Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [73]
"I think I surprised them a bit."
"I heard the shouts, dear." She smiled and took his arm, placing her hand on his sleeve above the steel of his artificial ulna. They left the garden.
On the patio outside, the bride and groom were dancing on the ceiling, heads downward. Their feet darted nimbly in and out of the dance rig, a broad complex of padded footloops for use in light gravity. Lindsay watched the bride, feeling a rush of happiness close to pain.
Kleo Mavrides. The young bride was the dead woman's clone, sharing her name and her genes. There were times when Lindsay felt that behind the merry eyes of the younger Kleo there lurked an older spirit, as a sound might still vibrate in the glass of a crystal just after it had ceased to ring. He had done what he could. Since her production, the younger Kleo had been his special care. He and Nora found satisfaction in these amends. It was more than penance. They had taken too many pains to call it simply recompense. It was love.
The groom danced powerfully; he had the bearlike build of all the Vetter-ling genetics. Fernand Vetterling was a gifted man, a standout even in a society of genius. Lindsay had known the man for twenty years, as playwright, architect, and Clique member. Vetterling's creative energy still filled Lindsay with a kind of awe, even subdued fear. How long would the marriage last, he wondered, between Kleo and her fleet graces and the sober Vetterling, with his mind like a sharp steel ax? It was a marriage of state as well as a love match. Much capital had been invested in it, economic and genetic.
Nora led him on through a crowd of children, who were lashing speed into whirring gyroscopes with dainty braided whips. As usual, Paolo Mavrides was winning, his nine-year-old face alight with preternatural concentration.
"Don't hit my wheel, Nora," he said.
"Paolo's been gambling," said Randa Vetterling, a muscular six-year-old. She grinned mischievously, showing missing front teeth.
"Nyaah," Paolo said, not looking up. "Randa's an informer."
"Play nicely," Nora said. "Don't bother the seniors." The senior genetics were sitting around the buhl table in Lindsay's veranda, with its Investor centerpiece. They were conversing strictly in Looks, a language which to the untrained eye seemed to consist entirely of sidelong glances. Lindsay, nodding, glanced under the table. Two children were squatting beneath it, playing in tandem with a long loop of string. Using all four hands and their largest toes they had formed a complex rack of angles.
"Very nice," Lindsay said. "But go play your spiders' games elsewhere."
"All right," the older child said grudgingly. Careful not to disturb their structure, they wormed their way toward the open doorway on their heels and toes, their string-wrapped hands outspread.
"I gave them some candy," said Dietrich Ross when they had left. "They said they'd save it for later. Ever hear of kids that age saving candy for later? What the hell's becoming of the world?"
Lindsay sat down, opening a pocket mirror. He pulled a powder puff from the pocket of his vest.
"Sweating like a pig," Ross observed. "You're not the man you once were, Mavrides."
"You can talk when you've danced four measures, Ross, you old fraud," Lindsay said.
"Margaret has a new opinion on your centerpiece," said Charles Vetterling. The former Regent had gone frankly to seed since his loss of office; he looked tubby and choleric, his old-fashioned trimmed hair speckled with white.
Lindsay was interested. "What's that, Madam Chancellor?"
"It's erotica." Chancellor-General Margaret Juliano leaned over the inlaid table and pointed into the perspex pressure-dome. Beneath the dome was a complex sculpture. Speculation had been rife ever since the Investors had first given it to Lindsay.
The gift was carved out of water ice and plated in glimmering frozen ammonia. Machinery beneath the dome maintained it at 40 degrees Kelvin. The sculpture consisted