Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [27]
Now the Black Medicals were safe from him—and grateful. They sincerely respected him and nagged him constantly for further tips on the market. Everyone was happy. He foresaw a long run for the play. After that, Lindsay thought, there would be other schemes, bigger and better ones. This aimless sundog world was perfect for him. It only asked that he never stop, never look back, never look farther forward than the next swindle. Kitsune would see to that. He glanced at her opera box and saw her floating with carnivorous meekness behind the Bank's senior officers, her dupes. She would not allow him any doubts or regrets. He felt obscurely glad for it. With her limitless ambition to drive him, he could avoid his own conflicts.
They had the world in their pocket. But below his giddy sense of triumph a faint persistent pain roiled through him. He knew that Kitsune was simply and purely relentless. But Lindsay had a fault line through him, an aching seam where his training met his other self. Now, at his finest moment, when he wanted to relax and feel an honest joy, it came up tainted. All around him the crowd was exulting. Yet something within him made him shrink from joining them. He felt cheated, twisted, robbed of something that he couldn't grip.
He reached for his inhaler. A good chemical whiff would boost his discipline.
Something tugged the fabric of his jumpsuit, from behind him, to his left. He glanced quickly over his shoulder.
A black-haired, rangy young man with flinty gray eyes had seized his jumpsuit with the muscular bare toes of his right foot. "Hey, target," the man said. He smiled pleasantly. Lindsay watched the man's face for kinesics and realized with a dull shock that the face was his own.
"Take it easy, target," the assassin said. Lindsay heard his own voice from the assassin's mouth.
The face was subtly wrong. The skin looked too clean, too new. It looked synthetic.
Lindsay twisted around. The assassin held a bracing wire with both hands, but he reached out with his left foot and caught Lindsay's wrist between his two largest toes. His foot bulged with abnormal musculature and the joints looked altered. His grip was paralyzing. Lindsay felt his hand go numb.
The man jabbed Lindsay's chest with the toe of his other foot. "Relax," he said. "Let's talk a moment."
Lindsay's training took hold. His adrenaline surge of terror transmuted into icy self-possession. "How do you like the performance?" he said. The man laughed. Lindsay knew that he was hearing the assassin's true voice; his laugh was chilling. "These moondock worlds are full of surprises," he said.
"You should have joined the cast," Lindsay said. "You have a talent for impersonation."
"It comes and goes," the assassin said. He bent his altered ankle slightly, and the bones of Lindsay's wrist grated together with a sudden lancing pain that made blackness surge behind his eyes. "What's in the bag, targ? Something they'd like to know about back home?"
"In the Ring Council?"
"That's right. They say they have us under siege, all those Mech wireheads, but not every cartel is as straight as the last. And we're well trained. We can hide under the spots on a dip's conscience."
"That's clever," Lindsay said. "I admire a good technique. Maybe we could arrange something."
"That would be interesting," the assassin said politely. Lindsay realized then that no bribe could save him from this man.
The assassin released Lindsay's wrist. He reached into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit with his left foot. His knee and hip swiveled eerily. "This is for you," he said. He released a black videotape cartridge. It spun in free-fall before Lindsay's eyes.
Lindsay took the cartridge and pocketed it. He snapped the pocket shut and looked up again. The assassin had vanished. In his place was a portly male sun-dog in the same kind of general-issue dun-brown jumpsuit. He was heavier than the assassin and his hair was blond. The man looked at him indifferently.
Lindsay reached out as if to touch him, then snatched