Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [85]
"If I changed it was because you wanted me to."
"Not like this. Not treason."
"We'll die for nothing."
"Like the others," she said, regretting it at once. And there it was before them: the old guilt in all its stark intimacy. Those others, to whom duty was more than life. Those they had abandoned, those they had killed in the Shaper outpost. That was the crime the two of them had struggled to efface, the crime that had bound them together. "Well, that's what you're asking, isn't it? To betray my own people again, for you!" There. She had said it. Now there was no going back. She waited in pain for the words that would free her from him.
"You were my people," he said. "I should have known I would never have one for long. I'm a sundog, and it's my way, not yours. I knew you wouldn't come." He leaned his head against the bare fingers of his artificial arm. Piercing highlights glinted off the harsh iron. "Stay and fight, then. You could win, I think."
It was the first time he had lied to her. "But I can win," she said. "It won't be easy, we won't have all we had, but we're not beaten yet. Stay, Abelard, please. Please! I need you. Ask me for anything except to give up fighting."
"I can't ask you to change," her husband said. "People only change if you give them time. Someday this thing that's haunted us will wear away, if we both live. I think the love is stronger than the guilt. If it is, and someday you feel your obligations no longer need you, then come after me. Find me...."
"I will, I promise it, Abelard.... If I'm killed like the others and you live on safely then say you won't forget me."
"Never. I swear it by everything we had between us."
"Goodbye, then." She climbed up into the huge Investor chair to kiss him. She felt his steel hand go around her wrist like a manacle. She kissed him lightly. Then she tugged, and he let go.
Chapter 6
AN INVESTOR TRADE SHIP: 29-9-'53
Lindsay lay on the floor of his cavernous stateroom, breathing deeply. The ozone-charged air of the Investor ship stung his nose, which was sunburned despite his oils. The stateroom walls were blackened metal, studded with armored orifices. From one of them a freshet of distilled water trickled, cascading limply in the heavy gravity.
This stateroom had seen a lot of use. Faint scratches cuneiformed the floor and walls, almost to the ceiling. Humans were not the only passengers to pay Investor fare.
If modern Shaper exosociology was right, the Investors themselves were not the first owners of these starships. Covered in vainglorious mosaics and metal bas-reliefs, each Investor craft looked unique. But close analysis showed the underlying basic structure: blunt hexagons at bow and stern, with six long rectangular sides. Current thought held that the Investors had bought, found, or stolen them.
The ship's Ensign had given him a pallet, a broad flat mattress patterned in brown-and-white hexagons, built for Investors. Its surface was as harsh as burlap. It smelled faintly of Investor scale-oil. Lindsay had tested the metal wall of his stateroom, wondering about the scratches. Though it felt faintly grainy, the steel zips of his foot-gloves slid on it like glass. Still, it might be softer under extremes of temperature and pressure. A very large taloned beast afloat in a pool of high-pressure liquid ethane, for instance, might have scratched the walls in an attempt to burrow out.
The gravity was painful, but the stateroom lights had been turned down. The cabin was huge and unfurnished; his scattering of clothes on magnetic hooks seemed like pathetic scraps.
It was odd of the Investors to leave a room empty, even if it doubled as a zoo. Lindsay lay quietly, trying to catch his breath, thinking about it. The armored hatchway rang, then shunted open. Lindsay levered himself up with the artificial arm, the only limb not sore from gravity. He smiled. "Yes, Ensign? News?"
The Ensign entered the room. He was small for an Ensign, a mere forearm's length taller than Lindsay himself, and his wiry build was accented by his birdlike