Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [92]
"You're not sleepy?"
He yawned. "A little."
She raised her right arm above her head, absently. A remote control unit leaped across the room into her hand, and she turned on the video wall. It showed an overhead view of the Extraterrarium, taken through one of the monitors in the Camassus Palace.
Lindsay joined her on the couch, tucking his mukluks into the heated stirrups. "Not that," he said, shivering. She touched a button; the videowall blurred and resolved into the Saturnian surface, crawling in red and amber. Nostalgia flooded him. He turned his face away.
She switched scenes. A craggy landscape appeared; enormous pits next to a blasted, flaking area cut by two huge crevasses. "This is erotica," she said. "Skin at twenty thousand times life size. One of my favorites." She touched buttons and the video raced across the ominous landscape, pulling to a stop by the root of a gigantic scaled spar. "See those domes?"
"Yes."
"Those are bacteria. This is a Mechanist, you see."
"You?"
She smiled. "This is often the hardest part for a Shaper. You can't stay sterile here; we depend on these little creatures. We don't have your internal alterations. We don't want them. You'll have to crawl like the rest of us." She took his left hand. Her hand was warm and faintly moist. "This is contamination. Is it so bad?"
"No."
"Better to get it over with all at once. Do you agree?" He nodded. She put her hand on the back of his neck and kissed him warmly, her mouth open. Lindsay touched his flannel sleeve to his lips. "That was more than a medical action," he said.
She pulled the knotted towel from his head and tossed it to the household servo. "Nights are cold in Dembowska. A bed is warmer with two."
"I have a wife."
"Monogamy? How quaint." She smiled sympathetically. "Face facts, Bela. Defection broke your contract with the Mavrides gene-line. You're a nonperson now. Except to us."
Lindsay brooded. An image surged up within him: Nora, curled alone in their bed, her eyes wide, her mind racing as her enemies closed in. He shook his head.
Calmly, Greta smoothed his hair. "If you tried a little, you'd recover your appetite. Still, it's wise not to rush things."
She showed the polite disappointment that a hostess might show to a guest who refused dessert. He felt tired. Despite his renewed youth he ached from the Investor gravity.
"I'll show you the bedroom." It was lined in dark fur. The bed's canopy was an overhead videoceiling. The massive headboard was equipped with the latest in slumber technology. He recognized an encephalogram, monitoring jacks for artificial body parts, fluorographs for midnight blood fractionation. He climbed into the bed, kicking off his mukluks. The sheets rippled, swaddling over him. "Sleep well," Greta said, leaving. Something touched the top of his head; above him the canopy flickered gently into life, sketching out brain rhythms. The waves were complex and annotated cryptically. One of the wave functions was outlined in roseate pink. As he looked at it, relaxing, it began to grow. He intuited suddenly what went on inside his mind to make it larger. He gave in to it and was suddenly asleep.
When he woke next morning Greta was sleeping peacefully beside him, an alarm tiara clamped to her forehead, tied in to the house security. He climbed out of bed. His skin itched ferociously. His tongue felt furred. He was beginning to crawl.
DEMBOWSHA CARTEL: 24-10-'53
"I never thought I'd see you this way, Fyodor." On Greta's parlor wall across the room from Lindsay,