Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [77]
Lindsay dropped to the floor on the other side. "Burn the sleeves," he muttered. By now everyone looked a little unraveled. He made his way toward the cluster of debaters.
A young Mechanist stood at the circle's center, wearing well-cut satin overalls with black frogging and a suggestion of Shaper lace at the throat. Lindsay recognized him: a disciple of Ryumin's, come in with the latest Kabuki Intraso-lar tour. He called himself Wells.
Wells had a brash, sundoggish look: short matted hair, shifty eyes, a wide free-fall stance. He had the Kabuki mask logo on his coverall's shoulders. He looked drunk.
"It's an open-and-shut case," Wells insisted loudly. "When they used the Investors as a pretext to stop the war, that was one thing. But those of us who've known the aliens since we were children can recognize the truth. They're not saints. They have played on us for profit." The group had not yet noticed Lindsay. He hung back, judging their ki-nesics. This was grim: the Shapers were Afriel, Besetzny, Warden, Parr, and Leng: his graduate class in alien linguistics. They listened to the Mechanist with polite contempt. Obviously they had not bothered to tell him who they were, though their predoctoral overvests marked their rank clearly.
"You don't feel they bear any credit for detente?" This was Simon Afriel, a cold and practiced young militant already making his mark in the Shaper academic-military complex. He had confessed once to Lindsay that he had his sights set on an alien diplomatic assignment. So did they all: surely, out of nineteen known alien races, there would be one with which the Shapers could establish strong rapport. And the diplomat who returned sane from that assignment would have the world at his feet.
"I'm an ardent Detentiste," said Wells. "I just want humanity to share the profit from it. For thirty years the Investors have bought and sold us. Do we have their secrets? Their stardrive? Their history? No. Instead they fob us off with toys and expensive joyrides to the stars. These scaly con artists have preyed on human weakness and division. I'm not alone in thinking this. There's a new generation in the Cartels these days—"
"What's the point?" This was Besetzny, a wealthy young woman who already spoke eight languages as well as Investor. She was the picture of young Shaper glamour in her slashed cordless sleeves and winged velvet headdress. "In the Cartels you're outnumbered by your old. They'll deal with us as they always have; that's their routine. Without the Investors to shield us—"
"That's just it, doctor-designate." Wells was not as drunk as he looked.
"There are hundreds of us who long to see the Rings for what they are. You're not without your admirers, you know. We have third-hand Ring fashions, fourth-hand Ring art, passed around secretly. It's pathetic! We have so much to offer each other. .. . But the Investors have squeezed everything they can from the status quo. Already they've begun abetting warmongers: cut down Ring-Cartel interflights, encouraged bidding wars. . . . You know, the mere fact that I've come here is enough to brand me for life, possibly even as an agent for Ring Security: a bacillus, I think you call them? I'll never set foot in a Cartel again without eyes watching me—"
Afriel lifted his voice. "Good evening, Captain-Doctor." He had spotted Lindsay.
Making the best of it, Lindsay ambled forward. "Good evening, doctorsdesignate. Mr. Wells. I trust you're not embittering yourselves with youthful cynicism. This is a happy time. ..."
But now Wells was nervous. All Mechanists were terrified of agents of Ring Security, not realizing that the academic-military complex permeated Shaper life so thoroughly