degrading its brain. It's very old. Held together with wires and
patchwork."
She sat it up on a floor mat and spooned vitaminized pap into
its mouth.
"You should seize control on your own," he said. He inserted
a dripping plug into a duct on the yarite's veiny forearm.
"I'd like that," she said. "But I have a problem getting rid of
this one. The sockets on its head will be hard to explain away. I
could cover them with skin grafts, but that won't fool an au-
topsy. . . . The staff expect this thing to live forever. They've
spent enough on it. They'll want to know why it died."
The yarite moved its tongue convulsively and dribbled out its
paste. Kitsune hissed in annoyance. "Slap its face," she said.
Lindsay ran a hand through his sleep-matted hair. "Not this
early," he said, half pleading.
Kitsune said nothing, merely straightened her back and shoulders and set her face in a prim mask. Lindsay was defeated at
once. He jerked his hand back and swung it across the thing's
face in a vicious open-handed slap. A spot of color showed in
its leathery cheek.
"Show me its eyes," she said. Lindsay grabbed the thing's gaunt
checks between his thumb and fingers and twisted its head so
that it met Kitsune's eyes. With revulsion, he recognized a dim
flicker of debased awareness in its face.
Kitsune took his hand away and lightly kissed his palm.
"That's my good darling," she said. She slipped the spoon
between the thing's slack lips.
THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU:21-4-'16
The Fortuna pirates floated like red-and-silver paper cutouts
against the interior walls of the Kabuki Bubble. The air was
loud with the angry spitting of welders, the whine of rotary
sanders, the wheeze of the air filters.
Lindsay's loose kimono and trousers ruffled in free-fall. He
reviewed the script with Ryumin. "You've been rehearsing this?" he said.
"Sure," said Ryumin. "They love it. It's great. Don't worry."
Lindsay scratched his floating, puffy hair. "I don't quite know
what to make of this."
A camouflaged surveillance plane had forced itself into the
Bubble just before the structure was sealed shut. Against the
bright triangular pastels, its dreary camouflage made it as obvious as a severed thumb. The machine yawed and dipped
within the fifty-meter chamber, its lenses and shotgun micro-
phones swiveling relentlessly. Lindsay was glad it was there, but
it bothered him.
"I have the feeling I've heard this story before," he said. He
flipped through the printout's pages. The margins were thick
with cartoon stick figures scribbled there for the illiterate. "Let
me see if I have it right. A group of pirates in the Trojan
asteroids have kidnapped a Shaper woman. She's some kind of
weapons specialist, am I right?"
Ryumin nodded. He had taken his new prosperity in stride. He
wore ribbed silk coveralls in a tasteful shade of navy and a loose
beret, high fashion in the Mech cartels. A silver microphone bead dotted his upper lip.
Lindsay said, "The Shapers are terrified by what the pirates
might do with her expertise. So they form an alliance and put
the pirates under siege. Finally they trick their way in and burn
the place out." Lindsay looked up. "Did it really happen, or
didn't it?"
"It's an old story," Ryumin said. "Something like that actually
happened once; I feel sure of it. But I filed off the serial
numbers and made it my own."
Lindsay smoothed his kimono. "I could swear that . . . hell.
They say if you forget something while you're on vasopressin,
you'll never remember it. It causes mnemonic burnout." He
shook the script in resignation.
"Can you direct it?" Ryumin said.
Lindsay shook his head. "I wanted to, but it might be best if I
left it to you. You do know what you're doing, don't you?"
"No," Ryumin said cheerfully. "Do you?"
"No. . . . The situation's getting out of hand. Outside investors
keep trying to buy Kabuki stock. Word got out through the
Geisha Bank's contacts. I'm afraid that the Nephrine Black
Medicals will sell their Kabuki holdings to some Mech cartel.
And then ... I don't know . . . it'll mean - "
"It'll mean that Kabuki Intrasolar has become a legitimate
business."
"Yes." Lindsay grimaced. "It looks like the Black Medicals will
escape unscathed. They'll even profit. The Geisha Bank won't
like it."
"What of it?" said Ryumin. "We have to keep moving forward
or the whole thing falls apart. The Bank's already made a killing
selling Kabuki stock to the Black Medicals. The old crone who
runs the Bank is crazy about you. The whores talk about you
constantly."
He gestured at the center stage. It was a spherical area
crisscrossed with padded wires, where a dozen actors were going
through their paces. They flung themselves through free-fall
aerobatics, catching the wires, spinning, looping, and
rebounding.
Two of them collided bruisingly and clawed the air for a
handhold. Ryumin said, "Those acrobats are pirates, you under-
stand? Four months ago they would have slit each other's
throats for a kilowatt. But not now, Mr. Dze. Now they have too
much at stake. They're stage-struck."
Ryumin laughed conspiratorially.
"For once they're more than pocket terrorists. Even the whores are more than sex toys. They're real actors, with a real script and a real audience. It doesn't matter that you and I know
It's a fraud, Mr. Dze. A symbol has meaning if someone gives it meaning. And they're giving it everything they have."
Lindsay watched the actors begin their routine again. They
flew from wire to wire with feverish determination. "It's pathetic," he said.
"A tragedy to those who feel. A comedy to those who think,"
Ryumin said. Lindsay stared at him suspiciously. "What's gotten into you, anyway? What are you up to?"
Ryumin pursed his lips and looked elaborately nonchalant.
"My needs are simple. Every decade or so I like to return to the
cartels and see if they've made any progress with these bones of
mine. Progressive calcium loss is not a laughing matter. Frankly,
I'm getting brittle." He looked at Lindsay. "And what about
you, Mr. Dze?"
He patted Lindsay's shoulder.
"Why not tag along with me? It would do you good to see
more of the System. There are two hundred million people in
space. Hundreds of habitats, an explosion of cultures. They're
not all scraping out a living on the edge of survival, like these
poor bezprizorniki. Most of them are the bourgeoisie. Their
lives are snug and rich! Maybe technology eventually turns them
into something you wouldn't call human. But that's a choice
they make-a rational choice." Ryumin waved his hands expansively. "This Zaibatsu is only a criminal enclave. Come with me
and let me show you the fat of the System. You need to see the cartels."
"The cartels. . ." Lindsay said. To join the Mechanists would
mean surrendering to the ideals of the Radical Old. He looked
around him, and his pride flared. "Let them come to me!"
THE MARE TRANQUILLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR
ZAIBATSU: 1-6-'16
For the first performance, Lindsay gave up his finery for a
general-issue jumpsuit. He covered his diplomatic bag with bur-
lap to hide the Kabuki decals.
It seemed that every sundog in the world had filtered into the
Bubble. They numbered over a thousand. The Bubble could not