Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [133]
"I'm glad for that."
"He loves me, I think."
"Well, that's not to be despised."
"Sometimes, when I think of how much profit I made from him, I have a strange warm feeling. I never had a better bargain. He was so wonderfully malleable. ... Even though he's useless now, I still feel real satisfaction when I look at him. I've decided that I'll never throw him away."
"Very good."
"For a Mechanist, he was bright, in his day. An ambassador to aliens; he had to be one of the best. He has many children here—congenetics—they are all very satisfactory."
"I noticed that when I met Colonel Martin Dembowska. A very capable officer."
"You think so, truly?"
Lindsay looked judicious. "Well, young, of course. But that can't be helped."
"No. And this one, this chatterbox"—the body pointed a finger at its own chest—"is even younger. Only nineteen. But my Wallchildren must grow up quickly. I mean to make Dembowska my genetic nest. All others must go. And that includes your Shaper friend from Skimmers Union."
"I'll take her off your hands at your convenience."
"It's a trap, Abelard. Constantine's children have no reason to love you. Don't trust her. Like Carnassus, she has been with aliens. They left their mark on her."
"I must confess I'm curious." He smiled. "I suppose it's the drugs."
"Drugs? It can't be vasopressin, your old favorite. Or you'd have a better memory."
"Green Rapture, Kitsune. I have certain long-term plans.... Green Rapture keeps my interest up."
"Your terraforming."
"Yes. It's a problem of time and scale, you see. Long-term fanaticism is hard work. Without Green Rapture, the mind gnaws away at the fantastic until it becomes the commonplace."
"I see," she said. "Your fantastic, and my ecstatic.... Childbirth is a wonderful thing."
"To bring new life into the world ... it is the mystery. Truly a Prigoginic event."
"You must be tired, darling. I've reduced you to Cicada platitudes."
"I'm sorry." He smiled. "It comes with the territory."
"You and Wellspring have a clever front. You're both great talkers. I'm sure you can lecture for hours. Or days. But centuries?" Lindsay laughed. "It seems like a joke sometimes, doesn't it? Two sundogs embracing the ultimate. Wellspring believes, I think. As for me, I do my best."
"Maybe he thinks you believe."
"Maybe he does. Maybe I do." Lindsay tugged a long lock of hair through his iron fingers. "As dreams go, Posthumanism has merits. The existence of the Four Levels of Complexity has been proven mathematically. I've seen the equations."
"Spare me, darling. Surely we're not so old that we have to discuss equations."
The words bypassed him. Under the influence of Green Rapture, his brain succumbed momentarily to the lure of mathematics, that purest of intellectual pleasures. In his normal state of mind, despite years of study, he found the formulas painful, a brain-numbing mass of symbols. In Rapture he could grasp them, though afterward he remembered only the white joy of comprehension. The feeling was close to faith.
A long moment passed. He snapped out of it. "I'm sorry, Kitsune. You were saying?"
"Do you remember, Abelard.. . . Once I told you that ecstasy was better than being God."
"I remember."
"I was wrong, darling. Being God is better."
Vera Constantine's quarters were a measure of Kitsune's distrust. The young Shaper clanswoman had been under house arrest for weeks. Her lodging was a three-room cell of stone and iron, outside Kitsune's world-consuming embrace.
She sat at an inset Market monitor, studying the flow of tranaction in a three-dimensional grid. She had never dealt in the Market before, but Abelard Gomez, a kindly young Cicada, had given her a financial stake to pass the time. Knowing no better, she applied to the flow of the Market the principles of atmospheric dynamics she'd learned on Fomalhaut IV. Oddly, it seemed to be working. She was clearly gaining.
The door unsealed and shunted open. An old man stepped in, tall and thin in muted Cicada garb: a long coat, dark