Other books by Bruce Sterling
INVOLUTION OCEAN
THE ARTIFICIAL KID
SCHISMATRIX
by Bruce Sterling
ARBOR HOUSE
New York
Copyright 1985 by Bruce Sterling
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in
whole or in part in any form. Published in the United States
of America by Arbor House Publishing Company and in
Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 987654321
This book is printed on acid-free paper. The paper in this
book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of
the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bruce Sterling
Schismatrix (lacking pp 78-79, 102-103 of this paper version)
PROLOGUE
Painted aircraft flew through the core of the world. Lindsay
stood in knee-high grass, staring upward to follow their flight.
Flimsy as kites, the pedal-driven ultralights dipped and soared
through the free-fall zone, far overhead. Beyond them, across
the diameter of the cylindrical world, the curving landscape
glowed with the yellow of wheat and the speckled green of
cotton fields.
Lindsay shaded his eyes against the sunlit glare from one of the
world's long windows. An aircraft, its wings elegantly stenciled
in blue feathers on white fabric, crossed the bar of light and
swooped silently above him. He saw the pilot's long hair trailing
as she pedaled back into a climb. Lindsay knew she had seen
him. He wanted to shout, to wave frantically, but he was
watched.
His jailers caught up with him: his wife and his uncle. The two
old aristocrats walked with painful slowness. His uncle's face
was flushed; he had turned up his heart's pacemaker. "You
ran," he said. "You ran!"
"I stretched my legs," Lindsay said with bland defiance.
"House arrest cramps me."
His uncle peered upward to follow Lindsay's gaze, shading his
eyes with an age-spotted hand. The bird-painted aircraft now
hovered over the Sours, a marshy spot in the agricultural panel
where rot had set into the soil. "You're watching the Sours, eh?
Where your friend Constantine's at work? They say he signals
you from there."
"Philip works with insects, Uncle. Not cryptography."
Lindsay was lying. He depended on Constantine's covert signals for news during his house arrest.
He and Constantine were political allies. When the crackdown
came, Lindsay had been quarantined within the grounds of his
family's mansion. But Philip Constantine had irreplaceable ecological
skills. He was still free, working in the Sours.
The long internment had pushed Lindsay to desperation. He
was at his best among people, where his adroit diplomatic skills
could shine. In isolation, he had lost weight: his high cheek-
bones stood out in sharp relief and his gray eyes had a sullen,
vindictive glow. His sudden run had tousled his modishly curled
black hair. He was tall and rangy, with the long chin and
arched, expressive eyebrows of the Lindsay clan.
Lindsay's wife, Alexandrina, took his arm. She was dressed
fashionably, in a long pleated skirt and white medical tunic. Her
pale, clear complexion showed health without vitality, as if her
skin were a perfectly printed paper replica. Mummified kiss-
curls adorned her forehead.
"You said you wouldn't talk politics, James," she told the
older man. She looked up at Lindsay. "You're pale, Abelard.
He's upset you."
"Am I pale?" Lindsay said. He drew on his Shaper diplomatic
training. Color seeped into his cheeks. He widened the dilation
of his pupils and smiled with a gleam of teeth. His uncle
stepped back, scowling.
Alexandrina leaned on Lindsay's arm. "I wish you wouldn't do
that," she told him. "It frightens me." She was fifty years older
than Lindsay and her knees had just been replaced. Her Mechanist teflon kneecaps still bothered her.
Lindsay shifted his bound volume of printout to his left hand.
During his house arrest, he had translated the works of Shakespeare into modern circumsolar English. The elders of the Lindsay clan had encouraged him in this. His antiquarian hobbies,
they thought, would distract him from plotting against the state.
To reward him, they were allowing him to present the work to
the Museum. He had seized on the chance to briefly escape his
house arrest.
The Museum was a hotbed of subversion. It was full of his
friends. Preservationists, they called themselves. A reactionary
youth movement, with a romantic attachment to the art and
culture of the past. They had made the Museum their political
stronghold.
Their world was the Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate
Republic, a two-hundred-year-old artificial habitat orbiting the
Earth's Moon. As one of the oldest of humankind's nation-
states in space, it was a place of tradition, with the long habits of
a settled culture.
But change had burst in, spreading from newer, stronger
worlds in the Asteroid Belt and the Rings of Saturn. The
Mechanist and Shaper superpowers had exported their war into
this quiet city-state. The strain had split the population into
factions: Lindsay's Preservationists against the power of the
Radical Old, rebellious plebes against the wealthy aristocracy.
Mechanist sympathizers held the edge in the Republic.
The Radical Old held power from within their governing hospitals. These ancient aristocrats, each well over a century old,
were patched together with advanced Mechanist hardware, their
lives extended with imported prosthetic technology. But the
medical expenses were bankrupting the Republic. Their world
was already deep in debt to the medical Mech cartels. The
Republic would soon be a Mechanist client state.
But the Shapers used their own arsenals of temptation. Years
earlier, they had trained and indoctrinated Lindsay and Constantine. Through these two friends, the leaders of their generation, the Shapers exploited the fury of the young, who saw their
birthrights stolen for the profit of the Mechanists.
Tension had mounted within the Republic until a single gesture could set it off.
Life was the issue. And death would be the proof.
Lindsay's uncle was winded. He touched his wrist monitor and
turned down the beating of his heart. "No more stunts," he said.
"They're waiting in the Museum." He frowned. "Remember, no
speeches. Use the prepared statement."
Lindsay stared upward. The bird-painted ultralight went into a
powerdive.
"No!" Lindsay shouted. He threw his book aside and ran.
The ultralight smashed down in the grass outside the ringed
stone seats of an open-air amphitheatre.
The aircraft lay crushed, its wings warped in a dainty convulsion of impact. "Vera!" Lindsay shouted.
He tugged her body from the flimsy wreckage. She was still
breathing; blood gushed from her mouth and nostrils. Her ribs
were broken. She was choking. He tore at the ring-shaped collar
of her Preservationist suit. The wire of the collar cut his hands.
The suit imitated space-suit design; its accordioned elbows were
crushed and stained.
Little while moths were flying up from the long grass. They
milled about as if drawn by the blood.
Lindsay brushed a moth from her face and pressed his lips to
hers. The pulse stopped in her throat. She was dead.
"Vera," he groaned. "Sweetheart, you're burned. . . ."
A wave of grief and exultation hit him. He fell into the sun-