Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [121]
Dreams, Lindsay thought. Dreams of Preservationism, turned into a black-market scrabble for immortality. The dream of Investor Peace had rusted and collapsed. The dream of terraforming still had a shine on it. Young Gomez could not know that it too would surely tarnish.
But somehow, Lindsay thought, you had to dream or die. And with new life pouring through him, he knew which choice was his.
Margaret Juliano leaned over the fence. "Abelard! Abelard, over here!
You need a look at this."
The boy, startled, began reeling in his kite hand over hand. "Now this is luck! That old psychotech wants to show me something in the compound."
"Go to it," Lindsay said. "You tell her that I said to show you anything you like, understand? And tell her that I've gone off for a little talk with Pongpi-anskul. All right, cousin?"
The boy nodded slowly. "Thanks, old Cicada. You're one of us." Pongpianskul's office was a paper wasteland. Musty cloth-bound books of Concatenate law were heaped beside his wooden desk; schedules and production graphs were pinned up at random on the room's ancient paneling. A tortoiseshell cat yawned in one corner and sharpened its claws in the carpet. Lindsay, whose experience with cats was limited, watched it guardedly. Pongpianskul wore a suit similar to Lindsay's but newer and obviously hand-stitched. He had lost hair since his days in Goldreich-Tremaine, and light gleamed dully on the dusky skin of his scalp. He swept a sheaf of records from the desk and paper-clipped them with skinny, wrinkled fingers.
"Papers," he muttered. "Trying to take everything off computers these days. Don't trust 'em. You use computers and there's always some Mech ready to step in with new software. Thin edge of the wedge, Mavrides. Lindsay, I mean."
"Lindsay is better."
"You must admit it's hard keeping track of you. It was a fine scam you pulled, passing yourself off as a senior genetic in the Rings." He Looked at Lindsay. Lindsay caught part of the Look. The experience of age made up somewhat for his loss of kinesic training.
Pongpianskul said, "How long has it been since we last talked?"
"Himn. What year is this?"
Pongpianskul frowned. "No matter. You were in Dembowska then, anyway. Things aren't so bad here under Neotenic aegis, eh, Mavrides, you admit? Gone a bit to rack and ruin, but all the better for the tourist trade; those Ring Council types eat it up with a spoon. Tell the truth, we had to go into the old Lindsay mansion and bash it about a bit, make it more romantic. Had some mice installed. You know mice? Bred 'em back to the wild state from lab specimens. You know their eyes weren't pink in the wild? Funny look in those eyes, reminds me of a wife of mine."
Pongpianskul opened one of the drawers in his cavernous desk and tossed in his sheaf of clipped papers. He pulled out a crumbling wad of graphs and started. "What's this? Should have been done weeks ago. No matter. Where were we? Oh, yes, wives. I married Alexandrina, by the way. Alexa's a fine Preservationist. Couldn't risk her slipping away."
"You did well," Lindsay said. His marriage contract had expired; her new marriage was a sound political move. It did not occur to him to feel jealousy; that had not been in the contract. He was glad that she had secured her position.
"Can't have too many wives, it's what life's all about. Take Georgiana for instance, Constantine's first wife. Talked her into a trace of Shatter, no more than twenty mikes, I swear, and it improved her disposition no end. Now she's as sweet as the day is long." He looked at Lindsay seriously. "Can't have too many oldsters around, though. Disturbs the ideology. Bad enough with those pesky Cataclysts and their posthuman schemes. Keep 'em behind wire, in quarantine. Even then kids keep sneaking in."
"It's kind of you to allow them here."
"I need the foreign exchange. C-K finances their research. But