Lindsay's heart sank. "I've never been one for metaphysics,
Wells. Your religious beliefs are your own business. I had a
woman who loved me and a safe place to sleep. The rest is abstract."
Wells examined his wall. Print blurred by, discussing a scandalous defection on Ceres. "Oh yes, your Colonel-Professor. I can't help you with that. You need a kidnapper to spirit her out. You
won't find one here. You should try Ceres or Bettina."
"My wife's a stubborn woman. Like you, she has ideals. Only
peace can reunite us. And there's only one source of peace in
our world. That's the Investors."
Wells laughed shortly. "Still the same line, Captain-Doctor?"
Suddenly he spoke in halting Investor. "The value of your
argument has depreciated."
"They have their weaknesses, Wells." His voice rose. "Do you
think I'm any less desperate than the Cataclysts? Ask your
friend Ryumin if I know weakness when I see it, or if I lack the
will to exploit it. The Investor Peace: yes, I had a hand in that.
It gave me what I wanted. I was a whole man. You can't know
what that meant to me-" He broke off, sweating even in the
cold.
Wells looked shocked. Lindsay realized suddenly that his out-
burst had broken every diplomatic rule. The thought filled him
with savage satisfaction. "You know the truth, Wells. We've
been Investor pawns for years. It's time we turned the chess-
board around."
"You mean to attack the Investors?" Wells said.
"What else, fool? What choice do we have?"
A woman's voice came from the base of the lamp. "Abelard
Mavrides, you are under arrest."
The elevator car hissed shut behind them. False gravity hit as
they accelerated upward. "Put your hands against the wall,
please," Greta said politely. "Move your feet backward."
Lindsay complied, saying nothing. The old-fashioned elevator
clacked noisily on rails up the vertical wall of the Dembowska
Crevasse. Two kilometers passed. Greta sighed. "You must have
done something drastic."
"That's not your worry," Lindsay said.
"To go by the book, I ought to cut the cables on your iron
arm. But I'll let it go. This is my fault too, I think. If I'd made
you feel more at home you wouldn't have been so fanatic."
"No weapons in my arm," Lindsay said. "Surely you examined
it while I slept."
"I don't understand this hard suspicion, Bela. Have I mis-
treated you somehow?"
"Tell me about Zen Serotonin, Greta."
She straightened slightly. "I'm not ashamed of belonging to the Nonmovement. I would have told you, but we don't proselytize.
We win over by example."
"Very laudable, I'm sure."
She frowned. "In your case I should have made an exception.
I'm sorry for your pain. I knew pain once." Lindsay said noth-
ing. "I was born on Themis," she said. "I knew some Cataclysts
there, one of the Mechanist factions. They were ice assassins.
The military found one of their cryocells, where they were
enlightening one of my teachers with a one-way ticket to the
future. I didn't wait for arrest. I ran to Dembowska.
"When I got here the Harem drafted me. I found out I had to
whore to Carnassus. I didn't take to it. But then I found Zen
Serotonin."
"Serotonin's a brain chemical," Lindsay said.
"It's a philosophy," she said. "The Shapers, the Mechanists-those aren't philosophies, they're technologies made into
politics. The technologies are at the core of it. Science lore the
human race to bits. When anarchy hit, people struggled for
community. The politicians chose enemies so that they could
bind their followers with hate and terror. Community isn't
enough when a thousand new ways of life beckon from every
circuit and test tube. Without hatred there is no Ring Council,
no Union of Cartels. No conformity without the whip."
"Life moves in clades," Lindsay murmured.
"That's Wells with his mishmash of physics and ethics. What
we need is nonmovemenl, calmness, clarity." She stretched out
her left arm. "This monitor drip-feeds into my arm. Fear means
nothing to me. With this, there's nothing I can't face and analyze. With Zen Serotonin you see life in the light of reason. People turn to us, especially in crisis. Every day the
Nonmovement wins more adherents."
Lindsay thought of the brainwaves he had seen in his safehouse
bed. "You're in a permanent alpha stale, then."
"Of course."
"Do you ever dream?"
"We have our vision. We can see the new technologies that
disrupt human life. We throw ourselves into those currents.
Perhaps each one of us is no more than a particle. But together
we form a sediment that slows the flow. Many innovators are
profoundly unhappy. After Zen Serotonin they lose their neurotic urge to meddle."
Lindsay smiled grimly. "It was no accident that you were
assigned my case."
"You are a profoundly unhappy man. It's brought this trouble
on you. The Nonmovement has a strong voice in the Harem.
Join us. We can save you."
"I had happiness once, Greta. You'll never know it."
"Violent emotion isn't our forte, Bela. We're trying to save the
human race."
"Good luck," Lindsay said. They had reached the end of the
line.
The old acromegalic stepped back to admire his handiwork.
"Strap is all right, sundog? You can breathe?"
Lindsay nodded. The kill-clamp dug painfully into the base of
his skull.
"Ft reads the backbrain," the giant said. Growth hormones had
distorted his jaw; he had a bulldog's underbite and his voice was
slurred. "Remember to shuffle. No sudden movements. Don't
think about moving fast, and your head will stay whole."
"How long have you been in this business?" Lindsay said.
"Long enough."
"Are you part of the Harem?"
The giant glared. "Sure, I fuck Carnassus, what do you think?"
His enormous hand grasped Lindsay's entire face. "You ever see
your own eyeball? Maybe I pull one out. The Chief can graft
you a new one."
Lindsay flinched. The giant grinned, revealing poorly spaced
teeth. "I see your type before. You are a Shaper antibiotic. Your
type tricked me once. Maybe you think you can trick the clamp.
Maybe you think you can kill the Chief without moving. Keep
in mind you must get by me on the way out." He gripped the
top of Lindsay's head and lifted him off the velcro. "Or maybe
you think I'm stupid."
Lindsay spoke in trade Japanese. "Save it for the whores,
yakuza. Or maybe your excellency would care to take this
clamp off and go hand to hand."
The giant laughed, startled, and set Lindsay down carefully.
"Sorry, friend. Didn't know you were one of our own."
Lindsay stepped through the airlock. Inside, the air was at
blood heat. It reeked of perfumed sweat and the odor of violets.
The brittle whine of a synthesizer broke off suddenly.
The room was full of flesh. It was made of it: satiny brown
skin, broken here and there by rugs of lustrous black hair and
mauve flashes of mucus membrane. Everything was involuted,
curved: armchair lounges, a rounded mass like a bed of flesh,
studded with mauve holes. Blood thrummed through a pipe-
sized artery beneath his feet.
Another hooded lamp-device swiveled up on a sleek-skinned
elbowed hinge. Dark eyes observed him. A mouth opened in the
sleek rump of a footstool beside him. "Take off those velcro
boots, darling. They itch."
Lindsay sat down. "It's you, Kitsune."
"You knew when you saw my eyes in Wells's office," the voice
purred from the wall.
"Not till I saw your bodyguard, really. It's been a long time.