against my enemies. Against the circumstances. Against history.
I want my wife back, Ryumin. My Shaper wife. I want her back
free and clear, without the shadows on her. If you won't help
me, who will?"
Ryumin hesitated. "I have a friend," he said at last. "His name
is Wells."
DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 31-10-'53
Before the advent of humankind, the Asteroid Belt had arranged itself through the physics of rubble. Fragments were distributed in powers of ten. For every asteroid there were ten others a third its size, from Ceres at a thousand kilometers down to the literal trillions of uncharted boulders following spacetime potentials at relative speeds of five kilometers per second.
Dembowska was of the third rank, two hundred kilometers
across. Like other circumsolar bodies, it had paid its homage to
the laws of chance. In the time of the dinosaurs, something large
had hit Dembowska. The visitor was there and gone in a split
second, leaving chunks of its impact-melted pyroxene embedded
in the crust as it flew apart in gouts of fire. At the point of
impact, Dembowska's silicate matrix had shattered, opening a
ragged vertical crevasse twenty kilometers down to the asteroid's
nickel-iron core.
Now most of the core was gone, devoured by ever-hungry
industry. Dembowska Cartel lived within the crevasse, long plazas dropping level after level into the fading gravity, the gradient
shifting until what were formerly walls became floors, until walls
and floors vanished altogether into the closest thing to free-fall.
At the crevasse's base the world expanded into an enormous
cavernous dugout, Dembowska's hollow heart, where genera-
lions of mining drones had gnawed at the metal and the ores
that held it.
The hole was too large for air. They treated it as space. Within
the free-fall vacuum at the asteroid's core were the new heavy
industries: the cryonics factories, where hints and memories
teased from the blasted mind of Michael Carnassus were translated into a steady rise of Dembowska Cartel slock on the market monitors of a hundred worlds.
Trade secrets were secure within Dembowska's bowels, snug
beneath kilometers of rock. Life had forced itself like putty into
the fracture in this minor planet: dug out its inert heart and
filled it with engines.
Seen from the industrial core, the bottom of the crevasse was
the top layer of the outside world. Here Wells had his offices;
where twenty-four-hour crews of his employees monitored the
datapulses of the Union of Cartels, under the quasinational
aegis of Ceres Datacom Network.
The offices were walled in velcro and video, the glowing walls
with their ceaseless murmur of news acting as work partitions.
Bits of hard copy were velcro-clipped underfoot and overhead;
reporters in headsets spoke over audiolines or tapped energetically at keyboards. They looked young; there was a calculated extravagance in their dress. Over the mumble of narrative, the smooth rattle of printouts, the whir of booted datatapes, came faint background music: the brittle keening of synthesizers. The cold air smelled of roses.
A secretary announced them. His hair crisped out from under
a loose Mech beret. Its puffiness suggested possible cranial taps.
He wore a patriotic lapel tag, showing the wide-eyed face of
Michael Carnassus.
Wells's office was more secure than the rest. His videowalls
formed a surging mosaic of headlines, interlocking rectangles of
data that could be frozen and expanded at will. He wore quilted
coveralls with Shaper lace at the throat; the gray fabric was
overprinted with stylized eurypteroids in darker gray. His stylish
gloves were overlaid with circuit-laden control rings.
"Welcome to CDN, Auditor Milosz. You too, Policewife. May
I offer you hot tea?"
Lindsay accepted the warm bulb gratefully. The tea was synthetic but good. Greta took the bulb but drank nothing. She
watched Wells with calm wariness.
Wells touched a switch on the sticky surface of his free-fall
desk. A large goose-necked lamp swiveled on its coiled neck
with subtle, reptilian grace and stared at Lindsay. There were
human eyes within the hood, embedded in a smooth matrix of
dark flesh. The eyes blinked and shifted from Lindsay to Greta
Beatty. Greta bowed her head in recognition.
"This is a monitor outlet for the Chief of Police," Wells told
him. "She prefers to see things with her own eyes, when they
have as much importance as you claim your news does." He
turned to Greta. "The situation is under control, Policewife."
The accordioned door shunted open behind her.
Tight-lipped, she bowed again to the lamp, shot a quick look at Lindsay, and kicked her way off the wall and out the door. It
slid shut.
"How'd you get stuck with the Zen nun?" Wells said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Lindsay.
"Beatty. She hasn't told you about her cult affiliation? Zen
Serotonin?"
"No." Lindsay hesitated. "She seems very self-possessed."
"Odd.I understand the cult is well established in your
homeworld. Bettina, wasn't it?"
Lindsay locked eyes with him. "You know me, Wells. Think
back. Goldreich Tremaine."
Wells smirked one-sidedly and squeezed his bulb of tea, firing
an amber stream into his mouth. His teeth were strong and
square, and the effect was alarmingly feral. "I thought you had a
Shaper look about you. If you're a Cataclyst, don't try anything
desperate under the eyes of the Chief of Police."
"I was a Cataclyst victim," Lindsay said. "They put me on ice
for a month. It broke me out of my routines. And then I
defected." He pulled the glove from his right hand.
Wells recognized the antique prosthetic. "Captain-Doctor
Mavrides. This is an unexpected pleasure. Rumor said you were
hopelessly insane. Frankly, the news had pleased me. Abelard
Mavrides, the Investor pet. What's become of your jewels and
cables, Captain-Doctor?"
"I travel light these days."
"No more plays?" Wells opened a drawer in his desk and
pulled out a humidor. He offered Lindsay a cigarette. Lindsay
took it gratefully. "The theatre's out of fashion," he said. They
lit up. Lindsay coughed helplessly.
"I must have annoyed you at that wedding party, doctor. When I came in to recruit your students."
"They were the ideologues, Wells, not me. I was afraid for
you."
"You needn't have been." Wells blew smoke and smiled.
"Your student Besetzny is one of ours now."
"A Detentiste?"
"Our thinking's progressed since then, doctor. The old categories, Mechanist and Shaper-they're a bit outmoded these
days, aren't they? Life moves in clades." He smiled. "A clade is
a daughter species, a related descendant. It's happened to other
successful animals, and now it's humanity's turn. The factions
still struggle, but the categories are breaking up. No faction can
claim the one true destiny for mankind. Mankind no longer
exists."
"You're talking Cataclysm."
"There are others just as crazy. Those who hold power in the
Cartels, in the Ring Council. Blinding the Schismatrix with
hatred is easier than accepting our potentials. Our missions to
the aliens have failed because we can't even deal with the
strangers who share our own ancestry. We are breaking up into
clades. We have to let go and reunite on a more basic level."
"If humankind flics to pieces, what could possibly unite it?"
Wells glanced at his videowall and froze a piece of news with
his finger ring. "Have you ever heard of Prigoginic Levels of
Complexity?"