. Staging political plays. And his wife was a diplomat.
At least Constantine knew that Abelard Lindsay was dead. His
agents in the Zaibatsu had taped Lindsay's death at the hands of
the Geisha Bank. Constantine had even spoken to the woman
who had had Lindsay killed, a Shaper renegade called Kitsune.
He had the whole sorry story: Lindsay's involvement with pi-
rates, his desperate murder of the Geisha Bank's former leader.
Lindsay had died horribly.
But why had Constantine's first assassin never reported back
from the Zaibatsu? He had not thought the man would turn
sundog. Assassins had failsafes implanted; few traitors survived.
for years Constantine had lived in fear of this lost assassin.
The elite of Ring Council Security assured him that the assassin
was dead. Constantine did not believe them, and had never
trusted them again.
For years he had worked his way into the mirrored under-
world of Shaper covert action. Assassins and bodyguards-the
two were often one and the same, since they specialized in one
another's tradecraft-these had become his closest allies.
He knew their subterfuges, their fanatic loyalties. He struggled
constantly to win their trust. He sheltered them in his Republic,
hiding them from pacifist persecution. He used his prestige
freely to further their militarist ends.
Some Shapers still despised him for his unplanned genes; from many others he had won respect. Personal hatreds did not
bother him. But it bothered him that he might be cut short
before he had measured himself against the world. Before he
had satisfied the soaring ambition that had driven him since
childhood.
Who knew about Lindsay, the only man who had ever been his
friend? When he was young, and weaker, before the armor of
distrust had sealed around him, Lindsay had been his intimate.