Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [11]
"I'll trust you," Lindsay decided. He kicked off his mud-smeared shoes. Ryumin rose slowly to his feet. He bent to pick up Lindsay's shoes, and his spine popped loudly. "I'll put these in the microwave," he said. "When you live here, you must never trust the mud."
"I'll remember," Lindsay said. His brain was swimming in mnemonic chemicals. The drugs had plunged him into a kind of epiphany in which every tangled wire and pack of tape seemed of vital importance. "Burn them if you want," he said. He opened his new bag and pulled out an elegant cream-colored medical jacket.
"These are good shoes," Ryumin said. "They're worth three or four minutes, at least."
Lindsay stripped off his coveralls. A pair of injection bruises mottled his right buttock.
Ryumin squinted. "I see you didn't escape unscathed." Lindsay pulled out a pair of creased white trousers. "Vasopressin," he said.
"Vasopressin," Ryumin mused. "I thought you had a Shaper look about you. Where are you from, Mr. Dze? And how old are you?"
"Three hours old," Lindsay said. "Mr. Dze has no past." Ryumin looked away. "I can't blame a Shaper for trying to hide his past. The System swarms with your enemies." He peered at Lindsay. "I can guess you were a diplomat."
"What makes you think so?"
"Your success with the Black Medicals. Your skill is impressive. Besides, diplomats often turn sundog." Ryumin studied him. "The Ring Council had a secret training program for diplomats of a special type. The failure rate was high. Half the alumni were rebels and defectors." Lindsay zipped up his shirt.
"Is that what happened to you?"
"Something of the sort."
"How fascinating. I've met many borderline posthumans in my day, but never one of you. Is it true that they enforced an entire second state of consciousness? Is it true that when you're fully operational, you yourself don't know if you're speaking the truth? That they used psychodrugs to destroy your capacity for sincerity?"
"Sincerity," Lindsay said. "That's a slippery concept." Ryumin hesitated. "Are you aware that your class is being stalked by Shaper assassins?"
"No," Lindsay said sourly. So it had come to this, he thought. All those years, while the spinal crabs burned knowledge into every nerve. The indoctrinations, under drugs and brain taps. He'd gone to the Republic when he was sixteen, and for ten years the psychotechs had poured training into him. He'd returned to the Republic like a primed bomb, ready to serve any purpose. But his skills provoked panic fear there and utter distrust from those in power. And now the Shapers themselves were hunting him. "Thank you for telling me," he said.
"I wouldn't worry," Ryumin said. "The Shapers are under siege. They have bigger concerns than the fate of a few sundogs." He smiled. "If you really took that treatment, then you must be less than forty years old."
"I'm thirty. You're a cagey old bastard, Ryumin." Ryumin took Lindsay's well-cooked shoes out of the microwave, studied them, and slipped them on his own bare feet. "How many languages do you speak?"
"Four, normally. With memory enhancement I can manage seven. And I know the standard Shaper programming language."
"I speak four myself," Ryumin said. "But then, I don't clutter my mind with their written forms."
"You don't read at all?"
"My machines can do that for me."
"Then you're blind to mankind's whole cultural heritage." Ryumin looked surprised. "Strange talk for a Shaper. You're an antiquarian, eh? Want to break the Interdict with Earth, study the so-called humanities, that sort of thing? That explains why you used the theatrical gambit. I had to use my lexicon to find out what a 'play' was. An astonishing custom. Are you really going through with it?"
"Yes. And the Black Medicals will finance it for me."
"I see. The Geisha Bank won't care for that. Loans and finance are their turf."
Lindsay sat on the floor beside a nest of wires. He plucked the Black Medicals pin from his collar and twirled it in his fingers. "Tell me about them."
"The Geishas are whores and financiers.