Schismatrix plus (16 page)

Kleo lived in the largest greenhouse. It was ornamental; it grew more slowly than the wormholed industrial gardens, where vegetation rioted under grow-lights in pure carbon dioxide. The room was oblong, and its long walls had the ribbed look of a seashell. Brilliant light poured from fluorescent tubes along each ridge.

The soil was mine tailings, held by dampness and a fine plastic mesh. Like the Shapers themselves, the plants were altered to live without bacteria. They were flowers, mostly: roses, daisies, buttercups the size of fists. Kleo's bed was of roofed-in wickerwork, grown from curved bamboo. She was awake, working on an embroidery hoop. Her skin was darker than the others'—the grow-lights had tanned her. She wore a sleeveless white blouse cinched at the waist, hanging in multiple thin folds. Her legs and feet were bare. There was an embroidered logo of rank above her heart.

"Hello, dear," she said.

"Kleo." Nora floated into the wickerwork structure and lightly kissed Kleo's cheek. "At his insistence, I—"

Kleo nodded once. "I hope you'll make this brief," she told Lindsay. "My garden is not for the unplanned."

"I want to discuss the murder of the Third Representative." Kleo tucked a lock of curled hair into her braided hairnet. The proportions of her wrist, palm, and forearm showed that she was older than the rest, from an earlier production run. "Nonsense," she said. "An absurd allegation."

"I know you had him killed, Kleo. Maybe you did it yourself. Be frank with me."

"That man's death was an accident. There's no proof otherwise. Therefore, we bear no blame."

"I'm trying to save our lives, Kleo. Please, spare me the party line. If Nora admits the truth, why can't you?"

"What you discuss with our negotiator in secret session is not our business, Mr. Secretary. The Mavrides Family cannot acknowledge anything unproven."

"That's it, then?" Lindsay said from behind his faceplate. "Crimes don't exist outside your ideology? You expect me to join that fiction, lie for you, protect you?"

"We're your people," Kleo said, fixing him with her clear hazel eyes.

"But you've killed my friend."

"That is not a valid allegation, Mr. Secretary."

"This is useless," Lindsay said. He bent, grabbed a thornless rosebush, and ripped it up by the roots. He shook it; blobs of wet dirt flew. Kleo winced. "Look!" Lindsay said. "Don't you understand?"

"I understand that you're a barbarian," Kleo said. "You destroyed a thing of beauty to make a point in an argument you know I can't accept."

"Bend a little," Lindsay pleaded. "Have mercy."

"That's not our assignment," Kleo told him.

Lindsay turned and left, stripping off the clammy spacesuit just beyond the airlock.

"I told you not to try it," Nora said.

"She's suicidal," Lindsay said. "Why? Why do you follow her?"

"Because she loves us."

ESAIRS XII: 23-2-'17

"Let me tell you about sex," Nora said. "Give me your hand." Lindsay gave her his left hand. Nora gripped his wrist, pulled him forward, and put his thumb deep into her mouth. She held it there, then released him.

"Tell me what you felt."

"It was warm," Lindsay said. "Wet. And uncomfortably intimate."

"That's what sex is like on suppressants," she said. "We have love in the Family, but not erotics. We're soldiers." "You're chemically castrated, then?"

"You're prejudiced," she said. "You haven't lived it. That's why the orgy you propose is out of the question."

"Carnaval isn't an orgy," Lindsay said. "It's a ceremony. It's trust, it's communion. It holds the group together. Like animals huddling."

"It's too much to ask," she said.

"You don't realize what's at stake. It's not your body they want. They want to kill you. They hate your sterile guts. You don't know how I talked, persuaded, coaxed them. . . . Listen, they use hallucinogens. Your brain turns to pudding in Carnaval. You don't know what your own hands are, much less someone else's genitals. . . . You're helpless. Everyone is helpless, that's the point. No more games, no politics, no ranks and grudges. No self. When you come out of Carnaval it's like the first day of Creation. Everyone smiles." Lindsay looked aside, blinking. "It's real, Nora. It's not their government that sustains them, that's just the brain. Carnaval is the blood, the spine, the groin."

"It's not our way, Abelard."

"But if you could join us, even once, for a few hours! We'd dissolve these tensions, truly trust each other. Listen, Nora, sex is not some handicraft. It's real, it's human, it's one of the last things we have left. Burn it! What do you have to lose?"

"It could be an ambush," she said. "You could bend our minds with drugs and kill us. It's a risk."

"Of course it is, but there are ways around that." He locked eyes with her. "I'm telling you this on the basis of all the trust we have between us. At least we can give it a trial."

"I don't like this," Nora said. "I don't like sex. Especially with the unplanned."

"It's that or juice your own gene-line," Lindsay said. He pulled a loaded hypodermic from inside his lapel and attached its needle. "I have mine ready."

She looked at it sidelong, then produced her own. "You may not take well to this, Abelard."

"What is it?"

"Suppressant. With phenylxanthine to kick your IQ up. So you'll see how we feel."

"This isn't the full Carnaval mixture," Lindsay said. "Just the aphrodisiacs, half strength, and muscle relaxant. I think you need it since I smashed the spinal crab. You seem jumpy."

"You seem to know all too well what I need."

"That makes two of us." Lindsay pulled aside the loose sleeve of his wraparound blouse. "This is it, Nora. You could kill me now and call it allergic reaction, stress, anything." He looked at the gaudy tattoos on the skin of his arm. "Don't do it."

She shared his suspicion. "Are you taping this?"

"I don't allow tapes in my room." He pulled a pair of elastic cords from a styrene cabinet and passed her one.

He tied off his bicep. She did the same. With their sleeves rolled up, they waited quietly for the veins to swell. It was the most intimate moment they had ever had together. The thought aroused him.

She slipped her hypodermic into the crook of his elbow, and found the vein by the sudden rosette of blood at the needle's root. He did the same. They stared into each other's eyes and pressed the plungers home. The moment passed. Lindsay withdrew the needle and pressed a sterile plastic dot against her puncture. Then he did his own. They loosened the cords.

"Neither of us seems to be dying," she said.

"It's a good sign," Lindsay said. He tossed the cords aside. "So far so good."

"Oh." She half closed her eyes. "It's hitting me. Oh, Abelard."

"How do you feel?" He took her shoulder. The nexus of bone and muscle seemed to soften under his hand. She was breathing shallowly, lips parted, her eyes dark.

"Like I'm melting," she said.

The phenylxanthine hit him first. He felt like a king. "You wouldn't hurt me," he said. "We're two of a kind, you and I." He undid the ties and pulled her blouse off, then peeled the trousers inside out over her feet. He left the sandals on. His clothes flapped as he threw them off. They spun slowly in midair.

He pulled her close, his eyes blazing.

"Help me breathe," she whispered. The relaxant had hit her lungs. Lindsay took her chin in his hands, opened her mouth, and sealed his lips around it. He puffed gently and felt her ribs expand against his chest. Her head lolled back; the muscles of her neck were like wax. He hooked his legs around hers, from the inside, and breathed for her.

She let her arms drift, sluggishly, around his neck. She pulled her mouth back a fraction of an inch. "Try now."

He tried to enter her. Despite his own excitement, it was useless; the aphrodisiacs hadn't hit her yet, and she was dry.

"Don't hurt me," she said.

"I want you," Lindsay said. "You belong to me. Not to those others."

"Don't say that," she said, her voice slurring. "This is an experiment."

"For them, maybe. Not for us." The phenylxanthine had made him certain, and reckless in his certainty. "The rest don't matter. I'd kill any one of them at a word from you. I love you, Nora. Tell me you love me."

"I can't say that." She winced. "You're hurting me."

"Say you trust me, then."

"I trust you. There, it's done. Hold still a moment." She wrapped her legs around him, then rocked her hips from side to side, settling around him.

"This is it, then. Sex."

"Haven't you had it before?"

"In the Academy once, on a bet. It wasn't like this."

"You feel all right?"

"I'm comfortable. Go ahead, Abelard."

But now his curiosity was aroused. "Did they give you the pleasure tap too? I had it once. An interrogation drill."

"Of course they did. But that was nothing human, just white ecstasy." She was sweating. "Come on, darling."

"No, wait a minute." He blinked as she clutched his waist. "I see what you mean. This is stupid, isn't it? We're friends already."

"I want you, Abelard! Come on, finish me!"

"We've proven our point. Besides, I'm filthy!"

"I don't care how fucking filthy you are! For God's sake, hurry!" He tried to oblige her, then, and worked away mechanically for almost a minute. She bit her lip and groaned in anticipation, rolling her head back. But all the meaning had leached out of it for him. "I can't go on," he said.

"I just don't see why we should bother."

"Just let me use you. Come on!"

He tried to think of something arousing. The usual damp whirl of his mind's erotic imagery seemed abstract and distant to him, like something done by another species. He thought of his ex-wife. Sex with Alexandrina had been something like this, an act of politeness, an obligation.

He held still, letting her slam herself against him. At last a cry of desperate pleasure escaped her.

She pulled away, patting sweat from her face and neck with the sleeve of her blouse. She smiled shyly.

Lindsay shrugged. "I see your point. It's a waste of time. I may have some trouble talking the others into it, but if I can reason with them...." She looked at him hungrily. "I made a mistake. It shouldn't have been this awful for us. I feel selfish now, since you had nothing."

"I feel fine," Lindsay insisted.

"You said you loved me."

"That was just hormones talking. Of course I have deep respect for you, a sense of comradeship. ... I'm sorry I told you that. Forgive me, I didn't mean it, of course."

"Of course," she said, putting on her blouse.

"Don't be bitter," Lindsay said. "You should take some of this. I'm grateful for it. I see it now in a way I never did before. Love ... it has no substance. It might be right for other people, other places, another time."

"Not us."

"No. I feel bad about it, now. Reducing our negotiations to a sexual stereotype. You must have found it insulting. And inconvenient."

"I feel sick," she said.

ESAIRS XII: 24-2-'17

"You're okay now, huh?" the President said, wrinkling his pug nose. "No more of that crap about dryin' up our juice?"

"No, sir, no." Lindsay shook his head, shivering. "I'm better now."

"Good enough. Untie him, Rep Two."

The woman undid Lindsay's ropes, uncoupling him from the cavern wall.

"I lost it," Lindsay said. "I can see that now, but when those suppressants hit me, everything just went crystal clear. Seamless."

"That's okay for you, but we have marriages," Senator 1 said sternly. He clutched the hand of Rep 1.

"I'm sorry," Lindsay said, rubbing his arms. "They're all under that stuff, here. Except Nora, now. I never realized how deep it went. These people are relentless, they don't have the decent muddiness and confusion that comes with sex. They all fit together as clean as cogwheels. We'll have to seduce them." He looked them over: Senator 3 with her close-cropped, pumpkinlike head, Justice 3 calmly picking his teeth with a shred of thumbnail. "It won't be easy."

"Relax, State." The President smoothed one of the red plastic ribbons of his openwork sleeve. "You've held this mess together long enough. The fuckers blew away Rep Three."

"There's no proof of that."

"You know they killed him, and we know it. You covered up for them, State, and maybe that was right, but it means you're in too deep. It's not our job to kill all these people. If we wanted to kill 'em, we wouldn't have moved our gun out of the Consensus and into this rock."

"But that was our triumph. Everyone's. We got the Armageddon guns shut down, didn't we? After that, anything's possible!"

"We have to kill the threat. That's our assignment. That's what the Mechs will pay us for. We've been exploring all the time you talked your head off. The tunnels are mapped. We know the machinery well enough to wreck it. We'll vandalize the place. Then off to the cartels and the high life."

"You'll leave them here in the wreckage?"

The Speaker of the House grinned tightly. "They can have our gun. We won't need it where we're going."

Justice 2 touched Lindsay's sandaled foot. "It's easy, State. We'll be in Themis Cartel before you know it, juicing in some dogtown. We'll stun the Mechs in this getup." She tugged at the shoulder of her plastic gown with one veiny hand. Two of the Senators snickered.

"When?" Lindsay said.

"You'll know. In the meantime, you just keep a lid on things."

"What if one of them wants to defect with us?" Lindsay said.

"Bring her along," the President said.

ESAIRS XII: 1-3-'17

Lindsay pulled himself through the darkness, tugging the loading crate behind him. He tapped at the rock as he went. "Paolo! Fazil!" A stone plug grated aside and Paolo appeared in an eerie glow of candlelight. He pulled himself out to the elbows and leaned toward Lindsay.

"Yes? What can we do for you?"

"Let's talk terms, Paolo."

"Is it that orgy business again?"

"We're doing a launch," Lindsay said. He jerked his thumb at the loaded crate behind him. "We could do two launches if we can come to an agreement." Lindsay smiled. "Favor for favor, all right? I'll get you your launch. In return you back me up on the Carnaval proposal."