Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [191]
"Can't you take that mask off, Hans? I want to see your face."
"It's not a mask, darling. And my face is, well, not a pretty sight. All those wires ..."
"You sound different, Hans. Your voice sounds different."
"That's because this voice is a radio analogue. It's synthesized."
"How do I know it's really you, then? God, Hans ... I'm so afraid. Everything ... it's just evaporating. The Froth is ... there's a biohazard scare, something smashed the gel frames in your domicile, I guess it was the dogs, and now the lichen, the damned lichen is sprouting everywhere. It grows so fast!"
"I designed it to grow fast, Valery, that was the whole point. Tell them to use a metal aerosol or sulfide particulates; either one will kill it in a few hours. There's no need for panic."
"No need! Hans, the discreets are suicide factories. C-K is through!
We've lost the Queen!"
"There's still the Project," I said. "The Queen was just an excuse, a catalyst. The Project can draw as much respect as the damned Queen. The groundwork's been laid for years. This is the moment. Tell the Clique to liquidate all they have. The Froth must move to Martian orbit." Valery began to drift sideways. "That's all you cared about all along, wasn't it? The Project! I degraded myself, and you, with your cold, that Shaper distance, you left me in despair!"
"Valery!" I shouted, stricken. "I called you a dozen times, it was you who closed yourself off, it was me who needed warmth after those years under the dogs—"
"You could have done it!" she screamed, her face white with passion. "If you cared you would have broken in to prove it! You expected me to come crawling in humiliation? Black armor or dog's eyeglass, Hans, what's the difference? You're still not with me!"
I felt the heat of raw fury touching my numbed skin. "Blame me, then!
How was I to know your rituals, your sick little secrets? I thought you'd thrown me over while you sneered and whored with Wellspring! Did you think I'd compete with the man who showed me my salvation? I would have slashed my wrists to see you smile, and you gave me nothing, nothing but disaster!" A look of cold shock spread across her painted face. Her mouth opened, but no words came forth. Finally, with a small smile of total despair, she broke the connection. The screen went black.
I turned to the Modem. "I want to go back," I said.
"Sorry," he said. "First, you'd be killed. And second, we don't have the wattage to turn back. We're carrying a massive cargo." He shrugged. "Besides, C-K is in dissolution. We've known it was coming for a long time. In fact, some colleagues of ours are arriving there within the week with a second cargo of mass drivers. They'll fetch top prices as the Kluster dissolves."
"You knew?"
"We have our sources."
"Wellspring?"
"Who, him? He's leaving, too. He wants to be in Martian orbit when that hits." The Modem glided outside the cuploa and pointed along the plane of the ecliptic. I followed his gaze, shifting clumsily along the visual wavelengths. I saw the etched and ghostly flare of the Martian asteroid's mighty engines. "The iceteroid," I said.
"Yes, of course. The comet of your disaster, so to speak. A useful symbol for C-K's decay."
"Yes," I said. I thought I recognized the hand of Wellspring in this. As the ice payload skimmed past C-K the panicked eyes of its inhabitants would follow it. Suddenly I felt a soaring sense of hope.
"How about that?" I said. "Could you land me there?"
"On the asteroid?"
"Yes! They're going to detach the engines, aren't they? In orbit! I can join my fellows there, and I won't miss the Prigoginic catalyst!"
"I'll check." The Modem fed a series of parameters into one of the fluidics. "Yes... I could sell you a parasite engine that you could strap on. With enough wattage and a cybersystem to guide you, you could match trajectory within, say, seventy-two hours."
"Good! Good! Let's do that then."
"Very well," he said. "There remains only the question of price." I had time to think about the price as I burned along through the piercing