Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [130]
They did, and eyes as well.
There was something in the air on this level. The perfume was particularly heady. Gomez grew heavy-lidded suddenly, and the Szilard brothers, who had donned headband cameras, took them off to dab at sweat. Jane Murray and Emma Meyer, puzzled by something they couldn't define, looked about suspiciously. As the two Dembowskans led them off the landing and into the fleshy depths, Lindsay placed it suddenly: sex pheromones. The architecture was aroused.
The group followed a low-grav footpath: toughened skin marked with the massive whorls of endless fingerprints. The ceiling overhead was a waving carpet of lustrous black hair, for traveling hand-over-hand. This level was clearly a showpiece: the former buildings had been stripped down to mere frameworks, trellises for flesh. Voluptuous organics rose at every side, euclidean corners scrapped for smooth maternal curves. Structures flowed up from the floor to merge in swan's-neck arches into the lustrous ceiling. Buildings were dimpled, hollowed, the sleek pink of sphinctered doors sliding imperceptibly into skin lightly stippled with down. They stopped on the furred lawn of an elaborate, massive edifice, its dark walls gleaming with ivory mosaic. "Your hostel," the Colonel announced. The building's double doors yawned open on muscular, jawlike hinges. Jane Murray hesitated as the others entered; she took Lindsay's arm.
"That ivory in the walls—it's teeth." She had gone pale under the cool blues and aquamarines of her Cicada face paint.
"Female pheromones in the air," Lindsay said. "They're making you uneasy. It's backbrain response, doctor."
"Jealous of the walls." The postanthropologist smiled. "This place feels like a gigantic discreet."
Despite her bravado, Lindsay saw her fright. She would have preferred even the most notorious of Cicada discreets, with their clandestine games, to this dubious lodging. They stepped inside.
Murasaki addressed the group. "You'll be sharing the hostel with two groups of commercial agents from Diotima and Themis, but you'll have a wing of your own. This way, please."
They followed her along a walkway of flat ivory implants. One of Dem-bowska's myriad of hearts, an industrial-scale blood-pumping station, thudded behind the ribs of the ceiling. Its double beat set the rhythm to light musical warbling from a wall-set larynx.
Their quarters were a biomechanical mix. Market monitors glowed in the walls, tracing the rise and fall of prominent Mechanist stocks. The furniture was a series of tasteful lumps and hummocks: curved beds of flesh, dressed modestly in iris-printed bedclothes.
The extensive suite was divided by tattooed membranous screens. The Colonel tapped one membrane divider. It wrinkled into the ceiling like an eyelid. He gestured politely at one of the beds. "These furnishings are exemplars of our Wallmother's erototechnology. They exist for your comfort and pleasure. I must inform you, though, that our Wallmother reserves the right to fecundity."
Emma Meyer, who had settled cautiously onto one of the beds, stood up.
"I beg your pardon?"
The Colonel frowned. "Male ejaculations become the property of the recipient. This is an ancient feminine principle."
"Oh. I see."
Murasaki pursed her lips. "You consider this odd, doctor?"
"Not at all," Meyer said winningly. "It makes perfect sense." The Dembowskan girl pressed on. "Any children sired by the men of your group will be full citizens. All Wallchildren are equally beloved. I happen to be a perfect clone, but I've won my post by merit, in the Mother's love. Isn't that so, Martin?"
The Colonel had a firmer grasp of diplomatic niceties. He nodded shortly. "The water of the baths is sterile and contains a minimum of dissolved organics. It may be drunk freely. The plumbing is genitourinary technology, but it is not waste fluid."
Gomez oozed charm. "As a biological designer, I'm delighted by your ingenious architecture. Not merely by its technical