Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [88]
She feasted, the taped arms flushing yellow with slime. The frill jutted behind her head, stiff with fury. The furtive nastiness of her crime was unmistakable; it crossed the barrier of species easily. As easily as wealth. Lindsay put his monocle away. The tape, attracted by the movement, unlaced its head and lifted it blankly. Lindsay waved his arms at it and the model fell into tangles. He stood up and began to shuffle back and forth in the heavy gravity. It watched him, coiling and flickering. DEMBOWSHA CARTEL: 10-10-'53
Lindsay lurched down the entry ramp, his scuffed foot-gloves skidding. After the blaze aboard the starship the disembarkation mall seemed murky, subaqueous. Dizziness seized him. He might have managed free-fall, but the Dembowska asteroid's feeble gravity made his stomach lurch. The lobby was sprinkled with travelers from the other Mechanist cartels. He'd never seen so many Mechs in one place, and despite himself the sight alarmed him. Ahead, luggage and passengers entered the scanning racks of customs. Beyond them loomed the glass fronts of the Dembowska duty-free shops. Lindsay shuddered suddenly. He had never felt air so cold. An icy draft seeped through his thin coveralls and the flexible fabric of his foot-gloves. His breath was steaming. Dazed, he headed for the customs. A young woman waited just before it, poised easily on one booted foot. She wore dark tights and a fur-collared jacket. "Captain-Doctor?" she said. Lindsay stopped with difficulty, gripping the carpet with his toes.
"The bag, please?" Lindsay handed her his ancient diplomatic bag, crammed with data lifted from Kosmosity files. She took his arm in a friendly fashion, leading him through an unmarked door past the customs scanners. "I'm Policewife Greta Beatty. Your liaison." They went down a flight of stairs to an office. She handed the bag to a woman in uniform and accepted a stamped envelope in return.
She led him out onto a lower floor of the duty-free mall, prying open the envelope with her lacquered nails. "This holds your new papers," she said. She handed him a credit card. "You are now Auditor Andrew Bela Milosz. Welcome to Dembowska Cartel."
"Thank you, Policewife."
"Greta will do. May I call you Andrew?"
"Call me Bela," Lindsay said. "Who picked the name?"
"His parents. Andrew Milosz died recently, in Bettina Cartel. But you won't find his death in the records; his next of kin sold his identity to the Dembowska Harem Police. All identifying marks in his records have been erased and replaced with yours. Officially, he emigrated here." She smiled. "I'm here to help you over the transition. To keep you happy."
"I'm freezing," Lindsay said.
"We'll see to that at once." She led him past the frosted glass into one of the duty-free shops, a clothier's. When they reemerged Lindsay wore new coveralls, of thicker quilted fabric with inset vertical puckers at wrists and ankles. The tasteful charcoal gray matched his new fur-lined velcro boots. Gloves were clipped to the vest pocket of his flared fuzzplastic jacket. He sported a microphone boutonniere in one creamtone lapel.
"Now your hair," said Greta Beatty. She carried his new zip-up wardrobe bag. "It's in an awful state."
"It was gray," Lindsay said. "The roots grew in black. So I shaved it off. Since then it's been on its own." He looked at her levelly.
"You want to keep the beard?"
"Yes."
"Whatever makes you happy."
After ten minutes under the stylers Lindsay's hair was brushed back from his forehead and temples in slickly brilliantined curves. The beard was trimmed.
Lindsay had been watching his companion's kinesics. There was a calmness, a quietude about her movements that belied her youth. Lindsay felt strained, hypertensive, but Greta's smooth cheerfulness was beginning to affect him through kinesic contamination. He found himself smiling involuntarily.
"Hungry yet?"
"Yes."
"We'll go to the Periscope. You look fine, Bela. You'll get the hang of Dembowska gravity in no time. Stick close by me." She wrapped her