Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [71]
"Forget titles of state," Constantine said. "In the Ring Council it's politesse. In the Republic, it smacks of aristocracy. Our local form of bad ideology."
"I see, Dr. Constantine. I'll be more careful in the future." Zeuner's cleanshaven face had the anonymous beauty of the Reshaped. He dressed with fussy precision in understated browns and beiges.
Constantine tucked the monocle into his copper-threaded velvet waistcoat. Beneath his embroidered linen jacket, his back had begun to sweat. The skin of his back was peeling where the rejuvenation virus ate at aging cells. For twenty years the infestation had wandered over his body, the first reward for his loyalty to the Shaper cause. Where the virus had worked, his olive skin had a child's smoothness.
Zeuner examined the cabin walls. The heavy insulation was stitched with pointillistic tapestries depicting the Republic. Orchards spread under bright clouds, sunlight fell with cathedral-like solemnity across golden wheatfields, ultralight aircraft dipped over stone-walled mansions with red-tiled roofs. The vistas were as clean as a travel brochure's. Zeuner said, "What's it really like, your Republic?"
"A backwater," Constantine said. "An antique. Before our Revolution, the Republic was rotting. Not just socially. Physically. An ecosystem that large needs total genetic control. But the builders didn't care about the long run. In the long run they were all dead."
Constantine steepled his fingers. "Now we inherit their mess. The Concatenation exiled its visionaries. Their genetics theorists, for instance, who formed the Ring Council. The Concatenates were squeamish. Now they have lost all power. They are client states."
"You think we'll win, doctor? The Shapers?"
"Yes." Constantine gave the man one of his rare smiles. "Because we understand what this struggle is about. Life. I don't mean that the Mechs will be annihilated. They may totter on for whole centuries. But they will be cut off. They'll be cybernetic, not living flesh. That's a dead end, because there's no will behind it. No imperatives. Only programming. No imagination." The playwright nodded. "Sound ideology. Not like what you hear in Gold-reich-Tremaine these days. Ddtentiste slogans. Unity in diversity, where all the factions form one vast Schismatrix. Humankind reuniting when faced by aliens."
Constantine shifted in his chair, surreptitiously rubbing his back against the cushion. "I've heard that rhetoric. On the stage. This producer you were mentioning—"
"Mavrides?" Zeuner was eager. "They're a powerful clan. Goldreich-Tremaine, Jastrow Station, Kirkwood Gap. They've never had a genetic on the Council itself, but they share genes with the Garzas and the Drapers and the Vet-terlings. The Vetterlings have authority."
"This man is a Mavrides by marriage, you said. A nongenetic."
"A eunique, you mean? Yes. He's not allowed to contribute his genes to the line." Zeuner was pleased to tell this bit of scandal. "He's also an Investor pet. And a cepheid."
"Cepheid? You mean he has a rank in Security?"
"He's Captain-Doctor Abelard Mavrides, C.-Ph.D. It's a low rank for one so old. He was a sundog once, a cometary miner, they say. He met the aliens on the rim of the System, wormed his way into their good graces somehow. ... They'd been here only a few months when they brought Mavrides and his wife into Goldreich-Tremaine in one of their starships. Since then he's moved from success to success. Corporations hire him as a go-between with the aliens. He teaches Investor studies and speaks their language fluently. He's wealthy enough to keep his past obscure."
"Old-line Shapers guard their privacy closely."
Zeuner brooded. "He's my enemy. He blighted my career." Constantine thought it through. He knew more about Mavrides than Zeuner did. He had recruited Zeuner deliberately, knowing that Mavrides must have enemies, and that finding them was easier than creating them. Zeuner was frustrated. His first play had failed; the second was