Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [45]
"We're a miners' democracy after all," Lindsay told Nora Mavrides.
"According to Fortuna ideology, we had a perfect right to drill. If you'd mapped your tunnel network for us, this wouldn't have happened."
"You risked everything," Nora Mavrides said.
"You have to admit there were benefits," Lindsay said. "Now that your network has been, as you say, 'contaminated,' we can at least meet face to face, without spacesuits."
"It was reckless, Secretary."
Lindsay touched his chest left-handed. "Look at it from our perspective, Dr. Mavrides. The FMD will not wait indefinitely to take possession of its own property. I think we've been quite reasonable.
"You keep assuming that we mean to leave. We are settlers, not brigands. We won't be turned aside by nebulous promises and anti-Mechanist propaganda. We are miners."
"Pirates. Mech hirelings."
Lindsay shrugged one-sidedly.
"Your arm," she said. "Is it really hurt? Or do you pretend it, to make me think you're harmless?"
Lindsay said nothing.
"I take your point," she said. "There's no true negotiation without trust. Somewhere we have common ground. Let's find it." Lindsay straightened his arm. "All right, Nora. If this is between just the two of us, role-playing aside, let's hear you. I can bear any level of frankness you're willing to advance."
"Tell me your name, then."
"It won't mean anything to you." She was silent. "It's Abelard," he said. "Call me Abelard."
"What's your gene-line, Abelard?"
"I'm no Shaper."
"You're lying, Abelard. You move like one of us. The arm business camouflaged it, but your clumsiness is too deliberate. How old are you? A hundred? Less? How long have you been sundogging it?"
"Does that matter?" Lindsay said.
"You can go back. Believe me, it's different now. The Council needs you. I'll sponsor you. Join us, Abelard. We're your people. Not these germy renegades."
Lindsay reached out. Nora drew back, the long laces of her sleeve ties jerking in free-fall.
"You see," Lindsay said. "I'm as filthy as they are." He watched her closely.
She was beautiful. The Mavrides clan was a gene-line he hadn't seen before. Wide, hazel eyes, with a trace of epicanthic fold, more Amerindian than oriental. High cheekbones, straight aquiline nose. Feathery black eyebrows, and a wealth of shimmering black hair, which in free-fall formed a bushy mass of curled tendrils. Nora's hair was confined in a loose free-fall headdress, a jade-green plastic turban with a crimson drawstring at the back and a serrated fringe of forest green above her bangs. Her coppery skin was clear and inhumanly smooth, with a dusting of rouge.
There were six of them. They had a close family resemblance, but they were not identical clones. The six were that tiny percentage of the Mavrides gene-line which had been drafted: Kleo, Paolo, Fazil, Ian, Agnes, and Nora Mavrides. Kleo was their leader. She was forty. Nora was twenty-eight. The rest were all seventeen years old.
Lindsay had seen them. He'd pitied them. The Ring Council did not waste investment. A seventeen-year-old genius was more than sufficient for the assignment, and they were cheap. They had looked him over with cold hazel eyes, with the alert and revolted stare that a man reserves for vermin. They longed to kill him, with a hunger tempered only by disgust. It was too late for that now. They should have killed him far away, when they could have stayed clean. Now he was too close. His skin, his breath, his teeth, even his blood seethed with corruption.
"We have no antiseptics," Nora said. "We never thought we'd need them. It won't be pleasant for us, Abelard. Boils, weals, rashes. Dysentery. There's no help for it. Even if you left tomorrow, the air from your ship ... it was crawling." She spread her hands. Her blouse had scarlet drawstrings at the wrists, with puffed slashed sleeves showing the smooth skin of her forearms. The blouse was a wraparound garment, tied with short strings at each hip and belted at the waist. She'd sewn it herself, embroidering the lapels