Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [50]
Lindsay licked his lips. He had seen this in the Ring Council: endemic gambling. Not just for money, but for the core of personality. Secret agreements. Dominance games. Sex. The struggles within gene-lines, between people who knew with flat certainty that they were equally matched. The dice were quick and final.
"I can help you," Lindsay said. "Let's negotiate."
"We're supposed to be on duty," Paolo said. "Monitoring radio. We're leaving, Mr. Secretary."
"I'll come along," Lindsay said.
The two Shapers resealed the stone lid of their secret workshop and scuttled off in the darkness. Lindsay followed as best he could. The Shapers had listening dishes dug in all over the asteroid. The bowl-shaped impact craters were ready-made for their camouflaged gridworks of copper mesh. All antennae fed into a central processor, whose delicate semiconductors were sheltered in a tough acrylic console. Slots in the console held cassettes of homemade recording tape, constantly spooling on a dozen different heads. Another cutout on the acrylic deck held a flat liquid crystal display for video copy and a hand-lettered keyboard.
The two genetics combed the waveband, flickering through a spectrum of general-issue cartel broadcasts. Most bands were cypher-static, anonymous blips of cybernetic datapulse. "Here's something," Paolo said. "Triangulate it, Fazil."
"It's close," Fazil said. "Oh, it's just the madman."
"What?" Lindsay said. A huge green roach speckled in lustrous violet flew past with a clatter of wings.
"The one who always wears the spacesuit." The two glanced at one another. Lindsay read their eyes. They were thinking about the man's stench.
"Is he talking?" Lindsay said. "Put him on, please."
"He always talks," Paolo said. "Sings, mostly. He raves into an open channel."
"He's in his new spacesuit," Lindsay said urgently. "Put him on." He heard Rep 3. "—granulated like my mother's face. And sorry not to say goodbye to my friend Mars. Sorry for Carnaval, too. I'm out kilometers, and that hiss. I thought it was a new friend, trying to talk. But it's not. It's a little hole in my back, where I glued the tanks in. Tanks work fine, hole works better. It's me and my two skins, soon both cold."
"Try and raise him!" Lindsay said.
"I told you he keeps the channel open. The unit's two hundred years old if it's a day. He can't hear us when he talks."
"I'm not reeling back in, I'm staying out here." His voice was fainter.
"No air to talk with, and no air to listen. So I'll try and climb out. Just a zipper. With any luck I can skin out completely." There was a light crackling of static. "Goodbye, Sun. Goodbye, Stars. Thanks for—" The words were lost in a rush of decompression. Then the crackling of static was back. It went on and on.
Lindsay thought it through. He spoke quietly. "Was I your alibi, Paolo?
"What?" Paolo was shocked.
"You sabotaged his suit. And then you carefully weren't here when we could have helped him."
Paolo was pale. "We were never near his suit, I swear!"
"Then why weren't you here at your post?"
"Kleo set me up!" Paolo shouted. "Ian walks point, the dice said so! I'm supposed to be clean!"
"Shut up, Paolo." Fazil grabbed his arm.
Paolo tried to stare him down, then turned to Lindsay. "It's Kleo and Ian. They hate my luck—" Fazil shook him.
Paolo slapped him hard across the face. Fazil cried out and threw his arms around Paolo, holding him close.
Paolo looked stricken. "I was upset," he said. "I lied about Kleo; she loves all of us. It was an accident. An accident."
Lindsay left. He scrambled headlong down the tunnels, passing more wet-ware and a greenhouse where a blower gusted the smell of fresh-cut hay. He entered a cavern where grow-lights shone dusky red through a gas-permeable membrane. Nora's room branched off from the cavern, blocked by the wheezing bulk of her private air blower. Lindsay squeezed past it on the exhale and slapped the lights.
Violet arabesques covered the