Schismatrix

only from ancient textbooks, could be mimicked through skilled

manipulation of the genes of insects.

Fault-lines could be shattered from orbit by dropped projectiles, leaving light flooded patches of pack ice. They could experiment on a dozen cracks at once, adapting rival ecosystems

through trial and error.

It would take centuries. Once again, Gomez took the burden

of the years upon himself. "Biodesign is still in its infancy," he

said. "We must face facts. At least, with the Queen, the Martian

Kluster will have wealth and safety for us. There, at least, our

only enemies will be the years."

Lindsay lurched forward abruptly and slammed his iron fist

into the. table. "We must act now! This is the moment of crux,

when a single act can crystallize our future. We have our choice:

routines or miracles. Demand the miraculous!"

Gomez was stunned. "It's Europa, then, Chancellor?" he said.

"Wellspring's plans seem safer."

"Safer?" Lindsay laughed. "Czarina-Kluster seemed safe. But

the Cause moved on, and the Queen moved with it, when

Wellspring took her. The abstract dream will flourish, but the

tangible city will fall. Those who can't dream will die with it.

The discreets will be thick with the blood of suicides.

Wellspring himself may be killed. Mech agents will annex whole

suburbs, Shapers will absorb whole banks and industries. The

routines that seemed so solid here will melt like tears. ... If we

embrace them, we melt with them."

"Then what must we do?"

"Wellspring is not the only one whose crimes are secret and

ambitious. And he's not the last to vanish."

"You're leaving us, Chancellor?"

"You must handle distress and disaster yourselves. I'm past

any use in that capacity."

The others looked stricken. Gomez rallied himself. "The

Chancellor Emeritus is right," he said. "I was about to suggest

something similar. Our enemies will focus attacks on the

Clique's Arbiter; it might be best if he were hidden."

The others protested automatically; Lindsay overruled them.

"There can't always be Queens and Wellsprings. You must trust in your own strength. I trust in it."

"Where will you go, Chancellor?"

"Where I'm least expected." He smiled. "This isn't my first

crisis. I've seen many. And when they hit, I always ran. I've

preached to you for years, asked you to dedicate your lives. . . .

And always I knew that this moment would come. I never knew

what I would do when the dream faced its crisis. Would I

sundog it as I always have, or would I commit myself? The

moment's here. I must defy my past, just as you must. I know

how to get you your miracle. And I swear to you, I will."

A sudden dread struck Gomez. He had not seen such resolution in Lindsay for years. It occurred to him suddenly that

Lindsay meant to die. He did not know Lindsay's plans, but he

realized now that they would be the crux of the old man's life. It

would be like him to exit at the climax, to fade into the shadows

while some unknown glory still shone. "Chancellor," he said,

"when may we expect your return?"

"Before I die, we'll be Europa's angels. And I'll see you in

Paradise." Lindsay cycled open the scaled door of the discreet;

outside, the free-fall corridors were a burst of sudden crowd

noise. The door thunked shut. He was gone. Thick silence fell.

The old man's absence left a hollowness behind. The others sat silently, savoring the sense of loss. They looked at one another.

Then, as one, they looked to Gomez. The moment passed; the

uneasiness dissolved. Gomez smiled. "Well," he said. "It's miracles, then."

Lindsay's rat leaped spryly onto the table. "He's left it be-

hind," Jane Murray said. She stroked its fur, and it chittered

loudly.

"The rat will come to order," Gomez said. He rapped the

table, and they set to work.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CIRCUMTERRAN ORBIT: 14-4-'54

Three of them waited within the spacecraft: Lindsay, Vera Constantine, and their Lobster navigator, who was known simply as

Pilot.

"Final approach," Pilot said. His beautiful synthesized voice

emerged from a vocoder unit hooked to his throat.

Strapped in before his control board, the Lobster was a chunk

of shadow. Me was sealed within a matte-black permanent

spacesuit, knobbed with lumps of internal machinery and dotted

with shiny gold input jacks. Lobsters were creatures of the

vacuum, faceless posthumans, their eyes and ears wired to sensors woven through the suits. Pilot never ate. Me never drank.

The routines of his body were subsumed within the life-

supporting rhythms of his suit.

Pilot did not like being within this spacecraft; Lobsters had a

horror of enclosed spaces. Pilot, though, had put up with the

discomfort for the thrill of the crime.

Now that they were dropping from orbit, the drugged calm of

weeks of travel had broken. Lindsay had never seen Vera so

animated. Her open delight filled him with pleasure.

And she had reason for gladness. The Presence was gone. She

had not felt it since the three of them had been scaled within

the spacecraft. They'd come so far since then that she believed

she had escaped it for good. She found as much happiness in

this relief as in the fulfillment of their long conspiracy.

Lindsay was happy for her. Me had never had true proof of the

objective existence of the Presence, but he had agreed to believe

in it for her. And similarly, she had never doubted him. It was a

contract and a trust between them. Me knew she might have

killed him, but that trust had saved his life. Long years since

then had only strengthened it.

"Looks good," the Lobster sang. The spacecraft began to buck

as it hit the entrance window of the Earth's atmosphere. The

Lobster emitted a burst of static, then said, "Air. I hate air. I

hate it already."

"Steady," Lindsay said. He tightened the straps of his chair and unfolded his videoscreens.

They were coming in over the continent once known as Africa.

Its outlines had been radically changed by the rising seas: archipelagos of drowned hills trailed clouds above a soup of weed-

choked ocean. Along the dark shore, rivers poured gray topsoil

into water streaked reel with algal blooms.

The white-hot flare of entry heat obscured his vision, flickering

over the diamond-hard hull lens of the forward scanner. Lindsay leaned back in his seat.

It was an odd ship, an uncomfortable one, not of human

manufacture. The egg-shaped hull had the off-white sheen of

stabilized metallic hydrogen, built only by gasbags. Its naked

interior floor and ceiling bore the rounded, scalloped segmentation marks of its former pilot, a gasbag grub. The spacefaring

grub had been packed within the hull as tightly as expanding

dough.

One of the gasbags had alluded to the astronaut's death in a

"conversation" with Vera Constantine. With its keen sensitivity

to magnetic flux, the unlucky grub had perceived a solar flare

whose shape and substance it found somehow blasphemous. It

had expired in despair.

Lindsay had been looking for just such a chance. When Vera

told him of the accident, Lindsay acted at once, lie recruited

the Lobsters through their business contact in Czarina-Kluster, a

Lobster they called "the Modem."

A complex deal was worked out, in utter secrecy, with the

anarchic Lobsters. One of their lacy, airless spacecraft used

Vera's coordinates to track down the dead grub. Lindsay allowed them to dissect it and appropriate its alien engines. In