have held them, except in free-fall. There were light opera-box
frameworks for the Hank elite, and a jackstraw complex of
padded bracing wires where the audience clung like roosting
sparrows.
Most floated freely. The crowd formed a percolating mass of
loose concentric spheres. Broad tunnels had opened spontaneously in the mass of bodies, following the complex kinesics of crowd flow. There was a constant excited murmur in a flurry of differing argots.
The play began. Lindsay watched the crowd. Brief shoving
matches broke out during the first fanfare, but by the time the
dialogue started the crowd had settled. Lindsay was thankful for
that. He missed his usual bodyguard of Fortuna pirates.
The pirates had finished their obligations to him and were
busy preparing their ship for departure. Lindsay, though, felt
safe in his anonymity. If the play failed disastrously, he would
simply be one sundog among others. If it went well, he could
change in time to accept the applause.
In the first abduction scene, pirates kidnapped the young and
beautiful weapons genius, played by one of Kitsune's best. The
audience screamed in delight at the puffs of artificial smoke and
bright free-fall gushes of fake blood.
Lexicon computers throughout the Bubble translated the script
into a dozen tongues and dialects. It seemed unlikely that this
polyglot crowd could grasp the dialogue. To Lindsay it sounded
like naive mush, mangled by mistranslation. But they listened
raptly.
After an hour, the first three acts were over. A long intermission followed, in which the central stage was darkened. Rude
claques had formed spontaneously for the cast members, as
pirate groups shouted for their own.
Lindsay's nose stung. The air inside the Bubble had been
supercharged with oxygen, to give the crowd a hyperventilated
elan. Despite himself, Lindsay too felt elation. The hoarse
shouts of enthusiasm were contagious. The situation was moving
with its own dynamics. It was out of his hands.
Lindsay drifted toward the Bubble's wall, where some enterprising oxygen farmers had set up a concessions stand.
The farmers, clinging awkwardly to footloops on the Bubble's
frame, were doing a brisk business. They sold their own native
delicacies: anonymous green patties fried up crisp, and white
blobby cubes on a stick, piping hot from the microwave. Kabuki
Intrasolar took a cut, since the food stands were Lindsay's idea.
The farmers paid happily in Kabuki stock.
Lindsay had been careful with the stock. He had meant at first inflate it past all measure and thereby ruin the Black
Medicals. But the miraculous power of paper money had se-
duced him. He had waited too long, and the Black Medicals had
sold their stock to outside investors, at an irresistible profit.
Now the Black Medicals were safe from him -and grateful.
They sincerely respected him and nagged him constantly for
further tips on the market.
Everyone was happy. He foresaw a long run for the play. After
that, Lindsay thought, there would be other schemes, bigger and
better ones. This aimless sundog world was perfect for him. It
only asked that he never stop, never look back, never look
farther forward than the next swindle.
Kitsune would see to that. He glanced at her opera box and
saw her floating with carnivorous meekness behind the Bank's
senior officers, her dupes. She would not allow him any doubts
or regrets. He felt obscurely glad for it. With her limitless
ambition to drive him, he could avoid his own conflicts.
They had the world in their pocket. But below his giddy sense
of triumph a faint persistent pain roiled through him. He knew
that Kitsune was simply and purely relentless. But Lindsay had
a fault line through him, an aching seam where his training met
his other self. Now, at his finest moment, when he wanted to
relax and feel an honest joy, it came up tainted.
All around him the crowd was exulting. Yet something within
him made him shrink from joining them. He fell cheated, twist-
ed, robbed of something that he couldn't grip.
He reached for his inhaler. A good chemical whiff would boost
his discipline.
Something tugged the fabric of his jumpsuit, from behind him,
to his left. He glanced quickly over his shoulder.
A black-haired, rangy young man with flinty gray eyes had
seized his jumpsuit with the muscular bare toes of his right foot.
"Hey, target," the man said. He smiled pleasantly. Lindsay
watched the man's face for kinesics and realized with a dull
shock that the face was his own.
"Take it easy, target," the assassin said. Lindsay heard his own
voice from the assassin's mouth.
The face was subtly wrong. The skin looked too clean, too new.
It looked synthetic.
Lindsay twisted around. The assassin held a bracing wire with
both hands, but he reached out with his left foot and caught
Lindsay's wrist between his two largest toes. His foot bulged
with abnormal musculature and the joints looked altered. His
grip was paralyzing. Lindsay felt his hand go numb.
The man jabbed Lindsay's chest with the toe of his other foot.'
"Relax," he said. "Let's talk a moment."
Lindsay's training took hold. His adrenaline surge of terror
transmuted into icy self-possession, "flow do you like the performance?" he said.
The man laughed. Lindsay knew that he was hearing the assassin's true voice; his laugh was chilling. "These moondock worlds
are full of surprises," he said.
"You should have joined the cast," Lindsay said. "You have a
talent for impersonation."
"It comes and goes," the assassin said. He bent his altered
ankle slightly, and the bones of Lindsay's wrist grated together
with a sudden lancing pain that made blackness surge behind
his eyes. "What's in the bag, targ? Something they'd like to
know about back home?"
"In the Ring Council?"
"That's right. They say they have us under siege, all those
Mech wireheads, but not every cartel is as straight as the last.
And we're well trained. We can hide under the spots on a dip's
conscience."
"That's clever," Lindsay said. "I admire a good technique.
Maybe we could arrange something."
"That would be interesting," the assassin said politely. Lindsay
realized then that no bribe could save him from this man.
The assassin released Lindsay's wrist. He reached into the
breast pocket of his jumpsuit with his left foot. His knee and hip
swiveled eerily. "This is for you," he said. He released a black
videotape cartridge. It spun in free-fall before Lindsay's eyes.
Lindsay took the cartridge and pocketed it. He snapped the
pocket shut and looked up again. The assassin had vanished. In
his place was a portly male sundog in the same kind of general-
issue dun-brown jumpsuit. He was heavier than the assassin and
his hair was blond. The man looked at him indifferently.
Lindsay reached out as if to touch him, then snatched his hand
back before the man could notice.
The lights went up. Dancers came onstage. The Bubble rang
with howls of enthusiasm. Lindsay fled along the Bubble's walls
through a nest of legs tucked through footloops and arms
clutching handholds. He reached the anterior airlock.
He hired one of the aircraft moored outside the lock and flew
at once to the Geisha Bank.
The place was almost deserted, but his credit card got him in.
The enormous guards recognized him and bowed. Lindsay hesitated, then realized he had nothing to say. What could he tell
them? "Kill me, next time you see me?"