Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [29]
He had to escape. He had to leave this world at once. He had no time left for scheming.
Outside, the assassin was waiting, with Lindsay's own stolen face. To meet him again was death. But he might escape the man if he disappeared at once. And that meant the pirates.
Lindsay rubbed his bruised wrist. Slow fury built in him: fury at the Shapers and the destructive cleverness they had used to survive. Their struggle left a legacy of monsters. The assassin. Constantine. Himself. Constantine was younger than Lindsay. He had trusted Lindsay, looked up to him. But when Lindsay had come back on furlough from the Ring Council, he'd painfully felt how deeply the Shapers had changed him. And he had deliberately sent Constantine into their hands. As always, he had made it sound plausible, and Constantine's new skills were truly crucial. But Lindsay knew that he had done it selfishly, so that he'd have company, outside the pale. Constantine had always been ambitious. But where there had been trust, Lindsay had brought a new sophistication and deceit. Where he and Constantine had shared ideals, they now shared murder.
Lindsay felt an ugly kinship with the assassin. The assassin's training must have been much like his own. His own self-hatred added sudden venom to his fear of the man.
The assassin had Lindsay's face. But Lindsay realized with a sudden flash of insight that he could turn the man's own strength against him. He could pose as the assassin, turn the situation around. He could commit some awful crime, and the assassin would be blamed. Kitsune needed a crime. It would be his farewell gift to her, a message only she would understand. He could free her, and his enemy would pay the price.
He opened the diplomatic bag and tossed aside his paper heap of stocks. He opened the floorboards and stared at the body of the old woman, floating naked on the wrinkled surface of the waterbed. Then he searched the room for something that would cut.
Chapter 3
ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 2-6-'16
When the last slave rocket from the Zaibatsu had peeled away, and the engines of the Red Consensus had cut in, Lindsay began to think he might be safe.
"So how about it, citizen?" the President said. "You sundogged off with the loot, right? What's in the bag, State? Ice-cold drugs? Hot software?"
"No," Lindsay said. "It can wait. First we have to check everyone's face. Make sure it's their own."
"You're twisted, State," said one of the Senators. "That 'antibiotic'
stuff is just agitprop crap. They don't exist."
"You're safe," the President said. "We know every angstrom on this ship, believe me." He brushed an enormous crawling roach from the burlapped surface of Lindsay's diplomatic bag. "You've scored, right? You want to buy into one of the cartels? We're on assignment, but we can detour to one of the Belt settlements—Bettina or Themis, your choice." The President grinned evilly.
"It'll cost you, though."
"I'm staying with you," Lindsay said.
"Yeah?" said the President. "Then this belongs to us!" He snatched up Lindsay's diplomatic bag and threw it to the Speaker of the House.
"I'll open it for you," Lindsay said quickly. "Just let me explain first."
"Sure," the Speaker said. "You can explain how much it's worthy" She pressed her portable power saw against the bag. Sparks flew and the reek of melted plastic filled the spacecraft. Lindsay averted his face. The Speaker groped within the bag, bracing her knee against it in free-fall.
With a wrenching motion she dragged out Lindsay's booty. It was the yarite's severed head.
She let go of the head with the sudden hiss of a scorched cat. "Get
'im!" the President yelled.
Two of the Senators bounced off the spacecraft's walls and seized Lindsay's arms and legs in painful jujutsu holds.
"You're the assassin!" the President shouted. "You were hired to hit this old Mechanist! There's no loot