Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [90]
"Why is it so cold?"
"History. Fashion. Dembowska's an old colony; it suffered an ecobreak-down. There are places where I can show you layers of flashfrozen mold still peeling off the walls. The worst rots have adjusted to a narrow range in temperature. When it's this cold they're dormant. That's not the only reason, though." She gestured at the window. "That has its influence." Lindsay looked out. "The swimming pool?"
Greta laughed politely. "That's the Extraterrarium, Bela."
"Burn me!" Lindsay stared outward.
The rough-hewn cavity was slopping over with a turgid, rust-tinged liquid. He'd thought it was water at first. "That's where they keep the monsters," he said. "That observation globe—that's the Carnassus Palace, isn't it?"
"Of course."
"It's quite small."
"It's an exact replica of the observatory of the Chaikin Expedition. Of course it's not large. Imagine what the Investors charged them to ship it to the stars. Carnassus lives very modestly, Bela. It's not like Ring Security told you."
Every diplomatic instinct held Lindsay back. With an effort, he broke them. "But he has two hundred wives."
"Think of us as a psychiatric staff, Auditor. Marriage to Carnassus is an arrangement of rank. Dembowska depends on him, and he depends on us." Lindsay said, "Could I meet Carnassus?"
"That would be up to the Chief of Police. But what's the point? The man can barely speak. It's not like they say in the Rings. Carnassus is a very dazed, very gentle person, who was terribly wounded. When his embassy was failing, he took an experimental drug, PDKL-Ninety-five. It was supposed to help him grasp alien modes of thought, but it shattered him. He was a brave man. We feel pity for him. The sexual aspect is a very minor part of it." Lindsay considered this. "I see. With two hundred others, some of them favorites, presumably, it must be a rather rare role... . Once a year, perhaps?"
She was calm. "Not quite that rare, but you've grasped the basics. I won't disguise the truth, Bela. Carnassus is not our ruler; he's our resource. The Harem rules Dembowska because we surround him and we're the only ones he'll talk to." She smiled. "It's not a matriarchy. We're not mothers. We're the police."
Lindsay looked out the window. A drip fell and rippled. It was liquid ethane. Just beyond the insulated metaglass the sluggish pond was at an instantly lethal 180 degrees below zero Celsius. A man in that reddish pool would freeze in seconds into a bloated mass of rock. The grayish stones of the shores, Lindsay realized suddenly, were water ice.
Something was emerging onto the shoreline. In the dim bluish light, the ethane's surface was pierced by what appeared to be a rack of broken twigs. Even in the feeble gravity the creature's movements were glacial. Lindsay pointed.
"A sea scorpion," Greta said. "Eurypteroid, to give it its formal name. It's attacking that lump on the shoreline. That black slime is vegetation." More of the predator slid with paralytic slowness from the thin liquid. The twigs were now revealed as interlocking basketlike foreclaws that meshed together like saberteeth. "Its prey is gathering energy to leap. That will take a while. By the standards of this ecosystem, this is a lightning attack. Look at the size of its cephalothorax, Bela."
The sea scorpion had heaved its broad, platelike prosoma out of the water; this crablike head-body was half a meter across. Behind the lozenge-shaped compound eyes was the creature's long, tapering abdomen, plated in overlapping horizontal ridges. "It's three meters long," Greta said as a servo delivered the first course. "Longer if you count the tailspike. A nice size for an invertebrate. Have some soup."
"I'm watching this." The extended claws were closing on the prey with the slow deliberation of a hydraulic door. Suddenly the prey-creature flopped wob-blingly into the air and landed in the pool with a splash.
"It jumps fast!" Lindsay said.
"There's only one speed for jumping." Greta Beatty