level of complexity." Now the Board of Advisors was deluged
with business, comlines frantic with would-be defectors maneuvering for asylum and a fresh start. The presence of an Investor cast an enormous shadow, a wall of prestige that no Mechanist or Shaper dared to challenge.
Makeshift squatter's digs crowded the Queen's raw Palace: nets of tough Shaper bubble suburbs, "subbles"; sleazy pirate craft
copulating in a daisy-chain of accordioned attack tunnels; rough
blown-out honeycombs of Mechanist nickel-iron, towed into
place; limpetlike construction huts clinging to the skeletal girders of an urban complex scarcely off the drawing board. This city would be a metropolis, a circumsolar free port, the ultimate sundog zone. He had brought it into being. But it was not for him.
"A sight to stir the blood, friend." Lindsay looked to his right.
The man once called Wells had arrived in the observation
bubble. In the weeks of preparation Wells had vanished into a
carefully prepared false identity. He was now Wellspring, two
hundred years old, born on Earth, a man of mystery, a maneuverer par excellence, a visionary, even a prophet. Nothing less would do. A coup this size demanded legendry. It demanded fraud.
Lindsay nodded. "Things progress."
"This is where the real work starts. I'm not too happy with that Board of Advisors. They seem a bit too stiff, too Mechanist.
Some of them have ambition. They'll have to be watched."
"Of course."
"You wouldn't consider the job? The Coordinator's post is
open for you. You're the man for it."
"I like the shadows, Wellspring. A role your size is too close to
the footlights for me."
Wellspring hesitated. "I have trouble enough with the philosophy. The myth may be too much for me. I need you and your
shadows."
Lindsay looked away, watching two construction robots follow
a seam to meet in a white-hot kiss of their welding-beaks. "My wife is dead," he said.
"Alexandrina? I'm sorry. This is a shock."
Lindsay winced. "No, not her. Nora. Nora Mavrides. Nora
Everett."
"Ah," Wellspring said. "When did you get the news?"
"I told her," Lindsay said, "that I had a place for us. You
remember I mentioned to you that there might be a Ring Council breakaway."
"Yes."
"It was as quiet as I could make it, but not quiet enough.
Constantine got word somehow, exposed the breakaway. She
was indicted for treason. The trial would have implicated the
rest of her clan. So she chose suicide."
"She was courageous."
"It was the only thing to do."
"One supposes so."
"She still loved me, Wellspring. She was going to join me here. She was trying to do it when he killed her."
"I recognize your grief," Wellspring said. "But life is long. You
mustn't be blinded to your ultimate aims."
Lindsay was grim. "You know I don't follow that post-
Cataclyst line."
"Posthumanist," Wellspring insisted. "Are you on the side of
life, or aren't you? If you're not, then you'll let the pain over-
whelm you. You'll go against Constantine and die as Nora did.
Accept her death, and stay with us. The future belongs to
Posthumanism, Lindsay. Not to nation-states, not to factions. It
belongs to life, and life moves in clades."
"I've heard your spiel before, Wellspring. If we embrace the
loss of our humanity then it means worse differences, worse
struggle, worse war."
"Not if the new clades can reach accord as cognitive systems
on the Fourth Prigoginic Level of Complexity."
Lindsay, despairing, was silent. Finally he said, "I wish you the
best of luck here, sincerely. Protect the damaged, if you can.
Maybe it'll come to something."
"There's a universe of potential, Lindsay, think of that. No
rules, no limits."
"Not while he lives. Forgive me."
"You'll have to do that for yourself."
AN INVESTOR TRADE SHIP: 14-2-'86
"This is not the sort of transaction we prefer," the Investor said.
"Have we met before, Ensign?" said Lindsay.
"No. I knew one of your students once. Captain-Doctor Simon
Afriel. A very accomplished gentleman."
"I remember Simon well."
"He died on embassy." The Investor stared, his dark eyeballs
gleaming with hostility above the white rims of his nictitating
membranes. "A pity. I always enjoyed his conversation. Still, he
had that urge to meddle, to tamper. You call it curiosity. An
urge to value useless data. A being with such a handicap runs a
great many unnecessary risks."
"Without a doubt," Lindsay agreed. He had not heard of
Afriel's death. The knowledge filled him with bitter pleasure:
another fanatic gone, another gifted life wasted. . . .
"Hatred is an easier motive to fathom. Strange that you should fall prey to it, Artist. It makes me doubt my judgment of your
species."
"I regret being a source of confusion. Chancellor-General Constantine might explain it better."
"I'll speak to him. He and his party have just come aboard. He
is not a fit model, though, for a judgment on human nature.
Our scanning reveals that he favors severe alterations."
Many did these days, Lindsay thought. Even the very young.
As if the existence of the Neotenic Republic, with its forced
humanity, freed the other factions from a stifling pretense. "You
find this odd in a spacegoing race?"
"No. Not at all. That's why there are so few of them left."
"Nineteen," Lindsay said.
"Yes. The number of vanished races within our trading realm
is larger by an order of magnitude. Their artifacts persist,
though, such as the one we plan to lease to you presently." The
Investor showed his striated, peglike teeth, a sign of distaste and
reluctance. "We'd hoped for truly long-term trade with your
species, but we cannot dissuade you from aiming for break-
throughs in questions of metaphysics. We will soon have to put
your solar system under quarantine for fear of being caught in
your transmutations. In the meantime we must abandon a few
scruples to make our local investments worthwhile."
"You alarm me," Lindsay said. He had heard this before:
vague warnings from the Investors, intended to freeze humanity
at its current level of development. It amused him that Investors
should preach Preservationism. "Surely the War is a greater threat."
"No," the Investor said. "We ourselves presented you with
evidence. Our interstellar drive showed you that space-time is
not what you thought. You must be aware of this, Artist. Consider recent breakthroughs in the mathematical treatment of what you call Hilbert space and the ur-space of the precontinuum. They can't have escaped your attention."
"Mathematics isn't my forte," Lindsay said.
"Nor ours. We only know that these discoveries are danger
signs of an imminent transition to another mode of being."
"Imminent?"
"Yes. A matter of mere centuries."
Centuries, Lindsay thought. It was easy to forget how old the
Investors were. Their deep disinterest in change gave them a
wide but shallow field of view. They had no interest in their
own history, no urge to contrast their own lives with those of
their dead, because there was no assumption that their lives or
motives varied in even the slightest degree. They had vague
legends and garbled technical readouts concerning particularly
prized objects of booty, but even these fragments of history were
lost in a jackdaw scramble of loot.
"Not all the extinct races made the transition," the Ensign said, "and those who invented the Arena probably died violently. We