Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [81]
He studied her kinesics warily. The wrinkles of her face were very slightly wrong, not matching the muscles beneath the skin. "You're young," he said. "You only look old."
"Then we share one fraud. For you, that's only one of many."
"Ross told me you were dependable," he said. "Why risk your situation by annoying me?"
"We want the truth."
He stared. "How ambitious. Try the scientific method. And in the meantime, let's talk sense."
The young woman smoothed her medical tunic with wrinkled hands. "Pretend I'm a theatre audience, Dr. Mavrides. Tell me about your ideology."
"I don't have one."
"What about the Investor Peace? All those Detentiste plays? Did you think you would heal the Schism with this Investor fraud?"
"You're younger than I thought," he said. "If you ask me that, you must have never seen the war."
She glared at him. "We were raised in the Peace! Children, told from the creche that love and reason would sweep the war aside! But we read history. Not Juliano's version but the bitter truth. Do you know what happens to groups whose innovations fail? At best they're shuffled off to some wretched outpost. At worst they're hunted down, picked off, turned against each other—" The truth of it stung him. "But some live!"
The girl laughed. "You're unplanned, so why should you care for us?
Stupidity is life and breath to you."
"You're one of Margaret Juliano's people," he said. "The Superbrights." He stared at her. He had never met a Superbright before. They were supposed to be closely sheltered, constantly under study.
"Margaret Juliano," she said. "From your Midnight Clique. She helped design us. She's a Detentiste! When the Peace falls, we'll fall with her!
They're always prying at us, spying, looking for flaws. . .." Her eyes were wild in the wrinkled face. "Do you realize the potential we have? There are no rules, no souls, no limits! But dogmas hedge us in. False wars and stupid loyalties. The heaped-up garbage of the Schismatrix. Others wallow in it, hiding from total freedom! But we want all the truth, without conditions. We take our reality raw. We want all eyes open, always: and if it takes a cataclysm, then we have a thousand ready...."
"No, wait," Lindsay said. The girl was a Superbright; she could be no more than thirty. It appalled him to see her so fanatic, so willing to repeat his errors: his, and Vera's. "You're too young for absolutes. For God's sake, no pure gestures. Give it fifty years first. Give it a hundred! You have all the time you want!"
"We don't think the way they want us to," the girl said. "And they'll kill us for it. But not until we've pried the worldskull open and put our needles in."
"Wait," Lindsay said. "Maybe the Peace is doomed. But you can save yourselves. You're clever. You can—"
"Life's a joke, friend. Death's the punch line." She raised her hand and vanished.
Lindsay gasped. "What have you—?" He stopped suddenly. His own voice sounded odd to him. The room's acoustics seemed different. The machines, however, were producing the same quiet hums and subdued beeps. He approached the machines. "Hello? Young girl. Let's talk first. Believe me, I can understand." His voice had changed; it had lost the subtle raspiness of age. He touched his throat left-handed. His chin had a heavy growth of beard. Shocked, he tugged at it. It was his own hair. He floated closer to the machines, touched one. It rustled beneath his hand. He seized it in a fury; it crumpled at once, showing a flimsy lathwork of cellulose and plastic. He tore into the next machine. Another mockup. In the center of the complex was a child's tape recorder, humming and beeping faithfully. He snatched it up left-handed and was suddenly aware of his left arm: a lingering soreness in the muscle.
He tore off his short and jacket. His stomach was taut, flat; the graying hair on his chest had been painstakingly depilated. Again he felt his face. He had never worn a beard, but it felt like two weeks' growth, at least. The girl must have drugged him on the spot. Then someone had given him a cell-wash, reversed catabolism,