The stranger had that vaguely supercilious air common to
many Shaper defectors, a sense of misplaced fanaticism spinning
its wheels. "I've gone by that name, yes."
"I'm Yevgeny Navarre."
The name struck a distant echo. "The membrane chemistry
specialist? This is an unexpected pleasure." Lindsay had known
Navarre in Dembowska, but only through video correspon-
dence. In person, Navarre seemed arid and colorless. As an
annoying corollary, Lindsay realized that he himself had been
arid and colorless during those years. "Please join me, Professor
Navarre."
Navarre strapped in. "Kind of you to remember my article for
your Journal," he said. " 'Surfactant Vesicles in Exoarchosauri-
an Colloidal Catalysis.' One of my first."
Navarre exuded well-bred satisfaction and signaled the bistro's
servo, which ambled up on multiple plastic legs. The trendy
servo was a faithful miniature of the Mars surveyor. Lindsay
ordered a liqueur for politeness' sake.
"How long have you been in C-K, Professor Milosz? Your
musculature tells me that you've been in heavy gravity. Investor
business?"
The heavy spin of the Republic had marked Lindsay. He
smiled cryptically. "I'm not free to speak."
"I see." Navarre offered him the grave, confidential look of a
fellow man-of-the-world. "I'm pleased to find you here in the
Kosmosity's neighborhood. Are you planning to join our fac-
ulty?"
"Yes."
"A stellar addition to our Investor researchers."
"Frankly, Professor Navarre, Investor studies have lost their
novelty for me. I plan to specialize in terraforming studies."
Navarre smiled incredulously. "Oh dear. I'm sure you can do
much better than that."
"Oh?" Lindsay leaned forward in a brief burst of crudely
imitative kinesics. His whole facility was gone. The reflex em-
barrassed him, and he resolved for the hundredth time to give it
up.
Navarre said, "The terraforming section's crawling with post-
Cataclyst lunatics. You were always a very sound man. Thor-
ough. A good organizer. I'd hate to see you drift into the wrong
circles."
"I see. What brought you to C-Kluster, Professor?"
"Well," said Navarre, "the Jastrow Station labs and I had some
differences about patenting. Membrane technology, you see. A
technique for producing artificial Investor hide, a very fashion-
able item here; you'll notice for instance that young lady's
boots?" A Cicada student in a beaded skirt and bright face paint
was sipping a frappe against the desolate backdrop of shattered
red terrain. Her boots were miniature Investor feet, toes, claws,
and all. Behind her the landscape lurched suddenly as the
surveyor moved on. Lindsay grasped the table in vertigo.
Navarre swayed slightly and said, "Czarina-Kluster is more
friendly to the entrepreneur. I was taken off the dogs after only
eight months."
"Congratulations," Lindsay said.
The Queen's Advisors kept most immigrants under the surveil-
lance dogs for a full two years. Out in the fringe dogtowns there
were whole environments where reality was nailed down by
camera and everyone was tagged ceaselessly by videodogs.
Widespread taps and monitors were part of public life in
Czarina-Kluster. But full citizens could escape surveillance in
the discreets, C-K's lush citadels of privacy.
Lindsay sipped his drink. "To prevent confusion, I should tell
you that these clays I use the name Lindsay."
"What? Like Wellspring?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You weren't aware of Wellspring's true identity?"
"Why, no," Lindsay said. "I understood the records were lost
on Earth, where he was born."
Navarre laughed delightedly. "The truth is an open secret
among Cicada inner circles. It's the talk of the discreets.
Wellspring is a Concatenate. His true name is Abelard Malcolm
Tyler Lindsay."
"You astonish me."
"Wellspring plays a very deep game. The Terran business is
only a camouflage."
"How odd."
"Speak of the devil," Navarre said. A noisy crowd burst from
the tubeway entrance to Lindsay's left. Wellspring had arrived
with a claque of Cicada disciples, a dozen students fresh from
some party, flush faced and shouting with laughter. The young
Cicadas were a bustle of blues and greens in long, flowing
overcoats, slash-cuffed trousers, and glimmering reptile-scaled
waistcoats.
Wellspring spotted Lindsay and approached in free-fall. His
mane of matted black hair was held by a copper-and-platinum
coronet. Over his foliage-printed green coat he wore a tape-
deck armband, which emitted a loud quasi-music of rustling
boughs and the cries of animals.
"Lindsay!" he shouted. "Lindsay! Good to have you back." He
embraced Lindsay roughly and strapped himself to a chair.
Wellspring looked drunk. His face was flushed, he had pulled
his collar open, and something was crawling in his beard, a
small population of what appeared to be iron fleas.
"How was your trip?" Lindsay said.
"The Ring Council is dull! Sorry I wasn't here to meet you."
He signaled the servo. "What are you drinking? Fantastic
chasm, the Marineris, isn't it? Even the tributaries are the size
of the Grand Canyon in Azirona." He pointed past Lindsay's
shoulder at a gap between towering canyon walls, where icy
winds kicked up thin puffs of ocher dust. "Imagine a cataract
there, pealing out in a thunderband of rainbows! A sight to stir
the soul to the roots of its complexity."
"Surely," Navarre said, smiling slightly.
Wellspring turned to Lindsay. "I have a little spiritual drill for
doubters like Ycvgeny. Every day he should recite to himself,
'Centuries . . . centuries . . . centuries.' "
"I'm a pragmatic man," Navarre said, catching Lindsay's eye
and lifting one eyebrow significantly. "Life is lived day to day,
not in centuries. Enthusiasms don't last that long. Flesh and
blood can't bear it." He addressed Wellspring. "Your ambitions
are bigger than life."
"Of course. They must he. They encompass it."
"The Queen's Advisors are more practical." Navarre watched
Wellspring with half-contemptuous suspicion.
The Queen's Advisors had risen to authority since the early
days of C-K. Rather than fighting them for power, Wellspring
had stepped aside. Now, while the Queen's Advisors struggled
with day-to-day rule in the Czarina's Palace, Wellspring chose to
frequent the dogtowns and discreets. Often he vanished for
months, to reappear with shadowy posthumans and bizarre re-
cruits from the fringes of society. These actions clearly baffled
Navarre.
"I want tenure," Lindsay told Wellspring. "Nothing political."
"I'm sure we could see to that."
Lindsay glanced about him. It came to him in a burst of
conviction. "I don't like Mars."
Wellspring looked grave. "You realize that an entire future
destiny might accrete around this momentary utterance? It's
from just such nuclei of free will that the future grows, in
smooth determinism."
Lindsay smiled. "It's too dry," he said. The crowd gasped and
shouted as the surveyor scuttled rapidly down a treacherous
slope, sending the world reeling. "And it moves too much."
Wellspring was troubled. As he adjusted his collar, Lindsay
noted the faint bruise of teethmarks on the skin of his neck. He
turned down the forest soundtrack on his armband. "One world
at a time seems wisest, don't you think?"
Navarre laughed incredulously.
Lindsay ignored him, gazing over Wellspring's shoulder at his