Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [64]
And the doyens of the Shaper academic-military complex: the smoothfaced Security types, facile, triumphant, still too pleased at the amazing coup to show their ingrained suspicion. And the intelligentsia, dazzled by potential, speculating wildly, their objectivity in rags.
Then she saw one. There were more, a dozen of them. They were huge. Their legs alone were as tall as men, enormous corded masses of muscle, bone, and tendon under slickly polished corrugated hide. Scales. Brown scaled hide showed under their clothing: they wore skirts, glittering beads on wire. Their mighty chests were bare, with great keelbone ridges of sternum. Compared to the treelike legs and the massive jutting tails, their arms were long and slender, with quick, swollen-tipped fingers and oddly socketed thumbs. Their heads were huge, the size of a man's torso, split with great cavernous grins full of thumb-sized flat peg teeth. They seemed to have no ears, and their black eyeballs, the size of fists, were shielded under pebbly lids and grayish nictitating membranes. Ribbed, iridescent frills draped the backs of their heads.
There were people talking to them, holding cameras. Shaper people. They seemed to be hunched in fear before the aliens; their backs were bent, they shuffled subserviently from one to another. It was gravity, Nora realized. The aliens used a heavy gravity.
They were real! They moved with relaxed, ponderous grace. Some were holding clipboards. Others were talking, with fluted, birdlike tongues as long as a forearm.
By size alone they dominated the proceedings. There was nothing formalized or stagy about it; even the solemn narration could not hide the essential nature of the meeting. The aliens were not frightened or even much impressed. They had no bluster, no mystique. They were businesslike. Like tax collectors.
Paolo burst in suddenly, his eyes wild, his long hair matted with blood.
"Quickly! They're right behind me!" He glanced around. "Give me that panel cover!"
"It's over, Paolo!"
"Not yet!" Paolo snatched the broad console top from midair. Wiring trailed behind it. He catapulted across the room and slammed the console across the tunnel entrance. Placed flat against it, it formed a crude barricade; Paolo whipped a tube of epoxy from his belt and glued the console top against the stone.
There was a gap to one side; Paolo pulled his slingshot and fired down the corridor. They heard a distant howl. Paolo jammed his face against the gap and screamed with laughter.
"The television, Paolo! News from the Council! The siege is over!"
"The siege?" Paolo said, glancing back at her. "What the fuck does that have to do with us?"
"The siege, the war," she said. "There never was any war, it's the new party line. There were just. . . misunderstandings. Bottlenecks." Paolo ignored her, staring down the tunnel, readying another shot. "We were never soldiers. Nobody was ever trying to kill anyone. The human race is peaceful, Paolo, just— good trading partners. . . . Aliens are here, Paolo. The aliens."
"Oh, God," Paolo moaned. "I just have to kill two more, that's all, and I already winged the woman. Just help me kill them first, then you can tell me anything you want." He pressed his shoulder against the barricade, waiting for the epoxy to set.
Nora drifted over him and shouted through one of the console's instrument holes into the darkness. "Mr. President! This is the diplomat! I want a parley!"
There was silence for a moment. Then: "You crazy bitch! Come out and die!"
"It's over, Mr. President! The siege is lifted! The System is at peace, do you understand? Aliens, Mr. President! Aliens have arrived, they've been here for days already!"
The President laughed. "Sure. Come on out, baby. Send that little fucker with the slingshot out first." She heard the sudden whine of the power saw. Paolo pushed her aside with a snarl and fired down the