Who let this phantom loose, and to what end?
GOLDREICH-TREMAINE COUNCIL STATE: 26-12-'46
Wedding guests surrounded the garden. From his hiding place
behind the boughs of a dwarf magnolia, Lindsay saw his wife
lightly bounding toward him, in half a gravity. Green fronds
brushed at the spreading wings of her headdress. Nora's formal
gown was a dense ocher weave beaded in silver, with openwork
amber sleeves. "You're all right, darling?"
Lindsay said, "My sleeve hems, burn it. I was dancing and
popped a whole weave loose."
"I saw you leave. Do you need help?"
"I can get it." Lindsay struggled with the complex interweave.
"I'm slow, but I can do it."
"Let me help." She stepped to his side, pulled inlaid knitting
needles from her headdress, and tatted his sleeves with a
smooth dexterity he could not hope to match. He sighed and
tucked his own needles carefully back into his braids. "The Regent is asking about you," she said. "The senior genetics are
here."
"Where'd you put them?"
"In the veranda discreet. I had to clear out a raft of kids." She
finished the sleeve. "There. Good enough?"
"You're a wonder."
"No kissing, Abelard. You'll smear your makeup. After the party." She smiled. "You look grand."
Lindsay ran his mechanical hand over his coils of gray hair.
The steel knuckles glittered with inlaid seed-gems; the wire
tendons sparkled with interwoven strands of fiberoptics. He
wore a formal Goldreich-Tremaine Kosmosity academic's ruffled overvest, its lapels studded with pins of rank. His kneelongs
were a rich coffee-brown. Brown stockings relieved the dignity
of his outfit with a hint of iridescence. "I danced with the
bride," he said. "I think I surprised them a bit."
"I heard the shouts, dear." She smiled and took his arm,
placing her hand on his sleeve above the steel of his artificial
ulna. They left the garden.
On the patio outside, the bride and groom were dancing on
the ceiling, heads downward. Their feet darted nimbly in and
out of the dance rig, a broad complex of padded footloops for
use in light gravity. Lindsay watched the bride, feeling a rush of
happiness close to pain.
Kleo Mavrides. The young bride was the dead woman's clone,
sharing her name and her genes. There were times when Lindsay felt that behind the merry eyes of the younger Kleo there
lurked an older spirit, as a sound might still vibrate in the glass
of a crystal just after it had ceased to ring. He had done what he
could. Since her production, the younger Kleo had been his
special care. He and Nora found satisfaction in these amends. It
was more than penance. They had taken too many pains to call
it simply recompense. It was love.
The groom danced powerfully; he had the bearlike build of all
the Vetterling genetics. Fernand Vetterling was a gifted man, a
standout even in a society of genius. Lindsay had known the
man for twenty years, as playwright, architect, and Clique mem-
ber. Vetterling's creative energy still filled Lindsay with a kind
of awe, even subdued fear. How long would the marriage last, he
wondered, between Kleo with her fleet graces and the sober
Vetterling, with his mind like a sharp steel ax? It was a marriage
of state as well as a love match. Much capital had been invested
in it, economic and genetic.
Nora led him on through a crowd of children, who were
lashing speed into whirring gyroscopes with dainty braided
whips. As usual, Paolo Mavrides was winning, his nine-year-old
face alight with preternatural concentration. "Don't hit my wheel, Nora," he said.
"Paolo's been gambling," said Randa Velterling, a muscular
six-year-old. She grinned mischievously, showing missing front
teeth.
"Nyaah," Paolo said, not looking up. "Randa's an informer."
"Play nicely," Nora said. "Don't bother the seniors."
The senior genetics were sitting around the buhl table in Lindsay's veranda, with its Investor centerpiece. They were conversing strictly in Looks, a language which to the untrained eye seemed to consist entirely of sidelong glances. Lindsay, nodding, glanced under the table. Two children were squatting beneath it, playing in tandem with a long loop of string. Using all four hands and their largest toes they had formed a complex rack of angles. "Very nice," Lindsay said. "But go play your spiders' games elsewhere."
"All right," the older child said grudgingly. Careful not to
disturb their structure, they wormed their way toward the open
doorway on their heels and toes, their string-wrapped hands outspread.
"I gave them some candy," said Dietrich Ross when they had
left. "They said they'd save it for later. Ever hear of kids that
age saving candy for later? What the hell's becoming of the world?"
Lindsay sat down, opening a pocket mirror. He pulled a powder puff from the pocket of his vest.
"Sweating like a pig," Ross observed. "You're not the man you
once were, Mavrides."
"You can talk when you've danced four measures, Ross, you
old fraud," Lindsay said.
"Margaret has a new opinion on your centerpiece," said
Charles Vetterling. The former Regent had gone frankly to seed
since his loss of office; he looked tubby and choleric, his old-
fashioned trimmed hair speckled with white.
Lindsay was interested. "What's that, Madam Chancellor?"
"It's erotica." Chancellor-General Margaret Juliano leaned
over the inlaid table and pointed into the perspex pressure-
dome. Beneath the dome was a complex sculpture. Speculation
had been rife ever since the Investors had first given it to
Lindsay.
The gift was carved out of water ice and plated in glimmering
frozen ammonia. Machinery beneath the dome maintained it at
40 degrees Kelvin. The sculpture consisted of two oblate lumps
covered in filigree spires of delicate crystalline frost. The tableau
was set on a rippled surface, possibly meant to represent some
unimaginably cold sludge-ocean. Off to one side, poking
through the surface, was a smaller hinged lump that might have
been an elbow.
"You'll notice there are two of them," the Shaper academic
said. "I believe that the physical goings-on are tastefully concealed beneath the water. The fluid, rather."
"They don't look much alike," Lindsay said. "It seems more
likely that one is eating the other. If they're alive at all."
"That's what I said," rasped Sigmund Fetzko. The Mechanist
renegade, by far the oldest of the six of them, lay back in his
chair in exhaustion. Words came to him with difficulty,
propelled by flexing rib-braces beneath his heavy coat. "The
second one has dimples. Shell collapsing. Juice sucked out of
it."
A Vetterling child came into the room, chasing a runaway
gyroscope. Vetterling Looked at Neville Pongpianskul, changing
the subject. The child left. "It is a good marriage," Pongpianskul
replied. "Mavrides grace with Vetterling determination: a for-
midable match. Mikhaila Vetterling shows promise, I think;
what was her split?"
Vetterling was smug. "Sixty Vetterling, thirty Mavrides, and ten percent Garza on a general reciprocity deal. But I saw to it that
the Garza genes were close to early-line Vetterling. None of that
new-line Garza tampering. Not till there's proof behind it."
"Young Adelaide Garza is brilliant," said Margaret Juliano.
"One of my advanced students. The Superbrights are astounding, Regent. A quantum leap." She smoothed the lapel of her
medal-studded overvest with graceful, wrinkled hands.
"Really?" said Ross. "I was married to the older Adelaide