bear any level of frankness you're willing to advance."
"Tell me your name, then."
"It won't mean anything to you." She was silent. "It's
Abelard," he said. "Call me Abelard."
"What's your gene-line, Abelard?"
"I'm no Shaper."
"You're lying, Abelard. You move like one of us. The arm
business camouflaged it, but your clumsiness is too deliberate.
How old are you? A hundred? Less? How long have you been
sundogging it?"
"Does that matter?" Lindsay said.
"You can go back. Believe me, it's different now. The Council
needs you. I'll sponsor you. Join us, Abelard. We're your people. Not these germy renegades."
Lindsay reached out. Nora drew back, the long laces of her
sleeve ties jerking in free-fall.
"You see," Lindsay said. "I'm as filthy as they are." lie
watched her closely.
She was beautiful. The Mavrides clan was a gene line he hadn't seen before. Wide, hazel eyes, with a trace of epicanthic fold,
more Amerindian than oriental. High cheekbones, straight aquiline nose. Feathery black eyebrows, and a wealth of shimmering
black hair, which in free-fall formed a bushy mass of curled
tendrils. Nora's hair was confined in a loose free-fall headdress,
a jade-green plastic turban with a crimson drawstring at the
back and a serrated fringe of forest green above her bangs. Her
coppery skin was clear and inhumanly smooth, with a dusting of
rouge.
There were six of them. They had a close family resemblance,
but they were not identical clones. The six were that tiny per-
centage of the Mavrides gene-line which had been drafted: Kleo,
Paolo, Fazil, lan, Agnes, and Nora Mavrides. Kleo was their
leader. She was forty. Nora was twenty-eight. The rest were all
seventeen years old.
Lindsay had seen them. He'd pitied them. The Ring Council
did not waste investment. A seventeen-year-old genius was more
than sufficient for the assignment, and they were cheap. They
had looked him over with cold hazel eyes, with the alert and
revolted stare that a man reserves for vermin. They longed to
kill him, with a hunger tempered only by disgust.
It was loo late for that now. They should have killed him far
away, when they could have stayed clean. Now he was too close.
His skin, his breath, his teeth, even his blood seethed with
corruption.
"We have no antiseptics," Nora said. "We never thought we'd
need them. It won't be pleasant for us, Abelard. Boils, weals,
rashes. Dysentery. There's no help for it. Even if you left tomorrow, (he air from your ship ... it was crawling." She spread her
hands. Her blouse had scarlet drawstrings at the wrists, with
puffed slashed sleeves showing the smooth skin of her forearms.
The blouse was a wraparound garment, tied with short strings at
each hip and belted at the waist. She'd sewn it herself, embroidering the lapels in pink-and-white gridwork. Below it she wore
shorts cinched at the knee and lace-up crimson sandals.
"I'm sorry," Lindsay said. "But it's better than dying. The
Shapers are burned, Nora. They're finished. I have no love for
the Mechs, believe me." For the first time, he gestured with his
right arm. "Let me tell you something I'll deny if you repeat.
The Mechs wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. Their Union of
Cartels is a sham. It's only united by fear and hatred of the
Reshaped. When they've destroyed the Ring Council, as they
must, the Mechs themselves will fly to pieces.
"Please, Nora. See it my way for a moment, for the sake of
argument. I know you're committed, I know you're loyal to
your gene-line, your people back home. But your death won't
save them. They're burned, doomed. It's just you and us now.
Eighteen people. I've lived with these Fortunans. We know what
they are. They're scum, pirates, marauders. Failures. Victims,
Nora. They live in the gap between what's right and what's
possible.
"But if you go along, they won't kill you. It's your chance, a
chance for the six here. . . . After they've shut you down, they'll
go back to the cartels. If you surrender, they'll take you along.
You're all young. Disguise your pasts, and in a century you
could be running those cartels. Mech, Shaper, those are only
labels. The point is that we live."
"You're tools," the woman said. "Victims, yes, I'll accept that.
We're victims ourselves. But victims in a better cause than
yours. We came here naked, Abelard. We were shipped here in
a one-way drogue, and the only reason we weren't blown away
in flight is because the Council launches fifty decoys for every
real mission. It costs the cartels mote to kill us than we're
worth.
"That's why they hired you. The rich Mechs, the ones in
power, have turned you on us. And we were surviving. We made
this base from nothing with our hands, brains, and wetware. It
was you who came to kill us."
"But we're here now," Lindsay said. "What's past can't be
helped. I'm begging you to let me live, and yon give me ideology. Please, Nora, bend a little. Don't kill us all."
"I want to live," she said. "It's you who should join us here.
Your lot won't be of much use, but we could tolerate you.
You'll never be true Shapers, but there's room for the
unplanned under our aegis. In one way or another, we outflank
every move the cartels make against us."
"You're under siege," Lindsay said.
"We break out. Haven't you heard? The Concatenation will
declare for us. We have one circumlunar already: the Mare
Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic."
Even here Constantine's shadow had touched him. "You call
that a triumph?" he said. "Those decadent little worlds? Those
broken-down relics?"
"We will rebuild them," she said with chilling confidence. "We
own their youth."
ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 1-1-'17
"Welcome aboard, Dr. Mavrides," the President said. He extended his hand. Nora shook it without hesitation; her skin was
protected under the thin plastic of her spacesuit.
"A fine beginning for the new year," Lindsay said. They were
on the control deck of the Red Consensus. Lindsay realized how
much he'd missed the familiar pop-blip-and-squeak of the instruments. The sound settled into him, releasing tension he
hadn't known he had.
The negotiations were twelve days old. He'd forgotten how bad the pirates looked, how consummately grubby. They had
clogged pores, hair rank with grease, teeth rimmed with plaque.
To a Shaper's eyes they looked like wild animals.
"This is our third agreement," the President said formally.
"First the Open Channels Act, then the Technological Assessment and Trade Consensus, and now a real breakthrough in
social justice policy, the Integration Act. Welcome to the Red
Consensus, doctor. We hope you'll regard every angstrom of the
craft as part of your national heritage."
The President pinned the printout treaty to a bulkhead and
signed it with a flourish. Lindsay printed the state seal with his
left hand. The flimsy paper ripped a little.
"We're all nationals here," the President said. "Let's relax a
little. Get to, uh, know each other." He pulled a gunmetal
inhaler and sniffed at it ostentatiously.
"You sew that spacesuit yourself?" the Speaker of the House
said.
"Yes, Madam Speaker. The seams are threadwire and epoxy
from our wetware tanks."
"Clever."
"I like your roaches," said Rep 2. "Pink and gold and green.
Hardly look like roaches at all. I'd like to have some of those."