Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [110]
"Mathematics isn't my forte," Lindsay said.
"Nor ours. We only know that these discoveries are danger signs of an imminent transition to another mode of being."
"Imminent?"
"Yes. A matter of mere centuries."
Centuries, Lindsay thought. It was easy to forget how old the Investors were. Their deep disinterest in change gave them a wide but shallow field of view. They had no interest in their own history, no urge to contrast their own lives with those of their dead, because there was no assumption that their lives or motives varied in even the slightest degree. They had vague legends and garbled technical readouts concerning particularly prized objects of booty, but even these fragments of history were lost in a jackdaw scramble of loot.
"Not all the extinct races made the transition," the Ensign said, "and those who invented the Arena probably died violently. We have no data on that: only technical data on their modes of perception, allowing us to make the Arena comprehensible to the human nervous system. In this we had the assistance of the Department of Neurology from the Kosmosity of the Nysa Corporate Treaty State."
Constantine's recruits, Lindsay thought. The Nysa rogue wireheads, Mechanist defectors to the Shaper cause, combining Mech techniques with the fascist structure of the Shaper academic-military complex. "The very men—the very beings, rather, for the job."
"So said the Chancellor-General. His party has assembled now. Shall we join them?"
Constantine's group mingled with Lindsay's in one of the cavernous lounges of the Investor ship. The lounge was crowded with towering rococo furniture: dizzyingly overdecorated settees and slablike tables, supported on curved legs crusted with ribbed domes and stylized scrolls. It was all far too large to be of any conventional use to the score of human visitors, who crouched under the furniture warily, careful not to touch anything. Lindsay saw as he entered the lounge that the alien furnishings had been sprayed with a thick protective lacquer to guard them from oxygen.
He had never seen any of the young Constantine genetics. Constantine had brought ten of them: five women, five men. The Constantine siblings were taller than Constantine and had lighter hair, clearly a percentage cut from some other gene-line.
They had that peculiar Shaper magnetism, an acrobatic smoothness and fluidity. Yet something in the set of their shoulders, their slim, dextrous hands, ki-nesically displayed Constantine's genetic heritage. They wore outlandish finery: round velvet hats, ruby earrings, and gold-laced brocade coats. They dressed for the sake of Investors, who appreciated a prosperous look in their customers.
One woman had her back to Lindsay, examining the towering legs of the furniture. The others stood calmly, trading meaningless pleasantries with Lindsay's people, a motley group of acedemics and Investor specialists on leave from Czarina-Kluster. His wife Alexandrina was among them; she was talking to Constantine himself, with her usual perfect good breeding. Nothing showed that all of them were seconds at a duel, witnesses present to assure fairness.
It had been a two-year struggle, a matter of prolonged and delicate negotiation, to arrange a meeting between himself and Constantine. At last they had settled on the Investor starship as a suitable battleground, one where treachery would be counterproductive. The Arena itself had remained in Investor hands; the Nysa technicians had worked on data freely available to both parties. The costs were split equitably, with Constantine assuming most of the financing, on an option against possible technological spinoffs. Lindsay had received data through a double-blind in Czarina-Kluster and Dembowska, to confuse possible assassins.