of his ideology frightened her. Something must have shown in
her face. Me tugged the torn glove from his hand. "Hope is our
duty," he said. "You must always hope."
"For years we hoped we could heal Philip Constantine," Vera
said. "Now we know better. We are ready to trade him to you
for our own safe-conduct."
Lindsay looked at her seriously. "This is cruelty," he said.
"He was your enemy," she said. "We wanted to make
amends."
"For me, you are that chance."
It was working. Me still remembered Vera Kelland.
"Don't deceive yourself," he said. "I don't offer true recompense. Czarina-Kluster must fall someday. Nations don't last in
this era. Only people last, only plans and hopes. ... I can only
offer you what I have. I don't have safety. I have freedom."
"Posthumanism," she said. "It's your state ideology. Of course
we'll adapt."
"I thought you had your own convictions, Vera. You're a
Galaclicist."
She ran her fingers lightly, absently, over one of the gill scams
in her neck. "I learned my politics in the observation sphere. In
Fomalhaut. The Embassy." She hesitated. "Life there changed
me more than you could know. There are things I can't ex-
plain."
'There's something in this room," he said.
She was stunned. "Yes," she blurted. "You felt it? Not many do."
"What is it? Something from the Fomalhaut aliens? The
gasbags?"
"They know nothing about it."
"But you do," he said. "Tell me."
She was in too far to back out. She spoke reluctantly. "I first
noticed it in the Embassy. The Embassy floats in the atmosphere of Fomalhaut Four, a gas-giant planet, like Jupiter. . . .
We had to live in water there to survive the gravity. We were
thrown together, Mechanists and Shapers; we shared the Em-
bassy, there was no choice. Everything was changed; we
changed. . . . The Investors came to take a Mechanist contingent
back to the Schismatrix. I think the Presence was aboard the
Investor ship. Since then the Presence has been with me."
"Is it real?" said Lindsay.
"I think so. Sometimes I almost see it. A kind of flickering. A
mirror-colored thing."
"What did the Investors say?"
"They denied everything. They said I was deluded." She hesitated. "And they weren't the last to say so." She regretted
confessing it at once. But the burden had eased. She looked at
him, daring to hope.
"An alien, then," Lindsay said. "Not one of the nineteen
known species."
"You believe me," she said. "You think that it's really here."
"We must believe each other," Lindsay said. "Life is better
that way." He looked about the narrow room carefully, as if
testing his eyes. "I'd like to lure it into the open."
"It won't come out," the girl said. "Believe me, I've begged it
many times."
"We mustn't try it here," Lindsay said. "Any manifestation
would alarm Kitsune. She feels secure in this world. We must
consider her feelings."
His sincerity startled her. It hadn't occurred to her that her
captor might have feelings, or that anyone might relate, in a
personal way, to that titanic mass of flesh.
He picked up the rat, which began squealing loudly, with
desperate energy. Me examined it with such guileless interest that, before she could help herself, she felt a stab of pity for him, an urge to protect him. The feeling surprised and warmed her.
He said, "We'll be leaving soon. You'll be coming with us." Me
put the rat in the pocket of his long coat. It rested there quietly.
The history of the Schismatrix was one long racking chronicle
of change. The population had reached nine billion. Within the
Ring Council, power had slipped from the narcotized hands of
the Zen Serotonists. After forty years of their reign, new Shaper
ideologues embraced the aggressive schemes of visionary
Galacticism.
The new creed had spread slowly. It was born in the inter-
stellar embassies, where ambassadors broke human limits in
their struggle to grasp alien ways of life. Now the Galacticist
prophets stood ready to abandon humanity entirely, to achieve a
Galactic consciousness where mere loyalty to species was obsolete.
Once again detente had shattered. The Mechanists and Shapers fought in bitter rivalry for the favor of aliens. Of the nine
teen alien races, only five had shown even the vaguest interest
in a closer relationship with humankind. The Chondrule Cloud
Processors were willing to move in, but only if Venus could be
atomized for easier digestion. The Nerve Coral Aquatics ex-
pressed mild interest in invading the Earth, but this would mean
breaking the sacred tradition of Interdict. The Culture Ghosts
were willing to join with anyone who could endure them, but
their hideous effects on the Schismatric diplomatic corps had
made them objects of genuine horror.
The gasbags of Fomalhaut offered most. It had taken many
decades to master their "language," which was best expressed as
complex unstable states of atmospheric dynamics. Once true
contact had been established, progress was rapid. Fomalhaut
was an enormous star with a huge asteroid belt rich in heavy
metals.
The asteroid belt was useless to the gasbags, who disliked space travel. They were, however, interested in Jupiter and planned to seed it with aerial krill. The Investors were willing to handle
transportation, though even their huge ships could carry only a
handful of surgically deflated gasbags per trip.
Controversy had raged for decades. The Mechanists had their
own Galacticist faction, who struggled to grasp the mind
shattering physics of the sinister Hijack Boosters. The Boosters,
like the Investors, possessed a technique of faster-than-light
travel. The Investors were willing to sell their secret, but only at
a crippling price. The Hijack Boosters mocked mankind but were occasionally indiscreet.
An advance into the galactic arm seemed inevitable. One of
two strategies would succeed: that of the Shapers, with their
diplomatic negotiation, or of the Mechanists, who directly at-
tacked the problem of starflight. Only a major faction could
succeed; the minor breakaway groups lacked the wealth, the
skilled population, the diplomatic pull. A new, uneasy polarity
took shape.
In the meantime, gasbag larvae in their egg-shaped spacecraft painstakingly inspected circumsolar space. Small groups of
Shapers and Mechanist renegades mapped the riches of
Fomalhaut. One solar system would never again be enough.
The breakdown of detente aroused old hatreds. Brushfire war-
fare flourished, unrestrained by the faltering Investors. Bizarre
new factions sprang up, led by returned diplomats. Their re-
cruits loomed at the edges of society: the Carnivores, the Viral
Army, the Coronaspherics.
History's kaleidoscope worked its permutations, its pace ever
faster, approaching some unknown crescendo. Patterns changed
and warped and flew apart, each chip of light a human life.
CZARINA-KLUSTER PEOPLE'S CORPORATE REPUBLIC: 13-1-'54
After seventy years of wealth and stability, disaster was loose in
Czarina-Kluster. The elite of the Lifesiders Clique met in secret
council, to wrestle with crisis.
Aquamarine Discreet was a Lifesider citadel, and its security
was absolute. Mosaic blowups of the Jovian moon, Europa,
covered the discreet's walls: bright grooved terrain in ice-white
and dusky orange, interior seas in blue and indigo. Over the
burnished conference table hung a Europan orrery, where jeweled spacecraft representing Lifesider satellites ticked quietly on orbits of silver wire.