scrapped for smooth maternal curves. Structures flowed up from
the floor to merge in swan's-neck arches into the lustrous ceiling. Buildings were dimpled, hollowed, the sleek pink of
sphinctered doors sliding imperceptibly into skin lightly stippled
with down.
They stopped on the furred lawn of an elaborate, massive
edifice, its dark walls gleaming with ivory mosaic. "Your hostel," the Colonel announced. The building's double doors yawned open on muscular, jawlike hinges. Jane Murray hesitated as the others entered; she took Lindsay's arm. "That ivory in the walls-it's teeth." She had gone pale under the cool blues and aquamarines of her Cicada face paint.
"Female pheromones in the air," Lindsay said. "They're making you uneasy. It's backbrain response, doctor."
"Jealous of the walls." The postanthropologist smiled. "This
place feels like a gigantic discreet."
Despite her bravado, Lindsay saw her fright. She would have
preferred even the most notorious of Cicada discreets, with their
clandestine games, to this dubious lodging. They stepped inside.
Murasaki addressed the group. "You'll be sharing the hostel
with two groups of commercial agents from Diotima and
Themis, but you'll have a wing of your own. This way, please."
They followed her along a walkway of flat ivory implants. One
of Dembowska's myriad of hearts, an industrial-scale blood-
pumping station, thudded behind the ribs of the ceiling. Its
double beat set the rhythm to light musical warbling from a
wall-set larynx.
Their quarters were a biomechanical mix. Market monitors
glowed in the walls, tracing the rise and fall of prominent
Mechanist stocks. The furniture was a series of tasteful lumps
and hummocks: curved beds of flesh, dressed modestly in iris-
printed bedclothes.
The extensive suite was divided by tattooed membranous
screens. The Colonel tapped one membrane divider. It wrinkled
into the ceiling like an eyelid. He gestured politely at one of the
beds. "These furnishings are exemplars of our Wallmother's
erototechnology. They exist for your comfort and pleasure. I
must inform you, though, that our Wallmother reserves the right
to fecundity."
Emma Meyer, who had settled cautiously onto one of the beds, stood up. "I beg your pardon?"
The Colonel frowned. "Male ejaculations become the property
of the recipient. This is an ancient feminine principle."
"Oh. I see."
Murasaki pursed her lips. "You consider this odd, doctor?"
"Not at all," Meyer said winningly. "It makes perfect sense."
The Dembowskan girl pressed on. "Any children sired by the
men of your group will be full citizens. All Wallchildren are
equally beloved. I happen to be a perfect clone, but I've won my
post by merit, in the Mother's love. Isn't that so, Martin?"
The Colonel had a firmer grasp of diplomatic niceties. He
nodded shortly. "The water of the baths is sterile and contains a
minimum of dissolved organics. It may be drunk freely. The
plumbing is genitourinary technology, but it is not waste fluid."
Gomez oozed charm. "As a biological designer, I'm delighted
by your ingenious architecture. Not merely by its technical
adroitness but by its fine aesthetics." He hesitated. "Is there
time for a bath before the luggage arrives?"
The Cicadas needed baths. The bacterial changeover had not
quite settled in, and the blood heat of the Dembowskan air
made them itch.
Lindsay withdrew to one end of the suite and lowered the
membrane wall.
At once his tempo changed. Without his young followers, he
moved at his own pace.
He didn't need to bathe. His aged skin could no longer sup-
port a large population of bacteria.
He sat on the edge of the bed. He was tired. Without volition,
his eyes glazed over. A long moment passed in which he was
simply empty, thinking nothing at all.
At last, blinking, he came back to himself. He reached reflex-
ively into his jacket pocket and produced an enameled inhaler.
Two long whiffs of Green Rapture brought interest back into
the world. He looked slowly about him and was surprised to see
a blue kimono against the wall. Murasaki was wearing it. Her
body was camouflaged almost perfectly against the background
of skin.
"Captain Murasaki," he said. "I didn't notice you. Forgive me."
"I was - " She'd been standing there in polite silence. She was flustered by his reputation. "I was ordered to - " She gestured at the door, a pucker in the wall.
"You want to take me somewhere?" he said. "My companions
can manage without me. I'm at your disposal."
He followed the girl into the ivory and fur of the hall.
In the lobby she stopped and ran her hand along the smooth
flesh of the wall. A hole sphinctered open beside her feet, and
the two of them dropped gently down one floor.
Below the hostel was a maintenance area. He heard a steady
rushing of arteries and an occasional bowel like gurgle from the
naked walls. Biomonitors flickered, set in puckered rims of flesh.
"This is a health center," Murasaki explained. "The Wallmother's health, I mean. She has a mind-link here. She can speak to you here, through me. You mustn't be alarmed." She turned her back to him and lifted the dark fringe of hair at her neck,
showing him the stippled interlink at the base of her skull.
Green Rapture washed gently over Lindsay, a tingling wave of
curiosity. Green Rapture was the ultimate antiboredom drug,
the biochemical basis of wonder boiled down to its complex
essence. With enough Green Rapture a man could find a wealth
of interest in the lines of his own hands. Lindsay smiled with
unfeigned delight. "Marvelous," he said. Murasaki hesitated and looked at him quizzically.
"You mustn't mind if I stare," Lindsay said. "You remind me
so of your mother."
"You're really him, Chancellor? Abelard Lindsay, who was my
mother's lover?"
"Kitsune and I have always been friends."
"Am I much like she was?"
"Clones are their own people." He spoke soothingly. "In the
Ring Council, I had a family once. My congenetics-my
children -were clones. And I loved them."
"You mustn't think I'm a mere piece of the Wall," Murasaki
said. "The Wall cells are chromosomally depauperate. Chimeric
blastomas. The Wall is not as fully human as Kitsune's original
flesh. Or mine." She looked searchingly into his eyes. "You
don't mind talking to me first? I'm not boring you?"
"Impossible," Lindsay said.
"We Wallchildren have had trouble before. Some foreigners
treat us as monsters." She sighed, relaxing. "The truth is, we're
really rather dull."
He was sympathetic. "You find it so?"
"It's not like Czarina-Kluster. Things are exciting there, aren't
they? Always something happening. Pirates. Posthumanists. Defectors. Investors. I see tapes from there sometimes. I'd love to
have clothes like that."
Lindsay smiled. "Clothes look better at a distance, my dear.
Cicadas dress for social status. It can take hours."
"You're only prejudiced, Chancellor Lindsay. You invented
social stripping!"
Lindsay winced. Was he always to be dogged by this cliche?
"I saw it in a play," the girl confessed. "Goldreich Intrasolar
came through on tour. They showed Fernand Vetterling's Pity
For the Vermin. The hero strips at the climax."
Lindsay felt chagrin. Vetterling's plays had lost all punch since
he had become a Zen Serotonist. Lindsay would have told the
girl as much, but he felt too much shadowy guilt at the tragic
course of Vetterling's career. Because of politics, Vetterling had