Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [5]
"I see," Lindsay said. This was, he realized, carte blanche to kill him at any time, for almost any reason. He had expected as much. This world was a haven for sundogs: defectors, traitors, exiles, outlaws. Lindsay doubted that a world full of sundogs could be run any other way. There were simply too many strange technologies at large in circumsolar space. Hundreds of apparently innocent actions, even the breeding of butterflies, could be potentially lethal.
We are all criminals, he thought.
"Do you wish to claim your civil right?"
"No, thank you," Lindsay said politely. "But it's a great solace to know that the Zaibatsu government grants me this courtesy. I will remember your kindness."
"You need only call out," the camera said, with satisfaction. The interview was over. Wobbling in free-fall, Lindsay stripped away the biomonitors. The camera handed him a credit card and a pair of standard-issue Zaibatsu coveralls.
Lindsay climbed into the baggy clothing. He'd come into exile alone. Con-stantine, too, had been indicted, but Constantine, as usual, had been too clever.
Constantine had been his closest friend for fifteen years. Lindsay's family had disapproved of his friendship with a plebe, but Lindsay had defied them.
In those days the elders had hoped to walk the fence between the competing superpowers. They'd been inclined to trust the Shapers and had sent Lindsay to the Ring Council for diplomatic training. Two years later, they'd sent Constantine as well, for training in biotechnology.
But the Mechanists had overwhelmed the Republic, and Lindsay and Constantine were disgraced, embarrassing reminders of a failure in foreign policy. But this only united them, and their dual influence had spread contagiously among the plebes and the younger aristos. In combination they'd been formidable: Constantine, with his subtle long-term plans and iron determination; Lindsay as the front man, with his persuasive glibness and theatrical elegance.
But then Vera Kelland had come between them. Vera: artist, actress, and aristocrat, the first Preservationist martyr. Vera believed in their cause; she was their muse, holding to the conviction with an earnestness they couldn't match. She too was married, to a man sixty years her senior, but adultery only added spice to the long seduction. At last Lindsay had won her. But with the possession of Vera came her deadly resolve.
The three of them knew that an act of suicide would change the Republic when all else was hopeless. They came to terms. Philip would survive to carry on the work; that was his consolation for losing Vera and for the loneliness that was to come. And the three of them had worked toward death in feverish intimacy, until her death had truly come, and made their sleek ideals into a sticky nastiness.
The camera opened the customs hatch with a creak of badly greased hydraulics. Lindsay shook himself free of the past. He floated down a stripped hallway toward the feeble glow of daylight.
He emerged onto a landing pad for aircraft, cluttered with dirty machines.
The landing pad was centered at the free-fall zone of the colony's central axis. From this position, Lindsay could stare along the length of the Zaibatsu, through five long kilometers of gloomy, stinking air. The sight and shape of the clouds struck him first. They were malformed and bloated, with an ugly yellowish tinge. They rippled and distorted in fetid up-drafts from the Zaibatsu's land panels.
The smell was vile. Each of the ten circumlunar worlds of the Concatenation had its own native smell. Lindsay remembered that his own Republic had seemed to reek when he first returned to it from the Shaper academy. But here the air seemed foul enough to kill. His nose began to run. Every Concatenate world faced biological problems as the habitat aged. Fertile soil required a minimum of ten million bacterial cells per cubic centimeter. This invisible swarm formed the basis of everything fruitful. Humanity had carried it into space.
But humanity and its symbionts had thrown aside the blanket of atmosphere. Radiation