the population was Security in one form or another. Besetzny,
Afriel, and Parr, for instance, all ardent leaders in Goldreich-
Tremaine paramilitary youth, were much more of a threat to
Wells than Lindsay, with his reluctant captaincy. Wells, though,
was galvanized with distrust. He mumbled pleasantries until
Lindsay walked away.
The worst of it was that Wells was right. The Shaper students
knew it. But they were not about to jeopardize their hard-won
doctorates by publicly agreeing with a naive Mech. No one
would have Ring Council clearance to visit other stars without
an impeccable ideology.
Of course the Investors were profiteers. Their arrival had not
brought the millennium humankind had expected. The Investors
were not even particularly intelligent. They made up for that
with a cast-iron gall and a magpie's lust for shiny loot. They
were simply too greedy to become confused. They knew what
they wanted, and that was their critical advantage.
They had been painted much larger than life. Lindsay had
done as much himself, when he and Nora had parlayed their
asteroid deathtrap into three months of language lessons and a
free ride to the Ring Council. With his instant notoriety as a
friend to aliens, Lindsay had done his best to inflate the Investor mystique. He was as guilty of the fraud as anyone.
He had even defrauded the Investors. The Investors' name for
him was still a rasp and whistle meaning "Artist." Lindsay still
had friends among the Investors: or, at least, beings whom he
felt sure he could amuse.
Investors had a sense of something close to humor, a certain
sadistic enjoyment in a sharp deal. That sculpture they had
given him, which rested in a place of honor in his home, might
well be two frost-eaten chunks of alien dung.
God only knew to what befuddled alien they had sold his own
piece of found art. It was only to be expected that a young man
like Wells would demand the truth and spread it. Not knowing
the consequences of his action, or even caring; simply too young
to live a lie. Well, the falsehoods would hold up awhile longer.
Despite the new generation bred in the Investor Peace, who
struggled to rip aside the veil, not knowing that it was the very
canvas on which their world was painted.
Lindsay looked for his wife. She was in her office, closeted
with her conspirator's crew of trained diplomats. Colonel-
Professor Nora Mavrides cast a large shadow in Goldreich-
Tremaine. Sooner or later every diplomat in the capital had
drifted into it. She was the best known of her class's loyalists
and served as their champion.
Lindsay hid within the comfort of his own mystique. As far as
he knew, he was the last survivor of the foreign section. If other
non-Shaper diplomats survived, it was not by advertising them-
selves.
He entered the room briefly for politeness' sake, but as usual
their smooth kinesics made him nervous. He left for the smok-
ing room, where two stagedoor hangers-on were being intro-
duced to the modish vice by the cast of Vetterling's Shepherd
Moons.
Here Lindsay sank at once into his role as impresario. They
believed in what they saw of him: an older man, a bit slow,
perhaps, without the fire of genius others had, but generous and
with a tang of mystery. With that mystery came glamour; Doctor
Abelard Mavrides had set his share of trends.
He drifted from one conversation to another: genetic marriage-
politics, Ring Security intrigues, city rivalries, academic doc-
trines, day-shift clashes, artistic cliques-threads all of a single
fabric. The sheen of it, the smooth brilliance of its social design,
had lulled him into routine. Fie wondered sometimes about the
placidity he felt. How much of it was age, the mellowness of
decay? Lindsay was sixty-one.
The wedding party was ending. Actors left to rehearse, seniors
crept to their antique warrens, the hordes of children scampered
to the creches of their gene-lines. Lindsay and Nora retired at
last to their bedroom. Nora was bright-eyed, a little tipsy. She
sat on the edge of their bed, unloosing the clasp at the back of
her formal dress. She pulled it forward and the whole complex
fretwork hissed loose across her back, in a web of strings.
Nora had had her first rejuvenation twenty years ago, at thirty-
eight, and a second at fifty. The skin of her shoulders was
glassily smooth in the bedside lamp's roseate light. Lindsay
reached into his bedside table's upper drawer and took his old
video monocle from its padded box. Nora pulled her slim arms
from the gown's beaded sleeves and reached up to unwire her
hat. Lindsay began filming.
"You're not undressing?" She turned. "Abelard, what are you
doing?"
"I want to remember you like this," he said. "This perfect
moment."
She laughed and threw the headdress aside. With a few deft
movements she yanked the jeweled pins from her hair and
tossed loose a surge of dark braids. Lindsay was aroused. He put
the monocle aside and slid out of his clothes.
They made slow, comfortable love. Lindsay, though, had felt
the sting of mortality that night, and it put the spur into him.
Passion seized him; he made love with ardent urgency, and she
responded. He climaxed hard, looking throughout the heart-
beats of orgasm at his own iron hand on her sleek shoulder. He
lay gasping, his heart beating loud in his ears. After a moment
he moved aside. She sighed, stretched, and laughed.
"Wonderful," she said. "I'm happy, Abelard."
"I love you, darling," he said. "You're my life."
She leaned up on one elbow. "You're all right, sweetheart?"
Lindsay's eyes were slinging. "I was talking with Dietrich Ross
tonight," he said carefully, "He has a rejuving program he wants
me to try."
"Oh," she said, delighted. "Good news."
"It's risky."
"Listen, darling, being old is risky. The rest of it is just a
matter of tactics. All you need is some minor decatabolism; any
lab can handle that. You don't need anything ambitious. That
can wait another twenty years."
"It'll mean dropping my mask to someone. Ross says this lot is
discreet, but I don't trust Ross. Vetterling and Pongpianskul had
a peculiar scene tonight. Ross abetted them."
She unraveled one of her braids. "You're not old, darling, and
you've been pretending it loo long. Your history won't be a
problem much longer. The diplomats are winning their rights
back, and you're a Mavrides now. Regent Vetterling's
unplanned, and no one thinks less of him."
"Of course they do."
"Maybe a little. That's not it, though. That's not why you've
put this off. Your eyes look puffy, Abelard. Have you been
taking your antioxidants?"
Lindsay was silent a moment. He sat up in bed, propping
himself up with his untiring prosthetic arm. "It's my mortality,"
he said. "It meant so much to me once. It's all I have left of my
old life, my old convictions. . . ."
"But you're not slaying the same by letting yourself age. You
should stay young if you want to preserve your old feelings."
"There's only one way to do that. Vera Kelland's way."
Her hands stopped with the braid half-twisted. "I'm sorry,"
Lindsay said. "But it's there somewhere: the shadow.... I'm
afraid, Nora. If I'm young again it will change things. All these
years that there's been such joy for us ... I froze here, lying in
the shadows, safe with you, and happy. To be young again, to
take this risk -I'll be out in the open. Eyes will be watching."