Reshaped like a magnetic field. She was of mixed Asiatic-
African gene stock: her eyes were tilted, but her skin was dark.
Her hair was long and faintly kinked. She knelt before a rack of
white keyboards with an air of meek devotion.
The yarite spoke without moving her head. "Your duties,
Kitsune." The girl's hands darted over the keyboards and the air
was filled with the tones of that most ancient of Japanese
instruments: the synthesizer.
Lindsay knelt on a cushion, facing the old woman. A tea tray
rolled to his side and poured hot water into a cup with a chaste
tinkling sound. It dipped a rotary tea whisk into the cup.
"Your pirate friends," the old woman said, "are about to
bankrupt you."
"It's only money," Lindsay said.
"It is our sweat and sexuality. Did you think it would please us
to squander it?"
"I needed your attention," Lindsay said. His training had
seized him at once, but he was still afraid of the girl. He hadn't
known he would be facing a Shaper. And there was something
drastically wrong with the old woman's kinesics. It looked like
drugs or Mechanist nerve alteration.
"You came here dressed as a Nephrine Black Medical," the
old woman said. "Our attention was guaranteed. You have it.
We are listening."
With Ryumin's help, Lindsay had expanded his plans. The
Geisha Bank had the power to destroy his scheme; therefore,
they had to be co-opted into it. He knew what they wanted. He was ready to show them a mirror. If they recognized their own
ambitions and desires, he would win.
Lindsay launched into his spiel. He paused midway to make a
point. "You can see what the Black Medicals hope to gain from
the performance. Behind their walls they feel isolated, paranoid.
They plan to gain prestige by sponsoring our play.
"But I must have a cast. The Geisha Bank is my natural reservoir of talent. I can succeed without the Black Medicals. I can't succeed without you."
"I see," the yarite said. "Now explain to me why you think we
can profit from your ambitions."
Lindsay looked pained. "I came here to arrange a cultural
event. Can't that be enough?"
He glanced at the girl. Her hands flickered over the keyboards.
Suddenly she looked up at him and smiled, slyly, secretly. He
saw the tip of her tongue behind her perfect teeth. It was a
bright, predatory smile, full of lust and mischief. In an instant it
burned itself into his bloodstream. Hair rose on the back of his
neck. He was losing control.
He looked at the floor, his skin prickling. "All right," he said
heavily. "It isn't enough, and that shouldn't surprise me.
Listen, madame. You and the Medicals have been rivals for
years. This is your chance to lure them into the open and
ambush them on your own ground. They're naive about finance.
Naive, but greedy. They hate dealing in a financial system that
you control. If they thought they could succeed, they'd leap at
the chance to form their own economy.
"So, let them do it. Let them commit themselves. Let them pile success on success until they lose all sense of proportion and
greed overwhelms them. Then burst their bubble."
"Nonsense," the old woman said. "How can an actor tell a
banker her business?"
"You're not dealing with a Mech cartel," Lindsay said in-
tensely, leaning forward. He knew the girl was staring at him.
He could feel it. "These are three hundred technicians, bored,
frightened, and completely isolated. They are perfect prey for
mass hysteria. Gambling fever will hit them like an epidemic."
He leaned back. "Support me, madame. I'll be your point man,
your broker, your go-between. They'll never know you were
behind their ruin. In fact, they'll come to you for help." He
sipped his tea. It tasted synthetic.
The old woman paused as if she were thinking. Her expression
was very wrong. There were none of the tiny subliminal flickers
of mouth and eyelid, the movements of the throat, that accompanied human thought processes. Her face was more than calm.
It was inert.
"It has possibilities," she said at last. "But the Bank must have
control. Covert, but complete. How can you guarantee this?"
"It will be in your hands," Lindsay promised. "We will use my
company, Kabuki Intrasolar, as a front. You will use your contacts outside the Zaibatsu to issue fictitious stock. I will offer it
for sale here, and your Bank will be ambivalent. This will allow
the Nephrines to score a financial coup and seize control of the
company. Fictitious stockholders, your agents, will react in
alarm and send in pleas and inflated offers to the new owners.
This will flatter their self-esteem and overwhelm any doubts.
"At the same time, you will cooperate with me openly. You
will supply me with actors and actresses; in fact, you will
jealously fight for the privilege. Your geishas will talk of nothing
else to every customer. You will spread rumors about me: my
charm, my brilliance, my hidden resources. You will underwrite
all my extravagances, and establish a free-wheeling, free-
spending atmosphere of carefree hedonism. It will be a huge
confidence trick that will bamboozle the entire world."
The old woman sat silently, her eyes glazed. The low, pure tones of the synthesizer stopped suddenly. A tense hush fell over the room. The girl spoke softly from behind her keyboards. "It will work, won't it?"
He looked into her face. Her meekness had peeled off like a
layer of cosmetics. Her dark eyes shocked him. They were full
of frank, carnivorous desire. He knew at once that she was
feigning nothing, because her look was beyond pretense. It was
not human.
Without knowing it, he rose to one knee, his eyes still locked
with hers. "Yes," he said. His voice was hoarse. "It will work, I
swear it to you." The floor was cold under his hand. He realized
that, without any decision on his part, he had begun to move
toward her, half crawling.
She looked at him in lust and wonder. "Tell me what you are,
darling. Tell me really."
"I'm what you are," Lindsay said. "Shaper's work." He forced
himself to stop moving. His arms began to tremble.
"I want to tell you what they did to me," the girl said. "Let me
tell you what I am."
Lindsay nodded once. His mouth was dry with sick excitement.
"All right," he said. "Tell me, Kitsune."
"They gave me to the surgeons," she said. "They took my
womb out, and they put in brain tissue. Grafts from the pleasure
center, darling. I'm wired to the ass and the spine and the
throat, and it's better than being God. When I'm hot, I sweat
perfume. I'm cleaner than a fresh needle, and nothing leaves my
body that you can't drink like wine or eat like candy. And they
left me bright, so that I would know what submission was. Do
you know what submission is, darling?"
"No," Lindsay said harshly. "But I know what it means not to
care about dying."
"We're not like the others," she said. "They put us past the
limits. And now we can do anything we like to them, can't, we?"
Her laugh sent a shuddering thrill through him. She leaped
with balletic grace over her deck of keyboards.
She kicked the old woman's shoulder with one bare foot, and
the yarite fell over with a crunch. Her wig ripped free with a
shredding of tape. Beneath it, Lindsay glimpsed her threadbare skull, riddled with cranial plugs. He stared. "Your keyboards,"he said.
"She's my front," Kitsune said. "That's what my life is. Fronts
and fronts and fronts. Only the pleasure is real. The pleasure of