Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [132]
"I thought it was marvelous. Though nudity doesn't mean much in Dem-bowska. ... I shouldn't tell you about plays. Didn't you start Kabuki Intrasolar?"
"That was Fyodor Ryumin," Lindsay said.
"Who's he?"
"A brilliant playwright. He died some years ago."
"Was he very old?"
"Extremely. More so even than me."
"Oh, I'm sorry." He had embarrassed her. "I'll be going now. You and the Wallmother must have a lot to discuss." She pressed her hand against the wall behind her, then turned to him again. "Thank you for indulging me. It was a very great privilege." A fleshy tentacle extruded from the wall behind her. The splayed clump at the tentacle's end grasped the back of her neck. She lifted her hair aside and adjusted the plug. Her face went slack. Her knees buckled and she fell slowly in the feeble gravity. Kitsune came on line and caught her before she hit the floor. The body trembled briefly in a palsy of feedback; then Kitsune stretched it and ran her hands along the arms. The face set itself; the body was all grace, electric with an old and ferocious vitality. Only the eyes were dead.
"Hello, Kitsune."
"Do you like this body, darling?" She stretched luxuriously. "Nothing brings memory back like being in a young woman. What do you call yourself these days?"
"Abelard Lindsay. Chancellor of Czarina-Kluster Kosmosity-Metasystems, Jovian Systems Division."
"And Arbiter of the Lifesiders Clique?"
Lindsay smiled. "Positions in social clubs have no legal validity, Kitsune."
"It's a position strong enough to bring a defector here, all the way from Skimmer's Union. .. . She says her,name is Vera Constantine. And that name means enough to you to bring you here?"
Lindsay shrugged. "You see me, Kitsune."
"The daughter of your old enemy? And the congenetic of a long-dead woman whose name escapes me?"
"Vera Kelland."
"How well you remember it. Better than you remember our own relationship?"
"We've had more than one, Kitsune. I remember our youth in the Zaibatsu, though not as well as I would like. And I remember my thirty years here in Dembowska, when I held you at arm's length because your form repulsed me and I missed my wife."
"You could not have resisted me in any form, if I had pressed. In those years I only teased you."
"I've changed since then. These days I'm pressed by other things."
"But now I have a better form. Like the old one." She shrugged the girl's body out of its kimono. "Shall we have a go, for old times' sake?" Lindsay approached the body and ran his wrinkled hand lingeringly along the long flank. "It's very beautiful," he said.
"It's yours," she said. "Enjoy yourself." Lindsay sighed. He ran his fingers over the splayed tentacular clump at the back of the girl's neck. "In my duel with Constantine, I had something like this installed. The wires lose a lot in translation. You can't feel it like this, Kitsune. Not like you did then."
"Then?" She laughed aloud. The mouth opened, but the face scarcely moved. "I left those limits behind so long ago that I've forgotten them."
"It's all right, Kitsune. I can't feel it in the same way any more, either." He stepped back and sat on the floor. "If it's any consolation, I still feel something for you. Despite all times and changes. I don't have a name for it. But then what we had between us never had a name." She picked up the sleeveless kimono. "People who waste time naming never have time for living."
They passed a few moments in companionable silence. She put the robe on and sat before him. "How is Michael Carnassus?" he said at last.
"Michael is well. With each rejuvenation we repair a little more Shatter damage. He leaves his Extraterrarium for longer and longer