Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [97]
Lindsay smiled grimly. "It was no accident that you were assigned my case."
"You are a profoundly unhappy man. It's brought this trouble on you. The Nonmovement has a strong voice in the Harem. Join us. We can save you."
"I had happiness once, Greta. You'll never know it."
"Violent emotion isn't our forte, Bela. We're trying to save the human race."
"Good luck," Lindsay said. They had reached the end of the line. The old acromegalic stepped back to admire his handiwork. "Strap is all right, sundog? You can breathe?"
Lindsay nodded. The kill-clamp dug painfully into the base of his skull.
"It reads the backbrain," the giant said. Growth hormones had distorted his jaw; he had a bulldog's underbite and his voice was slurred. "Remember to shuffle. No sudden movements. Don't think about moving fast, and your head will stay whole."
"How long have you been in this business?" Lindsay said.
"Long enough."
"Are you part of the Harem?"
The giant glared. "Sure, I fuck Carnassus, what do you think?" His enormous hand grasped Lindsay's entire face. "You ever see your own eyeball?
Maybe I pull one out. The Chief can graft you a new one." Lindsay flinched. The giant grinned, revealing poorly spaced teeth. "I see your type before. You are a Shaper antibiotic. Your type tricked me once. Maybe you think you can trick the clamp. Maybe you think you can kill the Chief without moving. Keep in mind you must get by me on the way out." He gripped the top of Lindsay's head and lifted him off the velcro. "Or maybe you think I'm stupid."
Lindsay spoke in trade Japanese. "Save it for the whores, yakuza. Or maybe your excellency would care to take this clamp off and go hand to hand." The giant laughed, startled, and set Lindsay down carefully. "Sorry, friend. Didn't know you were one of our own."
Lindsay stepped through the airlock. Inside, the air was at blood heat. It reeked of perfumed sweat and the odor of violets. The brittle whine of a synthesizer broke off suddenly.
The room was full of flesh. It was made of it: satiny brown skin, broken here and there by rugs of lustrous black hair and mauve flashes of mucus membrane. Everything was involuted, curved: armchair lounges, a rounded mass like a bed of flesh, studded with mauve holes. Blood thrummed through a pipe-sized artery beneath his feet.
Another hooded lamp-device swiveled up on a sleek-skinned elbowed hinge. Dark eyes observed him. A mouth opened in the sleek rump of a footstool beside him. "Take off those velcro boots, darling. They itch." Lindsay sat down. "It's you, Kitsune."
"You knew when you saw my eyes in Wells's office," the voice purred from the wall.
"Not till I saw your bodyguard, really. It's been a long time. Sorry about the boots." He sat and pulled them off carefully, masking his shudder at the sensual warmth of the fleshy armchair. "Where are you?"
"All around you. I have eyes and ears everywhere."
"Where's your body?"
"I had it scrapped."
Lindsay was sweating. After four weeks in the Dembowska chill, the heated air was stifling. "You knew it was me?"
"You're the only one I cared to keep who ever left me, darling. I wasn't likely to forget."
"You've done well, Kitsune," Lindsay said, masking his terror under a sudden onrush of half-forgotten discipline. "Thank you for killing the antibiotic."
"It was easy," she said. "I pretended he was you." She hesitated. "The Geisha Bank believed your deception. It was thoughtful of you to take the yarite's head."
"I wanted to make you a parting gift," Lindsay said carefully, "of absolute power." He looked at the sleek masses of flesh. There was no face anywhere. From the walls and floors came the syncopated muffled thumping of half a dozen hearts.
"Were you upset because I wanted power more than you?" His mind raced. "You've gained in wisdom since those days. Yes, I admit it. The day would have come when you chose between me and your ambitions.