Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [19]
The yarite was sitting cross-legged on a cushion. She was a wizened old Mech with a tight-drawn mouth and hooded, reptilian eyes. Her wrinkled head was encased in a helmetlike lacquered wig, skewered with pins. She wore an angular flowered kimono supported by starch and struts. There was room in it for three of her.
A second woman knelt silently with her back to the right-hand wall, facing the garden's image. Lindsay knew at once that she was a Shaper. Her startling beauty alone was proof, but she had that strange, intangible air of charisma that spread from the Reshaped like a magnetic field. She was of mixed Asiatic-African gene stock: her eyes were tilted, but her skin was dark. Her hair was long and faintly kinked. She knelt before a rack of white keyboards with an air of meek devotion.
The yarite spoke without moving her head. "Your duties, Kitsune." The girl's hands darted over the keyboards and the air was filled with the tones of that most ancient of Japanese instruments: the synthesizer. Lindsay knelt on a cushion, facing the old woman. A tea tray rolled to his side and poured hot water into a cup with a chaste tinkling sound. It dipped a rotary tea whisk into the cup.
"Your pirate friends," the old woman said, "are about to bankrupt you."
"It's only money," Lindsay said.
"It is our sweat and sexuality. Did you think it would please us to squander it?"
"I needed your attention," Lindsay said. His training had seized him at once, but he was still afraid of the girl. He hadn't known he would be facing a Shaper. And there was something drastically wrong with the old woman's ki-nesics. It looked like drugs or Mechanist nerve alteration.
"You came here dressed as a Nephrine Black Medical," the old woman said.
"Our attention was guaranteed. You have it. We are listening." With Ryumin's help, Lindsay had expanded his plans. The Geisha Bank had the power to destroy his scheme; therefore, they had to be co-opted into it. He knew what they wanted. He was ready to show them a mirror. If they recognized their own ambitions and desires, he would win.
Lindsay launched into his spiel. He paused midway to make a point. "You can see what the Black Medicals hope to gain from the performance. Behind their walls they feel isolated, paranoid. They plan to gain prestige by sponsoring our play.
"But I must have a cast. The Geisha Bank is my natural reservoir of talent. I can succeed without the Black Medicals. I can't succeed without you."
"I see," the yarite said. "Now explain to me why you think we can profit from your ambitions."
Lindsay looked pained. "I came here to arrange a cultural event. Can't that be enough?"
He glanced at the girl. Her hands flickered over the keyboards. Suddenly she looked up at him and smiled, slyly, secretly. He saw the tip of her tongue behind her perfect teeth. It was a bright, predatory smile, full of lust and mischief. In an instant it burned itself into his bloodstream. Hair rose on the back of his neck. He was losing control.
He looked at the floor, his skin prickling. "All right," he said heavily. "It isn't enough, and that shouldn't surprise me... . Listen, madame. You and the Medicals have been rivals for years. This is your chance to lure them into the open and ambush them on your own ground. They're naive about finance. Naive, but greedy. They hate dealing in a financial system that you control. If they thought they could succeed, they'd leap at the chance to form their own economy.
"So, let them do it. Let them commit themselves. Let them pile success on success until they lose all sense of proportion and greed overwhelms them. Then burst their bubble."
"Nonsense," the old woman said. "How can an actor tell a banker her business?"
"You're not dealing with a Mech cartel," Lindsay said intensely, leaning forward. He knew the girl was staring at him. He could feel it. "These are three hundred technicians, bored, frightened,