spent years as a nonperson. Lindsay could not blame the drama-
tist for choosing peace at any price. "Stripping's bad form, these
days," he said. "It's lost all meaning. People do it just to punctuate a conversation."
"I thought it was marvelous. Though nudity doesn't mean
much in Dembowska. ... I shouldn't tell you about plays.
Didn't you start Kabuki Intrasolar?"
"That was Fyodor Ryumin," Lindsay said.
"Who's he?"
"A brilliant playwright. He died some years ago."
"Was he very old?"
"Extremely. More so even than me."
"Oh, I'm sorry." He had embarrassed her. "I'll be going now.
You and the Wallmother must have a lot to discuss." She
pressed her hand against the wall behind her, then turned to
him again. "Thank you for indulging me. It was a very great
privilege." A fleshy tentacle extruded from the wall behind her.
The splayed clump at the tentacle's end grasped the back of her
neck. She lifted her hair aside and adjusted the plug. Her face went slack.
Her knees buckled and she fell slowly in the feeble gravity.
Kitsune came on line and caught her before she hit the floor.
The body trembled briefly in a palsy of feedback; then Kitsune
stretched it and ran her hands along the arms. The face set
itself; the body was all grace, electric with an old and ferocious
vitality. Only the eyes were dead.
"Hello, Kitsune."
"Do you like this body, darling?" She stretched luxuriously.
"Nothing brings memory back like being in a young woman.
What do you call yourself these days?"
"Abelard Lindsay. Chancellor of Czarina-Kluster Kosmosity-
Metasystems, Jovian Systems Division."
"And Arbiter of the Lifesiders Clique?"
Lindsay smiled. "Positions in social clubs have no legal validity, Kitsune."
"It's a position strong enough to bring a defector here, all the
way from Skimmers Union. . . . She says her name is Vera
Constantine. And that name means enough to you to bring you
here?"
Lindsay shrugged. "You see me, Kitsune."
"The daughter of your old enemy? And the congenetic of a
long-dead woman whose name escapes me?"
"Vera Kelland."
"How well you remember it. Better than you remember our
own relationship?"
"We've had more than one, Kitsune. I remember our youth in
the Zaibatsu, though not as well as I would like. And I remember my thirty years here in Dembowska, when I held you at
arm's length because your form repulsed me and I missed my wife."
"You could not have resisted me in any form, if t had pressed.
In those years I only teased you."
"I've changed since then. These days I'm pressed by other
things."
"But now I have a better form. Like the old one." She
shrugged the girl's body out of its kimono. "Shall we have a go,
for old times' sake?"
Lindsay approached the body and ran his wrinkled hand lingeringly along the long flank. "It's very beautiful," he said.
"It's yours," she said. "Enjoy yourself."
Lindsay sighed. He ran his fingers over the splayed tentacular
clump at the back of the girl's neck. "In my duel with Constantine, I had something like this installed. The wires lose a lot in translation. You can't feel it like this, Kitsune. Not like you did then."
"Then?" She laughed aloud. The mouth opened, but the face
scarcely moved. "I left those limits behind so long ago that I've
forgotten them."
"It's all right, Kitsune. I can't feel it in the same way any more, either." He stepped back and sat on the floor. "If it's any
consolation, I still feel something for you. Despite all times and
changes. I don't have a name for it. But then what we had
between us never had a name."
She picked up the sleeveless kimono. "People who waste time
naming never have time for living."
They passed a few moments in companionable silence. She put
the robe on and sat before him. "How is Michael Carnassus?" he said at last.
"Michael is well. With each rejuvenation we repair a little
more Shatter damage. He leaves his Extraterrarium for longer
and longer times, these days. He feels safe in my corridors. He
can speak now."
"I'm glad for that."
"He loves me, I think."
"Well, that's not to be despised."
"Sometimes, when I think of how much profit I made from
him, I have a strange warm feeling. I never had a better bargain.
He was so wonderfully malleable. . . . Even though he's useless now, I still feel real satisfaction when I look at him. I've decided that I'll never throw him away."
"Very good."
"For a Mechanist, he was bright, in his day. An ambassador to
aliens; he had to be one of the best. He has many children
here-congenetics-they are all very satisfactory."
"I noticed that when I met Colonel Martin Dembowska. A
very capable officer."
"You think so, truly?"
Lindsay looked judicious. "Well, young, of course. But that
can't be helped."
"No. And this one, this chatterbox" -the body pointed a finger
at its own chest-"is even younger. Only nineteen. But my
Wallchildren must grow up quickly. I mean to make
Dembowska my genetic nest. All others must go. And that
includes your Shaper friend from Skimmers Union."
"I'll take her off your hands at your convenience."
"It's a trap, Abelard. Constantine's children have no reason to
love you. Don't trust her. Like Carnassus, she has been with
aliens. They left their mark on her."
"I must confess I'm curious." He smiled. "I suppose it's the drugs."
"Drugs? It can't be vasopressin, your old favorite. Or you'd
have a better memory."
"Green Rapture, Kitsune. I have certain long term plans. . . .
Green Rapture keeps my interest up."
"Your terraforming."
"Yes. It's a problem of time and scale, you see. Long term
fanaticism is hard work. Without Green Rapture, the mind
gnaws away at the fantastic until it becomes the commonplace."
"I see," she said. "Your fantastic, and my ecstatic. . . . Child-
birth is a wonderful thing."
"To bring new life into the world ... it is the mystery. Truly a
Prigoginic event."
"You must be tired, darling. I've reduced you to Cicada platitudes."
"I'm sorry." He smiled. "It comes with the territory."
"You and Wellspring have a clever front. You're both great
talkers. I'm sure you can lecture for hours. Or days. But centuries?"
Lindsay laughed. "It seems like a joke sometimes, doesn't it?
Two sundogs embracing the ultimate. Wellspring believes, I
think. As for me, I do my best."
"Maybe he thinks you believe."
"Maybe he does. Maybe I do." Lindsay tugged a long lock of
hair through his iron fingers. "As dreams go, Posthumanism has
merits. The existence of the Four Levels of Complexity has been
proven mathematically. I've seen the equations."
"Spare me, darling. Surely we're not so old that we have to
discuss equations."
The words bypassed him. Under the influence of Green Rapture, his brain succumbed momentarily to the lure of mathematics, that purest of intellectual pleasures. In his normal state of mind, despite years of study, he found the formulas painful, a
brain-numbing mass of symbols. In Rapture he could grasp
them, though afterward he remembered only the white joy of
comprehension. The feeling was close to faith.
A long moment passed. He snapped out of it. "I'm sorry,
Kitsune. You were saying?"
"Do you remember, Abelard. . . . Once I told you that ecstasy
was better than being God."
"I remember."
"I was wrong, darling. Being God is better."