To catch birds with a mirror was the ideal snare.
The yarite's network of beads would protect him. Kitsune had
taught him how to work the beads from within. Even if the
assassin avoided the traps, he could be struck down from within
by high voltage or sharp flechettes.
Lindsay walked the pattern flawlessly and burst into the
yarite's quarters. He opened a videoscreen, flicked it on, and
loaded the tape.
It was a face from his past: the face of his best friend, the man
who had tried to kill him, Philip Khouri Constantine.
"Hello, cousin," Constantine said.
The term was aristocratic slang in the Republic. But Constantine was a plebe. And Lindsay had never heard him put
such hatred into the word.
"I take the liberty of contacting you in exile." Constantine
looked drunk. He was speaking a little too precisely. The ring-
shaped collar of his antique suit showed sweat on the olive skin
of his throat. "Some of my Shaper friends share my interest in
your career. They don't call these agents assassins. The Shapers
call them 'antibiotics.'
"They've been operating here. The opposition is much less
troublesome with so many dead from 'natural causes.' My old
trick with the moths looks juvenile now. Very brash and risky.
"Still, the insects worked well enough, out here in the
moondocks. . . . Time flies, cousin. Five months have changed
things.
"The Mechanist siege is failing. When the Shapers are trapped
and squeezed, they ooze out under pressure. They can't be
beaten. We used to tell each other that, when we were boys,
remember, Abelard? When our future seemed so bright we
almost blinded each other, sometimes. Back before we knew
what a bloodstain was. . . .
"This Republic needs the Shapers. The colony's rotting. They
can't survive without the biosciences. Everyone knows it, even
the Radical Old.
"We never really talked to those old wireheads, cousin. You
wouldn't let me; you hated them too much. And now I know
why you were afraid to face them. They're tainted, Abelard, like
you are. In a way, they're your mirror image. By now you know
what a shock it is to see one." Constantine grinned and
smoothed his wavy hair with a small, deft hand.
"But I talked to them, I came to terms. . . . There's been a
coup here, Abelard. The Advisory Council is dissolved. Power
belongs to the Executive Board for National Survival. That's me,
and a few of our Preservationist friends. Vera's death changed
everything, as we knew it would. Now we have our martyr. Now
we're full of steel and fury.
"The Radical Old are leaving. Emigrating to the Mech cartels
where they belong. The aristocrats will have to pay the costs for
it.
"There are others coming your way, cousin. The whole mob of
broken-down aristos: Lindsays, Tylers, Kellands, Morrisseys. Political exiles. Your wife is with them. They're squeezed dry
between their Shaper children and their Mechanist grandparents, and thrown out like garbage. They're all yours.
"I want you to mop up after me, tie up my loose ends. If you
won't accept that, then go back to my messenger. He'll settle
you." Constantine grinned, showing small, even teeth. "Except
for death, you can't escape the game. You and Vera both knew
that. And now I'm king, you're pawn."
Lindsay shut off the tape.
He was ruined. The Kabuki Bubble had assumed a grotesque
.solidity; it was his own ambitions that had burst.
He was trapped. He would be unmasked by the Republic's
refugees. His glittering deceptions would fly apart to leave him
naked and exposed. Kitsune would know him for what he was: a
human upstart, not her Shaper lover.
His mind raced within the cage. To live here under Constantine's terms, in his control, in his contempt-the thought
scalded him.
He had to escape. He had to leave this world at once. He had
no time left for scheming.
Outside, the assassin was waiting, with Lindsay's own stolen
face. To meet him again was death. But he might escape the
man if he disappeared at once. And that meant the pirates.
Lindsay rubbed his bruised wrist. Slow fury built in him: fury
at the Shapers and the destructive cleverness they had used to
survive. Their struggle left a legacy of monsters. The assassin.
Constantine. himself.
Constantine was younger than Lindsay. He had trusted Lind-
say, looked up to him. But when Lindsay had come back on
furlough from the Ring Council, he'd painfully felt how deeply
the Shapers had changed him. And he had deliberately sent
Constantine into their hands. As always, he had made it sound
plausible, and Constantine's new skills were truly crucial. But
Lindsay knew that he had done it selfishly, so that he'd have
company, outside the pale.
Constantine had always been ambitious. But where there had
been trust, Lindsay had brought a new sophistication and deceit.
Where he and Constantine had shared ideals, they now shared
murder.
Lindsay felt an ugly kinship with the assassin. The assassin's
training must have been much like his own. His own self-hatred
added sudden venom to his fear of the man.
The assassin had Lindsay's face. But Lindsay realized with a
sudden flash of insight that he could turn the man's own
strength against him.
He could pose as the assassin, turn the situation around. He
could commit some awful crime, and the assassin would be
blamed.
Kitsune needed a crime. It would be his farewell gift to her, a
message only she would understand. He could free her, and his
enemy would pay the price.
He opened the diplomatic bag and tossed aside his paper heap
of stocks. He opened the floorboards and stared at the body of
the old woman, floating naked on the wrinkled surface of the
waterbed. Then he searched the room for something that would
cut.
CHAPTER THREE
ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 2-6-'16
When the last slave rocket from the Zaibatsu had peeled away,
and the engines of the Red Consensus had cut in, Lindsay began
to think he might be safe.
"So how about it, citizen?" the President said. "You sundogged
off with the loot, right? What's in the bag, State? Ice-cold drugs?
Hot software?"
"No," Lindsay said. "It can wait. First we have to check every-
one's face. Make sure it's their own."
"You're twisted, State," said one of the Senators. "That
'antibiotic' stuff is just agitprop crap. They don't exist."
"You're safe," the President said. "We know every angstrom
on this ship, believe me." He brushed an enormous crawling
roach from the burlapped surface of Lindsay's diplomatic bag.
"You've scored, right? You want to buy into one of the cartels?
We're on assignment, but we can detour to one of the Belt
settlements-Bettina or Themis, your choice." The President
grinned evilly. "It'll cost you, though."
"I'm staying with you," Lindsay said.
"Yeah?" said the President. "Then this belongs to us!" He
picked up Lindsay's diplomatic bag and threw it to the Speaker of the House.
I'll open it for you," Lindsay said quickly. "Just let me
explain first."
"Sure," the Speaker said. "You can explain how much it's
worth." She pressed her portable power saw against the bag.
Sparks flew and the reek of melted plastic filled the spacecraft.
Lindsay averted his face.
Speaker groped within the bag, bracing her knee against it
in free-fall. With a wrenching motion she dragged out Lindsay's