government. I've come to ask for your help, Auditor. I'm not a
member of your Carbon Clique, but I know their power. You
have influence that works around the laws."
"Life must have been difficult for you, madam. Thrown out
without resources into the Schismatrix."
She blinked, china-white lids falling over her eyes like paper
shutters. "Things were not so bad once I'd reached the cartels.
But I can't pretend I've known happiness. I haven't forgotten
home. The trees. The gardens."
Lindsay knotted his hands, ignoring the tingle of confused
sensation from his right. "I can't encourage false hopes, madam.
Neotenic law is very strict. The Republic has no interest in those
our age, those who are estranged in any way from the raw state
of humanity. It's true that I've handled some matters for the
Neotenic government. Those involve the resettlement of
Neotenic citizens who reach the age of sixty. 'Dying out into the
world,' they call it. The flow of emigration is strictly one-way.
I'm very sorry."
She was silent a moment. "You know the Republic well, Auditor?" Her voice told him that she had accepted defeat. Now she
was hunting for memories.
"Well enough to know that the wife of Abelard Lindsay has
been defamed. Your late husband is regarded there as a
Preservationist martyr. They portray you as a Mechanist collaborator, driving Lindsay into exile and death."
"How terrible." Her eyes filled with tears; she stood up in
agitation. "I'm very sorry. May I use your biomonitor?"
"Tears don't alarm me, madam," Lindsay said gently. "I am
not a Zen Serotonist."
"My husband," she said. "He was such a bright boy; we
thought we'd done well when we scholarshipped him to the
Shapers. I never understood what they did to him, but it was
horrible. I tried to make our marriage work, but he was so
clever, so smooth and plausible, that he could twist anything I
said or did to serve some other purpose. He terrified the others.
They swore he would rip our world apart. We should never have
sent him to the Shapers."
"I'm sure it seemed a wise decision at the time," Lindsay said.
"The Republic was already in the Mechanist orbit, and they
wanted to redress the balance."
"Then they shouldn't have done it to my cousin's son. There
were plenty of plebes to send out, people like Constantine." She
put one wrinkled knuckle to her lips. "I'm sorry. That's aristocratic prejudice. Forgive me, Auditor, I'm distraught."
"I understand," Lindsay said. "To those our age, old memories
can come with unexpected force. I'm very sorry, madam. You
have been treated unjustly."
"Thank you, sir." She accepted a tissue from the household
servo. "Your sympathy touches me deeply." She dabbed at her
eyes with precise, birdlike movements. "I almost feel that I
know you."
"A trick of memory," Lindsay said. "I was married once to a
woman much like you."
A slow Look passed between them. A great deal was said,
below the level of words. The truth surfaced briefly, was ac-
knowledged, and then vanished beneath the necessity for subterfuge.
"This wife," she said. Her face was flushed. "She did not
accompany you on your journey here."
"Marriage in Dembowska is a different situation," Lindsay
said.
"I was married here. A five-year contract marriage. Polygamous. It expired last year."
"You are currently unattached?"
She nodded. Lindsay gestured about the room with a whir of
his right arm. "Myself as well. You can see the state of my
domestic affairs. My career has made my life rather arid."
She smiled tentatively.
"Would you be interested in the management of my house
hold? An Assistant Auditorship would pay rather better than
your current position, I think."
"I'm sure it would."
"Shall we say, a six-month probationary period against a five
year joint management contract, standard terms, monogamous?
I can have my office print out a contract by tomorrow morning."
"This is quite sudden."
"Nonsense, Alexandrina. At our age, if we put things off, we
never accomplish anything. What's five years to us? We have
reached the age of discretion."
"May I have that drink?" she said. "It's bad for my maintenance program, but I think I need it." She looked at him
nervously, a ghost of strained intimacy waking behind her eyes.
He looked at her smooth paper skin, the brittle precision of
her hair. He realized that his gesture of atonement would add
another rote to his life, a new form of routine. He restrained a
sigh. "I look to you to set our sexuality clause."
SKIMMERS UNION COUNCIL STATE: 23-6-'83
Constantine looked into the tank. Behind the glass window,
below the surface of the water, was the waterlogged head of Paolo Mavrides. The dark, curled hair, a major trait of the Mavrides gene-line, floated soggily around the young man's neck and shoulders. The eyes were open, greenish and blood-shot. Injections had paralyzed his optic nerve. A spinal clamp left him able to feel but not to move. Blind and deaf, numbed by the blood-warmed water, Paolo Mavrides had been in sensory isolation for two weeks.
A tracheal plug fed him oxygen. Intravenous taps kept him
from starving.
Constantine touched a black rocker switch on the welded tank,
and the jury-rigged speakers came alive. The young assassin was
talking to himself, some mumbled litany in different voices.
Constantine spoke into the microphone. "Paolo."
"I'm busy," Paolo said. "Come back later."
Constantine chuckled. "Very well." He tapped against the microphone to make the sound of a switch closing.
"No, wail!" Paolo said at once. Constantine smiled at the trace
of panic. "Never mind, the performance is ruined anyway.
Vetterling's Shepherd Moons."
"Hasn't had a performance in years," Constantine said. "You
must have been a mere child then."
"I memorized it when I was nine."
"I'm impressed by your resourcefulness. Still, the Cataclysts
believe in that, don't they? Testing the inner world of the
will. . . You've been in there quite a while. Quite a while."
There was silence. Constantine waited. "How long?" Mavrides
burst out.
"Almost forty-eight hours."
Mavrides laughed shortly.
Constantine joined in. "Of course we know that isn't so. No,
it's been almost a year. You'd be surprised how thin you look."
"You should try it sometime. Might help your skin problems."
"Those are the least of my difficulties, young man. I made a
tactical error when I chose the best security possible. It made
me a challenge. You'd be surprised how many fools have had
this tank before you. You made a mistake, young Paolo."
"Tell me something," Paolo said. "Why do you sound like
God?"
"That's a technical artifact. My voice has a direct feed to your
inner ear. That's why you can't hear your own voice. I'm reading it off the nerves to your larynx."
"I see," Paolo said. "Wirehead work."
"Nothing irreversible. Tell me about yourself, Paolo. What was
your brigade?"
"I'm no Cataclyst."
"I have your weapon here." Constantine pulled a small timer-
vial from his tailored linen jacket and rolled it between his
fingers. "Standard Cataclyst issue. What is it? PDKL-Ninety-
five?"
Paolo said nothing.
"Perhaps you know the drug as 'Shatter,' " Constantine said.
Paolo laughed. "I know better than to try to re-form your
mind. If I could have entered the same room with you I would
have set it for five seconds and we would have both died."