Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [53]
"I want to discuss the murder of the Third Representative." Kleo tucked a lock of curled hair into her braided hairnet. The proportions of her wrist, palm, and forearm showed that she was older than the rest, from an earlier production run. "Nonsense," she said. "An absurd allegation."
"I know you had him killed, Kleo. Maybe you did it yourself. Be frank with me."
"That man's death was an accident. There's no proof otherwise. Therefore, we bear no blame."
"I'm trying to save our lives, Kleo. Please, spare me the party line. If Nora admits the truth, why can't you?"
"What you discuss with our negotiator in secret session is not our business, Mr. Secretary. The Mavrides Family cannot acknowledge anything unproven."
"That's it, then?" Lindsay said from behind his faceplate. "Crimes don't exist outside your ideology? You expect me to join that fiction, lie for you, protect you?"
"We're your people," Kleo said, fixing him with her clear hazel eyes.
"But you've killed my friend."
"That is not a valid allegation, Mr. Secretary."
"This is useless," Lindsay said. He bent, grabbed a thornless rosebush, and ripped it up by the roots. He shook it; blobs of wet dirt flew. Kleo winced. "Look!" Lindsay said. "Don't you understand?"
"I understand that you're a barbarian," Kleo said. "You destroyed a thing of beauty to make a point in an argument you know I can't accept."
"Bend a little," Lindsay pleaded. "Have mercy."
"That's not our assignment," Kleo told him.
Lindsay turned and left, stripping off the clammy spacesuit just beyond the airlock.
"I told you not to try it," Nora said.
"She's suicidal," Lindsay said. "Why? Why do you follow her?"
"Because she loves us."
ESAIRS XII: 23-2-'17
"Let me tell you about sex," Nora said. "Give me your hand." Lindsay gave her his left hand. Nora gripped his wrist, pulled him forward, and put his thumb deep into her mouth. She held it there, then released him.
"Tell me what you felt."
"It was warm," Lindsay said. "Wet. And uncomfortably intimate."
"That's what sex is like on suppressants," she said. "We have love in the Family, but not erotics. We're soldiers." "You're chemically castrated, then?"
"You're prejudiced," she said. "You haven't lived it. That's why the orgy you propose is out of the question."
"Carnaval isn't an orgy," Lindsay said. "It's a ceremony. It's trust, it's communion. It holds the group together. Like animals huddling."
"It's too much to ask," she said.
"You don't realize what's at stake. It's not your body they want. They want to kill you. They hate your sterile guts. You don't know how I talked, persuaded, coaxed them. . . . Listen, they use hallucinogens. Your brain turns to pudding in Carnaval. You don't know what your own hands are, much less someone else's genitals. . . . You're helpless. Everyone is helpless, that's the point. No more games, no politics, no ranks and grudges. No self. When you come out of Carnaval it's like the first day of Creation. Everyone smiles." Lindsay looked aside, blinking. "It's real, Nora. It's not their government that sustains them, that's just the brain. Carnaval is the blood, the spine, the groin."
"It's not our way, Abelard."
"But if you could join us, even once, for a few hours! We'd dissolve these tensions, truly trust each other. Listen, Nora, sex is not some handicraft. It's real, it's human, it's one of the last things we have left. Burn it! What do you have to lose?"
"It could be an ambush," she said. "You could bend our minds with drugs and kill us. It's a risk."
"Of course it is, but there are ways around that." He locked eyes with her. "I'm telling you this on the basis of all the trust we have between us. At least we can give it a trial."
"I don't like this," Nora said. "I don't like sex. Especially with the unplanned."
"It's that or juice your own gene-line," Lindsay said. He pulled a loaded hypodermic from inside his lapel and attached its needle. "I have mine ready."
She looked at it sidelong, then produced her own. "You may not take well to this, Abelard."
"What is it?"