Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [84]
He said, "You came this far. You wouldn't have, if you didn't want to come with me. I know you, Nora. You're still the same, even if I've changed."
"I came because I wanted to be with you for every moment that I could." She fought down the tears, her face frozen. The sensation was horrifying, a black nausea. Too many tears, she thought, had been pushed away for too long. The day would come when she would choke on them.
Constantine used every weakness in Goldreich-Tremaine, she thought. And my special weakness was this man. When Abelard came back from the rejuvenation clinic, three weeks late and so changed that the household robots wouldn't let him in ... But even that was not so bad as the days without him, hunting for him, finding that the black-market subble he'd gone to had been deflated and put away, wondering what furtive Star Chamber was picking him to shreds....
"This is my fault," she said. "I accused Constantine with no proof, and he humiliated me. Next time I'll know better."
"Constantine had nothing to do with it," he said. "I know what I saw in that clinic. They were Superbrights."
"I can't believe in the Cataclysts," she said. "Those Superbrights are watched like jewels; they don't have room for wild conspiracies. What you saw was a fraud; the whole thing was staged to draw me out. And I fell for it."
"Don't be proud, Nora. It's blinded you. The Cataclysts abducted me, and you won't even admit they exist. You can't win, because you can't bring back the past. Let it go, and come with me."
"When I see what Constantine did to the Clique—"
"It's not your fault! My God, aren't there disasters enough without your heaping them all on your own shoulders? Goldreich-Tremaine is through! We have to live now! I told you years ago that it couldn't last, and now it's over!" He flung his arms wide. The left one, tugged by gravity, fell limply; the other whirred with smooth precision through a powered arc. They had been over this a hundred times, and she saw that his nerves were frayed. Under the influence of the treatment his hard-won patience had vanished in a blaze of false youth. He was shouting at her. "You're not God!
You're not history! You're not the Ring Council! Don't flatter yourself!
You're nothing now, you're a target, a scapegoat! Run, Nora! Sundog it!"
"The Mavrides clan needs me," she said.
"They're better off without you. You're an embarrassment to them now, we both are—"
"And the children?"
He was silent a moment. "I'm sorry for them, more sorry than I can say, but they're adults now and they can take their own chances. They're not the problem here, we are! If we make things easy for the enemy, just slip away, evaporate, we'll be forgotten. We can wait it out."
"And give the fascists their way in everything? The assassins, the killers? How long before the Belt fills up again with Shaper agents, and little wars blaze up in every corner?"
"And who'll stop that? You?"
"What about you, Abelard? Dressed as a stinking Mechanist with stolen Shaper data in that bag! Do you ever think of anyone's life but your own? Why in God's name don't you stand up for the helpless instead of betraying them?
Do you think it's easier for me without you? I'll go on fighting, but without you there'll be no heart in me."
He groaned. "Listen. I was a sundog before I met you, you know just how little I had.... I don't want that emptiness, no one caring, no one knowing
... And another betrayal on my conscience.... Nora, we had almost forty years!
This place was good to us, but it's falling apart on its own! Good times will come again. We have all the time there is! You wanted more life, and I went out and got it for you. Now you want me to throw it away. I won't be a martyr, Nora. Not for anyone."
"You always talked about mortality," she said. "You're