success. She announced plans to move to C-K, but as years
passed she refused to disturb her routines, and her power de-
cayed. It had led to a break, and the destinies of C-K and
Dembowska had radically diverged.
Disquieting stories of her transformations had reached Lindsay
in C-K. Rumor said she had embraced new technologies, ex-
ploiting the laxity that had come with detente. Dembowska was
still a member of the Mechanist Union of Cartels but was
constantly on the verge of expulsion, tolerated only as a
clearinghouse for Ring Council defectors.
Even the Ring Council was appalled by Dembowska's emer-
gent technology of flesh. In the hands of the Zen Serotonists,
the Ring Council struggled for stability; as a result, it was falling
behind. The cutting edge of genetics technology had been seized
by the wild-eyed black surgeons of the cometaries and the
Uranian rings, mushrooming post human clades like the
Metropolarity, the Blood Bathers, and the Endosymbiotics.
They had discarded humanity like a caul. Disintegrating
microfactions surrounded the Schismatrix like a haze of superheated plasma.
The march of science had become a headlong stampede. The
Mechanists and Shapers had become like two opposing armies,
whose rank and file, scattering into swamps and thickets, ignore
the orders of their aging generals. The emergent philosophies of
the age-Posthumanism, Zen Serotonin, Galacticism -were like
signal bonfires lit to attract stragglers. Deserters' philosophies.
Lindsay's fire burned brightly, and its glow attracted many.
They called Lindsay's group the Lifesiders Clique.
Czarina-Kluster's cliques had the power of minor factions in
their own right. The cliques formed a shadow government in
C-K, a moral parallel to the distracted formal rule of the
Queen's Advisors. Clique elites moved behind the scenes, imi-
tating their paragon Wellspring in deliberate webs of self-spun
obfuscation. The forms of power and its realities had been
gently disentangled. The social arbiters of the Polycarbon
Clique, the Lifesiders, or the Green Camarilla could work won-
ders with a dropped hint or a lifted eyebrow.
It followed, then, that groups considering defection to C-K
consulted the Cicada cliques before formally requesting asylum.
Normally this was Wellspring's domain.
In the latest case, however, Wellspring was absent on one of his many recruiting trips. Lindsay, knowing the nature of the case,
had agreed to meet the representative of the breakaway group
on neutral ground in Dembowska.
His entourage consisted of his chief lieutenant, Gomez; three
of his postdoctoral students; and a diplomatic observer from the
Queen's Advisors.
Dembowska had changed. When they debarked into customs
amid the sparse crowd from the liner, Lindsay was struck by the
warmth. The air was at blood heat and smelled faintly of
Kitsune's skin. The smell brought seeping memory with it. Lind-
say's smile was melancholy. The memories were eighty-five
years old, as thin as paper; they seemed to have happened to
someone else.
Lindsay's Lifesiders checked their luggage. Two of the
graduate students, Mechanist types, murmured first impressions
into their lip mikes. Other passengers waited at the scanning
booths.
Two Dembowska agents approached their group. Lindsay
stepped forward in the faint gravity. "Harem police?" he said.
"Wallchildren," said the first of the pair, a male. He wore a
thin, sleeveless kimono; his bare arms were covered with author-
ity tattoos. His face seemed familiar. Lindsay recognized the
genetics of Michael Carnassus. He turned to the other, a woman, and saw Kitsune, younger, her hair shorn, her dark arms
stenciled in white ink.
"I'm Colonel Martin Dembowska, and this is my Wallsister,
Captain Murasaki Dembowska."
"I'm Chancellor Lindsay. These are cliquemembers Abelard
Gomez, Jane Murray, Glen Szilard, Colin Szilard, Emma Meyer, and Undersecretary Fidel Nakamura, our diplomatic observer." The Cicadas bowed, each in turn.
"I hope you weren't distressed by the bacterial change aboard
ship," Murasaki said. She had Kitsune's voice.
"A minor inconvenience."
"We are forced to take great care with the Wallmother's skin
bacteria," the Colonel explained. "There is a considerable acre-
age involved. I'm sure you understand."
"Could you offer us exact figures?" asked one of the Szilard
brothers, with a Mechanist's dry craving for hard data. "Reports
in Czarina-Kluster are clouded."
"At last report the Wallmother massed four hundred thousand,
eight hundred and twelve tons." The Colonel was proud. "Have
you anything to declare? No? Then follow me."
They followed the Dembowskan into a confidential clearance
office, where they left their luggage and were provided with
sterilized guest's kimonos. They floated barefoot into the hot air
of Dembowska's first mall.
The cavernous duty-free shopping area was paved, walled, and ceilinged in flesh. The Cicadas padded along reluctantly, their
toes just brushing the resilient skin. They looked with hidden
longing at the shops, safe islands of stone and metal. Lindsay
had schooled them to be tactful and was proud of their masked
reactions.
Even Lindsay felt a qualm when they entered the first long
tunnel; its round, gulletlike design tapped a deep well of unease.
The party boarded an openwork sled, propelled by peristaltic
twitches from the sinewed tracks beneath it.
The slick wall was studded periodically by sphinctered plugs
for predigested pap. Light glowed gently from translucent bladders swollen with white phosphorescence. Gomez, at Lindsay's
elbow, studied the architecture with a trancelike intensity. His
attention was sharpened to a cutting edge by a drug known in
Cicada circles as "Green Rapture."
"They've gone for broke," Gomez, said softly. "Could there be
personality behind this? It must take half a ton of backbrain to
manage all this meat." His eyes narrowed. "Imagine how it must
feel."
The Carnassus clone, in the sled's first compartment, touched
the controls. A seam parted wetly in the floor, pitching the sled
into vertical free-fall. They catapulted down a multitrack eleva-
tor shaft, broken periodically by dizzying vistas of plazas and
suburbs.
Shops and offices flashed past, embedded in billows of dark
satiny skin. The heat and smell of perfumed flesh were everywhere: intimacy on an industrial scale. The crowds were sparse. Many were young children, running naked. The sled braked to a halt. The group disembarked onto a furred landing. Gomez nudged Lindsay as the empty sled slid back up the rails. "The walls have ears, Chancellor." They did, and eyes as well.
There was something in the air on this level. The perfume was
particularly heady. Gomez grew heavy-lidded suddenly, and the
Szilard brothers, who had donned headband cameras, took
them off to dab at sweat. Jane Murray and Emma Meyer,
puzzled by something they couldn't define, looked about suspiciously. As the two Dembowskans led them off the landing and into the fleshy depths, Lindsay placed it suddenly: sex pheromones. The architecture was aroused. The group followed a low-grav footpath: toughened skin
marked with the massive whorls of endless fingerprints. The
ceiling overhead was a waving carpet of lustrous black hair, for
traveling hand-over-hand.
This level was clearly a showpiece; the former buildings had
been stripped down to mere frameworks, trellises for flesh.
Voluptuous organics rose at every side, euclidean corners