Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [125]
Navarre exuded well-bred satisfaction and signaled the bistro's servo, which ambled up 6n multiple plastic legs. The trendy servo was a faithful miniature of the Mars surveyor. Lindsay ordered a liqueur for politeness'
sake.
"How long have you been in C-K, Professor Milosz? Your musculature tells me that you've been in heavy gravity. Investor business?" The heavy spin of the Republic had marked Lindsay. He smiled cryptically. "I'm not free to speak."
"I see." Navarre offered him the grave, confidential look of a fellow man-of-the-world. "I'm pleased to find you here in the Kosmosity's neighborhood. Are you planning to join our faculty?"
"Yes."
"A stellar addition to our Investor researchers."
"Frankly, Professor Navarre, Investor studies have lost their novelty for me. I plan to specialize in terraforming studies." Navarre smiled incredulously. "Oh dear. I'm sure you can do much better than that."
"Oh?" Lindsay leaned forward in a brief burst of crudely imitative kinesics. His whole facility was gone. The reflex embarrassed him, and he resolved for the hundredth time to give it up.
Navarre said, "The terraforming section's crawling with post-Cataclyst lunatics. You were always a very sound man. Thorough. A good organizer. I'd hate to see you drift into the wrong circles."
"I see. What brought you to C-Kluster, Professor?"
"Well," said Navarre, "the Jastrow Station labs and I had some differences about patenting. Membrane technology, you see. A technique for producing artificial Investor hide, a very fashionable item here; you'll notice for instance that young lady's boots?" A Cicada student in a beaded skirt and bright face paint was sipping a frappe against the desolate backdrop of shattered red terrain. Her boots were miniature Investor feet, toes, claws, and all. Behind her the landscape lurched suddenly as the surveyor moved on. Lindsay grasped the table in vertigo.
Navarre swayed slightly and said, "Czarina-Kluster is more friendly to the entrepreneur. I was taken off the dogs after only eight months."
"Congratulations," Lindsay said.
The Queen's Advisors kept most immigrants under the surveillance dogs for a full two years. Out in the fringe dogtowns there were whole environments where reality was nailed down by camera and everyone was tagged ceaselessly by videodogs. Widespread taps and monitors were part of public life in Czarina-Kluster. But full citizens could escape surveillance in the discreets, C-K's lush citadels of privacy.
Lindsay sipped his drink. "To prevent confusion, I should tell you that these days I use the name Lindsay."
"What? Like Wellspring?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You weren't aware of Wellspring's true identity?"
"Why, no," Lindsay said. "I understood the records were lost on Earth, where he was born."
Navarre laughed delightedly. "The truth is an open secret among Cicada inner circles. It's the talk of the discreets. Wellspring is a Concatenate. His true name is Abelard Malcolm Tyler Lindsay."
"You astonish me."
"Wellspring plays a very deep game. The Terran business is only a camouflage."
"How odd."
"Speak of the devil," Navarre said. A noisy crowd burst from the tubeway entrance to Lindsay's left. Wellspring had arrived with a claque of Cicada disciples, a dozen students fresh from some party, flush-faced and shouting with laughter. The young Cicadas were a bustle of blues and greens in long, flowing overcoats, slash-cuffed trousers, and glimmering reptile-scaled waistcoats.
Wellspring spotted Lindsay and approached in free-fall. His mane of matted black hair was held by a copper-and-platinum coronet. Over his foliage-printed green coat he wore a tape-deck armband, which emitted a loud quasi-music of rustling boughs and the cries of animals.
"Lindsay!" he shouted. "Lindsay! Good to have you back." He embraced Lindsay roughly and strapped himself to a chair. Wellspring