Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [131]
The Cicadas needed baths. The bacterial changeover had not quite settled in, and the blood heat of the Dembowskan air made them itch. Lindsay withdrew to one end of the suite and lowered the membrane wall. At once his tempo changed. Without his young followers, he moved at his own pace.
He didn't need to bathe. His aged skin could no longer support a large population of bacteria.
He sat on the edge of the bed. He was tired. Without volition, his eyes glazed over. A long moment passed in which he was simply empty, thinking nothing at all.
At last, blinking, he came back to himself. He reached reflexively into his jacket pocket and produced an enameled inhaler. Two long whifs of Green Rapture brought interest back into the world. He looked slowly about him and was surprised to see a blue kimono against the wall. Murasaki was wearing it. Her body was camouflaged almost perfectly against the background of skin.
"Captain Murasaki," he said. "I didn't notice you. Forgive me."
"I was—" She'd been standing there in polite silence. She was flustered by his reputation. "I was ordered to—" She gestured at the door, a pucker in the wall.
"You want to take me somewhere?" he said. "My companions can manage without me. I'm at your disposal."
He followed the girl into the ivory and fur of the hall.
In the lobby she stopped and ran her hand along the smooth flesh of the wall. A hole sphinctered open beside her feet, and the two of them dropped gently down one floor.
Below the hostel was a maintenance area. He heard a steady rushing of arteries and an occasional bowel-like gurgle from the naked walls. Biomonitors flickered, set in puckered rims of flesh.
"This is a health center," Murasaki explained. "The Wallmother's health, I mean. She has a mind-link here. She can speak to you here, through me. You mustn't be alarmed." She turned her back to him and lifted the dark fringe of hair at her neck, showing him the stippled interlink at the base of her skull. Green Rapture washed gently over Lindsay, a tingling wave of curiosity. Green Rapture was the ultimate antiboredom drug, the biochemical basis of wonder boiled down to its complex essence. With enough Green Rapture a man could find a wealth of interest in the lines of his own hands. Lindsay smiled with unfeigned delight. "Marvelous," he said.
Murasaki hesitated and looked at him quizzically.
"You mustn't mind if I stare," Lindsay said. "You remind me so of your mother."
"You're really him, Chancellor? Abelard Lindsay, who was my mother's lover?"
"Kitsune and I have always been friends."
"Am I much like she was?"
"Clones are their own people." He spoke soothingly. "In the Ring Council, I had a family once. My congenetics—my children—were clones. And I loved them."
"You mustn't think I'm a mere piece of the Wall," Murasaki said. "The Wall cells are chromosomally depauperate. Chimeric blastomas. The Wall is not as fully human as Kitsune's original flesh. Or mine." She looked searchingly into his eyes. "You don't mind talking to me first? I'm not boring you?"
"Impossible," Lindsay said.
"We Wallchildren have had trouble before. Some foreigners treat us as monsters." She sighed, relaxing. "The truth is, we're really rather dull." He was sympathetic. "You find it so?"
"It's not like Czarina-Kluster. Things are exciting there, aren't they?
Always something happening. Pirates. Posthumanists. Defectors. Investors. I see tapes from there sometimes. I'd love to have clothes like that." Lindsay smiled. "Clothes look better at a distance, my dear. Cicadas dress for social status. It can take hours."
"You're only prejudiced, Chancellor Lindsay. You invented social stripping!"
Lindsay winced. Was he always to be dogged by this cliche?
"I saw it in a play," the girl confessed. "Goldreich Intrasolar came through on tour. They showed Fernand Vetterling's Pity For the Vermin. The hero strips at the climax."
Lindsay felt chagrin. Vetterling's plays had lost all punch since he