Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [147]
When they saw sunlight flooding just below the surface, Pilot yowled in electronic glee and kicked in the main engines. Steam blasted out in an explosive cratering rosette as the sea recoiled. They broke Mach 1 in seconds. As acceleration crushed them into their seats, Vera strained to see her videoboard and screamed. "The sky! Blue sky! A wall above the world! Pilot, give us space!"
Below them, the sea absorbed the shock, as it did all things. And they were gone.
THE NEOTENIC CULTURAL REPUBLIC: 8-8-'86
Life moved in clades.
Terraform-Kluster loomed over Mars, shattering red monotony with white steam, green growth, blue nascent seas.
On Venus, death's back was broken, as honest clouds threw lace across the searing, acid-bitten sky.
Ice ships with freshly minted creatures from the labs splashed into Europa, dissolving deep within blood-warm abysses.
On Jupiter the Great Red Spot was breaking up, sloughing off strange blooming clouds of red krill, tiny creatures gathered into shoals and herds bigger than Earth.
At the Neotenic Cultural Republic, Abelard Lindsay decamped from a monstrous spacecraft.
In the free-fall zone he moved easily, with the unconscious grace of extreme age.
But as he moved down the slope inside the cylindrical world, past the hotels and low-grav tourist shops, he leaned more and more heavily on the squat head of his robot companion. The two of them reached level ground, a loamy wilderness with solemn, ancient ranks of trees. The tub-shaped robot nurse nicked a quick blood sample from the nerveless flesh of Lindsay's leg. As they shuffled along the leaf-strewn footpath, the machine fractionated the blood and mumbled over its data.
The Republic had become a place of towering gloom, silence broken by birdcalls, a canopy of foliage cracking mirrored sunlight into dappled shards. Local Neotenics in studiedly antique clothing lounged on lichen-eaten stone benches, while their charges, senile Shapers and obsolescent Mechs, tottered marveling through the woods.
Lindsay paused, gasping as the cuirass pumped his chest beneath his dark blue coat. The baggy legs of his trousers and his sturdy orthopedic shoes hid the prosthetic framework strapped to his wasted legs. Overhead, at the core of the world, an ultralight aircraft spewed a long trail of gray cremated powder over the rich green treetops.
No one approached him. The embroidered squids and angler fish on his coat-sleeves identified him as a CircumEuropan, but he had come incognito. Catching his breath, Lindsay walked on toward the Tyler mansion and his meeting with Constantine.
The mansion had expanded. Beyond its ivy-shrouded walls, other estates had sprung up, a complex of asylums and retirement wards. Over the years, despite the Preservationists, the outside world had seeped in irresistibly. The Republic's premier industries were hospitals and funerals; rehabilitation for those who could make it, a quiet transition for those who could not. Lindsay crossed the courtyard of the first hospital. A group of Blood Bathers basked in the sun, waiting with animal patience for their skins to grow again. Beyond that estate was a second, where two young Patternists were surrounded by guards. They scratched at the dirt with twigs, their lopsided heads almost touching. Lindsay saw one of them look up for a moment: the boy's cold eyes had the chilly logic of utter paranoia.
Neatly dressed Neotenic attendants ushered Lindsay through the gates of the Tyler estate. Margaret Juliano had been dead for years. Lindsay recognized the new Director as one of her Superbright students.
The Superbright met him on the lawn. The man's face had the quiet self-possession of Zen Serotonin. "I've cleared your visit with Warden Pongpi-anskul," he said.
"That was thoughtful," Lindsay said. Neville Pongpianskul was dead, but it was not polite to refer to the fact. Following Ring Council ritual, Pongpianskul had "faded," leaving behind him a programmed web of speeches, announcements, taped appearances, and random telephone