How would he hear it? From his bodyguards, through the
earpiece? Through the stolen Mech implants in his own brain,
that opened internal channels to the thin data-whispers of the
wireheads? Or-
Something was happening. The banner-waving choreography
on the curved stage disintegrated in sudden confusion, the colored corporate logos and gene-line insignia slowing and tangling. The dancers fell back in chaos in response to shouted orders. Someone was floating to the edge of the podium. It was the wretched Charles Vetterling, his aged face bloated with triumph and a lackey's self-importance.
This was it. Vetterling was shouting. The play's leading man
gave him a throat mike. Vetterling's voice roared suddenly in
thudding feedback.
". . . of the War! Mech markets are in panic! The asteroid
Nysa has declared for the Ring Council! I repeat, the Nysa
Cartel has abandoned the Mechanist Union! They have asked
for admittance as a Ring Council Treaty State! The Council is
meeting. . . ." His words were drowned in the roar from the
audience, the clatter of buckles as they unstrapped from their
scats and rose in confusion. Vetterling struggled with the mike.
Patches of his words broke the din. ". . . capitulation . . . through banks in Skimmers Union . . . industrial ... new victory!"
It started among the actors. The leading man was pointing
above the heads of the audience at Constantine's box, shouting
fiercely at the rest of the cast. One of the women began applauding. Then it spread. The whole cast was applauding, their faces alight. Vetterling heard them behind him, turned to look. He grasped things at once, and a stiff smile spread over his face. He pointed dramatically. "Constantine!" he shouted. "Ladies and gentlemen, the Chancellor-General!"
Constantine rose to his feet, gripping the iron banister behind
the transparent shield. When they saw him the crowd exploded,
a free-fall maelstrom of shouts and applause. They knew it was
his triumph. The joy of it overwhelmed them, the brief bright
release from the dark tension of the War. If he'd failed, they
would have hounded him to death with the same passion. But
that dark knowledge had been blasted by victory. Because he'd
won, now the risk he'd run only sharpened his delight.
He turned to his wife. Her eyes brimmed over with tears of
pride. Slowly, not leaving the banister, he extended his hand to
her. When their fingers touched he read her face. He saw the
truth there. From this night on his dominion over her was total.
She took her place beside him. Vera tugged his sleeve, her eyes wide. He lifted her up, cradling her in his left arm. His lips
touched her ear. "Remember this," he whispered fiercely.
The anarchic shouts died down as another rhythm spread. It
was the rhythm of applause, the long, cadenced, ritual applause
that followed every session of the Ring Council itself, ageless,
solemn, overwhelming applause, applause that brooked no dissent. The music of power. Constantine raised his wife's hand above their heads and closed his eyes.
It was the happiest moment of his life.
DEMBOWSKA CARTEL: 15-5-'75
Lindsay was playing keyboards for the sake of his new arm. It
was much more advanced than his old one, and the fine discrimination of its nerve signals confused him. As he ran through
the composition, one of Kitsune's, he felt each key click down
with a brief muddled sensation of sharp heat.
He rested, rubbing his hands together. A pins-and-needles
tingling ran up the wires. The new hand was densely
honeycombed with fingertip sensors. They were much more
responsive than his old arm's feedback pads.
The change had jarred him. He looked about his desolate
apartment. In twenty-two years it had never been anything more
to him than a place to camp. The apartment's fashions, its
ribbed wallpaper and skeletal chairs, were two decades out of
dale. Only the security systems, Wells's latest, had any touch of
the mode.
Lindsay himself had gone stale. At ninety, grooves marked his
eyes and mouth from decades of habitual expression. His hair
and beard were sprinkled with gray.
He was improving at the keyboards. He had attacked the
problem of music with his usual inhuman steadiness. For years
he had worked hard enough to kill himself, but modern
biomonitoring technique saw each breakdown coming and averted it months ahead of time. The bed took care of that, feeding
him subterranean flashes of intense and blurry dream that left
him each morning blank and empty with perfect mental health.
Eighteen years had passed since his wife's remarriage. The
pain of it had never fully hit him. He'd known her present
husband briefly in the Counciclass="underline" Graham Everett, a colorless
Detentiste with powerful clan connections. Nora used Everett's
influence to parry the attacks of militants. It was sad: Lindsay
didn't remember the man well enough to hate him.
Warnings cut short his playing. Someone had arrived at his
entry hall. The scanners there assured him that the visitor, a
woman, bore only harmless Mechanist implants: plaque-scraping
arterial microbots, old-fashioned teflon kneecaps, plastic knuckles, a porous drug duct in the crook of the left elbow. Much of her hair was artificial, implanted strands of shining optical fibers.
He had his household servo escort the woman in. She had the
strange complexion common to many older Mechanist women,
smooth unblemished skin like a perfectly form-fitted paper
mask. Her red hair was shot through with copper highlights
from the fiberoptics. She wore a sleeveless gray suit, furred vest,
and elbow-length white thermal gloves. "Auditor Milosz?"
She had a Concatenate accent. He ushered her to the couch.
She sat gracefully, her movements honed to precision by age.
"Yes, madam. What may I do for you?"
"Forgive me for intruding, Auditor. My name is Tyler. I'm a
clerk with Limonov Cryonics. But my business here is personal.
I've come to ask your help. I've heard of your friendship with
Neville Pongpianskul."
"You're Alexandrina Tyler," Lindsay realized aloud. "From
Mare Serenitatis. The Republic."
She looked surprised and lifted her thin, arched brows. "You
already know my case, Auditor?"
"You" -Lindsay sal down in the stirruped chair- "would like
a drink, perhaps?" She was his first wife. From some deeply
buried level of reflex he felt the stirrings of a long-dead persona,
the brittle layer of false kinesics he had put between them in
their marriage. Alexandrina Tyler, his wife, his mother's cousin.
"No, thank you," she said. She adjusted the fabric over her
knees. She'd always had trouble with her knees; she'd had the
teflon put in in the Republic.
Her familiar gesture brought it all back to him: the marriage
politics of the Republic's aristocrats. She had been fifty years his
senior, their marriage a stifling net of strained politeness and
grim rebellion. Lindsay was ninety now, older than she had
been at their marriage. With a flood of new perspective, he
could taste the long-forgotten pain that he had caused her.
"I was born in the Republic," she said. "I lost my citizenship in
the Shaper purges, almost fifty years ago. I loved the Republic,
Auditor. I've never forgotten it. ... I came from one of the
privileged families, but I thought, perhaps now, since the new
regime there has settled, surely that's all a dead issue?"
"You were Abelard Lindsay's wife."
Her eyes widened. "So you do know my case. You know I've
applied to emigrate? I had no response from the Pongpianskul